#what’s even the point of having third and fourth and fifth parties if votes for them don’t count?

[tearosesarts]

Man, it really does suck that we just kinda have to vote blue all the way down the ballot just to prevent the worst option. They tell you to research your candidates, but then sometimes the other parties’ options sound better than the democratic candidates, but you can’t vote for them because it’s impossible for them to win because nobody’s heard of them, so any vote that isn’t blue or red may as well not be a vote at all.

[booasaur]

I think there are some takeaways here, if we want to learn from this.

First: third-party voters were irrelevant. In no swing state did left-leaning third-party voters add up to enough to push Harris over.

Second: many progressive policies and politicians outperformed Harris.

Third: appealing to Republicans did not work.

It has never worked, in the US or in Europe, we've seen time and again that giving ground to right wing policies only legitimizes them and voters then prefer the original. For example, if you worry about immigration, and both sides are saying it's a problem, who do you trust more to handle it?

Fourth: polls were pretty accurate. There were months, years, really, of debate about polling being broken, which demographics were underrepresented, which were overrepresented, herding, hopes that they were overcorrecting for the last two misses on Trump, but they ended up closer than anybody wanted. Which also means that Biden would have lost by even worse.

Fifth: on the one hand, people should hopefully see this graphic and realize there's no minority to scapegoat:

On the other hand, I'm seeing a lot of people take it as a sign the country has simply shifted to the right in a huge, undeniable way that's depressing and ominous and feels hopeless. After all, Trump will win the popular vote by a lot, the first time a Republican has in decades.

However, this should be taken in conjunction with these numbers:

Now THIS is something that's open to further analysis and that can be worked with.

Why did so many Democrat voters not show up?

Here are some potential reasons for this, the truth most likely being a combination of at least several of them:

She's a Black-Indian woman. There's no denying the racism and misogyny among the US electorate, but given earlier polls where she was leading, I don't think this was the main or certainly only reason.

She was seen as too progressive/leftist. Again, by virtue of our racist, misogynistic electorate and our billionaire-owned media, Harris was seen as too extreme left by a lot of people, not just because of policies, but because inherently, her identity itself is extreme left to them. I personally don't think this was a crucial factor because, again, she had been leading when she was going stronger on the progressive messaging, other progressive policies and politicians outperformed her, and a lot of the people who think she's too extreme are Republicans who'd never vote for her. I just don't think it's a good enough reason for the millions of Democrats who didn't show.

Palestine. There's a coalition of pro-Palestine people, not just Muslims and Arab Americans but leftists and other POC too, but numerically, their vote for third parties made no difference. Did enough shift to Trump or not show up at all? Certainly in Michigan they swung to the right, but would that have made a difference? Did they matter in other less tangible ways, e.g., a lot of the same active progressives who'd have been out campaigning simply voted quietly for Harris and left it at that? How much of a distraction was this for Dems, having to constantly address Gaza as opposed to putting forth their own policies, and did it contribute to the overall perception of them being incompetent and weak and bringing chaos when people were tired of it? I think Palestine did have an effect, but enough to swing it overall...?

Not being progressive enough. A lot of people will point to Palestine and immigration, the decision to campaign with Liz Cheney and Mark Cuban and court Republican moderates, stifling Walz, and various other shifts that abandoned the left for the center and then the left didn't show up while the center went for Republicans as they always do, but the left isn't that large. I think, if this one point is a factor, it's more that it was simply difficult for normal voters to show up when they didn't really know what the candidate stood for, aside from "more of the same" and "not Trump".

Biden. When you have a ton of people unhappy with where the country is going, including their biggest priority, the economy, being tied to an unpopular incumbent was going to be tough, especially when, as a Black-Indian woman, she would be judged as disloyal if she broke too much from him. Nevertheless... People were unhappy with him and his administration.

Ultimately, I think there's a lot to learn and I hope Dems will.

I think we're in for a tough time and we're going to need community and solidarity, not fighting among ourselves.

[dumbestthingiveeverheard]

Dumbest Thing I've Ever Heard: 8/15/2023

Fifth Place: Karine Jean Pierre

What if there's an investigation that everybody involves knows is bullshit? Just today, Biden's Press Secretary Karine Jean Pierre said the Executive Branch knows for a fact that this investigation will not reveal any important connection between the President and Hunter Biden's business deals. However, one has to wonder, if that is the case, why are they even bothering to investigate this in the first place? I wish to remind everybody that our last President attempted to overthrow the government and end democracy in the United States, and the Justice Department is too busy running nonsensical investigations based on Republican bullshit--which makes one wonder what the point of electing a Democrat even was.

Fourth Place: Ben Shapiro

Here is what Shapiro had to say regarding the Trump indictment revealed last night:

Whatever you think of the Trump indictments, one thing is for certain: the glass has now been broken over and over again. Political opponents can be targeted by legal enemies. Running for office now carries the legal risk of going to jail -- on all sides.

Even ignoring the hypocrisy of this coming from a man who wrote an entire book calling for the prosecution of Barack Obama, this is utterly nonsensical. Running for office does not carry the legal risk of going to jail, breaking the law does--the only difference being now running for office is not a shield from going to jail.

Third Place: Christopher Rufo

Can we just talk about how moronic the right is when it comes to optics? For example, if you want to do something regarding the institutions of this country and push them to the right--maybe you shouldn't compare yourself to one of the most hated politicians in United States history.

Finally, the next conservative administration must mobilize federal law enforcement against the left-wing radical organizations that engaged in political violence during the summer of George Floyd. What Nixon did to the Black Panther Party, the next president must do to the violent factions of our time. 

I'm half reminded of when J.D. Vance tried to convince Donald Trump to channel Andrew Jackson's response to the Supreme Court--however, it is impossible to stress how bad of an idea something like that would be. Seriously, comparing yourself to the personification of everything most people hate about politics--the man who nearly destroyed the Republican Party--is quite possibly the dumbest thing a person could do.

Second Place: Sebastian Gorka

I don't even know what to say about this one:

President Trump said what? He said, "I just want to find 11,780 votes." That's like saying, "I just want to have vanilla ice cream for dessert."

No it isn't--not in any way.

Winner: Charlie Kirk

Again, this is another one I don't really have a comment for--I guess other than Kirk saying that Trump's indictment is "an attempt to nullify the Constitution" shows that he hasn't actually read it.

Charlie Kirk, you've said the dumbest thing I've ever heard.

[littlejackiepapercut]

I don't want to talk about politics on this account. Ever. I am not going to tell anyone my opinion on any politician because that's not what I'm here for. But I have to say.

Really? People believe this? People actually think that Donald Trump has a plan, with a chance of success, to completely subvert the entire electoral system in perpetuity? That's retarded. I mean that is six different kinds of retarded.

First off most of the people saying this were saying for the last four years that you can't rig an election. And you know what? They're right. The system can be cheated a little bit by individuals on either side, and one has to assume that some cheating does happen on both sides for exactly that reason, but to completely rig an election to the point of disregarding the vote entirely is absolutely impossible and you're stupid if you think it's possible.

Second, if it could be bypassed that would require a massive conspiracy. Do you think Donald Trump has enough friends on the inside to pull that off? Do you think he's even smart enough to pull it off? I fucking don't and fuck you if you do.

Third, why would he even do that? He'd have to be elected a second time first, and he can't be elected three times. It doesn't benefit him in any way. And if he needs to be elected to do it, what makes you think he'd be able to keep it in place after his term is up?

Fourth, who exactly would he be rigging future elections in favor of? He runs as a Republican but he doesn't actually have a party. He doesn't really appeal to a "wing" of politics. The Congressional Republicans are at best fifty-fifty on him, most of the time much worse. He pisses off the right as much as he does the left with his trade wars and comments about taking away guns and free markets not working. If anything Trump's policy preferences benefit from the pendulum continuing to swing.

Fifth, this is from a Scottish source. Relying on this is exactly as retarded as if your primary source for information on American politics is the BBC or Sky News Australia or, I don't know, Computing Forever.

Sixth, I don't actually want to make a sixth point, I just want to call anyone who believes this nonsense retarded one more time.

Vote for whoever you want. Red, blue, yellow, I don't care, doesn't matter one fuck to me. But this fearmongering has no place in the discussion. I will not be taking questions or comments. All of you shut up. And, yes, go touch grass.

US followers, you need to deny Trump the presidency at all costs.

There’s a lot more work to do on top of voting but you need to get out and vote against him.

Here’s how to check your voter registration status.

[purplepink-blueberry]

Slovak presidential elections posting by blueberry bc what else would i do, actual schoolwork?

yesterday was the first round but i fell asleep at 11 pm like a child so i couldn't do a summary/explanation. Well. I could. but it would make zero sense. So. Let's do a summary/recap/explanation for the fortunate people who are studying something more useful than Poli Sci (this is a joke, I love studying Poli Sci and I think the knowledge is important, humanities/social sciences are just underappreciated)

so. presidential elections in Slovakia. They happen every five years (the same years the EU parliament elections take place!) and we, shockingly, elect our president.

(A sidenote, a president in Slovakia is kind of like a monarch in a constitutional monarchy, except we choose them, they represent us abroad, their signature is required for legislation to become law and they are the chief army officer, but since we are in NATO and at peace, currently, that doesn't add too much extra responsibility. Legislation is proposed and approved by the parliament, the president just has to sign it. Or they can veto it, or ask the constitutional court to check whether the law doesn't go against the constitution).

After 5 years of having a president that truly deserves a better country to be a president of, we will have a new president and we'll decide in two weeks.

but wait blueberry, didn't you say that you had the elections now?

Yes, I did. For presidential elections, it is required that the winner has more than 50% of votes to actually assume the role and when you have a multiple-party system, this doesn't usually happen. I mean, we had originally 11 candidates, 2 of whom withdrew, so 9 in total. I'd be actually worried if anyone got more than 50% there because that wouldn't be a sign of the healthiest of democracies (not that our democracy is healthy but getting more than 50% in the first round would either mean one of the candidates has a cult base of followers, and cult of personality is Not Good or that somehow half of Slovakia united against something even worse... and I for real don't wanna see that). Okay but back to elections. In the first round, all candidates who have gathered enough signatures in a petition (for them to be a candidate) compete. In the second round, two weeks after the first round, the first two candidates compete.

