Lurker > ElatedVenusaur

Having some Stone Xocoveza right now. Good stuff.

It's because the media started being kind of mean to her and the donor class has started going big into propping up Mayor Pete, who draws from a similar base.
This is still a three-horse race though(and Pete isn't one of them).

I dig Citizen Hank. Propane Man is hilarious though.

DrizztLink posted...

Who gives a shit about using a rotary phone?

There is literally no advantage to the technology.

My grandmother had a rotary phone. They're really not that hard to use, it just takes a minute to put all the numbers in.
Almost like buttons are better or something...

He'll struggle to out-poll the margin of error. He and Steyer are unintentionally making excellent arguments for a wealth tax.

Right, I have a little list of interesting/unique characters.

1066
-Duchess Matilda di Canossa of Tuscany
This is a good play once you've got your feet wet: you have firm control of a very rich duchy, you have a young ruler with good stats, and are in position to expand in multiple directions. Just be sure to marry Matilda matrilineally! Historically, Matilda was one of Pope Gregory VII's supporters in his conflict with Emperor Heinrich IV and convinced the Pope to forgive Heinrich after he spent three days outside her castle(Gregory had taken refuge there, fearful of an invasion) in the snow, barefoot and clothed in sackcloth.

-Duke Robert "Guiscard" de Hauteville
A Norman raider in southern Italy who got official titles from the Pope, because the Pope was afraid of the Normans. Older ruler, but great stats and a massive family, plus you're in prime position to claim all of southern Italy and Sicily. You can then expand where you please, and are in excellent position to participate in Crusades.

-Duke Eric "the Heathen" of Uppland(requires Old Gods)
While Sweden has officially been Christian for decades, Duke Eric af Munso still adheres to the old ways. Are you a bad enough dude to save the Norse faith from conversion and destruction? The fact that Eric has a claim on the Swedish throne might help you get started.

-Spain is good: any of the larger dukes or kingdoms is a pretty exciting play. Pretty much the same goes for the Muslims to the south, if you have Sword of Islam.

-Count Herbert of Vermandois
Historically, Herbert was the last male descendant of Charlemagne. Where his grandfathers ruled most of what is today Western Europe, Herbert rules a single county. Can you return the dynasty to greatness?

-Count Werner of Aargau
1066 has a playable Hapsburg! The Hapsburgs would one day become Dukes of Austria, come to dominate the HRE, and wear several crowns in their days. They were not deposed until after the First World War.

-Count Guillaume of Bourgogne
The d'Ivreas used to be a great dynasty, and, historically, they were fated to be great once more: holding a number of duchies and even a few crowns. Another massive family to leverage for alliances and influence.

Almost like such institutions are undemocratic and tend to be anti-Democratic!

YokoGeri posted...

who's that?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sharice_Davids
She's good, but AOC and the Squad are better.

Proof positive that having billions of dollars is bad for your mental health. Even the "good" billionaires scream like stuck pigs if you suggest they might have a little less.

Warren, I worry she will squander this moment like Obama did, that is that she will demobilize her base to appease the Democratic Party and be left as nothing more than a rubber stamp for whatever Pelosi and Schumer deem sufficient.

You can kind of see how people got it into their heads that Mario was Soviet propaganda: he looks straight out of central-casting for the role of "powerful, masculine proletarian" in that second one(he's even wielding a hammer!).
In general, it's weird seeing Mario depicted as being muscular, but he was just "generic working class dude" back then.

Balrog0 posted...

seems like a big night for democrats across the country

I suppose with the exception of seattle's city races, which were still big nights for democrats now that I think about it, actually (just not socialists)

Yeah, I was sad and disturbed to see Amazon scalped Kshama Sawant basically just by dumping a giant pile of money into her race.

Morning bump. Should be pretty consequential even with Gov. Ralph I dont remember if I was in the Klan hood or the blackface Northam.

https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2019/11/05/us/elections/results-virginia-general-elections.html
They currently have a 3 seat majority in the Senate(with one race still undecided) and 11 seat majority in the House(with 5 races outstanding). The Democrats now have full control of Virginia's state government for the first time since 1994.
I'm particularly happy to see Lee Carter won re-election(and comfortably), because he's unabashedly socialist and has made a point of calling for the repeal of Virginia's "Right to Work" laws.
Of other particular note, Del. Danica Roem also won re-election and Ghazala Hashmi has become the first Muslim woman elected to Virginia's Senate.

Damn_Underscore posted...

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_governors_of_Kentucky

Not uncommon for Kentucky to elect a Democratic governor

Yeah, plenty of states are weird like that. Like, Massachusetts and Vermont have weird hard-ons for Republican governors.
Honestly, the state Democratic parties probably like it to, because it gives them an excuse to not do anything the least bit controversial.

Kentucky(super unpopular Republican incumbent in a ruby red state) and Mississippi have gubernatorial elections today. Virginia has state legislative elections(with Democrats seemingly poised to take control of both houses of the state legislature). And I know Connecticut has municipal elections today.

