TwinIon

So the first house objection was based on a constitutional technicality, arguing that only "legislatures" can choose electors and that process wasn't followed. A narrow objection, and one that wouldn't change the outcome, but whatever. It felt very much like a "I want to argue for Trump, but I don't want to regurgitate his insanity, so this is the best I could come up with." I had to mute this second objection by Jim Jordan after a short time because it very much is that Trump regurgitation. He started out talking about how the election feels wrong and obviously Trump won because people showed up for his rallies.

So the house has objected to the certification of the AZ results. Now the Senate will debate for about two hours, both houses will reject the motion, and then we get to do it all again between two and six more times. What a fun day of politics.

I have to say that I fully did not expect both Dems to win. I didn't really follow polls post election, but I just assumed that it was a long shot at best. Quite happy to be wrong. I'm not optimistic about many significant policies suddenly getting through, but at the very least there is hope that they might and we don't have to worry about regular things like cabinet confirmations or FCC commissioners being held hostage for years.

Maybe everyone's praise for this show set raised my expectations too much, but after three episodes of cheese I'm not inclined to keep going. The IMDB episode ratings don't really improve. Is it safe to say that if I'm not in after a few episodes, this show just isn't for me?

Cyberpunk, finish Valhalla, Fenix Rising, and since I finally have a Quest 2 coming, a whole bunch of VR stuff.

Ghosts is a game where the art really helps it outshine some serious technical limitations. It's full of low res textures that feel like they're base layers waiting for the higher LOD texture to pop-in, but they never do. Materials often look like they lack texture depth, feeling flat and artificial. At the same time, it's got some very high quality assets that it does its best to highlight and keep front and center. Mostly though, it's a triumph of highly romanticised dynamic lighting and scenery that really just makes everything look amazing most of the time. It's clear that they optimized for a given look and were hitting the limits of the PS4, and I think they were very successful in what they set out to achieve, but I feel like I saw more cracks in that look than I did in something like TLOU2.

For most foods it's a matter of making sure that the pan is at the right temperature and has the right distribution of fat in the pan. I will admit that at I still screw that up more often than I should, but pretty much everything should work in stainless if done right. I do still have and use some Scanpans, though I can't say they've held up perfectly after years of use, which is why I've gone back to the stainless. I have a decent seasoning on my cast iron, but I mostly use it for meats and occasionally for a dutch baby.

I finally put in an order for a Quest 2, but it won't be here until Jan 27. I was looking at link cables, and there are a ton of them on Amazon. Anyone have a specific recommendation, or does it not really matter?

I really love our All-Clad pans. I spent a lot of time with some Scanpans, but eventually made my way back to the copper-cored stainless All-Clad. It's consistent, and you can beat them to hell and they'll polish up like new. I have one lodge cast iron pan that I use often, and when you need cast iron, there is no substitute. I have been wanting to give a carbon steel pan a chance, though I'm not super eager to have another pan I have to care for.

WW84 fluctuates from being boring to being outright terrible as it wholly avoids doing anything exciting or provoking through a terribly extended runtime. I don't have the energy to go through it all, but there's a whole lot to pick apart and very little to redeem here.

The story in the Post suggests that congress is likely to override the veto. It's a shame that a President is willing to veto the NDAA but not to reign in any of the insane military spending, but because he's annoyed that Twitter puts labels next to some of his posts.

No that seems like a pretty clear cut case of illegality. I don't expect most of the anti-trust lawsuits filed recently to go anywhere, but this has massive fine written all over it.

Also: That's the legislation that Trump would rather pass.

An easy watch given that it'll be on Prime.

SARS-CoV-2 is studded with so called "spike" proteins that it uses to enter human cells. These spikes are much of what makes it so contagious. The the BioNTech vaccine targets those spike proteins, building an immunity specifically to them. So it's not necessarily that the entire virus is 99% the same, it's just that one spike protein. As long as new strains still have that spike protein, the vaccine should still work, and that seems likely to be the case here. The additional good news is that if we started to see a SARS-CoV-2 mutation that lacks the spike protein, it would be very likely to be far less contagious.

Got so close to getting one from Best Buy today, it was in cart, but it was only for local pickup, and it kept saying I couldn't pick up at that store, so I'd switch stores, same story. I'm on a 2080 Super right now, so I should probably wait for a 3080 ti, and probably will end up doing so by default. Of course, when the ti finally arrives, it'll be impossible to get and then I'll have to decide between buying a (possibly) more available 3080 or waiting for a ti to become available. I can't remember the last time I've tried so hard and failed to buy something.

I agree. It's the same reason that Facebook lobbies for additional regulation. They have enough money to build out whatever is necessary to comply with regulations, but any potential competitors would have a much harder time doing so. Especially when you have regs like this that require both technology solutions and additional manpower. Also, this bill would further entrench existing players like Pornhub by pushing out general purpose media platforms like Twitter, Reddit, and TikToc. Odds are many of them would completely ban adult images in order to avoid having to implement all this.