Later I can do a brief summary of everyone who was a candidate but only like a half of them are actually relevant names (to me).

The person who won the first round is Ivan Korčok and in second place was Peter Pellegrini. If one of these names is familiar from my electionposting in October, that's because I mentioned Pellegrini as he is the leader of Hlas, which is a pretend-social democratic political party (or was? As a president, you can't be a member of any political party in Slovakia, the president is supposed to be impartial).

Korčok used to be the minister of foreign affairs during the "reign" of Matovič (I'll do a summary at some point, it is *unhinged*) but when his party (the liberals) left the coalition, he resigned. Frankly, the only reason he won the first round is because he isn't tied to Fico.

Korčok won with 42.5% of votes, Pelle was second with 37%, third was Harabin with 11.7%, fourth was Forró with 2.9% and fifth was Matovič with 2.1%

In two weeks, we'll see. And I might do more tired electionposting because I will go to my school's election night event. But my prediction is that Korčok will lose.

[colourfullsims]

Well it took a while, but I’m proud to present the official schedule for my Love Island Challenge! 

I’ve had the majority of the schedule worked out for some time now, but since this challenge includes all genders and sexualities, it’s harder to predict how evenly things will go the longer the challenge goes on. I’ve tried my best to come up with a schedule that will account for those unpredictabilities and now I just have to hope for the best lol. Beside that, I’m excited for you all to see the challenges and dates I have planned for the islanders!

Below the cut, you’ll find a summary of what you can expect for each day of the challenge, which is a combination of skill based challenges, relationship building opportunities, and viewer influenced decisions. I’ve made this schedule with the intention of having a total of 25 sims competing, as well as opportunities for various sexuality and gender pairings. As the challenge goes on, I may need to make changes if I run into issues with this pacing: I’ll let you all know if that happens. If you plan on using my schedule as a blueprint for your own Love Island Challenge, feel free to tweak things to work for your needs!

I’ll be aiming to post new uploads of the challenge 3-5 days a week, with 3-5 posts per day. Viewer Votes will go live periodically throughout the challenge: some will be for dates, some for Hideaway access, and some influencing the results of eliminations. So you can expect to see a new Viewer Vote at least a week before each of these events is set to be published.

If you have any questions about this schedule or anything else Love Island related, feel free to leave it in the comments below. Thanks guys and see you soon for more shenanigans from the Love Island Villa!

Day 1: Premiere Night & First Coupling Ceremony Ten islanders enter the Villa and participate in the first coupling ceremony of the season!

Day 2: New Islander, Speed Dates, Solo Date A new islander has entered the villa: all eligible islanders will participate in speed dates, and the newbie’s favorite will win themselves a solo date that evening!

Day 3: Challenge, Solo Date, Second Coupling Ceremony Challenge Day! After participating in a skilled challenge, the winning couple will go on a solo date in the afternoon. In the evening, the second coupling will commence, and one islander will be dumped from the Villa.

Day 4: Solo Dates (Viewer Vote #1) The first Viewer Vote will determine which two couples will go on solo dates!

Day 5: Challenge & Solo Date Challenge Day! After participating in a skilled challenge, the winning couple will go on a solo date in the evening.

Day 6: New Islanders, Speed Dates & Solo Dates Two new islanders have entered the villa: all eligible islanders will participate in speed dates, and the two newbie’s favorites will win themselves solos date that evening!

Day 7: Solo Dates (Viewer Vote #2) The second Viewer Vote will determine which two couples will go on solo dates!

Day 8: Challenge & The Hideaway Challenge Day! After participating in a skilled challenge, the winning couple will gain access to the Hideaway in the evening, where they will enjoy precious alone time.

Day 9: Solo Date & Third Coupling Ceremony (Viewer Vote #3) The first half of the third Viewer Vote will determine which couple will go on a solo date! In the evening, islanders will participate in the third coupling ceremony and the second half of the viewer vote will determine which sim(s) will be dumped from the Villa. Same sex couplings will now be possible from this point forward!

Day 10: New Islanders, Speed Dates, Solo Dates Two new islanders have entered the villa: all eligible islanders will participate in speed dates, and the two newbie’s favorites will win themselves solos date that evening!

Day 11: Challenge & Solo Date Challenge Day! After participating in a skilled challenge, the winning couple will go on a solo date in the evening.

Day 12: Solo Dates (Viewer Vote #4.1) Part 1 of the fourth Viewer Vote will determine which two couples who are not currently coupled up will go on solo dates! 

Day 13: Solo Dates & Fourth Coupling Ceremony (Viewer Vote #4.2-3) Part 2 of the fourth Viewer Vote will determine which two couples who are currently coupled up will go on solo dates! In the evening, the fourth coupling will commence: part 3 of the Viewer Vote will determine the order islanders will recouple in. Any islanders left single will be dumped. Otherwise, an emergency part 4 of the Viewer Vote will be released, and the two least favorite couples will be up for elimination. The safe islanders will then have to decide which one of the two couples they will dump from the Villa.

Day 14: Casa Amor Day 1: Speed Dates, Challenge, House Party Casa Amor is open! The ten remaining islanders will be split between two Villas, each group meeting five new islanders each. Each group will go on speed dates with the new islanders to get to know each other. In the afternoon, each Villa will choose partners and participate in a skilled challenge. In the evening, each Villa will have a house party.

Day 15: Casa Amor Day 2: Solo Dates & The Hideaway (Viewer Vote #5.1) The first half of the fifth Viewer Vote will determine which two sets of sims will go on a solo date (one set from each Villa). Date 1 of 2 will take place on this day. In the evening, winners from yesterday’s challenge will gain access to the Hideaway!

Day 16: Casa Amor Day 3: Solo Dates & The Hideaway (Viewer Vote #5.2) The first half of the fifth Viewer Vote will determine which two sets of sims will go on a solo date (one set from each Villa). Date 2 of 2 will take place on this day. The second part of the Viewer Vote will allow the audience to give one set of islanders from each Villa access to the Hideaway!

Day 17: Fifth Coupling Ceremony (Viewer Vote #5.2) All islanders will return to the original Villa. The fifth coupling will take place, with the original islanders revealing whether they want to stay coupled up with their partners from before Casa Amor, or if they want to couple up with one of the new islanders. Any original islanders who are not coupled up at the end of the coupling ceremony will not be dumped from the Villa, but will need to be coupled up by the next ceremony to stay in the game. Any new islanders who are not coupled up by the end of the ceremony will be dumped from the Villa.

Day 18: Challenge & Solo Date Challenge Day! All islanders will participate, whether coupled up or not. After participating in a skilled challenge, the winning islander will go on a solo date with the islander of the choice.

Day 19: Solo Date (Viewer Vote #6) The sixth Viewer Vote will determine which two couples will go on solo dates! Date 1 of 2 will take place on this day.

Day 20: Solo Date (Viewer Vote #6) The sixth Viewer Vote will determine which two couples will go on solo dates! Date 2 of 2 will take place on this day.

Day 21: Challenge & The Hideaway Challenge Day! Only couples will participate in this challenge. After participating in a skilled challenge, the winning couple will gain access to The Hideaway.

Day 22: Sixth Coupling Ceremony In the evening, the sixth coupling will commence: any islanders left single will be dumped. If more than 8 couples are remaining, an emergency part 2 of the sixth Viewer Vote will be released, least favorite couple(s) will be dumped from the island, leaving us with seven couples (14 sims total).

Day 23: Solo Dates (Viewer Vote #7) The seventh Viewer Vote will determine which two couples will go on solo dates!

Day 24: Challenge & The Hideaway  Challenge Day! After participating in a skilled challenge, the winning couple will gain access to The Hideaway.

Day 25: Seventh Coupling Ceremony In the evening, the seventh coupling with commence. After the couples have been settled, the pair with the weakest connection with be dumped from the Villa. This will be the last chance for sims to recouple.

Day 26: Challenge & Solo Date Challenge Day! After participating in a skilled challenge, the winning couple will go on a solo date.

Day 27: Dumping (Viewer Vote #8) In the evening, islanders will gather at the firepit to hear the results of the public vote. Viewers will vote for their favorite couples, and the couple with the lowest ranking will be dumped from the island.

Day 28: Family Day The remaining couples will invite their closest family and friends to meet their current partner!

Day 29: Final Dates & Dumping (Viewer Vote #9) Each couple will have one final solo date together which will be customized towards their interests. In the evening, islanders will gather at the firepit to hear the results of the public vote. Viewers will vote for their favorite couples, and the couple with the lowest ranking will be dumped from the island.

Day 30: Finale Night (Viewer Vote #10) The viewers will cast a final vote for which couple they think should win. Results will be shared on finale night, and fourth, third, second, and first place prizes will be awarded. The winning couple will stand at the firepit one last time and open up the money envelopes: one will be empty and the other will contain the cash prize. The islander who received the money will then have to decide whether to take the money for themselves, or to share it with their partner.

[bongaboi]

Milwaukee Bucks: 2021 NBA Champions

MILWAUKEE (AP) Giannis Antetokounmpo ended one of the greatest NBA Finals ever with 50 points and a championship Milwaukee waited 50 years to win again.

Antetokounmpo added 14 rebounds and five blocked shots as the Bucks beat the Phoenix Suns 105-98 on Tuesday night to win the series 4-2. It was the third game this series with at least 40 points and 10 rebounds for Antetokounmpo, a dominant debut finals performance that takes its place among some of the game's greatest.

He shot 16 for 25 from the field and made an unbelievable 17-of-19 free throws - a spectacular showing for any shooter, let alone one who was hitting just 55.6% in the postseason and was ridiculed for it at times.

He hopped around the court waving his arms with 20 seconds remaining to encourage fans to cheer, but there was no need. Their voices had been booming inside and outside for hours by then, having waited 50 years to celebrate a winner after Lew Alcindor - before becoming Kareem Abdul-Jabbar - and Oscar Robertson led the Bucks to the championship in 1971.

In a season played played largely without fans, the Bucks had 65,000 of them packed into the Deer District outside, a wild party that figured to last deep into the Midwestern night. The party wasn't bad inside, either: Confetti rained down inside as fans chanted ''Bucks in 6! Bucks in 6!'' - a hopeful boast by former player that turned out to be a prophetic rallying cry.

