Lurker > ElatedVenusaur

I mean, we all knew Joe Rogan was dumb, right?
LOL at people blaming Bernie for it though.

He still owes us. He'll go all the way, and it doesn't matter, because he'll be blamed if Biden loses regardless of if he drops out now or in June, no matter how hard he campaigns for Biden.

SMT IV

Isabeau Battle Theme
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AhvLVhuh2dg&t=1305s

Demon Lord Lucifer(Stage 1)/Sanat
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=essons6CRbQ&t=1222s

Demon Lord Lucifer(Stage 2)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xhpDGXLWUW0
SMT IV: Apocalypse

Divine Powers Battle (vs. Odin, Maitreya, or Krishna)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-EtFEfnwCxc&t=66s

One Who Stands Against God (YHVH Battle Stage 2)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xMH-zB8LRzA
*YHVH trembles with scorn*

Yeah, this is the one situation where robust mass transit is really bad. Buses and especially subways definitely helped it blow up.
Add in NYC's global status as an economic hub and a giant tourist attraction, and it was never going to do very well. Trump bungled everything and DeBlasio was dumb too. Cuomo is also content to let Riker's fester.

Hellblade: Senua's Sacrifice
I just finished it, so have a bunch a bit of its great OST.

Valravn
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B7cuGQBjN04

Surtr
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1Um8BFSh4xo

Hela(Passarella Death Squad - Just Like Sleep)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x-e-REZr31I

That last one is truly beautiful.

No, you're right. It would be better, because Hillary Clinton, for all her (many) faults, is not half as stupid, venal, corrupt, or narcissistic as Trump is.
It would still be a total trainwreck because our society is uniquely poorly structured to deal with a national health emergency. There probably isn't a universe where we aren't at least as bad as Italy, at least if the inflection point is back in 2016.

Well, I suppose this counts...

Final Fantasy V - Battle at the Big Bridge (Gilgamesh's Theme)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ikP38UAdhgg

This video doesn't just have the original version, it has every remix that has ever been done of it, whether for a port of FFV itself, or in a different game.

Except...I don't see the PSX version anywhere in there...
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oVJ498ZJDnE
Included for completeness' sake.

Edit: Apparently, the GBA version in the compilation above isn't quite right...
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YjeQmcMpWQI

MrToothHasYou posted...

Taking donations from people

Literally every fundraising email Ive gotten from him in the past three weeks has been for charities related to the coronavirus crisis. The only other email Ive gotten from him was for a petition to Walmart for stronger protections for their employees who are working through the pandemic. Shes absolutely full of shit.

Yeah, every text I've gotten from the campaign has been canvassing for donations for coronavirus-related charities.
Of course, this is nothing new for his campaign: he's very frequently used his e-mail and number list to draw attention to strikes and disasters and urge his supporters to help.

Numenor posted...

When everything is racist, nothing is racist.

It's just that this country was intentionally built to be racist, like, from the ground up(couldn't have slaves being seen as people, after all). And even though we've made it progressively less racist, it's still pretty racist.

Esrac posted...

She must still be bitter about Clinton's loss. I can't imagine any other motivation for calling a candidate not dropping out "morally bankrupt".

Not unifying the party in the way you want them to isn't a matter of moral failing.

It's typical centrist behavior: everything is up to the left or the left's fault. If Bernie continues his campaign and Biden loses, it's Bernie's fault. If he suspends his campaign now and Biden loses, it will still be Bernie's fault. They all fall in line when the DNC tells them to, so naturally they think we are all at Bernie's beck and call.

Ogre Battle 64

Rrowf (Standard Boss Battle Theme)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EViTB06i1LE&t=13s

Loki (Big Boss Battle Theme) You'll first get it fighting General Godeslas
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YfjalT1H7Zg

World-shaking (Final Boss Map Theme)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s5WT7loy5xg

Distortion (Final Boss Battle Theme)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JWxp9IwnTao

There's a meme tweet I would love to post for this occasion, but it's definitely too profane for GameFAQs.
But, you know, at the end of the day, you reap what you sow.

