Lurker > Thorn

FFDragon posted...

Trading Musk for Zuck is at best a lateral move.

For real. Like he may be less personally noxious but Meta/FB is basically responsible for a genocide soooooooo.

Thorn posted...

For me it's like:

S: Melusine, Van Gogh
A: Muramasa
B: Summer Abby
C: Douman, Ibuki
D: Summer Kiara NP2
F: Himiko NP2

no surprises for guessing what the very first thing i saw after hitting the gssr was

At least Koyanskaya came without too much trouble so I now have re-secured pity for Oberon.

For me it's like:

S: Melusine, Van Gogh
A: Muramasa
B: Summer Abby
C: Douman, Ibuki
D: Summer Kiara NP2
F: Himiko NP2

but last anniversary already punished me for my sins with skadi np2 so perhaps it will be merciful this time (hahahahahaha)

trdl23 posted...

We're getting 66 more SQ than JP got for their social media campaign (126 total).

I'm not sure this is true. Fandom site says they got 156. And assuming our 126 isn't counting the 30 from the "real" anniversary date we got a few days ago we're even?

Melusine's GSSR because Melusine and Van Gogh would be top gets for me. Only dupes would be Summer Kiara (but NP2 wouldn't be terrible for her at least) and Himiko (okay please no. also what i will get)

KnK, Black Lagoon, Evangelion, and Bebop are the ones I've seen of those and all are fantastic.

Steins;Gate would probably be my #2 as well. Great adaptation as well.

i don't expect us to share #1 though lol. Mine would be Evangelion.

pyresword posted...

I remember this happening more than once with the game

it's like all in the first two chapters (counting the prologue) too, lol

Mortal Punishment is so cool. Kevin lowkey coolest crafts.

Didn't they say we were going to get like a sequel of either the anime or Rebellion? Did that just never happen? Or was that referring to Rebellion (though I could have sworn it was something distinct)

Madoka is good. Though I prefer Nanoha.

Yeah, a "read" here is basically any time a tweet is loaded. So if you're scrolling your feed or looking at replies every single one of those would count as a read.

good news everyone

rations have been increased

From 6000/600/300 (bluechecks/peasants/new peasants) to 8000/800/400

I'm pretty sure they're just throwing explanations at the wall in the hopes that something sticks to cover for system-wide failures.

Service was degrading for those without an account since his takeover but it got especially bad this week. Week started by just removing the search bar entirely. Then yesterday you couldn't view tweets. And now there's today's thing where even accounts are affected.

People are managing to F5 through the "rate limit" so not even that seems to be working right. Saw an article that Twitter stopped paying Google, who was hosting a lot of their services, and was frantically trying to move everything off of Google's services by yesterday (June 30) because apparently that's when Google was going to pull the plug for lack of payment and well.. it certainly adds up with what's happening now.

Meta, Bluesky, Post, etc. are all getting so many opportunities to put the final nail in this but this may be the best yet.

someone step up please

So do I.

just when i start to think twitter might manage to find a way to continue to limp on i am chastised for my lack of faith in its doom

Also IIRC, Santos's Dem opponent did bring up many of the lies Santos told about his background. Like, probably not all of them because they were just so fucking many, but most of the initial ones were brought up in the campaign but the media didn't care so it lost staying power.

also don't think "democrats" were the defendant in this court case but you can correct me if i am wrong

Not sure how in the world you can confidently state that and put the blame on Biden when in this very case this court chose to ignore that an Act of Congress gave authority to the Executive Branch to do this because they profess "concern" that the "administrative state" has gained too much power.

They're straight up legislating from the bench and deciding policy. Why do you think they'd respect the Higher Education Act when they decided that HEROES could be ignored because they don't like giving DOE that much power? Because somehow I doubt maintaining they have that same power, just under a different Act, is going to persuade them.

Like, clearly, Biden does have the authority but this court simply doesn't give a fuck.

MacArrowny posted...

The Bradley episode near the end is 10/10 though.

Bradley cutting into the rebel broadcast as he returns to the city after being thought dead is an 11/10 moment.