The Bucks became the fifth team to win the NBA Finals after trailing 2-0 and the first to do it by winning the next four games since Miami against Dallas in 2006.

Chris Paul scored 26 points to end his first NBA Finals appearance in his 16th season. Devin Booker added 19 points but shot just 8 for 22 and missed all seven 3-pointers after scoring 40 points in each of the last two games.

The teams that came into the NBA together as expansion clubs in 1968 delivered a fine finals, with the last three games all in the balance deep into the fourth quarter.

The Bucks won them largely because of Antetokounmpo, a two-time MVP in the regular season who raised his game even higher in the finals and was voted the NBA Finals MVP.

He was the star of these finals in every way, from his powerful play on the court to his humble thoughts in interviews to even taking time after Tuesday night's win to find children to high-five amid the celebrations. And he did it all after missing the final two games of the Eastern Conference finals with a hyperextended left knee, an injury that at first he feared could be serious to end his season.

Just think what people would have missed.

Khris Middleton scored 17 points for the Bucks and Bobby Portis came off the bench with 16. Jrue Holiday had 12 points, 11 assists and nine rebounds to go along with his usual sturdy defense that helped finally cool off Booker.

The Bucks thought they might be here the last two seasons. They had the NBA's best record in 2018-19 but blew a 2-0 lead against Toronto in the Eastern Conference finals.

They came back with the best record again last season but never regained their momentum after the season was suspended because of the coronavirus pandemic in March. They were eliminated in the second round by Miami in the bubble.

The Bucks traded for Holiday before this season and even though they weren't quite as strong in the regular season, they were finally NBA Finals ready.

And Milwaukee was ready for the moment.

Fans began filling the streets and restaurants in the afternoon on what felt like a holiday in Milwaukee. The Brewers moved up the start time of their home game against Kansas City to be played in the afternoon to accommodate Milwaukee fans - and Brewers star Christian Yelich, who was part of the crowd inside Fiserv Forum.

The game was tied at 77 after three quarters but Antetokoumpo had 13 points in the fourth to make sure Milwaukee wouldn't have to go back to Phoenix for Game 7 on Thursday.

The Suns returned to the postseason for the first time since 2010 but remain without a title and have never won more than two games in their three appearances in the NBA Finals.

TIP-INS

Suns: The Suns scored their fewest points in a first quarter in this postseason when they had 16. ... Deandre Ayton, who was shooting 67.6% in the postseason, was 4 of 12 for 12 points.

Bucks: Brook Lopez had 10 points and eight rebounds. ... Milwaukee's only other NBA Finals appearance was a loss in 1974.

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Follow Brian Mahoney on Twitter at https://twitter.com/briancmahoney

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More AP NBA: https://apnews.com/hub/NBA and https://twitter.com/AP-Sports

[luigi-of-the-us]

To all who read this,

The social injustice that is happening as of the time that I am writing this will only continue to if we don’t weed out those who wish to stop us, but we should never forget compassion, show it wherever you go, but stand your ground in you beliefs, but also be fluid enough to where if the other person’s side may affect where you are, show understanding and tolerance to the other person. We must also recognize the evils within our country and right the wrongs that have been made during this time, if we don’t, chaos will engulf this great nation. If this country is called The United States of America, then why are our people so divided? The answer is politics, social media only shows us what we want to SEE but not what we need to SEE, we, U.S. Citizens, have become so consumed by our own bias that we don’t even see the real threat in front of us, the threat of people taking away our right to choose. The right to choose our profession, to choose our religion, to choose our destinies, to choose our legacies, and the right to choose our leaders of this great country. DO NOT brandish your guns or any physical weaponry, because the only thing we need from our armory right now is our mind, voice, and morality. Let our actions speak our kindness, and show that we don’t need to enact violence to prove our point. Hate will only burn us out and kill us in the end, let love guide our actions because love will only strengthen us to make the right choices and create a bright tomorrow because in the need we’re all human, but in this awakening, people wish us harm and will attempt to corrupt us. We must stand together against this evil and use our kindness to show them their wrongdoings. Kind people are often mistaken as gullible and blind to the cruel world, when most are aware of the cruelness of the world, they just choose to show a brighter world to show that the world can and will be better. A better world would be where nations would work together to make sure that peace lasts. But first, we need to take care of our situations first and foremost before we attempt this.

The first thing that needs to be taken care of is politics, making sure that we hear ALL sides of the different parties, not just one or the other, major or minor.

Second would be education for all our children, making sure that the future is bright for the better, but also show them the ugly side of the world so that they can make things better when their time comes to lead the world we left behind.

Third would be to go back to how the Vice President is voted in, originally the Vice president would be whoever came in second in the presidential elections, that’s what we need right now, so that we can show that the political parties can work together.

Fourth would be term limits on Congress, the reason being that Congress has none, so the same people are elected over and over again and there are just stale ideas and not many new and fresh ideas are brought to the table, that and also it allows corruption to seethe within our Government.

Fifth would be better gun control laws, the person in question has to go through a psychological evaluation to get a license and/or permit.

Sixth would be to put more reliable people in the voting polls and to actually investigate voter fraud, even if rumored because something like that would be taking away the people's right to vote, it should not be taken lightly, no matter what.

Seventh would be fixing the debates, have them be more factual and not a personal attack on the other debtor.

Eighth would be to sort out the corruption within the police department, physical evaluations, prior history, motivations, better monitorization, less-lethal equal equipment.

Ninth would be to give special needs more of a focus because maybe they can give us more of a perspective on the world and maybe change it for the better if we give them a chance to do so, when people hear that someone is a special needs person, they don’t always give them a chance to prove that they can do something amazing and life-changing.

The tenth would be to make better tax laws because the second/third class are always the ones that are taken advantage of when tax day comes.

Eleventh would be to give the homeless jobs, in Puerto Rico, they put their homeless in cells and educate them enough to where they can get a job, but they stay there until they get a paying job to rent a small apartment, the reason why they do this is because some homeless are lazy and think people will take care of them.

Twelfth would be to recognize that the President doesn't have many powers, Congress has the most and it’s mostly their fault if something goes wrong within the country, that isn’t that the president doesn’t have any power at all, it’s just some if not most of the problems come from them.

Thirteen would be that we need to recognize all lives matter, not just one because if we don’t then we will forever be divided and then our country falls to the ground and shatter like glass.

Fourteenth would be to preserve the statues because they remind us of all the mistakes and victories we have made, we need them to remind us where we were and where then we are now.

Fifteenth would be to be more conservative in some places of our laws, ideals, and world, but also learn to move with the times without throwing away what makes this nation great and what makes us better than the evils in the world.

Sixteenth would be to look at the future like it’s the eighth wonder of the world because the past is fixed to where it is, but we can look to the past so that we can shape the future, I hope to shape it to where truth and justice are the reality, so that evil has no chance to even tempt the world.

Seventeenth would be to recognize that we the people are divided because of all the politics that we’ve been exposed to, choosing sides and pinning brother against brother. We need to come together in peace and in unity to fight the good fight, but not with physical violence, but with our minds and voices, to show that we are better than the rioters and looters so that we can show them there are more peaceful ways to solve a problem.

Eighteenth would be to recognize the powers of the people, we need to realize that we can shape the country that we live in, we just need to vote for those changes and tell our congressmen and senator to enact those changes, we need to realize this because they will take away those rights as soon as possible before they decide to take it away and became communist.

Nineteenth would remind us that we need to make these changes to change the world, to make sure that we can keep our freedom. We need to fight to keep our freedom, to keep our land free from tyranny, to keep the peace, to show where we stand, and to show we will not allow evil to take over our country.

Twentieth would be to remind our leaders that we are the ones who put them in power and that we can take that power away from them if we wanted to.

Twentyfirst would be to recognize that the militias are of the people and not of the government, we create them so if the government gets in over its head we have an army to fight them, and that government should not take our freedoms.

Twentysecond would be to remind ourselves that if the president fails that the country fails with them. We should always give the president support, no matter who is in the position, even if you don’t agree or like them.

Twentythird would be to remember the tragedies this country has been through, because if we forget them then other countries will step on us and take us over, we should also never go for globalism because if we do then we betray all the principles this country stands for.

Twentyfourth would be to have all states adopt the castle doctrine because you should have the right to protect your home, family, friends, and children. When someone is threatening your safety and the safety of those you have in your, home/property you should be allowed to defend it.

Twentyfifth would be able to take your gun into a restaurant and or store because if a robber or terrorist were to threaten your safety you should be able to protect yourself.

Twentysixth would be to investigate congress, how this would go is to not let the federal government do this because Congress has them wrapped around their fingers, let their state government investigate them since they would know their congressmen/women better than the federal government and there is no interference or bias from them to go off of.

Twentyseventh would be to make social media less toxic and more enjoyable for everyone.

Twentyeighth would be to establish a better government program to get our soldiers back into civilian life so that they can get better jobs and a better life after they have retired to settle down and be with family.

Twentyninth would be to help the soldiers that last their limbs with good prosthetics, so that they can at least feel like they have some normalcy and so that they can hug their children, dance with their daughters, be the best man at their friend's wedding, walk their daughter down the aisle, and to play with their grandchildren.

Thirtieth would give our soldiers/law enforcement better protection, something lightweight and strong enough to withstand hollow points and high-speed projectiles.

Thirtyfirst would be to run better security when it comes to protecting military-grade weapons, vehicles, and armor.

Thirtysecond would be to talk with the people the nation is sworn to serve, set up polls, do more press conferences when it comes to national security, allow the people to speak their mind without bias, and possibly just think about how the people think during times of peace, war, pandemics,ensure and other such things because if the government ignores the people, they will riot.

Thirtythird would be to allow prayer back into the schools, if we don’t then we have taken away the freedom of religion from our children and have taught them that we do not allow tolerance in the schools and that we as a nation have failed by taking away the simple freedom of religion.

