The old man is every Boss Blind

when your balatro deck can score 100,000,000+ chips per hand

To this day, I still have no idea what cadence or tone to read the “Robert Downey Jr. Pointing At Himself” meme in & yet it never fails to make me laugh when I see it

Now I want to hash out a fantasy world where rollercoasters are giant but sentient & mostly passive living creatures that roam the land sometimes solo and sometimes in nomadic packs of different types & sizes; often resting in the open often near humans who they allow to ride on them. If they rest for a while due to hibernation and/or nesting, humans set up festivals & celebrations around them resulting in pop-up amusement parks until the creatures decide to move along. More docile coasters like Swirling Teacups, who play by bouncing into each other like baby rhinos or rams & spinning around, are safe enough for toddlers to play in. However, the more temperamental & irratble coasters of longer lengths & taller heights can reflect the high risk ones in our world whose riders may end up going at breakneck speeds or even being flung in the air. It’s quite uncommon but some people have been known to get even get killed riding on cantankerous coasters at times. It’s never truly deliberate on the part of the coasters however cranky they may act.

roller coasters could kill us so easily if they wanted but they choose not to because by nature they’re gentle beasts and they love us. like horses

This week, lawyers for Trump went into the Supreme Court & argued in order to protect their client, that a president explicitly could assassinate a political opponent & in turn any dissenting or opposed senators, judges or even average citizens and be immune from prosecution and in the face of that lunacy multiple conservative justices (who once again make up the majority) on the SC signaled their open support of that argument without any hesitation or doubt & with zero reference to actual case law. Multiple supposed icons in the practice of law in this country openly signaled their support for a rewinding of our country back to monarchical rule with collective straight faces.

This is what we have to look forward to if Trump is allowed into office again. Justice Jackson, one of the few competent & progressive justices was as usual also one of the few rational actors in this farce & pointed out explicitly that all the granting of presidential immunity would do is make the presidency a desired office for out & out criminality. Whether conservatives want to acknowledge it or not by supporting Trump’s claim, there is nothing stopping a president from not just being a dictator who jails & slaughters all opposition but could also just become a drug lord, using the apparatuses & authority granted by our country to make the US a golden state of the drug trade. There is nothing stopping a president from trading away government & military intel to every last one of our enemies dooming soldiers we’ve sent abroad & leaking prime targets for attacks that would kill citizens & cripple infrastructure. Conservatives claiming to be outraged about the acts of scumbag predators like Epstein have done nothing through their support for Trump’s argument than assure that if you are an abuser & an outright predator who explicitly targets children, there is no better protection than becoming president where you can openly assault anyone of any age & be immune from prosecution. Said president could literally hunt for their prey amongst the children of White House tourists or those amongst the staff in their administration & by declaring the acts a “duty of office” victims & their families would have ZERO recourse for justice.

Like I wish this were exaggeration or hyperbole but it’s explicitly the type of country that conservatives want to usher in for the explicit & soul purpose of granting their messiah Donald Trump the chance to avoid accountability for his actions. People embedded in political & legal scholarship are clear about the realities:

Like I’ve said before, I wish this was all a big joke but we are only at this point because of how deeply & willingly the right has embraced not just Trump but fascist, inhumane & anti-citizen/anti-democratic ideals over the past decade. The response to this though is not cowardice or apathy but action. If you can register to vote, then vote. If someone you know needs help to register and/or to get to their polling place in November & you have the ability to help them, then help. Nothing is gained by watching these travesties of government & justice and despairing & sitting on your hands saying that nothing will change. If people were able to win their freedoms & rights generations ago, then we can do it again today. Fascism, bigotry, cruelty & hate only succeed when good people do nothing in response. If you’re breathing, you’re still alive & you have a voice & you can fight & make change. If there was a time when giving up was on the table it is absolutely NOT NOW

Critical PSA to Balatro or Mahjong or general Roguelike Deckbuilder Lovers for the amazing looking upcoming game ULTIMAHJONG!

ULTIMAHJONG is in the exact spirit of the likes of Balatro, Bingle Bingle & other casino/gambling-based roguelikes/deckbuilders that have been inundating the indie gaming scene recently and which I’ve personally been happily drowning in! In this case the base game is Mahjong & it’s straight up Riichi Mahjong based rather than the deluge of puzzle solitaire tile matching games that overwhelm Steam

Currently has playable demo on top of being Wishlistable. The dev predicts a release this year & I’m absolutely purchasing it on day one if for nothing else than to reward a halfway legitimate Mahjong game!

Speaking of the dev, they themselves ran through a few rounds of the early game to show it off:

Don’t know how many this post will reach but I’m happy to do my part to raise the population of Mahjong Enthusiasts out here on top of supporting innovative indie devs & their projects!

Reposting an incredible & simple breakdown by Medhi Hasan regarding the unexaggerated & woeful reality as to what the future holds if people who claim to care about civil rights & progress choose to sit on their hands this November under the misguided notion that either “nothing will ever change”, “one vote doesn’t matter” or “both parties are the same”.

The Piña Colada song carves a trajectory across the chart over the course of the song.

Love Songs [Explained]

Transcript Under the Cut

[Y-axis label:] Do you like me? [X-axis label:] Do I like you? [X- and Y-axis values (from bottom left):] NO!!; No; Unclear or Neutral; Yes; YES!!

