TwinIon

Making arguments about how your representation is diminished if others are fairly represented sure is a bad look. "We deserve to have voting representatives in both houses of congress because it's our right as Americans! Can't say the same for those people in DC."

When I saw the headline I was prepared for some real reckless shenanigans from Space X, but as far as rules violations go, that's pretty tame.

Interesting article. It really seems like Amazon needs to be better at deciding what "the Amazon way" means for any given project,. I know Amazon likes to build their own tools, but where they've been successful is when they've built a tool that is best of breed, which they can then sell as a product or service. So it makes sense that they'd want to build their own engine. Still, if I was starting up a game division, there's no way that I start off by building my own engine. If there's one common thread among "corporate overlord screws up game development" stories, it's almost always about forcing some engine. It also seems like it's obvious that the data centric Amazon approach would not be a good fit for video games. Maybe you should have a video game guy in charge of a billion dollar video game business. Just a thought. My understanding of Amazon Studios is that they were not like this. That article mentions that every Amazon game needed to be a billion dollar franchise. Early Amazon Studios acquisition was Chi-Raq, not a film I'd describe as destined for a mainstream audience. It probably helps that Amazon Studios has been run by people in the industry and that they can purchase projects like Chi-Raq after they've mostly been completed. I guess we'll see how their LOTR project goes, but overall I haven't gotten the impression that it's completely dysfunctional like Amazon Gaming apparently is.

Even if GM does meet this goal and does only sell electric vehicles by 2035/2040, they're not the sole provider and cars are a rather durable good, so I'm not worried about people that absolutely need a gas vehicle. The question for GM isn't if they can meet the needs of every possible driver, the question is if they can build vehicles for the majority of new car buyers. Those are very different markets at any given moment in time. I expect charging infrastructure to improve by leaps and bounds over the next decade or so as every major manufacturer gets heavily into electrics, and I think that will change customer behavior. Yeah, right now we expect to make a dedicated stop to fill up our car every once in a while, but I suspect it'll be more common to simply tie car charging into typical activities (shopping, eating out, maybe even work). I have a friend who owns a Model 3 and couldn't have a home charger for almost a year, and that's what he did. It wasn't ideal, but it was livable, even with the very small number of superchargers around. Nearly every major and many smaller shopping centers around us have chargers already. For now it's only a couple, but as demand increases I think it'll be much more common. Then of course you have people who can charge at home, and who will almost never need to charge elsewhere. That's been the case for our electric car. I really hope that GM hits this goal largely because if they do it should mean that charging is in a much better place.

Just got my PS5 and aside from a few minutes in Astro's Playground the remaster is the first thing I'm playing, and I think it's a pretty good place to start. Playing in performance RT mode and it looks great. I originally played on release on a base PS4, so playing now on the PS5 with a 4K OLED TV and it looks great. The upgraded textures make a huge difference, and obviously RT is really great in this game. I haven't noticed the reflections being low quality, but I haven't really taken a close look. I can say that they make a huge difference both in a lot of the interior sections and obviously in the buildings while swinging around. While swinging around I've come to appreciate the triggers on the new controllers. It's not a huge thing, but I like how they have it setup with the resistance and the nice click. Certainly a PS5 feature I look forward to experiencing in other games. The effective lack of loading times is another PS5 highlight, it really streamlines an already excellent game. I also just wanted to again heap some praise on the game itself. Since playing through the first time I've played through a lot of other single player games. In particular I got on a bit of an Assassins' Creed quarantine binge. I've put maybe 10 hours into Valhalla, but haven't been too motivated to continue on. It's an unfair comparison in many ways, but Spider-Man still looks so many third person action games feel old and busted by comparison. Both while traversing the world and in combat, it's so fluid and exciting. More than perhaps any other game I can pull off the cool thing I want to. In so many games, including many of the AC titles, I end up looking like a buffoon, swinging wildly at nothing, not making a jump or climbing awkwardly around a structure. Despite the comparative speed of Spider-Man, and the range of actions available, I can almost always hit my mark. I loved it when it first came out, and I might be enjoying it even more this time around.

