Fizzzzle

I didn't post about this earlier, but Portland transportation director readies plan to roll back key downtown protected bike lane BIKEPORTLAND.ORG It would be an unprecedented reversal of a protected bike facility. So a few years ago, Portland city council voted unanimously to add a protected bike lane along W Broadway, one of the main corridors going through downtown. That stretch of road had some of the highest car/bike collisions in the city (I myself have been right hooked there more than once, and that's with bright green paint and shit) The fucked up thing is that getting that protected bike lane put in took YEARS of planning and research. Seriously, it was almost a decade and millions of dollars conducting economic impact studies, traffic studies, safety studies, and lobbying before it was finally voted on. Then it took another few years to finally be implemented. After all that, the protected bike lane was there for all of 8 months, and all it took was for a couple hotels on Broadway to be like "WAAAAHHHH! WE DON'T LIKE IT!" and PBOT just goes "okay, take it out." A few days after that article was posted, PBOT issued a statement saying "there's nothing imminent happening, we're just conducting a review and exploring options," meanwhile an e-mail was leaked that showed they had already approved the removal of the protected bike lane. Over a decade and millions of dollars of fighting to get the thing in and all it takes to take it down is 2 business owners who don't like that their valet parking is slightly inconvenienced.

When I hear "16 year probe" I can't help but think "damn, there are people in the IRS who have been working on this for their entire career pretty much."

I still can't believe that they moved the release of The Exorcist movie because of Taylor Swift. The venn diagram of people on earth who are choosing between seeing the new Exorcist movie vs. the Taylor Swift movie has to be damn near two separate circles.

So in 2034, by the time the appeals for this have run their course, how much do you think they'll actually pay?

He'd be eligible if one of his parents was a US citizen when he was born, but that isn't the case. You don't have to be born in the US to be president, you just have to be a natural born citizen, which can happen anywhere in the universe as long as one of your parents was a US citizen when you were born*. That's why the whole birther thing with Obama was so stupid - he could have been born on Mars and it wouldn't have mattered. *Restrictions apply. You aren't automatically a natural born US citizen if one of your parents is a US citizen. There are restrictions. For example, if you're born to a US citizen and a foreign national outside of the US, your US citizen parent had to have spent at least 5 years living in the US after the age of 12 or something, or a contiguous year before your birth. So if you're a US citizen at birth but you move to a different country at age 7 or whatever, your citizenship does not automatically pass on to your children. My little brother is a US citizen, was born in the United States, but because he hasn't lived in the United States since he was 3 years old, his citizenship would not automatically pass to his children unless he moves back to the states. There is some wiggle room, though. All of these rules were put in later, the most recent of which was in the 90's. So Cenk is saying he'll fight in in the courts. I don't think he would win, as I doubt the courts (or anyone) would make a change on what counts as a natural born citizen just so some dipshit on the internet can run for president... BUT, we do live in the dumbest timeline, so.... who knows.

I think it's probably the first RPG I will have played multiple times *because of* the different choices and such since Dragon Age: Origins. I think I played through DA:O 4-5 times total. I doubt I will do that with Baldur's Gate 3, since it's soooooooo much longer, but I'll play through it at least twice, I think. I did play through games like Skyrim multiple times, but not necessarily because of different choices. I just liked walking around that world so much that I kept going back to play it. I've played through the Mass Effect trilogy multiple times, but the choices don't really matter all that much in the grand scheme of things. Unless you intentionally try to get your squad killed or whatever.

I'm nowhere near educated enough about this shit to have a nuanced opinion on any of this, but one thing does strike me - the far right factions in both Israel and Palestine benefit from heightened conflict/tension. Maybe in this particular case, they flew a little too close to the sun, but all of those people saying that this will be the end of Bibi or Likud in general... I don't see it. No one is going to give a shit about his corruption scandals or the supreme court bullshit for a good while, and his party's position will just be strengthened for the time being. To be clear, I'm not trying to "both sides" the conflict in general and say one side is just as bad as the other or whatever, I'm just saying it seems to me that the people in power on both sides have very clear interest in making sure tensions stay high. As long as we can keep the people focused more on their fear of the other than their hatred of us, we can do anything we want, etc.