There are no words for how depressing and tragic that is.

Airhammy posted...

The whole series I was waiting to see that, and I was satisfied with the result. Good thing Steven was able to revive her.

I did appreciate how it took literally all of the Diamond bath water.
I also really love how the Diamonds panned out. Yellow always seemed like she was bothered by shattering and trying to make them "useful" again: now that she's free of having to make gems useful and has developed her powers, she can finally fix shattered gems and seems to be genuinely fulfilled by it. She even had that other gem there for moral support, because presumably a gem that was shattered might otherwise freak out upon suddenly regaining consciousness and seeing a freaking Diamond.
Blue Diamond has gone full stoner and got a stoner song. Instead of making people feel sad, she makes them feel happy. With smoke. And she's super chill.
And finally, White Diamond has learned to use her power to replicate the psyches of other gems, instead of crushing them. She has, in a very literal sense, learned to respect others.
Lastly, while I felt I Am My Monster was a little short for how complex it was, it was really powerful. Just about everyone was there for him: including the Cluster! That's true love: seeing some one at their absolute worst, and hugging them and telling them you love them. The Future was a perfect palate cleanser to that, and overall ,the series did an impeccable job of demonstrating how overcoming your trauma and mental illness isn't instantaneous: it's a process, but one that Steven is already making good progress on. Also, him saying good bye to the gems and then coming back crying, wondering aloud why they were so cool with this, and them all bursting out crying and Garnet explaining they tried not to cry because it might have led to him staying, but there wasn't a future where he left and never came back because they would always be a family was really touching.

Not much. Im more of a historian than a political scientist( I DO have a history degree, so I have some minimal claim to the title).
My own sentiment is that some form of central authority is an unavoidable reality of human governance, but, then, the idea that kings werent necessary for government would have seemed quite foreign to the vast majority of medieval Europeans, so perhaps were simply too far from such a reality to grasp it.

Im drinking Stone Xocoveza right now. Ive had it in my basement for a little over two months as a special offering for a game night that didnt materialize and wont any time soon. Its good though: it contains lactose, which I forgot, and the hostess is lactose intolerant.

Xocoveza is a stout brewed with chocolate, coffee, pasilla peppers, vanilla, cinnamon, and nutmeg, inspired by Mexican hot chocolate. Its been out of season for a while now.

Tropicalwood posted...

Leaking confidential documents to the media isn't actually whistleblowing. Whistleblowing would be if he went above his CO and informed their CO of misconduct.

The CO, who, dollars to donuts, will simply repress it because it might make the Navy look bad?

JBaLLEN66 posted...

Isnt the Strong point of a government to have flowing flawless elections?

The way to do that during a pandemic is voting by mail, not asking people to literally risk their lives if they want to cast a vote. But, of course, they don't care about that.

COVxy posted...

Puzzled by all the D'Onofrio hate itt, tbh.

Me too. Goren is great, and Eames doesn't get enough love either, for that matter. Get Goren, Eames, Munch, Ice T, and Briscoe and have them constantly troll Stabler.

I've never been bothered by women's arm hair. Shave it, keep it, do whatever suits you, because your skin will still be lovely.

P4wn4g3 posted...

Well the predictive modeling would have it at 300,000 today. So idk. Crappy reporting I'm guessing.

That would be pretty close, but, of course, there are probably lots of unconfirmed cases because we're so short on testing capability.

RchHomieQuanChi posted...

I don't think they did though. It was clear that Thor was going through some deep depression and dealt with it with excessive partying and overeating.

Yeah, I thought it was great. He was basically eating and drinking his guilt: he blamed himself for the snap. If he had been a little stronger, a little wiser, a little faster, if he had just aimed for the head, none of this would have happened(not quite true, of course, but Thor certainly believes it's true). He was clearly consumed by grief and guilt and felt utterly useless and unworthy, that he had failed everyone.
Undoing the snap doesn't undo his torment, his trauma, his loss of self-worth, nor does it restore the faith of the Asgardians who looked to him for leadership in their darkest hour and were disappointed. That part is actually more realistic than Thor instantly getting his groove back and returning to where he was at the end of Ragnarok.