Or, perhaps this is a better way to put it - again as the dissent puts forward - the HEROES Act pretty clearly gives the Secretary the broad power to essentially rewrite the terms and conditions of the loans during a national emergency. Congress obviously knew that there would be future national emergencies so obviously this authority would be there then as well. And this wasn't some accidental loophole the administration found in the bill, it's clearly spelled out.

Whether or not Congress should have given this much power or whether or not the Secretary should exercise it are political questions outside the authority of the court. The remedies to either of those questions lies with the electoral process, not the judicial branch.

LordoftheMorons posted...

I dunno about standing but it seems to me that Biden pretty clearly didn't have the authority to do it (it certainly wasn't the intent of the law).

But that's not really the court's job. As the dissent points out, whether Congress should have delegated that much authority to the Secretary of Education isn't their place to answer. The law they passed pretty clearly does.

It's set before the Mask games with Oshtor as the MC before he became a General. AFAIK it's canon but maybe I'm wrong?

I'm... actually not entirely sure that's true anymore. It definitely was. But the major thing here is Nayuta not being mainline... until Falcom goes "j/k it was canon all along." Reverie would be beating Monochrome Mobius, for example.

I'm so sorry, losing a pet is always hard.

We had a long discussion about the 303 Case (the LGBTQ+ web designer case) on Discord and I was brought around to thinking that if you actually decide to reach the merits of the case (whether you should is another matter entirely - especially given the apparent fraud involved in the complaint) it's more nuanced than I thought - and how I feel it is portrayed and argued in the majority's opinion.

tl;dr of the discussion: To the extent you consider the web design artistic and contract work I think I can grudgingly except an artist having the right to refuse/not be compelled to take on work. Which is distinct from, say, entering a McDonalds and ordering a Big Mac and being refused.

I still am not entirely sure I'm onboard with this specific ruling though because an argument raised by Colorado and dismissed by the majority is the hypothetical (because she never sold a single website design period) of a gay couple requesting the exact same website designed for a straight couple previously, just with the names and dates changed because in my mind that would have it leave the realm of "art" and be closer to the McDonalds example.

Another thing we were tossing about in the Discord discussion that I don't think was answered but feel should be brought up is whether the protections involved changed when we're discussing an individual artist vs an LLC as was the case here. I think the majority declared them the same but I don't know if I agree that should be the case.

In any event, all the above aside, I think the majority was wrong to basically lean as hard as it did on religious expression as it did. Makes the ruling worse and shows what they're really thinking IMO. Kind of says something when a Discord chat made the case for me way better than this majority did with its gross arguments that I mentioned earlier.

Now the Student Debt Loan decision is just a farce on every level - standing to merits.