I love how moments like this teach people how utterly NOT set in stone the rules of government are. What happens if no one has enough votes to become speaker of the house? .... nothing, because it's never happened before. The House just stops functioning until one is elected. There's literally no precedent for it. Even stuff we take for granted, like the Presidential line of succession wasn't implemented until the Cold War, when they were like "oh shit, what happens if like the whole cabinet gets taken out in a nuclear strike?" Hell, the first time a president died in office (Harrison in 1841) they had no idea what to do. John Tyler was immediately appointed acting President, but they were like... do we just hold another election now? Imagine if that precedent was set... Point being it's fun to give these examples when someone tries to present the Constitution as some exalted, infallible document. It's not, it was written to be intentionally vague about a lot of things.

That game gave me nightmares as a kid. Probably shouldn't have played it when I was like 5 years old.

At the very least, 4, 6, 7, 9, 10, and 12. Square was on a helluva run for most of that time.

Did anyone say Final Fantasy 4-12? Final Fantasy Tactics? I just kind of assumed someone did at some point, I didn't actually check.

Narita is pretty goddamn far away from Tokyo, be prepared for a long trip. It's like a couple hours.

Flying over the Pacific in anything other than economy is pretty much "fuck you" money. I've flown over the Pacific many times... never once would it have cost anything less than 2-3k round trip just for the fucking flight. In 2017 or so I spent like 2 months in Thailand for less than $2k, and that included the flight. I hate sleeping on planes anyway, I'm too short. I feel like you have to be at least 6 feet tall to comfortably sleep in an airplane seat, first class included. Unless you have one of those fully reclining joints.

I'll never get over the fact that roller coaster Tycoon was made by one guy... IN FUCKING ASSEMBLY Like it's one thing for Eric Barone to make Stardew Valley by himself, sure... Tom whatshisface made Roller coaster Tycoon in goddamn assembly. That's why even a potato could run those games when they came out even though they looked incredible for the time

The thing is I LOVED Origin and Odyssey. It's not the open-world-collectathon shit that bothered me. It's that the world in Valhalla was so boooooorrrriiing. HOW DO YOU MAKE VIKINGS BORING

A just and measured response.

I look both ways before I fucking sit down at the park across the street from my house now. Fuckers could come out of nowhere. I see those assholes driving their park trucks and I know what they're capable of Sons of bitches ain't gonna catch ol' fizzle sleeping. No sir.

Okay, I know this isn't the place for this, but.... all of those games are like... fine. At least the ones I've played. I would never think any of them are top 100. They're all just perfectly fine

Lesseeee.... Stardew Valley Final Fantasy IX Morrowind Sorry if they've been thrown in already, I'm on my phone and can't ctrl+f

I was just buying some shit at the local corner store and the cashier, as I was leaving, was like "ay bro, don't you think it's weird that we all got that alert the other day?" ... No, I don't.... turns out they do that sometimes.

I had no idea he was still alive. RIP.

It's a total bummer I have no plans to take any long flights in the foreseeable future, otherwise I would 100% watch this.

There's all kinds of stuff that could be done. Even if you don't have absolute term limits, you could have consecutive term limits for senators, for example (say, no more than 2 consecutive terms without having to vacate your seat) ... or, y' know, absolute term limits that keep people from being in power for 50 years

Origins and Odyssey are 2 of my favorite games of the last 10 years. Odyssey is the only game in the series that I've beaten twice. Valhalla started out fun, but holy shit did it wear out its welcome. That game went on 20-30 hours longer than was necessary, and I'm shocked I actually lasted until the end. If Mirage is scaled back, that's a good thing. Bigger and more bloated is definitely not the direction they needed to go after Valhalla.

I don't get the posthumous veneration for rappers who were objectively pieces of shit. It's like in the comments section of every King Von video on YouTube, "RIP, we lost you too soon." The dude literally (allegedly) killed like 12 people and bragged about it on Twitter. Sorry if I'm not shedding a tear at his death.