Last year we heard reporting that Apple's electric car ambitions had been scaled back dramatically from building their own car from scratch to simply providing driverless car software. Large parts of the so-called project Titan team were let go, and many assumed Apple was out of the race. Now we have a new report from Reuters that says Apple is indeed still moving ahead with their electric car ambitions. They're unsure if Apple will contract with partners to build a whole car, or if they'll be partnering with existing automakers, but besides self-driving car software, the key item in this new report is that Apple has some "breakthrough" battery tech that will both dramatically decrease cost and increase the range. The report also says Apple is targeting a 2024 date for this new car. At this point, I think it's fair to take these kinds of speculation with a pretty hearty dose of skepticism, but it's still fun to speculate as to what Apple could mean to electric and self-driving cars, should they enter the market in any real capacity. One element that comes to my mind that may have been in the background before is that Apple is now much more capable of a chip builder than they were in 2014. Yes, they were a few generations deep into the A-series when Titan started up, but now they've expanded their capabilities immensely, with a heavy focus on compute, vision, and AI, all things you'd need in a self-driving car. I'm not sure how aware people are, but many (most?) car software platforms are built on QNX, a blackberry subsidiary that works, but I wouldn't call them a gold standard of innovation. Even if Apple's ambitions get scaled back, it's not hard to imagine Apple's hardware and software taking significant market share from both QNX and self driving providers at the same time. As far as breakthrough battery tech, that's my ultimate "I'll believe it when I see it." If they do have something cheap and good, then I'll be first in line to praise them for it, but I feel like it's a line we've heard before, and as far as I know Apple hasn't been a leader in battery tech. We've seen a lot of scaled back ambitions from the self-driving car sector. Uber basically gave up, Waymo has been moving very slowly, established car makers have been much more quiet about their ambitions in the last year or so. If Apple does get into the mix, it could spice things back up.

I'm kinda surprised to see TLOU2 isn't cleaning up, seems like the kind of game that I'd expect to win it all. It doesn't really do much new, but I'd argue it's easily best of breed. While I'm glad that Alyx is getting some recognition, I hoped for a bit more. I realize PC based VR is a lot to ask, but it's a great experience, and probably my personal GOTY. I should probably play Hades.

That's a pretty huge upgrade. Congrats and enjoy the new phone. I am slightly curious as to why you'd get the Note when you don't expect to use the stylus? There was a time when the Note line was unrivaled, but now the S20 Ultra is basically the same thing. If you're looking to game on the phone and your internet is good enough I know Samsung has some special deal with MS for X Cloud. I forget what's special, but I know it's specifically well supported on the new Samsung devices. I've tried it out on my Pixel and it's impressive. Some people like controller add-ons like the Razer Kishi, but I'm pretty happy with simple controller clips. It's nice to have a full size controller to grab on to, and you can position the screen so it's in front of your hands, which I like. I haven't put too many hours into it, but I honestly prefer it over my switch for many things. I've actually done more streaming from my PC than the cloud, but either way it's nifty to stream things while kinda watching something else on TV.

I'd love to imagine that this Foxconn mess will serve as a warning, but somehow I just think of this:

This was always a doomed venture. The question to me is how much the DirecTV blunder will affect investor's confidence in AT&T's media holdings as a whole. There's a non-zero chance that AT&T blows up Warner Media in an attempt to turn HBO Max into Netflix, and then ends up selling the whole thing in a fire sale as investors reconsider the wisdom of a profitable ISP spending all it's cash trying to build a new media company.

How much Grogu do you all think we'll be getting in Season 3? The way it was left, it sure seems like his role in Mando's story could be done, but for completely non-plot reasons I have a hard time believing it. You could make a good argument that Grogu is the most important character in media right now. Disney is effectively betting the company on Disney+. They're not burning down the rest of the empire around them, but it's clearly the centerpiece of their media strategy for the foreseeable future. Grogu is the crossover point that spawned a billion memes on the only original draw that Disney+ has at launch. Due to Disney's rush to get a streaming service out ASAP and the Covid delays, the Mandalorian has been the single original pillar, and the only real pull outside the (obviously valuable) Disney catalog. So Grogu is arguably the biggest draw on the biggest show, on the most important media platform of the biggest media company in the world. If I'm Bob Chapek (Disney's CEO), there is no way in hell I'm allowing a season 3 to sideline that draw. Now, you can argue that while the Mandalorian was integral to the launch of Disney+, by the time Season 3 rolls around there will be several other Star Wars shows to ease that burden, along with several Marvel, Disney, and Pixar entries. So Grogu's place as a singular draw is no longer necessary. Still, you don't sideline your star player just because it seems like you're about to take the lead.

Great photos. Kinda off topic, but I recently watched The Way I See It, a documentary about Pete Souza who was Regan and Obama's photographer. It's not the best put together doc, but it does a good job of hammering home the importance of having a good photographer for a leader. I think he makes a good argument for that importance both to history and, in this age of immediate digital distribution, to cementing a leader's humanity in the public eye. It's obviously something we lost with Trump's insistence on staged photos, but I'm glad that others continue to document their time in office. I also hope that Biden will follow Obama's example and give his photographers the same kind of extraordinary access that Souza had.