-Captain America (Amazing Spider-Man #537)

My Name is Jeremy J. Matsumoto, I am 18 years old, I live in Phoenix Arizona, I have noticed that the nation I love is crumbling and I wish to help correct it, by doing what I have suggested that we as the people of the free nation need to do, we can make America great again, we can insure our nation's safety, prosperity and livelihood is secure and doing well. I only wish for this nation to do better, be safe for those I care for, and those around me. It’s time we take our Country back, say no more, and tell them it’s time to change into something better, not by force, but by the will in our minds, voices, and morality, the question is if you are ready to make the tough decision and change the nation for the better tomorrow.

[sirpoley]

On the Four Table Legs of Traveller, Leg 3: Character Creation

In part 1 of this series, I described how Mongoose Traveller's spaceship mortgage rule becomes the drive for adventure and action in a spacefaring sandbox, and the 'autonomous' gameplay loop that follows.

In part 2, I talked about how Traveller's Patron system gives the DM a tool to pull the party out of the 'loop' and into more traditional adventures.

In this part, I'll talk about Traveller's unique character creation system, and how it supports the previous two systems.

Brief Overview of Character Creation

Traveller's character creation is weird, and it was the first thing house-ruled away by my old DM—and I can see why.

Traveller character creation is a minigame of sorts, in which you first generate ability scores (much like in D&D), then pick a career. You make a stat check to qualify for the career, one to 'survive' the career (more on this later), and one to advance. Every time you qualify for the career and/or advance, you get a random skill or stat boost from a table related to your training. In the Army and Marines, for example, you're very likely to get combat-related skills, while as a Merchant you're more likely to get something like Broker or Admin (which tend to be more useful, surprisingly).

You also roll once on a life event table, in which your character might fall in or out of love, make friends or enemies, study abroad, and so on.

You then advance four years in age and try again, and continue for as long as you want. If your character gets too old, they start suffering physical ability score consequences, though these can be bought off with semi-legal anti-aging meds, the consequence of which is starting with high amounts of medical debt.

Rolling to Survive

If you fail a survival roll, you're permanently expelled from your career (but can start another one), and often suffer major debilitating injuries in the form of sweeping permanent ability score damage, though this can be bought off by going deep into medical debt. It's technically possible to die in character creation if your physical ability scores are reduced to zero in this way, in which case you would start over. For that to happen, the player would have to decline treatment—basically, they're making a choice to give up and start over. This is a kind of extreme "safety net" against playing truly worthless characters, I suppose, though I haven't seen it happen yet.

Why is this Good Again?

This way of creating characters is shockingly different from any that I've seen before. The character that you end creation with might not have any resemblance at all to what you sat down and intended to create, which was a huge source of frustration, as a player, in my last two campaigns. It's more common than not to, for example, come up with a concept for a dashing space pilot and end up with a 98 year-old-that-looks-34 white-collar office worker who's got a laundry list of grievances against various corporations who have fired him over the years.

When I've seen this system work well, it's because players went into it with different expectations that they would in D&D. For a D&D campaign, you usually come to the table with a more-or-less fully-fledged character concept, then roll stats (or point-buy) and fill in the boxes. In Traveller, it's more like spinning a wheel and seeing what you'll get.

For the kind of campaign that Traveller assumes, however, this is perfect, and here's why.

First, it sets the tone of the campaign. Traveller is very different from most D&D-esque RPGs. It doesn't provide any guidance for or benefit from, for example, balanced encounters. By creating mechanically unbalanced, unpredictable characters, it is telling the players from the start that there are sharp edges to this game and they have to stay on their toes.

Second, it generates crucially important NPCs for the campaign. Those life events—and some fail-to-survive rolls—often create allies, enemies, rivals, and contacts: NPCs that are guaranteed to be met during the campaign. The book provides tips to the DM to ensure that these NPCs have access to spaceships, as they can be found on the random encounter tables. But here's the fun bit: the Player will be just as pissed at their rival, Captain Morgensen (or whatever) as their character is supposed to be, as he was (according to the events table) instrumental in getting them fired from their career as a space scout. By generating these characters during character creation's life-simulation, it gives them a real, emotional connection that leads to a lot of fun during play. These NPCs can easily function as Patrons (which, as explained in part 2, are the keys to adventure), or can provide paths to Patrons.

Third, it has the potential to start the characters massively in debt. The clear optimal path in character creation is to pay off any injuries by going into medical debt, and chug analgesic anti-aging pills like they're Skittles in order to keep advancing down your career paths, or start new ones. As explained in part 1, Traveller's 'loop' functions best when the PCs are swimming in as much debt as possible. The more debt, the more motivation to travel, and thus the more space pirates and space dragons and space princesses and whatever that they'll meet.

Fourth, it familiarizes them with the setting. The book provides quite a few career path options to the Players, and uses the same to generate its NPCs. Thus, just by reading through the career path options available to them, Players learn a lot about the world of Traveller and the kinds of people they might meet, without having to read lengthy setting handouts or pages and pages of lore or anything like that.

Fifth, it creates gaps in the party's expertise, which encourages hiring NPCs. It's virtually impossible to end up with an adventuring party that can cover every skill required to operate a spaceship, for example. This encourages hiring NPC crewmembers to fill in those gaps, which really helps make Traveller 'work'. A lot of the party's time is going to be spent on their spaceship, so the more people who are on there, the better from a roleplaying standpoint. Also,  

That said, it's not perfect, as…

There Are Some Real Limitations

Mechanically, the main issue that's come up with Traveller's character creation is that it's entirely possible for the party to be missing one or more vital skills, or for a character to be lacking something that would be key to making them 'work'. Traveller's basic dice mechanics harshly penalize untrained skill checks compared to attempting even slightly-trained ones, and some roles can't be easily filled in by NPC crewmembers. If your character never rolls to learn the Gun Combat skill, for example, they'll more likely than not miss every attack they make in the whole campaign. The party can overcome this by hiring marines, for example, but the player might still be bored every time a gunfight starts.

This can be mitigated by, say, letting that player control their hired NPCs in combat directly, but as the game doesn't really provide a lot of guidance for who plays hired NPCs (the DM? the player that hired them? The party as a whole, by vote?), the DM and player will have to come up with their own solution. Since they might not even realize that there is a problem that needs to be solved, this can easily lead to traps (for example, if the DM assumes full control over hired NPCs, many battles will lead to the DM just rolling checks against himself/herself over and over in front of an audience) that generate frustration.

Mechanics aside, there are some narrative implications for character creation that might strike many Players as quite weird. Most D&D Players default to making their adventurers whatever their races' equivalent of early-20s is. Sometimes there's an old wizard thrown in to spice things up, but I'd say 9-in-10 characters I've seen are 'college-aged.'  

Traveller strongly rewards old characters. Sometimes very old. Don't be surprised if the average age of the Traveller characters is the same as the summed age of all of your Players. This isn't necessarily bad—immortal, eternally-young sci-fi characters are kinda neat—but it's also pretty limiting, and may not be within the Players' expectations. If a Player wants to make a character who's a young hotshot just starting out, the rules will punish them severely. They'll have virtually no skills, no money (or debt!), no ship shares (units that track ownership of the spaceship), and no NPC connections.

Making it Work

I'm not going to change these rules until I'm more familiar with the system, but my gut says that many of the game's skills (such as Computers, Comms, and Sensors, or the two skills that govern two different, but similar, kinds of environmentally-sealed armour) could be consolidated to reduce the odds of a missing skill torpedoing a character. I also think flexibly passing back and forth control of hired NPCs between the DM and Players will solve a lot of problems, but deciding on the fly who is in control in a given scenario will probably take some experience as a DM. I’m vaguely aware that there’s a second edition of Mongoose Traveller, which may have done some of these things, but I haven’t played it and as such can’t comment on it.

I think for a satisfying experience, you have to make it clear to your Players not to try to build their characters to a pre-imagined concept, but rather come up with a concept as they play through their character's life. Also, tell them upfront that, in this particular sci-fi universe, anti-aging technology has allowed for the rich and powerful to stay eternally young, and that they can expect to have already retired from one or more full careers before the campaign even begins.

Next up, how this all ties in with random encounters.

[utilitycaster]

Class choices in actual plays (D&D and Pathfinder)

Only main PCs (no guests, but I do include multiple characters per player if they played more than one during the campaign)

This does include players who did not stay through the whole campaign or who joined midway through the campaign if they were considered part of the main party at some point

Only base classes, I’ll do a different post for multiclasses. All are D&D 5e except Rusty Quill Gaming; from what I can tell open-source Pathfinder does not have a warlock class but otherwise has the same base classes (including artificer)

Doesn’t include NADDPod which I know is very popular because I may listen to it one day and don’t want to spoil too much

Actual play shows/podcasts considered: Critical Role, both campaigns; Fantasy High; Escape from the Bloodkeep; The Unsleeping City; Tiny Heist; TAZ Balance; TAZ Graduation; Relics & Rarities; RQG up through episode 85 and not including Bertie’s sidequest

SPOILERS FOR CRITICAL ROLE C2, UNSLEEPING CITY, AND TINY HEIST: Nott/Veth, Misty/Rowan, and all of Rick Diggins’ personas are each counted as one character as they are the same person in a different body (and except for Nott and Veth, are the same race as well).

Number of characters considered: 57

Tied for first: Cleric and rogue with 8 each. This makes sense; it’s possible to have a party without them if you have an alternate healer or alternate stealthy/skilled person, but they’re difficult to replace. Props to Relics & Rarities, though, which had neither. Weirdly, the most common cleric domain is grave (to be fair, only with 2) and the most common rogue archetypes are swashbucklers and inquisitive, with 2 each as well, indicating that people really like Xanathar’s Guide to Everything.

Tied for second: Barbarian and fighter with 6 each. People like to be big and hit things. Note that these four classes - Cleric, Rogue, Barbarian, and Fighter - account for basically half of all the actual play characters considered (28/57). Of the barbarians, half are berserkers, and of the fighters, half are champions (and Bertie probably would have been a Champion archetype...things get less equivalent on the subclass level from pathfinder to 5e).

Tied for third: Bard and druid with 5 each. This is weird to me, honestly, as druids are one of the hardest classes to play and bards aren’t that hard but are often seen as one of the weaker classes. I assumed that after cleric, the most popular casters would be one of the arcane heavy-hitters, but as a bard player I feel very validated here. All the bards except one started as college of lore, and that one (hi Fig) switched subclasses to lore. For druids, two are circle of the shepherd but as with clerics and rogues there was no clear favorite.