Marx and Engels had the weirdest relationship. The former was penniless, depressed, anxious, and petty as all get out. The former was a relatively wealthy industrialist who pretended to be respectable but not-so-secretly was Marx's BFF and biggest booster(aside from Marx's wife Jenny). Only Engels and Jenny could make sense of Karl's horrible chicken scratch and he never could have published anything without them. In fact, Engels was primarily responsible for putting out Volumes 2 and 3 of Das Kapital, as he assembled them from Marx's notes after Marx's death(Jenny died two years before Karl, so Engels was probably the only one left who could actually make sense of Karl's notes).

I will end by noting that Karl Marx was a massive Russophobe.

No Republican Senator is going to vote for anything good ever again, which is why people like Biden talking about "reaching across the aisle" makes me queasy.
Of nearly equal concern is that Joe Manchin and Kyrsten Sinema exist and are basically Republicans.

One punch was not enough.

Talking about DKC, 1&3 are good, at best, and would be somewhat forgettable if not for DKC2, which is one of the best platformers ever made.
It's really hard to find a trilogy where all 3 games are great(Sonic is tricky, because Sonic&Knuckles is technically a 4th-game. But the 1st one isn't great anyway). Super Mario Bros. was great for its time, but feels dated: it doesn't get great until 3.
Mega Man X would count, if we were talking about stuff exclusively on SNES. X-X3 are all great, but then it just kept going...and going. The classic series has a familiar problem: the 1st game is good but janky as hell. 2&3 are great though, even though they both have problems.

I wouldn't be half as excited for her as for Bernie, but I would still vote for her, yes.

BeantownHero posted...

sondast posted...

Omar argued that the resolution was a political statement designed to condemn Turkey, which denies the genocide, rather than a genuine defense of universal human rights.

is she wrong?

In this case? Yes, particularly given Turkey is perpetrating another genocide right now.

Well, that makes me sad.

marthsheretoo posted...

American security theater makes for long lines at understaffed bottlenecks and this can cause people to underestimate how much time they need.

This is a big part of it.
Portland tested my bag of lapsang souchong tea, for example.

Guide posted...

Definitely rape or murder. I'm so glad for whatever genetic fluke made me big so I just never have to deal with people's shit.

I already have anxiety, so I assume if I were a woman, I would be an agoraphobe burying myself in cats.
I have a woman friend who jokes about what a great victim she would make, because shes small, skinny, and weak(by female standards).

Dems get the lamest trolls.

Beans are great. Cheap, nutritious, tasty, and versatile.

David Bowie - Hallo Spaceboy
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=heal8E-3Hh8

Very underrated, IMO. Some claim that the Spaceboy is Major Tom, the astronaut referenced in Space Oddity and Ashes to Ashes(and seemingly in the video for Blackstar)

Pink Floyd - The Trial
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AdzHBpxZWVM

I would link the video, but it's, well, it's just a tiny bit against the TOS.

Bjork - The Gate
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RIGgn1s3AvI

Imagine being the art team that makes her stuff.
"I want the video to end with me in a faerie-elf outfit looking at a tendony facsimile of me with a glowing ball of energy between us. Oh, and lots of CGI ribbons. In the void."

Really, I think all the good press about his (legit really great) Senate run went to his head. His ambition out-stripped his ability, and once people looked closer, they realized he was indistinguishable from, say, Harris, Klob, and Buttigieg ideologically. And was a lot less charming when compared to not-Ted Cruz.

Vulnerable Republican Senators like Susan Collins, Cory Gardner, etc. will all be on-record either carrying water for Trump or on-record throwing him under the bus.
Trump is pretty broadly unpopular and the facts of the case are really clear(so much so even the Trump administration acknowledges them), so the idea is to hammer Republicans who defend him with their disregard for the country.

It's also about the House investigating Trump's crimes and filling the news cycle with them(it helps that Trump and his administration are idiots and thus damaging evidence is plentiful). And fulfilling their Constitutional duty to hold the President accountable.

Rick&Morty is one of my favorite cartoons, but IMO it's not as good as Venture Brothers, BoJack Horseman, or Steven Universe.
It's really great though.

Oh, and Steven Universe is really damned anime, since I brought it up.

darkprince45 posted...

Antifar posted...

The New York Police Department said in a statement shared with The Post early Monday that a witness near Atlantic and Flatbush avenues in Brooklyn told officers that Napier had a gun around 4:40 p.m. Friday. Officers first tried to approach the 19-year-old a short time later, NYPD said, but he fled into the Pacific Street subway station. Napier allegedly slipped past the turnstile and boarded a southbound train. At least 10 officers were waiting at the Franklin Avenue station when the train pulled in.

This is why they had guns drawn. which makes sense. The topic title and headline makes it out sound like they swarmed him with guns for skipping a fare

How does them having their guns drawn improve the situation?

They say this is the healthiest economy, and it is. Just the best, healthiest economy. Perfect.

Sounds like crap, man. I feel for you.