I just want to say this is all hilarious and a true indictment of the stock market.

I'm sure this has been answered somewhere in this thread, but are there any brands that you guys would completely avoid? Any that you'd specifically recommend? Or does it really not matter?

It might be nice if there was something not tied to LL that allowed you to get matchmaking for basically any activity. I do think that even a 1250 could be a problem for matchmaking, and I can imagine you might often get whole fireteams that were unprepared or underleveled or something. Still, the game tracks a million things. To take it to an extreme, I got Conqueror this season. Surely you could match me with other Conquerors in a 1250 and there wouldn't be a problem. Same thing with the raid. I have the seal, I've run it maybe 20 times. Put me in a matchmade group of folks who have done the same and there would be no problems. Of course, requiring Conqueror or Descendent to get matchmaking would be silly, but it does seem like there should be some way to earn the right to get matchmaking. Next time I need to grind pinnacles it's kinda silly I'll need to do the whole discord song and dance for stuff the game could easily assume that I'm prepared for.

It'll be quite difficult to prove actual malice, but I think they might have a real chance.

Does this suddenly make him willing to compromise or vote to convict?

At the beginning of lockdown I caught up on a bunch of games that I'd bought and never finished or never played as well as a few that I picked up really cheap. A lot of single player action/adventure stuff. I played through most of the Assassins' Creed Series, a couple recent Far Cry games, FF7R, Last of Us 2. I played through Black Mesa and replayed Half-Life 2 so I was ready for Alyx. Then my tour of unfinished games took me back into Destiny 2, which has since eaten up hundreds of hours since. If there was one game that defined my time in quarantine, it would be Destiny. Especially for that first couple hundred hours, there are endless things to chase after. I'd just gotten to a point where I felt like I'd gotten most of what I was after when Beyond Light came out, introducing a whole new set of stuff to chase. I still expect to put time into it going forward, but I don't think it'll be quite the same kind of time sink it was for a while there. There are a bunch of single player games I'm looking to get through. Valhalla, Fenix Rising, Cyberpunk, and I now have a PS5 coming, so Miles Morales is now on the list as well.

To oblivion and beyond!

I've seen a few seasons of most of the CW superhero shows and I think I'm done with them unless this one deviates heavily from that formula.

Finally got an order in through Best Buy. Should be here by Tuesday if all goes well. Definitely the hardest it's been for me to get a gadget in a long time. I've been subscribed to twitter feeds and notification apps and discord channels since launch. Looking forward to giving it a go.

I'd disagree with that simplification. If I were to distill it to one sentence it would be that I think easing the passage of legislation would be an overall good thing, even though it would mean passage of a lot of stuff I don't like. Right now most of the GOP doesn't even have a policy agenda. Trump didn't run on one. When he did win and they had the ability to pass whatever they wanted they still couldn't get it together. I think it's quite possible that if we re-do 2016 but knew going in there was no filibuster the GOP might actually have written some bills. Maybe they'd have put forward a real ACA alternative. I doubt I'd have liked anything they would have passed, but a democratically elected government should be able to actually govern, and a huge part of that is passing a policy agenda through legislation, but it hardly ever happens now. The way the Georgia runoff was framed, it was basically a choice between a government that maybe accomplishes something vs one that is all but guaranteed to never pass anything. I'd be much happier with a government that tried things more regularly even though that would obviously mean a lot of stuff happening that I disagree with.