Tied for fourth: Monk, paladin, sorcerer, and wizard, with 3 each. No clear favorite with the monk subclasses, and two of the paladins are from pathfinder. For sorcerers, the favorite is draconic bloodline (which is weird to me because I would assume wild magic would be more popular), and two of the wizards are transmuters. I get why monk and paladin are a little less popular despite loving paladins - monks are specialized and paladins are sort of weird to play as a base class, particularly pre-oath for campaigns that start at first level (Ricky Matsui and all Unsleeping City characters began at 3rd level, and the two paladins in RQG both came in as mid-campaign characters) and I’m guessing sorcerer and wizard split the arcane glass cannon vote, even though they’re actually pretty different.

Tied for fifth: Artificer, ranger, and warlock, with 2 each. I’m a little surprised about warlocks, who I thought would be more popular as battle casters. Artificer and ranger make sense - hybrid classes are a specific taste, rangers prior to revised ranger were kind of underpowered, and artificer wasn’t in the main PHB and has gone through a lot of revisions. As a result it’s hard to tell what the artificer specialties are. Both the rangers are beastmasters, and both the warlocks are hexblades, because everyone loves the hexblade (I love the hexblade too but I just really want to see an archfey or celestial warlock).

And finally: we have one bloodhunter, which is understandable as it’s not released as a class in official D&D material and is still being revised. I was hoping it would be in the guide to wildemount, but I think the latest revision came out after the book would have gone to print (same with the cobalt soul subclass). I kind of hope they come out via Unearthed Arcana though so they’re at least semi-official 5e content.

Some fun facts:

There are three characters named variations of “Rick” among the 57 considered

Gender distribution: artificers, barbarians, clerics, druids, monks, paladins, rangers, and wizards are an equal or roughly equal male/female split. However, all the bards but one (Scanlan) are women, all the rogues but two (Nott and Sasha) are men, and all sorcerers, warlocks, and fighters are men. [note: Ally is nonbinary, but has played a woman and a man in Fantasy High and The Unsleeping City respectively. Molly (bloodhunter) is the only canon nb character; Nott/Veth is a female character played by a male player, all other characters, to my knowledge, have the same gender as their player and the player gender breakdown here is 37 characters played by men, 18 played by women, 2 played by a nb player]. Obviously this is a tiny sample size; also the individual player genders are somewhat more balanced (20 men, 14 women, 1 nb person) but all four of the players who are counted three times here are men (Sam Riegel, Taliesin Jaffe, Justin McElroy, Clint McElroy).

Race breakdown by class: is virtually impossible because I have no fucking clue what half the 5e races for the Dimension 20 characters are, thanks Brennan. However, some incomplete observations

Artificers are both human or what I think probably counts as human (bittyfolk from Tiny Heist)

there are two half-orc barbarians

there are two fairy bards which I believe is treated as an elf in Dimension 20

there are two human and two dwarf clerics but it’s otherwise all over the place

I have no idea what race was reskinned to make a drider or rat druid but anyway druids are all over the map

Four human fighters, the most popular race/class combo is real

also all the monks are human or human equivalent

paladins are all over the place too

half-elf and reskinned half-orc rangers, which does sort of fit the ranger archetype

two human rogues, two-ish goblin rogues (with gun), I have no idea what race ‘plastic toy’ is supposed to be (REDDIT IS GOING TO EAT YOUR ASS, BRENNAN) but there are two of them

no clear preference for sorcerers and warlocks (also is Pactwraith a revenant? I give up)

*12 days of Christmas Voice* two elf wizards

*still 12 days of Christmas Voice* AND A TIEFLI-I-ING BLO-ODHUNTER

[eurosong]

Good morning folks, and welcome to today’s, not statistical map but rather statistical posters, showing how jury and televote top 5s have diverged since 2009. It’s something that’s been on my mind since the jury results were revealed, and after @lonelyislanders ‘ suggestion, I definitely thought I should share this with you all now rather than at the start of the next season. Let’s take a quick trip through the last 11 years of ESC history of jury-televote agreement and discord!

2009 was when juries were introduced - not for nothing, this was after “western” countries’ worst-ever ESC year, where only Sweden qualified from the semi-final. All the jury’s top 5 came from Northern Europe this time, only two of which - Norway and Iceland, coïncided with the televoters’ top 5, though Estonia, the jury’s 5th, came close as the televoters’ 6th. Amongst these tops, the biggest disparities were that of Azerbaijan (getting around 140 points less from the juries than the televoters) on one side and UK and France on the other (getting 110-120 points less from the televoters than the juries.) At least the winner, Rybak’s Fairytale, was shared by both groups - though his win would have been rather less rotund if only juries had decided it.

In 2010, we saw an even greater level of disconnection, as the top 5 of the jury and the televote shared only one song in common - again, thankfully, this was both group’s winner, Germany’s Satellite. Lena romped home in the televote, but she won the jury vote over Belgium’s Me and my guitar by a matter of just two points. The jury put all the other 4 of the public’s top 5 in their top 10 - with the biggest dropper, Turkey, having around 60 points fewer from the juries - but some of the juries’ most loved tracks really didn’t get much of a response from the televote, most notably Israel with a hundred points less than with the jury, ending up only 14th as a result.

2011 is a notoriously fractious year, intriguing for us statistics lovers. Once again, the jury and the televoters shared only one country - only this time, it wasn’t the winner of both groups. Azerbaijan squeaked by an extremely narrow win in the public vote over Sweden, but were only 2nd in the jury vote behind a triumphantly returned Italy. Whilst the public only placed Madness of Love 11th with ~150 points less, the jury love was enough to place it second behind Azerbaijan, whose relatively lukewarm scores with both voting groups gave the Azeris their first win. Some of the distinctions between the tops were brutal this year. UK was 5th with the public, but 4th last with the jurors, dragging them down to 11th place. Austria, 5th with the juries, were 2nd bottom with the public, and only managed 18th with the combined vote. 2011 is kinda one big advert for the current “two separate scores” system for how much one vote cancelled out the other.

In 2012, we at least had agreement on the winner yet again - though, this time, Sweden’s Euphoria absolutely romped home with the juries but got an oft forgotten only marginal win over Russia in the televote - one more douze to the Russian grannies would have handed Party for everybody the public win instead. They got a respectable-enough 11th with the juries, which meant that they weren’t dragged down too much and came in 2nd. Serbia, 3rd in the televote and 2nd with the juries, completed the podium. Once again, the jury dragged Azerbaijan and Turkey down - Love me back was 4th with the televoters, 5th last with the juries, who gave it ~125 pts less. The Turks still managed a top 10 result in 7th place, but it was to be their final ESC participation for now.

In 2013, we saw a very similar situation to 2012 - the public and jury shared a winner, this time, Denmark, and one group gave a song 2nd place, another group 3rd place - this time, that was Azerbaijan, whose Hold me ended up 2nd in the joint votes. The biggest disparities were the jury’s 3rd and 5th, Sweden and Moldova, ending up 18th and 19th in the televote (Moldova ended up 11th and Sweden 14th in the joint vote) and the public’s 4th, Greece, ending up 14th with the juries (but 6th overall).

2014 was the most harmonious year of jury-televote results to date. Both groups agreed on not just the winner, Austria, but also 4 of their top 5 - with the Netherlands, Sweden and Armenia ending up 2nd to 4th as a result. The one disparity was with the fifth member of the top 5. There was not much difference between the jury’s 4th, Hungary, and the public’s rating of it (10th, but only a difference of 30 pts - leaving the Magyars 5th overall), but the distinction was huge with the public’s 5th, Poland‘s My Slowanie, coming fourth last with the jurors, gaining ~140 fewer points, and dragging them down to 14th overall.

2015 brought the drama of Poland’s drag moreso than the harmony of the rest of the results. The jury and televote top 5s had three songs in common, but that belies the drama: the televote’s clear winner, Italy’s Grande Amore, who had 80 points above 2nd placed Russia and almost 90 more than 3rd placed Sweden, were ranked only 6th by the juries, who gave them almost 200 pts fewer than the public, dropping them behind Sweden, the jury winner, and Russia, the jury 3rd place, in the combined rankings. The juries also only put Estonia, the public 5th place, in 11th, but in the combined rankings, it was able to hold onto a spot in the top 10. On the other side, the jury’s 4th place, Australia, and 2nd place, Latvia, got 5th and 6th overall having been placed 6th and 8th with the public.

2016 brought in a new voting system where the jury and televotes would be unchained from one another and two sets of votes given. This was supposed to increase fairness and allow for public and jury favourites to both get recognition - but this occasion was marked with some controversy, when neither the runaway jury winner, Australia (4th in the televote with ~130 votes less than with the juries), nor the public winner, Russia (5th in the jury vote with ~230 points less than with the public) got the win. Instead, Ukraine, a country that had come 2nd in both, took the win. Australia would have won under the old system despite a lukewarm response from the public, so a song winning that did well with both groups was an improvement on the old system in my eyes. Other than big disparities between this eventual top 3, the jury and televote differed on the other two songs that comprised their individual top 5. Each had a song they marked well that the other group marked decently (Jury’s 3rd, France, being 9th with the public and so 6th in the combined vote; public’s 5th, Bulgaria, who were the jury’s 7th and ended up 4th overall) and a song the other marked down radically - the jury’s 4th, Malta, were the public’s 6th last and they ended up 12th overall; the public’s 3rd, Poland, were 2nd last with the juries but ended up 8th. Under the old system, Malta would have ended up 24th and Poland 19th.

2017 brought something we’d never seen before - the juries and televoters agreeing on the exact same top 2, Portugal and Bulgaria, by a convincing distance. They disagreed on pretty much everything else though :v . The public’s 3rd, Moldova, got such a strong score that they ended up 3rd overall despite only being the jury’s 8th - they would have been 5th under the old system. Belgium’s Blanche clinched 4th in the televote and overall vote, despite getting almost 150 fewer points from the juries. The biggest disparity of the year was that of Australia - 4th with the juries, second last with an embarrassing 2 points from the public.