Esrac posted...

A lot more dead Russians.

They would have to go full Stalin to keep up with the disastrous "transition" that occurred after the Soviet Union's collapse. It was so bad Yeltsin had to steal an election from the communists.
How good or bad the Soviet Union would be would depend on how successful Gorbachev was and how far he would be able/willing to go in terms of democratizing the government and the kleptocratic Soviet bureaucracy.
Even so, it would actually be hard to do worse than OTL Russia has, even for the Soviets.

Sky Chase is perfectly fine as a palate cleanser and transition between Metropolis and Wing Fortress.
Metropolis drags(it's over fond of those screws that take forever to get you anywhere) and has a nasty habit of putting those crabs and mantises where you can't see them until you jump up somewhere and they attack immediately.
Wing Fortress is mostly fine, but there's that one jump that's a total leap of faith and that's just terrible.
I was never bothered by not having rings on Death Egg though.

BathroomWater posted...

Animist polytheism with hundreds upon hundreds of gods. A trio of goddesses were especially revered, and Allah was included in the pantheon but more as a king god or something akin to that, not the all-encompassing lord of all worlds, one-God that we see today.

Yeah, the Kaaba was even a pre-Islamic shrine which Muhammad converted to a shrine for Allah, for example.
Islam can be understood as synthesizing all the most popular elements of Judaism and Christianity with traditional Arabic beliefs and folklore, really. The two religions had been presented in the Arabian peninsula for centuries at the time of Islam's founding, and Ethiopia even invaded and conquered a Jewish kingdom to put an end to its persecution of Christians(and to get started on persecuting Jews).

Paragon21XX posted...

Good thing no one is asking you, because that sort of take is fallacious at its very foundation. A people's identity does not disappear just because they've been exiled from their homeland.

They were also gone no more than a few decades: Neo-Babylon/Chadaea survived for less than a century between overthrowing the Assyrians and being conquered by Cyrus the Great.
It was the last Mesopotamian empire.

Edit: Like, literally, Nebuchadnezzar II reigned for 43 years, and he's the Babylonian King mentioned by the Bible. He died in 562 BCE, and Cyrus conquered the city in 549 BCE, just 13 years later. Assuming the conquest of Judea and the deportation occurred towards the beginning of his reign, that gives us an exile of around 50 years at max.

Let's talk a bit about the Babylonian exile. Basically, the Neo-Babylonians were massive jerks, and in order to control conquered territories, they deported large segments of the population(likely primarily elites or anyone that might be expected to stir things up) and settled them around Babylon, so they could keep a close eye on them.
Fortunately for everyone who wasn't a Babylonian, Neo-Babylon was short-lived and was conquered by Persia, led by Cyrus the Great. Cyrus was much less of a jerk, and when he discovered all these exiled peoples crowded around Babylon, he struck on a great idea: he escorted them home, and then he set about rebuilding all the temples the Babylonians had burned and looted. If the Old Testament is anything to go by, the strategy was a PR coup that supplied Cyrus with a number of happy vassals(Cyrus, IIRC, is the only foreign king that is mentioned in a positive way).
Of course, the people who had been left behind had probably been doing just fine without the exiles, and may have been annoyed. In Judea, this manifested in the fact that the left-behind and the exiles had slightly different rituals. The exiles alleged that, in their absence, the left-behinds had forgotten the proper ways, while the left-behinds charged that the exiles had allowed their rituals to be corrupted by Babylonian religious practices.
They handled this like humans normally handled minor disagreements; that is, very poorly.
The left-behinds who refused to yield, in the end, formed their own community and came to be known as Samaritans(due to their claim of descent from the tribes that lived around Samaria, or the modern day West Bank), and all good, self-respecting orthodox Jews hated them(the feeling was mutual).

