I've been spectacularly ill off and on since Thursday afternoon (why I haven't streamed). Early this morning, I ran to the ER. It turns out not to be the flu, COVID or KNOXitis, but a bacterial kidney infection. The local pharmacies are out of the prescribed antibiotics due to the current shortages, but they've ordered some & in any event I've been on IVs for hours, so I feel a lot better.
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I was running errands when the launch finally happened but I got to go back and watch NSF's stream to see the actual flight (I did skip a bit in the middle.)
Posted by: Rick C at Thu Mar 14 10:21:09 2024 (BMUHC)
OK...This Morning, While Doing our Dailys, we Learned an Important Lesson About Adventure Levels. We're Suddenly Level 31 and Can Proceed With the PLOT! Join Us Tonight at 7:00pm EST /11pm UTC @ https://www.twitch.tv/brickmuppet
(That's in 11 minutes if you forgot to set your clocks)
I JUST walked in the door. We'll be streaming Genshin Impact tonight in a few minutes. Join us as we try to solve the mystery of a god's death, pursue more Archon Quests and roll the dice and do some pulls.
Join us tonight at 7:30pm EST / 12:30am UTC as we return to the grind in Disgaea: Hour of Darkness, then after a brief intermission, pop in around 10:30pm EST / 03:30am UTC as we join other streamers in contemplating the cold equations of post-apocalyptic survival in Project: ZOMBOID.
My Mom, my Dad, and, my Uncle have had me on edge for a few weeks as all have had medical scares, been to the hospital and all three have had surgeries of varying levels of seriousness. But it was my wacky Aunt Virginia, who, as is her wont, completely surprised everybody by doing something utterly unexpected.
The nieces and nephews have mostly recovered from the shock and the wake was a fairly upbeat affair, befitting Aunt Ginny's exuberant nature.
However, this past week has been a reminder that tragedy can come at the most unexpected times and it is best to treasure the time we have here, for that time is finite.
Very Cursory Thoughts by a Layman on the New York Situation
My opinion of Donald Trump is summed up here. I think he's crass, ethically fraught, and unlikely to win. However, if one wants to beat him, one needs to make the case, to the American people.
That ought not to be hard.
However, the Democrats have taken his 2016 success as an affront and are trying to destroy Trump via lawfare. They are attempting to keep him off the ballot in several states (an unprecedented bit of chicanery not seen since the lead up to the civil war). And in New York, they are attempting to destroy the man for the crime of existing.
Specifically, they are fining him 355 million ( now over$400 million) Dollars for allegedly overvaluing his properties, in order to secure better interest rates for loans. While judgement has been reached, I say "alleged" because not only did the banks allegedly defrauded by this alleged overestimation actually testify ON TRUMP'S BEHALF in the matter, and denied that they had been wronged in any way, but the judge summarily declared Trump guilty. Now he is being charged interest every day he does not pay the fine, despite the fact that the ruling is being appealed.
Some idea of how bad this is is that what Trump has been accused of is such established past practice that real estate developers, even those who dislike Trump, are fleeing the state because this seems to be such a bullshit verdict, based on politics, & in an era of cancel culture that's a real threat.
The purpose of this is clear, bankrupt Trump, and make it impossible to win the election. This is third world level crap and it unleashes a huge Pandora's box when such a fine, so completely out of line with sentencing guidelines is leveed due to political animus.
The results of this are likely to be quite dark.
When the sum total of the law becomes " I think he's bad! GET HIM" society does not become better. The history of my own part of the U.S. (the southeast) is illustrative of why this is, but it has rarely been articulated so eloquently as by Paul Schofield here...
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Yeah, this was obvious from around January 12th, 2021, when a bunch of law school heads signed a letter that incidentally impeached some of its own claims, and invented a novel and wide reaching theory of professional liability.
Every day that those people do not resign adds further credibility to the notion that they have decided to conspire to violate civil rights of voters, and that JDs will not fairly act as agents in resolving disputes by litigation.
That was in my view more or less the death of the University, and a fundamental reordering of how we need to think about professions. I have been appalled at how few people, seemingly, are doing that analysis.
I'm actually fairly optimistic about things.
I mean, it is not good, but it is very clear now that the basic fundamentals have been a bit bad for a while. There are no short, fun routes to an excellent state of affairs.
The more we can persuade that some judges are crooks, the more we can persuade to pay closer attention to state politics, and to oversight over public universities.
Posted by: PatBuckman at Fri Mar 1 23:48:16 2024 (r9O5h)
Project Zomboid (collaboration with other streamers)
Friday: Genshin Impact
(Plus Occasional collaborations)
Saturday: Usually nothing but there will be Occasional Special Events/ Movie Nights
There may be one or two additional games added in the next month, and I'm planning to resume science streams, however those are necessarily going to use guerilla scheduling.
The streams start time may change going forward. If so they will be getting earlier rather than later, lengthening the streams.