As I had predicted way back in March, 2018 saw a clear televote winner beating out jury vote favourite from a much more divided field. The jury’s #1, Austria, ended up only 13th with the public, but this was enough to get a place on the podium in 3rd place. What’s intriguing is that all 8 songs across the jury and televote top 5 ended up in the top 10 but would have been dragged way down under the old system - like Sweden, second in the jury but fourth last in the televote, still 7th overall, or the third to fifth sequence of Italy, Czechia, Denmark who came 17th, 15th and 20th in the juries but ended up in 5th, 6th and 9th place in the overall tally.

Perhaps 2019 was the craziest year of all. Neither the televote winner, Norway, nor the jury winner, Macedonia, the first jury winner in Eastern Europe by the way, managed to make it into the top 5, getting 200-250 points less from the other group. In Norway’s case, they wouldn’t even have qualified had the juries had their way. The only songs that were shared by both groups’ top 5s, Netherlands and Italy, ended up 1st and 2nd in a similar way to Jamala. All the songs that the juries and televote didn’t share ended up in the top 10 anyway, either because of the force of one element’s vote (Norway 6th and Macedonia 7th despite very mediocre scores in the jury and televote respectively) or because they got decent votes from the other element, as is the case for Switzerland (5th with the public, 7th with the juries - 4th overall), Russia (4th with the public, 9th with the juries - 3rd overall), Sweden (2nd with the juries, 9th with the public - 5th overall) and Azerbaijan (5th with the juries, 8th with the public and overall.) The mathematics still amaze me of this year!

As we set sail for another decade, I wonder whether 2020 will bring similar discord or what would be only our 2nd shared winner since 2015?

[schraubd]

Post-New Hampshire Thoughts

New Hampshire is in the bag, and it's a win for Bernie Sanders. That makes him one for two, or two for two, depending on how you count. Let's go with 1.5 for two. And second place goes to none other than South Mayor Pete Buttigieg -- the Iowa Caucus winner (or "winner" -- again, I'm just not going to go into it). Third place, in a huge late surge, was Amy Klobuchar, who rounds out the pledged delegates winners. Fourth and fifth were Warren and Biden, respecitvely. So where is the race now? My assorted thoughts:

The biggest story is, of course, the Klobucharge. Namely, that people have finally settled on "Klobucharge" being the correct term. Indeed, as Eric Muller observes, this is just the tip of the iceberg: there's laying on the Klobucharm, flying off the Klobucharts, watching opponents get Klobucharred....

We're so starved for hot takes that "the winner of the evening was the guy who won the evening" never satisfies. After all, Bernie beat Pete Buttigieg by less than two points in a state where he obliterated Hillary Clinton four years ago, and they actually earned the same number of delegates. Is that really good news? Answer: yes, because the moderates are still fractured and it's really hard to see Buttigieg consolidating the vote while there's time for it to make an impact. Sanders is now the definite -- though not overwhelming -- favorite.

That said, the other big winner definitely is Klobuchar, who I think probably has positioned herself as the moderate candidate to beat. But does she have the resources and time to really launch in other states? Does she have any significant basis of appeal in communities of color? I'm doubtful -- which is another reason why this was a good night for Bernie.

On the one hand: It's strange how we make all this noise about how unfair it is that the Democratic primary begins with two states that have virtually no POC voters, then write campaign obituaries after just two states with virtually no POC voters hit the polls. On the other hand: Joe Biden looks like toast, and his last stab at relevancy may be to play kingmaker among the remaining moderates. My guess is if he passes the torch to anyone, it will be Klobuchar.

Tough night for my candidate, Elizabeth Warren. Getting the Castro endorsement may well have been prescient in the worst way: just like with Castro, my entire Twitter feed loves her, and just like with Castro, that love sadly is not translating to significant real world impact. She's not yet DOA, but she's in a tough spot. Sad.

Two drop-outs: Yang and Bennet. I think a lot of Yang's supporters go to Sanders. As for Bennet's voters, well, you'd have to ask Michael Bennet because I'm pretty sure he's the only one.

There were also reports -- quickly retracted -- that Tom Steyer was dropping out as well. This was the only time anyone has thought about Tom Steyer in the past month.

While everyone else has been distracted, Michael Bloomberg is quietly rising in the polls based on the irresistible grassroots force of having literally infinity money to spend on advertising. But what happens when that force hits the immovable object of "Bloomberg is a sexual harasser whose signature political program was police harassment of Black people"? I imagine Bernie will start lighting him up on this sooner rather than later -- but until we actually see it, it's hard to know what will happen.

Every year, political commentators breathlessly ask "could we have a brokered convention?" And every year, actual knowledgeable observers roll our eyes and say "there will never be a brokered convention." And yet ... could we have a brokered convention? Most of the "Sanders is the front-runner" case right now is based on the moderates dividing up the vote and allowing  Sanders to continue skating to narrow plurality wins based on his high floor/low ceiling. But Democrats don't have any winner-takes-all states, so even if Sanders keeps "winning" pluralities he's not amassing a delegate majority or anything close to it (the New Hampshire delegate tallies right now are Sanders 9/Buttigieg 9/Klobuchar 6).

A brokered convention would be a disaster. Dis-as-ter. It's almost impossible to imagine Sanders winning it -- with the possible exception of Warren, none of the remaining heavies seem likely to have delegates itching to back him. But can you imagine how Sanders Sibs will react if they have a plurality of delegates going in, won the most states, and still lose the nomination? Hell, they barely accept it as legitimate when they lose the normal way. It will be Dems in disarray on steroids, except this time it will actually be true. A brokered convention might well rip the party apart.

The only way Sanders wins the nomination in a brokered scenario is if his delegates credibly threaten to shoot the hostage (in this metaphor, the hostage is America, and shooting it means sitting back and letting Trump win), and they just might do it, which means threatening to do it just might work. Either way, it's a nightmare.

via The Debate Link https://ift.tt/2tOyUEX

[demaury]

Some kind of mistake (chapter 1)

Ever since Eliott first came across the new resident of the apartment 320, he made peace with the fact that Lucas 'Big Blue Eyes' Lallemant would, one way or another, turn his life upside down. Thing is, he hadn't expected that Lucas' wife and Lucas' daughter would play a part in it. Because, you know, he didn't know they existed until it was too late. (ao3 link)

SAMEDI, 08:49

It was a Saturday. For some reason, that particular fact in itself stuck in Eliott’s mind.

What was odd was that it didn’t particularly strike him as any different from the other Saturdays. It started off with Sofiane kicking him awake on his couch with a cup of coffee that wasn’t nearly enough to calm the pounding of a hundred hammers against his skull — courtesy of one (or ten) too many drinks from the night before. While he was twisting around in a sitting position and discarding the blanket usually covering the couch, Sofiane sat on the armrest, looking down at him.

“Eliott, c’mon. You know I like having you here but man- you stink.” He pulled a disgusted face as he said so. If Eliott’s eyes weren’t already giving him hell for the sunlight flooding the tiny living-room, he would have rolled them. It couldn’t be that late, considering Sofiane was still here. “Why can’t you just come over when you’re sober for once? That’d make for a nice change.”

A snort escaped past his lips as he was trying to swallow down his first sip of the morning. Sofiane was an actual mother hen, always down to give advises, especially when no one had asked for it — but Eliott wouldn’t have it any other way, and that’s why he always ended up crashing on his couch whenever he was too tired and/or drunk to go home by himself. It was just convenient that Sofiane’s place happened to be located in a particularly lively neighborhood, which meant that more often than not, his place was the closest from where Eliott was finding himself. A waste, considering that Sofiane was rarely (if ever) pulling an all-nighter these days.

“Not my fault you’re always ditching me,” Eliott protested, nose in his coffee. “Idriss too. You guys are the worst friends.”

What kind of friend let you ring at the intercom and didn’t even open the door? Idriss fucking Bakhellal. He was exactly that kind of friend. ���Dude, I can’t keep up with your shit. I gotta wake up in the morning, just go make some other friends to party with,’ he had told him bluntly.

Was it his fault if all of a sudden his friends had boring jobs and boring lives?

Sofiane gave him a pointed look, before shaking his head as if he had been able to follow his train of thoughts. “I’ve got a job, Eli. Not everyone can afford to get shitfaced every Friday nights and a couple other nights in-between and still keep up with their lives.”

“I’ve got a job too, I’ll let you know,” Eliott retorted, mildly wounded in his pride.

Being overly judgmental was going against everything Sofiane was, although technically Eliott knew there was some truth in it, but after nearly five years of justifying the fact that yes, staying home on his computer was part of his job (and a huge part of it at that, not to say all of it), it was getting a little bit more on his nerves each time someone mentioned it. If anything, he was making more money that Sofiane, and probably more than Idriss as well — EP teacher wasn’t really the starter plan for a millionaire career.

He shifted on the couch, becoming increasingly aware of his wrinkled and slightly damp tee-shirt with every move he made. Maybe Sofiane was right about the smell, after all.

“Yes, but you don’t have work hours like Idriss and I do.”

Eliott shot him an unimpressed look. “You’re a driving instructor, Sof, you don’t treat cancer.” Joke was on him, because after ten years of friendship, he surely knew Sofiane well-enough to be aware that he was as proud to help kids get their driving license as any doctor was to save a life. Twenty years down the road and he’d start lining up on a wall the driving licenses he had contributed to.

Sofiane rolled his eyes. “And you’re still an asshole whenever you’re wasted, nice to see some things never change.” He leaned forward to grab his phone from the coffee table and immediately bolted up. “Shit I’m late. Look, do whatever you want but lock the door behind you and leave the spare key in the mailbox.”

“What’s the point of a spare key if you have both of them in here?” Eliott observed as Sofiane shrugged on a hoodie and fumbled around to grab the things he needed to go — shoes, keys, phone, and wallet— before literally jumping to the front door.

“That’s just a proof you’re spending too much time in here!”, he yelled as he slammed the door behind him, making Eliott wince at the sound.

SAMEDI, 09:51

He stayed put for a couple of minutes, before setting the cup of coffee on the table before him and gathering his things to head out. Usually he didn’t feel so much like things weren’t okay whenever he found himself here, with Sofiane fretting around him — if anything, it made him laugh. But for some reason this morning just wasn’t it.