Yeah, Mayne was another tough departure.

~~~

Demon Slayer: Season... 3? The Entertainment/Red Light District Arc one beated.

Man I'm convinced certain episodes have a higher budget than most shows lol. Zenitsu being asleep for like 75% of the season was a plus. That's as far as Netflix has though so I guess that's it for now!

I mean pretty much every other country with a Supreme Court has it operate very differently. Specifically not lifetime terms so that its makeup isn't a lottery based on when people die.

man espn laying off a bunch more people

this time they got jeff van gundy. it's a shame, i found him entertaining as color commentary. also found out they didn't renew neil everett's contract and beyond SVP he and stan were probably my next favorite anchors.

Monochrome Mobius PS4 release (The Utawarerumono Oshtor prequel)
Not excited per se but Nayuta no Kiseki

Those are the only two off the top of my head but I do feel like I'm forgetting something.

I probably can't run BG3 so I'm safe there lol.

ya go my trails

I thought there was an outside chance the challenge would be dismissed on standing and so would survive without ever reaching the merits. But it was just that, an outside chance.

Affirmative Action was absolutely dead with this court.

Not to say that because I expected these results I think they're correct. The Debt Relief absolutely should have been thrown out on standing and honestly probably should have prevailed on the merits even if it got there but... y'know. And the AA ruling is a mess too.

Read Gorsuch's opinion in the LGBTQ case and jesus what a mistake.

He bases a lot of his arguing around the fact that the web designer isn't discriminating against LGBTQ people because she'll still let them buy websites from her. ...Just, you know, not for their weddings. They can get one for their straight friends as a gift I guess so clearly no discrimination going on here. The dissent explicitly calls that shit out too and compares it to the civil rights cases they had to decided by just changing the names/categories out and saying that under this logic this court would have found it was okay for hotels to disallow black people from staying in a room provided they still let them rent a room out for their white friends because that proves they weren't being discriminating against based on race.

Sky 3 on the shortlist for greatest game ever so this is an easy call

Only played Tears of the Kingdom from that list.

Trails to Azure kind of straddles the line of qualifying here. It's technically more than just a port since it blends some of the Evolution features in and would be my winner otherwise. Though I think the only other 2023 game I may have played so far is Limbus Company so I'm not exactly drawing form a big pool here.

Edit: oh wait fire emblem engage was 2023. well, everything from the above remains unchanged.

I'd sooner expect Biden to get blamed for this because I have no faith in the electorate.

6-3 party line opinion kills Biden's student debt relief.

Apologies for the false alarm if you saw my now deleted post. Student debt was technically two cases and they dropped the first one and I saw "dismissed on standing" and jumped the gun. It was this second one that was the one where they tackled it head on.

I mean, as a matter of record, it was decided 15 minutes ago so technically not true.

On the LGBTQ front. 6-3 party line ruling that the First Amendment can't require a wedding website designer to make ones for gay marriages. This is the case where it turns out the website person may have faked her "injury" by creating the man she claims asked her to make a website because when contacted by journalists he said he never heard of it and was married to a woman at the time of the complaint.

As we approach 20 minutes until the fate of student loan debt relief (and maybe some LGBTQ rights) are given to us. Twitter has apparently decided to now prevent users without an account to even view tweets anymore. I mentioned how, as a not-user, they had been slowly eroding the ability to use the site since Elon took over but now it's finally hit the stage where even trying to view a tweet is disallowed and instead redirects you to a register notice.

Oddly, embeds still work.

Crescent-Moon posted...

When it was really hitting the NY area, I had to keep my windows closed and could barely go outside because with my lung damage it was causing me all sorts of issues.

Yeah, I think it was hitting 400+ in some parts of the state. Never checked the exact number here but "bright deep orange" was probably pretty bad.

i will get to the xenoblade 3 dlc one day

one day

why did everything release all at once right now aaaaaa

o ya my kaguya. team miko and hayasaka imhotbqh

FMA:B is Top 10ish for me, I think. I have seen Promised Neverland S2 and while you have made the correct decision boy is it sure "something." OG FLCL is excellent. The sequels, as you say, are mixed. I want to say it was... Alternative?... that was the better of the two (one with the four girls as the mains) but still not near the original's level.

Wasn't the whole vaccine thing before Harden tried to get out of there? And arguably one of the main reasons behind him wanting to get the hell out?

I want to say that's Kyrie but I guess maybe he dodges it because of the 2016 Cavs and that Boston had a fast recovery.

Lopen posted...

Why I'm saying I don't think you're actually thinking is because you're taking historical accounts as though "it happened that way just because people said it happened that way" but if you look at why the system is as it is you'll see there is a lot of robustness to it to accomplish exactly the "whitewashed things" I'm saying it should accomplish.

So we're just going to ignore that I looked into and mentioned how the first Electoral Colleges ended up apportioning votes in a manner that is the very opposite of what you claim it was meant to do?

Or that I keep framing these in the context of history beyond "stuff politicians said" and instead stuff they did.