If a Friday stream is cancelled, (this will occasionally happen due to IRL concerns) We'll switch the Sunday stream to Genshin.
I will be playing Genshin Impact tonight, (7:30pm EST / 12:30am UTC). After flexing a bit about finishing Phantom Brave and all the Total Overwhelming Victories achieved in Genshin on Friday, I'll be trying to make sense of all of these crazy people we met in Liyue on Friday who claim to have known us for years. Also: The RNG provided a Chibi Gremlin and her Radish Rabbit, so I will be running them through their paces. Come and marvel at this intersection of "Kawaii" and "Kowai"!
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One hearsay is that if one was listening to Tucker not that frequently, it could become obvious that Tucker simply went mad at some point.
I've joked that his FBI handlers are just that desperate to discredit the releases of the congressional videos.
The thing about commenting on politics, or commenting on commenting? Recent times have been hard on everyone's mental health, and trying to stay in the business seems to have been especially maddening.
Okay, so I have been trolling/commenting on political blogs for maybe as much as fifteen years (According To Hoyt under another handle), or perhaps even twenty or so. But, it was not income, so I could quit for a while if the situation got too confusing. I have absolutely needed those breaks.
Maybe I was never /that/ sane, but I definitely have had some worse periods, where I actually later appreciated the opportunity I took to be silent.
Honest, true, sane, and will not get the speaker punished. Achieving one does not automatically achieve others.
I can be honest and also closely approximating true.
I can be honest and also closely approximating sane.
I am not trying to run a viable business of pushing out words.
David French is, and seems to have picked dishonesty.
I don't really know anything about Tucker Carlson. I tend to think that the search for a human to champion right, when no one closer is championing right, is a weakness of personal philosophy, and personal conviction. IE, instead of pretending that bad people are good, if alone in the world, remain resolute that the world can go frustrate themselves.
Putin is basically similar to HRC.
I'm not sure if the Putin fanboys I have seen online are mostly paid Russian assets, or go along to get along American nominal Christians in the visible Christian church, who were never really brought into the true Christian church by the Holy Spirit. It is fundamentally absurd to suppose Putin as a champion of Christendom. Whatever the merits of Orthodoxy, Putin has tried to lead Muslims against Christians.
For me, the big moral qualm is funding for defense programs.
I like funding for defense programs.
There's the pragmatic trade off that letting the Democrats steal a lot, and take credit for good things done by others, is undermining the long term political support for defense programs.
If a Biden can be allowed fraudulently into office, no future defense spending questions can remain entirely isolated from the question of the returns from that spending being destroyed by a further future Biden cognate. I can like Ukraine a lot, like fighting the Russians, like lots of the spending for Ukraine, and still understand that fighting the Ukraine funding in congress now makes confidence available for longer term defense spending in the future.
(Expecting anything from congress now except theater is short term ism. I know the service community is committed to lobbying for continued funding. It is still short termism, and not having any officers speaking on the record about this congress's basic ability to deliver anything good is prudent but maybe undermines positioning for having strategic vision.)
Posted by: PatBuckman at Mon Feb 26 11:11:39 2024 (r9O5h)
What Are We Gonna Do Tonight? THE SAME THING WE DO EVERY MONDAY NIGHT!
At 7pm EST/Midnight UTC , I'm going to be streaming FF14: No sidequests tonight. We're going to just be wailing on METEOR GIRL! (I promise to go at least an hour before I rage quit & stream something else!)
...and, TBH, we're getting a little better at this every time so this might actually result in victory!
Mom's out of surgery. The surgery was unrelated to her symptoms the other night, which seemed like a heart attack but turned out to be a prescription interaction.
Happy Day.
In other news, I have been visually contemplating everything I've eaten the last few days.
Brett Weinstein, a world renowned biologist, has been looking at the migration through the Darian Gap. Here he is interviewed by Tucker Carlson and reports what he saw firsthand, his conclusions and he hypothesizes some genuine grade-A high-octane nightmare fuel. It's an hour and 12 minutes.
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I just asked 'If we leave the borders open, won't that allow Russian Spetsnaz troops into the US?'
The question rises since the Dems and Austrian Republicans have now given us the false choice of either leaving the border completely open or Ukraine will lose.
Posted by: cxt217 at Mon Feb 5 21:21:10 2024 (ZLF73)
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Most likely, Spetsnaz and PRC cognates have been here for years.
That biology professor in (IIRC) Philadelphia who was murdered in 2020 looked to me like it was probably a PRC operation.
I could simply be wildly paranoid on that point.
That said, southern border has been a security disaster for decades. The known knowns have been concerning for a while. IE, civil war, failed nation, and a bunch of criminal states. Known unknowns include the question of how many of our nominal politicians are cartel employees.
Legislature could easily still screw us, but there are even a few signs of optimism there. Mainly, it seems like the Republican 'leadership' does not understand what they can deliver, and the Democrats are ignorant of that.
Posted by: PatBuckman at Tue Feb 6 19:29:01 2024 (r9O5h)