Questionmarktarius posted...

Unless Karen and Jimmy are paid better than the employees they're constantly bailing out, they are going to be the first out the door the second a better offer appears or the warehouse unionizes.

You say that like corporate gives a damn about them or ever will. Workers are treated like lemons: some lemons are juicier than others, but once all their juice has been squeezed out, they're tossed in the compost bin same as all the others.

Bio1590 posted...

ThyCorndog posted...

europeans fucked the region after ww1 and ww2 and we continued to fuck it up afterwards

Afghanistan goes back to the 1800s

Yeah, it was used as a buffer state between Russia's holdings in Central Asian and British India. The Brits were hyper paranoid about Russian hordes pouring out of Central Asia and overrunning India(logistics be damned).

coh posted...

How did we even get involved in the Middle East in the first place. Im talking pre 9/11

Afghanistan isn't really in the Middle East though: it's in Central Asia. We first really got involved in the '80s when the Soviets were waging a war to support their client government, so we slipped the rebels(which included the proto-Taliban) missile launchers so they could shoot down Soviet helicopters and stuff.
Afghanistan as it exists really isn't a cohesive entity and hasn't been, not really in terms of having had a cohesive national government and definitely not in terms of their being an Afghan identity that supersedes ethnicities.

Bio1590 posted...

It wasn't "pointless".

It further destabilized the country and basically left them with almost no chance of recovery without massive amounts of foreign assistance.

Hey, once we leave, the Taliban will probably bring back some stability. And when you're not sure if that would be a good or bad thing, you know you've really screwed up!

Revenge of the Sith isn't a good movie, but it comes much closer to it than the other two. It feels like it was knee-capped out of the gate by Attack of the Clones and feels compelled to tie up that movie's loose ends before beginning its own plot. Would have been nice to get more development on the Anakin-Palpatine relationship, but I remember genuinely liking the scene where Mace Windu goes to arrest him(basically the moment of Anakin's fall). The fights are a bit *too* over-the-top, but in spite of some painful dialogue and (probably) awful directing, Ewan McGregor puts in a good-to-great performance. And Ian McDiarmid plays Palpatine really well, and it's hard not to enjoy the Yoda-Palpatine fight because McDiarmid just seems to be enjoy hamming it up so much.

But then there're the Younglings, and Padme, and the movie's big event (the purge of the Jedi) being reduced to a quick montage. Lucas having literally all the power ensured these movies never had a chance.

I can confidently say that the Bills played their worst game of the year. Josh Allen is streaky and fumbles too much, yet is somehow the only player on offense capable of sparking anything ever. Our much bally-hued defense got gashed.

This is Third World grade corruption and negligence. It's clear PG&E doesn't give a damn.

https://www.sfchronicle.com/business/article/PG-E-is-less-than-one-third-done-with-its-2019-14483596.php

Edit: LOL they've basically done 1/3 of the tree-trimming they were supposed to do. Oh, and 2018's deadliest wildfire was caused by a transmission tower that was so poorly maintained it was broken by wind.

brestugo posted...

They were nudes, someone leaked them to the Daily Mail.

Her ex, IIRC. I hope he gets slapped for releasing revenge porn.

I'm more concerned about the potential ethics problems raised by having an affair with a staffer, personally.

Ivynn posted...

ElatedVenusaur posted...

Cleopatra herself was Macedonian Greek and probably had some Persian blood, but no Egyptian blood: there's no evidence the Ptolemies mixed with the native Egyptian population. They were probably light brown to white in skin tone.
https://www.world-archaeology.com/wp-content/uploads/cwa23/400px/441.jpg
That's a coin depicting her: check out that nose!

How do we know that guy wasn't just a shitty artist

I mean, it is a representation on a coin(it may not be super accurate and some aspects could be exaggerated for clarity), but apparently prominent noses were common among the Ptolemaic dynasty. And that's just a profile of her head: it doesn't give us a sense of how the rest of her looked, let alone how she moved or spoke. Though she is almost universally noted as having been really smart, witty, well-educated, and altogether charismatic. She would also have been wearing the finest clothes and make-up the ancient world had on offer.

masticatingman posted...

I feel like small cars are more essential today than ever with how congested parking gets. Even normal parking lots feel tight for me to get out and I have a small 4 door Japanese car.

Parking lots were made for cars and two door old school trucks. Not the monstrosities you see everywhere now.

Yeah, this is why I love having a shrimpy Hyundai Accent. I can slip into just about any space I want/need to, because my car is small. Sure, it probably wouldn't survive a head-on collision well(because it doesn't have much of a nose), but it seems crazy to base your purchases on something so exceedingly unlikely.

Cleopatra herself was Macedonian Greek and probably had some Persian blood, but no Egyptian blood: there's no evidence the Ptolemies mixed with the native Egyptian population. They were probably light brown to white in skin tone.
https://www.world-archaeology.com/wp-content/uploads/cwa23/400px/441.jpg
That's a coin depicting her: check out that nose!