I bring it up because knowing who the Samaritans were really changes the context of one of Jesus' most famous parables: that of the good Samaritan. They still exist today, even.

Alpha218 posted...

There is already the STOCK Act that prohibits Congress from insider trading. Like I said, I doubt Barr will do jack shit because most of the people who did this are Republicans, and they dont need anything else disrupting the senate races this year since Dems have a chance of retaking the majority.

Well, him going after Feinstein wouldn't be any loss. It would also lead to funny conversations with chuds.

She'll probably lose her primary and suffer no other consequences, because this is America.

CommunismFTW posted...

I never want to have responsibility in a corporate work environment ever again. This topic doesn't make me regret avoiding it at all costs for the last few years.

Amen. I've avoided advancement precisely because it seems like a ton of garbage, and they don't even pay supervisors much more money.

KYOJIROKAGENUMA posted...

Man I really need to go through and play the SMT series...

The series does a few different things with its Law vs. Chaos dynamic, and the creators seem to really like Mastema, as he features prominently in Strange Journey and SMT IV.
Mastema is sort of a proto-Lucifer in Jewish traditions, and both games have him ostensibly aligned with God.
SMT Devil Survivor plays with a different biblical story altogether, whereas Devil Survivor 2 creates a different dynamic and also has you fight a bunch of kaiju.

I'm concerned for me and my coworkers, since we work at Whole Foods and are thus exposed. I have a few coworkers who are immuno-compromised.

Yazidism has a unique twist: the Earth is ruled over by a being known as Taws Melek or the Peacock Angel. When God creates the angels, He instructs them to bow before no other being but God.
When God creates Adam, He instructs the angels to bow before him. Only the Peacock Angel refuses, and when asked why, he argues that to bow before Adam would be to disobey God's previous order. For his wisdom, God rewarded the Peacock Angel with dominion over Earth and humans, and tasks him to guide them.
The Peacock Angel, if you haven't already guessed, is typically identified with Satan/Lucifer/Iblis, but here he is recast as the first among the angels as opposed to an evil adversary.

Also, it's worth mentioning that "Satan", in the original conception, was more title than name. The Jews envisaged the Satans as participating in judging souls: it was their duty to declaim a soul's sins and test their faith, more so for the sake of the mortal than for Yaweh, of course.

Lastly, SMTIV: Apocalypse takes things in an interesting direction...
Lucifer is, unwittingly, still a servant of YHVH: he is the scourge YHVH uses to drive humans to him and to punish the sinful. Lucifer could never actually threaten YHVH: only humans are capable of downing him; this is why Krishna and the Divine Powers needed Flynn. When both Lucifer/Walter and Merkabeh/Jonathan are defeated in YHVH's realm, they regain their consciousnesses and fuse to form Satan in order to battle YHVH.

Gladius. It's got a decent story and a really cool concept(running a gladiator school and climbing the ranks and fighting in arenas in different regions), it's just buggy, samey, and blatantly unfinished in places. If you finished it, polished it, and expanded it a little, you could have an all-time classic on your hands.

Lost_All_Senses posted...

Isn't it just being on the bottom but still doing all the work? Thrusting upwards? Im realizing I never really thought into this much.

I think the "power" is more about being the one directing the proceedings, not necessarily doing *all* the work yourself.

I've been to Disney World a few times: I have family who live about an hour away. It gets a lot more affordable when you don't need a hotel, but I've only been, like, three times.

Here's a pretty good article about the state of things: https://thebaffler.com/working-stiff/food-fight-kelly
It's about Trader Joe's and Whole Foods, so I'll quote some of the Whole Foods section.

The company has taken only incremental measures to protect them, like promising workers up to two weeks of sick leave contingent on a positive COVID-19 test at a time when the vast majority of civilians cannot access them, and offering a $2 hourly wage increase through April. Meanwhile, the chains parent company is literally owned by the richest man in the world.

You still only get 40 hours of paid sick leave a year, so I hope you're not living paycheck-to-paycheck when you have to self-isolate for a week or more. Or that you don't come down with another serious illness before 2021.