You're simply sitting at the top of an ivory tower and asserting your opinion as the objective truth of the matter and dismiss any refutation of it as "oh politicians could be lying" or "oh you can't think for yourself you're just parroting historical accounts" or "i'm simply objective. i don't have an axe to grind like you"

That's why I said "how convenient" all the way back then. Contrary to what you may believe, I'm entirely willing to accept reconsideration if presented with evidence or compelling argument that refutes my stance. But that's not what I'm getting here. Instead, from the very beginning, you snidely say I'm not capable of independent thought and "craving validation" (...why the fuck would i even care? i already hate myself. if anything, i'm looking for confirmation of my worst fears that everyone else does too. But I guess I don't have your enlightenment-like ability to just analyze people over the internet based on like three sentences in a debate over history) then pidgeonhole me as some "rando" and recurring character you bring up in arguing with other people like you're some lord overseeing a play. I haven't been given a reason to consider your view of this beyond "well if you actually could think for yourself you'd see that it's obvious" which doubles as somehow an ironclad defense against contravening evidence or arguments because it's apparently so self-evidently true that anything that undermines it must be wrong or faulty in some regard.

This isn't an exchange or talk about ideas, it's just a sanctimonious sermon.

Lopen posted...

You're tying the EC to that and yes that's probably more "correct" to do but it's also completely irrelevant to the discussion we're having here (EC in current day) as we don't have any slaves contributing to populations at the moment.

I'm not the one tying the EC to the Three-Fifths Compromise. The Founders did! On purpose! They told us they did! You say it's not relevant to the discussion we're having but I only mentioned it way back when because you said the reason we had it was to give small states representation.

I'm saying - bullshit. That's the story we tell ourselves as a country now because we love whitewashing our history (this is a human nature thing, sure, but we should recognize when we're doing it) and pretending things were a lot nicer, cleaner, and more noble than they actually were.

This isn't a case where the Electoral College, Three-Fifths Compromise, and House of Representatives all came together at different times and "whoops that's an unintended interplay between them! gosh what a mess!" They were all designed at the same time, in the same document, and linked together on purpose for the same reason (well not the House as a whole but its design relevant to this discussion) and we don't have to suppose that or anything because we have the writers telling us that was the case.

Trying to claim it was actually all about giving small states more representation is revisionist history that tries to ignore the context and history behind its creation and adoption and acting like history began in 1865 at the earliest. To the extent there was concern and intent behind the Founders to give less populous states a stronger voice you had that in the Senate. Now, yes, it's true that the Senate apportionment plays a role in EV votes too but a) like I already said this effect was in some cases overpowered by the Three-Fifths Compromise influence on the EC such that some of the smaller states were actually losing representation because that part had far greater weight when actually applied but also b) this is all also within the context that there wasn't some grand plan to ensure diversity of thought and interest in the government - it was to make sure the elite clubs of powerful, landed, white men in small states didn't lose their seats at the table.

We are so far from the "original vision" of the Founders on this and so many other things (Suffrage extended to slaves and women, direct election of Senators, the existence of political parties, the artificial cap on the House of Representatives, etc.) that an already distorted system has become downright grotesque and so far removed from whatever designs that it may have had that it should just be put out of its misery. You can try and make up a reason for why it still serves a purpose but it would be completely divorced from history and that's what I took issue with to begin with.

Again, my only venture into this debate was to refute the notion that the EC was designed and adopted with the intent to give smaller states greater power. Certainly it does do that at present but very little of its creation and adoption suggests that was why it was designed or implemented. Both by the words of its creators as well as the actual math and results it produced immediately once put into place. I never ventured out to what, if any, purpose it serves today. You can have that debate with others here if they want to have it - I'm not particularly interested in doing so. I just objected to the whitewashing of its history that I saw.

Lopen posted...

Here's a hypothetical for you.

Leave populations of voting people the same but now the north supports slavery (and owns the slaves, and the south is anti-slavery). Do you now think the Electoral College is good now because it helped staunch the voting population advantage in the north.

...How does this math work? I am being serious here, I can't grasp how this hypothetical works without collapsing immediately.

The Electoral College's abstraction of the vote tied it to the House of Representatives which necessarily and intentionally tied Electoral College votes to the Three-Fifths Compromise. If you're holding the number of freed people but just moving the slaves from the south to the north then in doing so the Electoral College will now disproportionately favor the North because the slaves are now giving them additional voting representation in the EC despite the fact that they are, well, enslaved, and have no suffrage. (And the South is losing the EVs they gained from having the slaves)