[Top left quarter:] No Scrubs That Don't Impress Me Much Cry Me a River We Are Never Ever Getting Back Together

[Middle left:] You're So Vain

[Bottom left quarter:] I Will Survive

Somebody That I Used To Know

You Oughta Know

[Center:] Thank U, Next

[Top right quarter:] Teenage Deam Shape of You I Will Always Love You Call Me Maybe

[Middle right:] Killing Me Softly

[Bottom right quarter:] Girlfriend You've Lost That Lovin' Feelin' You Belong With Me Creep

Don’t ever let anyone else tell you that Democrats & Republicans are the same again. This is what progress looks like & it doesn’t happen if we cede our country to Trump & republicans under the misguided notion that “nothing will ever change” or that “voting is pointless because one vote won’t matter”. If you want to protect trans kids, preserve reproductive rights & end the vilification of books & education regarding the history and lives of the marginalized & disenfranchised, political apathy is not the answer. Wins like this need fighting for. Period.

"School districts that don’t respect transgender and nonbinary students’ pronouns or force them to use restrooms that don’t align with their gender identity could be committing federal civil rights violations beginning this fall.

Today, the U.S. Department of Education announced the issuance of a final rule under Title IX to protect people in public schools from sex-based discrimination and harassment. The announcement marks a significant update in federal efforts to combat sex discrimination in federally funded educational institutions. During a call with reporters, Secretary of Education Miguel Cardona emphasized the administration’s dedication to ensuring that Title IX effectively serves all students by providing safe, welcoming, and rights-respecting educational environments."

Read the full piece here

Imagine being buried alive and then seeing this little guy with a backpack suddenly arrive

Oh damn! Inque as the antagonist is as inspired a choice as The Spot was in Across the Spider-Verse! She & Blight were my favorite villains in the series

Concept art from a pitched Batman Beyond animated feature film — From Writer/Director Patrick Harpin (My Dad the Bounty Hunter) & Production Designer/Producer Yuhki Demers (Into the Spider-Verse, Across the Spider-Verse)

82 YEARS AGO - BATMAN DEBUTED FOR THE FIRST TIME Eighty-two years ago on March 30, 1939, Detective Comics #27 hit newsstands, introducing the Caped Crusader for the very first time in a featured story called “The Case of the Chemical Syndicate.”

“And for all that fierce exterior, I’ve never met anyone who cared as deeply about his fellow man as Bruce Wayne.”  - Amanda Waller, Justice League Unlimited, Season 2 Episode 13 (2005)

Though the proverbial "showdown at high noon" is largely a media invention, many famous gunslingers of the American Old West did engage in formal duels at least occasionally. The main differences from the popular media version are twofold:

Formal duels were rare; most famous gunslingers duelled only once or twice in their entire careers, and a gunslinger with three or more duels under their belt would have been considered extraordinarily prolific (and also extraordinarily stupid – see below);

Those gunslingers who did duel typically made a point of accepting challenges only from opponents of demonstrably inferior skill; there was something of an unspoken agreement among prolific duellists to avoid duelling each other by any means necessary, as they knew the surest way to cut short one's career was to duel someone who actually knew what they were doing!

Anyway, the reason I bring this up is because some day I want to write a semi-competitive tabletop RPG where the player characters are all rival gunslingers living the high life on manufactured drama and exaggerated tales of their legendary prowess while going to elaborate lengths to avoid having to actually fight each other.

Concept art for Shin Megami Tensei: Luigi’s Mansion

why do these look like kaneko drew them

Truly the announcement of the SMT: Tokyo Conception RPG finally being translated has sparked more of an interest in GMing for me than any other game. Official English Megaten TTRPG is the best news I've heard in a while.

Just re-learned that the best name for my beloved genre of games that I suck at ie high octane, combo-based action games that include Metal Gear Rising, Bayonetta, Hi-Fi Rush, DMC 5 etc. is truly “Spectacle Fighter(s)”! Heard it a while ago but it didn’t stick until recently getting reminded of it.

I used to use the phrase “Character Action” which despite still getting used always felt too broad & not at all as evocative as “Spectacle Fighters” which gets to the core of why those games have appeal. Not only are they a close relative to the straight up fighting game genre with heavy emphasis on precision combos, move cancelling, hitboxes & the like but they become elegant ballets of stylish combat that’s as fun to pull off as it is to watch especially in the hands of an expert. The “Combo MAD” tag of Youtube videos is overflowing vids for that very reason.

Been scouring the Steam category for “Spectacle Fighters” & I’m enjoying the fact small & indie outfits are & have been working to build up the genre beyond just the mainstream AAA company titles out there

I will never stop being furious that the DJ rhythm game FUSER was stuck in the niche/obscure category until it was shuttered. The audience it had was insanely passionate & it had a matching massive library of music, instruments & mixing tools. Though its heavy influencer DROPMIX was a flash in the pan for a while, I’d thought that what was essentially a digital version on multiple platforms would drag it into Guitar Hero status but sadly it wasn’t able to get a mainstream grip.

One more of a long line of longshot hopes I have for a sequel to a game with a small but hype fanbase