An awful part of his teenage years had been spent hating himself for not being more like the other kids of his age, with an easy life, healthy hobbies, healthy relationships, healthy self-perception. Yeah, an awful lot of the time, between fifteen and nineteen, he had wished he was more like Sofiane, more like Idriss. More like anybody else. It had started working out for him only after he hit twenty. His meds were on point. He was slowly making peace with the fact that things would never be a 100% easy, and stopped purposefully ignoring the signs when shit was about to hit the fan.

As a free-lance graphic designer, he mostly worked from home, which spared him the prospect of dealing with an asshole boss on a daily basis — and getting fired because of one of his low lows. His sex-life was always a bit of a mess, but not dating anybody was making it a lot easier to juggle between the moment he craved loneliness and those he craved physical contact beyond logic. He was seeing his parents, who lived across town, twice a month, talking with his sister at least once a week, going to his therapist whenever it was needed, and every once in a while, Idriss got invested into a new sport and bugged him enough to join him, or simply to go for a morning run.

It wasn’t a perfect life, but it was healthier than it had been since what felt like forever. For the last five years or so, he had felt reasonably like the rest of his friends and acquaintances. So why was everyone starting to act like 26 was the age limit for all of this? It was as though they had no idea about all the efforts he had put into this in the first place, and sometimes he just wanted to scream his frustrations out.

The bus-ride back to his place wasn’t long, but it felt a lot like it. His phone had died the night before, so he was only hoping that whatever his drunken self had posted on his stories wasn’t shameful enough to make prospective clients run off to the next graphic designer on their list. He had started making a name for himself when he had scored a campaign promoting a new club in the Marais, two years ago, and although his building couldn’t be considered ‘fancy’ by any means, he was making enough money to afford living on his own in a bigger space than Sofiane’s literal shoebox.

Talking about boxes, Eliott thought.

A bunch of cardboard boxes were piled up in the entrance of his building. The main door was hanging wide open, a couple of leaves swirling around under the cool breeze and loud voices echoing inside — far too loud for Eliott’s still inebriated, sleep-deprived brain. He had known that the family of four living in the apartment on the fourth floor, the level below his own flat, would lose no time in being replaced — the moment the two parents had stopped fighting for good was when the dad had left and the countdown had started for a single mom in an overpriced city.

As Eliott walked in, careful not to trip, his eyes fell on three guys apparently waiting for the elevator to reach the ground floor, while holding upward the slatted base of a bed. Young, probably in their twenties. And fucking loud.

“I didn’t sign up for this!” one of them was protesting vehemently, his voice bouncing up against every wall and right through Eliott’s brain as he padded further in. When the guy straightened, the two others almost toppled over under the weight of the bed base. “I signed up for a bunch of books and clothes, I’m not a moving company!”

“Bro, can you just stop whining already?” another one said, adjusting his position with an elbow resting on the wooden frame.

“My point is, why are we doing all of this, and Lucas gets to just… I don’t know, slide them out of the elevator and inside his flat?” the first one complained.

Eliott almost snorted, and if he had been in the mood for conversation, he would have probably told them that they were fucking spoiled. Back when he moved in, the elevator was out of order, which had been a real pain in the ass to move everything up to the fifth floor — Sofiane and Idriss kept insisting that as long as the amount of years he had spent in his flat didn’t equal the number of floors they had to go through, they would never be even.

Oh fuck no, he thought.

That meant he had five goddamn flights of stairs to go through before crashing onto his bed.

Just what he needed.

“So following your logic,” the third one, a blond guy with glasses, chimed in, “Lucas should be here, dealing with the heavy shit, while you’re randomly shoving everything in his living-room until we can’t even open the door.”

“Exactly!” the first one exclaimed, then he met the look of his two friends. “Wait no- Not exactly but-”

“I can’t believe he’s allowed to vote,” the guy with the glasses muttered with a loud sigh, “congrats Baz, you made me lose faith in the democratic system.”

The fact that he threw his hands up in the air as he talked, and that the bed base once again threatened to fall to the ground under his other friend’s protests, offered enough of a distraction for Eliott to reach the stairs without having to go through a conversation he had no emotional interest in.

The pressure of being one among a million other people was nothing compared to the pressure of being known from everyone in a small town. Eliott was fine with being lost in the crowd, especially in a town where people considered it a flaw to be over-sympathetic; that was definitely something he could get behind. It was easy to just coexist with other people without seeking any further contact with them than a polite nod whenever they let you use the elevator with them, or when they held you the door out of habit rather than politeness — that made for less people asking annoying stuff from you when you couldn’t deal with it. He scrambled his way up through the floors, occasionally reminding himself that he could go through the last two flights of stairs without puking. It wasn’t exactly easy, considering that going through the mess that was the fourth floor gave him the impression of being the character of an online platform game. When he made it there, the technological wonder that was an elevator had managed to get the bed base up the fourth floor before him.

Eliott heard a grunt before he actually saw anything, then he saw the bed base move before he saw the person behind it. A boy was pestering to himself, sliding between the bed base and the wall of the elevator to try pulling it out from the outside, rather than pushing it out from the inside. The frame made an agonizing screeching sound that reverberated through the whole building and had Eliott wincing, but the guy had apparently made peace with every single living soul hating him because he didn’t stop — only slowing down as the meters added to the actual weight of the object. Eliott liked to think of himself as someone at least more observant than most, but it didn’t take a genius to know that the number of smaller boxes waiting by the front door was multiplying the number of chances for something bad to happen.

And as Murphy’s law stated so well, everything that could go wrong, did go wrong.

The guy walking backward didn’t get to see the box near his foot until he tripped over it, letting out a ‘fuck’ as he lost his balance and the bed base toppled over him with a loud, metallic sound. It took Eliott an extra-second to get in motion — really, it wasn’t like shit like this happened every day. The guy was struggling to get out of what looked ridiculously like a wooden cage all of a sudden.

“You okay?”, Eliott enquired, startling him.

“Never been better,” he gritted out.

Eliott smirked to himself and leaned forward to grab the slats and lift the bed base off, before sliding it up against the wall while the guy was laboriously rising up on his feet.

“Thanks,” he mumbled, rubbing his forearm. “I guess some people don’t get the point of teaming up to get shit done faster.”

Eliott cocked an eyebrow. “Let me guess, the other three downstairs are yours?”

“There might be no more than me at the end of the day if they keep up like that.”

Sassy, Eliott noted. He liked it. For the first time he was actually indulging in a little bit of staring. Not much. The barest minimum, really. First of all, despite having been told him countless times that he looked younger than his 26 years old, he had troubles believing that this guy was an actual grown-up, but maybe it had to do with the fact that he was rather short, or the way his hair seemed disheveled beyond repair — and, again, Eliott knew a stuff or two about messy hair. What caught his attention was the two, big blue eyes suddenly staring back at him.

Wide.

And blue.

Very, very blue.

A very dark shade, one of those that even Photoshop had no trouble making pop — which didn’t happen often. Call it a professional quirk, but it was a nice thing to see. There was a bit of an awkward silence, only broken when the elevator dinged behind them, offering Eliott enough of a distraction for his brain to fall back into place, and preferably out of the gutter before he started overanalyzing the wonders that his skinny jeans made to his lower body.

“See? I told you he would be just fine,” the voice of one of the three guys from the hall echoed behind them. “Our Lulu is the best.”

Suddenly the big blue eyes were not focused on him anymore, and Eliott didn’t know how to feel about it. He was just awkwardly standing now, caught between people he didn’t even know fifteen minutes before. That wasn’t the definition of how he wanted to spend his Saturday morning riding out his hangover.

“Are you fucking kidding me? I almost died!”, Blue Eyes protested.

“I told you this would happen,” another one muttered.

Eliott shook his head to himself, and started to retreat towards the staircase while they were busy throwing insults at each other.

Maybe Sofiane was right.

Maybe he was too old for this shit — whatever that was.

[giftofshewbread]

Last Hours of the Last Days

The Last Hours of the Last Days :: By Daymond Duck Published on:

November 17, 2019

The world has been in the last days since Peter preached his sermon on the first Pentecost following the ascension of Jesus (Acts 2:17), and current events seem to indicate that it is now down to the last hours of the last days.

First, in early Nov. 2019, Pres. Trump notified the UN that the U.S. is withdrawing from the Paris Climate Change agreement.

Pres. Trump said the agreement was less about changing the climate and more about redistributing the wealth of the U.S. (In addition to that, in my opinion, Climate Change is also a scam and a scare tactic to bring in a world government).

America’s withdrawal will go into effect in one year.

Second, Qatar gives the PA and Hamas 30 million dollars a month, but Qatar recently told the PA and Hamas that Qatar will probably stop giving them the money at the end of 2019.

This will come on top of the massive cuts Pres. Trump has made, and it will increase the pressure on the PA and Hamas to accept the economic benefits of Pres. Trump’s “Deal of the Century” and make a peace treaty more likely.

Third, Israel’s two main parties are in a standoff on creating a new government, but there is one thing that both agree on: Israel should annex the Jordan Valley and declare Israeli sovereignty over it.

This will cause the Fig Tree (Israel) to put on leaves (grow; Matt. 24:32).

Fourth, Israel will be wealthy in the latter years and latter days (Ezek. 38:11-12).

Large deposits of oil and natural gas have been discovered off the coast of Israel.

It has taken a while, but Israel has finally started pumping, processing and selling product from one of those large deposits.

Pres. Trump has convinced the EU to stop buying their oil and natural gas from Russia and to start buying it from Israel, and that has Vladimir Putin upset.

This will hurt Russia financially and make Israel richer.

On top of this, an international oil company called Energean recently announced that they had greatly underestimated the amount of oil and natural gas that they have discovered off the coast of Israel.

According to a business-oriented newspaper in Israel called Calcalist, Israel’s currency is now the strongest currency in the world.

Imagine that: Israel has gone from a wasteland in 1948 to the strongest currency in the world (should I add with cattle and goods, silver and gold).

Fifth, according to several Scriptures, all of the Jews will return to the Promised Land when Messiah comes (I think this refers to the Second Coming; Matt. 24:21).