This piece in the Atlantic is short and worth a read. It makes the argument that while we've seen heightened condemnation of Trump's federal execution spree, the far larger execution program continues to be those done with drone strikes. In 542 strikes, Obama killed 3,797 people (including 324 civilians), and while it is thought Trump further accelerated the program, the lack of transparency makes it impossible to verify. The article brings up the case of American journalist Bilal Abdul Kareem who believes he is on a secret kill list and has survived five separate drone strikes. His case continues to work it's way up the court system, as he sues the federal government asking for due process. In order to get that due process, he wants to know "(1) whether the government had made a determination to kill him; (2) if yes, if it actually tried to kill him; (3) the process by which the government decided to target him; (4) the factual basis for deciding to target him; and (5) whether he was still a target." Last week the US Court of Appeals affirmed a lower court ruling that he does not have standing in this case, because he can't prove that these bombings were actually US drone strikes. Adding transparency, reducing, or ending the drone program would be a significant step for Biden to right one of the more significant wrongs of the last three administrations. I hope he decides to do the right thing.

When I hear arguments against killing the filibuster I get the impression that they largely boil down to some fear that the US Senate will suddenly adopt the Facebook motto of "move fast and break things," but I don't really think there's much chance of that happening. Other arguments largely boil down to "well, the other guys will be able to pass things when they're in power," and to that I largely say "bring it on!" I want government to be elected on the premise that the democratically elected officials will pass the policies they ran on. Right now I feel like we see so many on the right run on completely empty policy proposals. 2016 was the perfect opportunity for them to pass whatever they wanted, to replace the ACA they so bitterly hated, but they didn't have a better plan, only shallow opposition. If we changed the power structure a little bit and suddenly there was a higher expectation that if you won control of the government you'd actually be able to enact your policies, I think there might be more actual policy debate and more consequences for enacting policies both good and bad. As it stands, I get the impression that most people (myself often included) don't expect many real policies to get enacted, because so little opposition is required to prevent it. The only real issue that I have with making policy easier to implement in general is that we currently have a situation where one party holds wholly outsized influence compared to their voting population, and when they have power they actively seek to prevent or otherwise manipulate the actual democratic process to hold onto power they otherwise might not. Of course, the fixes for that (ending the electoral college, voting rights acts, etc.) would largely come from legislation that wouldn't get passed without ending the filibuster.

I want to believe that McConnell's further obstructions will convince the necessary folks to get rid of the filibuster, but I won't hold my breath. There's nothing about his time as majority leader that indicates he's willing to work with the Dems or compromise on basically anything that matters. I don't know what else he could possibly do to demonstrate the necessity of ending the filibuster.

It was on the ballot again last year and it passed with 52% of the vote.

I don't really think it makes sense for people living in the US to lack the representation that comes with statehood. Especially during the last four years, we've seen the power that states still wield. So overall I'm in favor of DC Statehood. Still, I don't feel like the people in DC are terribly underrepresented or otherwise forgotten, at least not to the extent that people in Puerto Rico are. Assuming the people in PR support statehood, they should be a priority.

Freakonomics did an episode about Mattresses a while back. It's a weird industry.

I'm seeing the Q threads saying they were duped, but I'd love to know what % of the Q faithful fall off the train now. How many will believe the inevitable theories that this is all still part of the plan and Trump is really pulling all the strings behind the scene? With Trump out of office, surely they'll shed many of the more casual followers, but given the decentralized nature of the whole conspiracy and the deplatforming of so many groups/followers, I feel like it'll take a while to figure out how many are still believers.

This is Marvel spending some of that goodwill they've been working on over all these years. It's not bad, but with essentially no indication as to where it's going, I'm largely sticking with it because it's Marvel and it must be going somewhere. It's quite a bold decision to launch the new Marvel Studios Television with this show and these episodes in particular. You'd need some serious confidence to assume your audience will stick with you, and that's exactly what Marvel has. If nothing else, I'm glad they're trying something different.

I hope they put a Blue Lives Matter sign on the door. Also, wonderful detail that they'd go use the restroom at Obama's place, and that even Pence isn't so petty as to prevent the people keeping him safe from using his toilet.

The house already passed the bill to increase checks to $2000. I don't think it's always been well worded, but I'm confident that the promise has always been to increase this round of stimulus to $2000, never to send out $2000 on top of the recently passed $600.