I pointed out that the EC, upon the completion of the first census, increased the voting weight of the state with the highest population relative to what it would have been had you left it to popular vote (assuming, for the moment, that the slaves are not granted suffrage. I honestly thought this was such a given it went without saying but apparently I have to rethink this if you intend to seriously advance the idea that the slave states would grant slaves suffrage to game the popular vote which just seems batshit insane to me to even suggest.)

By freed people eligible to vote, Virginia had the highest population but was in a virtual tie with Pennsylvania and Massachusetts. However, the latter two had very few slaves (and Massachusetts had none) so in the first Electoral Colleges occurring after the first census, instead of these states weighing about equally - Virginia, already the most populous, ended up with 21 EVs compared to 15 and 16 for PA and MA. You even see some of the smallest population states actually having their EV representation share drop in such a comparison because this effect in some cases even overpowers the advantage they are given by the existence of the Senate (another undemocratic abomination but we can leave that for another topic.)

This can't have surprised the Founders. By tying the Electoral College to the Three-Fifths compromise, they were giving any state that held slaves extra voting power. You can see this pretty clearly if you compare a % of population (freed people) to % of EV representation because it's blindingly obvious. When certain states get more EVs because they have slaves and those states count towards apportionment (even at "only" 3/5) like... "duh."

They didn't merely "acknowledge" that it advantaged slave states, they said it was explicitly why it was chosen over a straight popular vote. It was a feature, not a bug.

Lopen posted...

and unless you think the entirety of United States government was built around preserving the power of slave states then there's no reason to believe the EC was made entirely because of slave politics

Again, you're putting the words "entirely" in my mouth. Certainly I am arguing it was the prime motive. I wouldn't say the US government was built entirely around preserving the power of slave states but I sure as fuck am going to say it was a key component. The Founders took their first shot at a government with the Articles of Confederacy and it failed catastrophically. They needed to get all the states on board a new framework and yes the slave states and their desire to protect slavery was a major part of that. I'm honestly a bit flummoxed this needs to be explained, it was basically the defining conflict that dominated national politics for the first hundred years of the country until it resulted in a fucking civil war. From the Three-Fifths Compromise to the Missouri Compromise where we had to make sure any time we added a free state we added a slave state to make sure abolitionists wouldn't be able to obtain enough power to threaten slavery in the South.

Like, the whole "the Electoral College was designed to make sure the smallest states among us still had an important voice in government" is a thing we're taught from kindergarten because it's a nice story but I don't believe an actual examination of the history suggests that to be true and that's it's just another part of the absurd mythology that has been built up around the Founders like they hadn't failed pretty miserably at constructing a government on attempt #1 and weren't just making what deals they could to keep the country together so it wouldn't be picked off by the European colonial powers again. If you're asking if I'm denying the idea that they were some philosopher-kings who descended to implement some idealistic vision where even the small guys had a voice too - then, uh, yeah, I am. They absolutely did not give a fuck about that.

Sure putting a lot of words in my mouth when my only intent in a fairly benign post was to point out that the reason an indirect election system was chosen was largely based on the debate over slavery this country has grappled with since well before the Founding.

Also, kind of curious that they chose to go for an Electoral College that gave more voting representation to the most populous state at the time (Virginia) than it would have otherwise had had it been a straight popular vote, don't you think?

Shit, am I still living rent free in your head over that? Sorry, didn't realize I was going to leave that big an impression.

I just thought that if there was going to be a reasoned discussion or debate then if someone were going to just assert something about the motives for the origin of something, rather than following suit and just pulling shit out of my ass and trying to make it true by force of will it'd be more accurate to point to the primary sources because questions like "Why was the EC created and implemented" isn't some unknowable magic shit we got to speculate on - they fucking told us why themselves so it's a matter of fact not a "well, I want your opinion, bro" matter.

But if instead we're just here to argue for the sake of arguing and facts and evidence don't mean shit well I've had my fill of that over the years. Would it have made you feel better about it if I loudly declared why I wasn't going to bother engaging then instead so you could claim it was performative rather than just actually leaving like I did? Cuz you can use this post then, I guess.

The court even refers to those state bans in the opinion but uses that as a reason to support their decision. I'm not kidding.

I still can't get over Roberts admitting that racial disproportion is a problem and college admissions should be able to take action on that... but only for the military.

It's the weirdest thing. It's like for a few sentences he is making the case for affirmative action but then quickly gathers himself and goes, "No, wait, it doesn't matter. The military can keep doing it because I already wrote that down but thankfully I caught myself before I accidentally joined Sotomayor's opinion."

We had hail here out of nowhere like a month ago for like 15 minutes. And it never hails here.