Im a barista and our coffee bar is still open, even though every coffee bar in my city has shut down, so am I really an essential worker? she continued. Im making cappuccinos for people who have absolute panic in their eyes.
Back in January, Whole Foods cut health care benefits for 1,900 of its part-time workers, a decision that now appears especially cruel. As the Chicago worker told me, Any kind of argument about money saving or profitability just seems totally absurd when were owned by Jeff Bezos. Theres no rationalization for not giving your workers health insurance during a pandemic.

A group called Whole Worker has since launched a public campaign to hold Whole Foods accountable. They have organized a sickout today in order to bring attention to their demands, which include guaranteed paid sick leave for workers who self-quarantine, hazard pay, proper sanitation procedures, and reinstating the health care benefits that were lost in January. Since Whole Foods has temporarily relaxed its attendance policy, those who participate in the sickout can do so without fear of reprisal, which is a huge advantage when dealing with a company so adamantly opposed to collective organizing.

So, apologies to people fantasizing about me and my coworkers getting fired for being uppity or whatever.

I know Whole Foods has strict item limits on a lot of things, including limiting toilet paper and paper towels to one per customer(in my store, they're posted everywhere those items are. Customers still ignore them and sometimes get angry).
Don't go there today though.

Well, I'm officially participating. I had to wait on hold for five minutes to call-out on a totally random Tuesday. That's usually reserved for snowstorms. Or perhaps the call-out line has simply had to make adjustments due to the pandemic.
In any case, I wouldn't be able to look my co-workers, or, perhaps even more importantly, myself, in the eye if I didn't do this.

berlyman101 posted...

Ah shit. You work in a warehouse for Amazon? While foods?

Whole Foods(thankfully).

chrono625 posted...

nope, these tax caps have absolutely killed me in 2018 and 2019 tax filings.

living and working in high tax and high cost of living areas Ive owed the past two years where I would normally get 0 or a thousand back. Now Im paying back 5k or more.

You make over $500k and you're asking the dude who made like $17,000 last year to feel sorry for you.
Because otherwise this doesn't help you.

I'm going to stick with spoilers, because it only just ended.
That's the strength of Future: it's very small potatoes. There's no world-ending catastrophe, no Sword of Damocles hanging over the Crystal Gems and Earth, no (serious) threats left to fight. Steven was always the one who held the others together, the one who saved others, who turned enemies into allies, who fixed everything, who saved the galaxy. And now there's nothing left to fix and no one left to save, and everyone's kind of moving on and living their own lives and doesn't need Steven. At least, not the way he's used to, and Steven just doesn't know what to do with himself anymore.

Going to be calling out tomorrow. If I dont, Ill have to burn my Bernie bumper sticker and donate to the Center for American Progress.

Well, she and her friends would, and thats everyone who matters, right?

KillerSlaw posted...

AOC has ambition and is honestly playing the game right.

You can't get elected being an extremist. You can get on the stage, but at some point you need to fall in line.

Obama knew this. Bernie didn't.

How is Bernie an extremist, exactly? He's by all accounts personally pleasant, doesn't typically pick fights with Senate leadership, and he doesn't typically endorse primary challengers.
It is true that Bernie is perceived as extreme, and AOC will be as well, unless she sells her soul to the donor class, because that's the only way they'll ever accept some one like her or Bernie(and even then they would probably be regarded with suspicion, see Warren, Elizabeth for more details).

Can anyone think of a time Bernie Sanders publicly feuded with Chuck Schumer? He also doesn't typically endorse many primary challengers(to incumbents, at least).
Just sounds like Politico feverishly trying to generate content.

David Bowie - Hallo Spaceboy(Double Click Mix)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RL3dfkZGaPs
I didn't realize Bowie had made so many (excellent) remixes of this particular song, I'm just sharing this one because it explicitly identifies the titular "Spaceboy" as being Major Tom from Space Oddity and Ashes to Ashes.