Several prominent rabbis have signed a document saying that all of the Jews on earth are commanded by Scripture (a mitzvah) to return to the Promised Land.

One rabbi said, “It is clear that we are quickly approaching a watershed point in Jewish history when everything concerning the Jewish people will change.”

I don’t know how the Jews will respond, but I suspect that most secular or non-religious Jews will ignore this command, but some religious Jews will take it seriously and soon start making preparations to move to the Promised Land.

Sixth, the Jews have already built a railroad, they are now building hotels and restaurants, and they just voted to build a cable car to move 3,000 visitors per hour to the Wailing Wall below the Temple Mount.

3,000 visitors per hour is 30,000 visitors in a 10-hour day, and that doesn’t include the visitors that will arrive by vehicles, buses, etc.

Opponents will try to stop it, but it is clear that Israel is preparing to accommodate multitudes of visitors to the Temple Mount (and likely to a rebuilt Temple).

Seventh, on Sept. 11, 2001, terrorists attacked the World Trade Center Towers in New York. Pres. Bush could have pointed out that Islam divides the world into two parts: The Domain of the Faithful (Muslims) and the Domain of Those that Islam is at War With (all non-Muslims), but Pres. Bush chose to appease Islam, refer to Islam as a religion of peace, etc., because he didn’t want to alienate all Muslims.

Pres. Obama followed by removing terms like “Islamic terrorists,” “jihad,” etc., from military training manuals; and he ordered the State Dept., Intelligence agencies and the FBI not to use those terms.

Dogs are considered to be unclean animals in Islam; and Pres. Trump said Al-Baghdadi died like a dog, like a coward, whimpering and crying.

Instead of trying to appease Islam, Pres. Trump called it like it is.

The man that murdered people, raped women, and enslaved women and children died like the unclean animal that he was.

It is an understatement to say that Pres. Trump is not the most tactful person on earth, but his language was more truthful than Bush or Obama; and it is important to face up to what some Muslims want to do (establish a global Islamic caliphate).

Eighth, Iran is seeking nuclear weapons because Iran wants to establish an Islamic caliphate.

Iran has stepped up her enrichment of nuclear materials and could have enough nuclear material to produce a bomb in two to three months (one year at the most).

It is important to have someone (even if he lacks tact) in the White House that knows what a dog is when he sees one because Iran calls the U.S. the great Satan, and time is running out on this issue.

By the way, it was recently reported that the U.S. and Russia are both building up their forces in Syria.

The Battle of Gog and Magog appears to be getting close.

Ninth, it is my opinion that world leaders will form ten regions or ten trading blocks of nations and eventually merge them into ten political blocks of nations with a leader over each one that will become the Ten kings, horns, toes, etc.

The EU and USMCA are examples of regional trading blocks.

A regional group of nations called the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN regional group) has just concluded a treaty with China and five other nations that covers one-third of the trade on earth.

Understand that ten kings or ten horns will rise, and then the eleventh or little horn (the Antichrist) will rise.

God can speed this up or slow it down as he sees fit.

[shy-magpie]

RQG 73

We rejoin our heroes bursting through the gate of a spooky house after hearing a scream I like the image of Bertie opening the gate as Sasha was climbing it Sasha hopes for a bat large enough to ride and climbs the outside of the building towards the scream, thus avoiding a lot of potential traps and nonsense. Sasha sees furniture covered in sheets; team speculates it's the ghosts of all the furniture Bertie has destroyed Sasha is a great scout Hamid give your scout a minute before using acid splash to break in, before she can report Splitting up the party works better for tanks than magic halflings Covering ground is secondary to not dying, Grizzop Sasha throws cards at the back of their heads to get their attention rather than yelling and alerting the enemy Bertie uses his boots to fly up to the window and break in Grizzop don't split the party, I'm trusting you to guard Hamid Bertie why don't you give that ring to Hamid, and he can decide when to attract zombies to the team Useful sword is useful or would be if they had any meat on hand Vitally challenged. Oh good Sasha talked him into handing over the ring. “Don't mind me, *rolls dice*” gets my vote for scariest line of the episode Bertie attacks the ceiling rather than wait for them to find a way into the attic Bertie uses his knowledges,  Alex has fun listing Gothic clichés Bertie is a good meat shield Eh good press is a fair price for him being so cheerful about being their meat shield. Does make you wonder if the sword prioritizes Bertie "looking brilliant" or living though Not being turned to is a small price for constantly teasing the GM, Bryn Grizzop, promise me you'll remember that you use a ranged weapon and not die of wandering off on your own 5 minutes after joining the team. *still not officially, twitches* I don't want to miss the opera but saving time is second to not splitting the party in a scary mansion *ad break, Rusty Quill offers to teach me history, was that Bryn as a voice actor?* Screaming specter(wraith?) did something new and lowered Bertie's max hit points instead of just damaging him. I still don't get different types of damage; is it more or less geeky if you learn about RPG systems without having plans to play? Sword is being useful and gives us a description of the  enemy Wraith gets a Natural 1, I don't think the dice like it when Alex makes a nasty baddie Daggers not useful against wraiths Hamid's Ray went awry Grizzop is actually digging towards the enemy on his own Glowing talking sword? Actually seems to have hurt it. Player vs character knowledge on display as Lydia comments on the futility of Sasha's attack Alex don't make me worry for Bertie Poor Sasha just not cut out for this fight. Maybe she can buy a holy blade or a mystic mister Hamid did well in the fight,  Bryn likes that extra "pew" Cheap jokes about Bertie's condition as further con drain occurs Sasha really doesn't consider Bertie a teammate anymore. Wiggles dagger inside wraith to no effect. Wraith finally re-dies,  now the team can join Grizzop and the team won't be split anymore Oh Lydia drops some historical knowledge, I didn't know TB was code for syphilis; that explains a bit. But if Grizzop kills the zombies slowly we won't get to the opera *stamps foot and pouts* Yes Hamid someone needs to unsplit the party Is that (skeleton covered in jewelry holding a crate) Sasha bait or just the pathfinder equivalent of dead rats full of gold? An opera gown maybe? Gee Grizzop, could that be a consequence of trying to handle zombies on your own coming? Bertie shouldn't flee the wraith because he "wouldn't win a running wraith", really James? No being mean to us shippers! Gah this show is meta, how many layers is that when I, a fan, writes about the players talking about their characters in terms of fan reactions? Also for the record is out of character player talk about the game without acknowledging the audience breaking the fourth wall or is breaking the third wall a thing? Do we add a fifth wall if we admit that the players are preforming to an extent even out of character and may have different personalities when not doing podcasts? At what point is this no longer about the format and just me having a philosophical crisis over the notion of "self" Vs "performance"?

[robertreich]

What We Must Do Now

My friends, this is a dark hour. Intolerance, cruelty, racism, misogyny, xenophobia, and environmental destruction have been let loose across the land.

Trump controls the Republican Party, the Republican Party controls the House and Senate, and Trump may soon control the Supreme Court.

But here’s the thing. Only 27 percent of Americans are Republican, according to the Gallop Poll. 

Moreover, the vast majority of Americans disapprove of Trump. He lost the popular vote in 2016 by 2.8 million. Since then, his approval ratings haven’t exceeded 45 percent.

The GOP itself is no longer a political party, anyway. It is now little more than Donald Trump, Fox News, a handful of billionaire funders, and rightwing Christians who oppose a woman’s right to choose, gay marriage, and the Constitution’s separation of church and state.

Yet Trump is about to make the second Supreme Court nomination of his presidency. And that second nominee – like Trump’s first, Neil Gorsuch -- is likely to be young enough to remain on the Court for the next 40 years.

If confirmed, Trump’s new justice would join four other Republican-appointed justices to form a majority that will interpret the U.S. Constitution and laws in ways inimical to the values of a majority of Americans.

For example, Trump's new justice is all but certain to join the four other Republican-appointed justices in overturning Roe v. Wade, a 1973 compromise on abortion that still has the support of two-thirds of Americans.

Trump’s new justice is likely to do the same in revoking same-sex marriage, also now supported by about two-thirds of Americans.

I don’t have to remind you that this comes after Republicans essentially stole a Supreme Court seat by refusing to consider President Barack Obama’s nominee, Merrick Garland.

In addition to everything I’ve noted above, Republicans also now control both chambers in 32 states (33 if you count Nebraska) and 33 governorships.

In many of these states they are entrenching their power by gerrymandering and arranging to suppress votes.

Enough. The question is what are we – the vast majority – to going to do about this?

I have six modest suggestions.

First and most importantly, do not give up. That’s what they would like us to do. Then they’d have no opposition at all. Powerlessness is a self-fulfilling prophecy. Please do not succumb to it.

Second, in the short term, contact your senators and urge them to oppose Trump’s nominee to the Supreme Court.

If your state has a Republican senator, you might mobilize and organize your friends and neighbors to do whatever they can to get that senator to reject Trump’s Supreme Court nominee. Or, at the least, postpone consideration of that nominee until after the midterm elections, so there’s a chance to change the composition of the Senate.

Third, make a ruckus. Demonstrate. Engage in non-violent civil disobedience. Fight lies with truth. Join the resistance.

Many grass-roots organizations are doing great work, and could use your help. Among them are: @IndivisibleTeam, @swingleft, @UpRiseDotOrg, @MoveOn. @Sister_District, and @flippable_org. I’m sure I’ve left out many others. Check with your friends, and check online.

Fourth, don’t engage in divisive incrimination over “who lost” the 2016 election. There’s no point in Hillary loyalists, Bernie supporters, Jill Stein voters, and others turning on one another again, and blaming each other for the outcome. We must be united.

Fifth, vote this November 6 for people who will stand up to the Trump Republican’s rampage. Mobilize and organize others to do so, too. If you live in a “blue” state, contact friends and relations in “red” states and urge them to do the same.

Sixth, help lay the groundwork for the 2020 presidential election, so that even if Trump survives Robert Mueller’s investigation and a possible impeachment proceeding, he will not be reelected.

Finally, know that this fight will be long and hard. It will require our patience, our courage, and our resolve.

The stakes could not be higher. We’re talking about the future of our democracy, and the wellbeing of our children and their children’s children.