ScottishFox

All of those items seem pretty interesting, but I can't help but wonder if the pressing need isn't instead a standard setting and adventures that take place in that setting. Forgotten Realms and Fifth Edition have ignited D&D like nothing we've ever seen before along with the wild success of Critical Role. My vote would be for HERO to have some professionally done adventures.

Trump is going to legally contest this thing in the exact nightmare scenario I was hoping would not happen. Last night Michigan really threw some fuel on the fire when they found 138,339 votes for Biden and 0 for Trump. There's no way an update of that size doesn't contain a single Trump vote. https://twitter.com/Scottyterrible/status/1323996189637939204/photo/1 That being said it does look like Biden will take this without judicial intervention.

One thing is for sure. They were wildly off in many races. I doubt they'll have much weight going forward.

Here's a picture of it. https://twitter.com/willchamberlain/status/1323616167769055234/photo/1 It's pretty clearly stated that the watcher can go to any poll in the area. In the video provided by the same twitter account multiple poll workers tell the guy he's not authorized at that location (which is clearly not the case). Regardless of who wins I'm just hoping the shenanigans aren't so widespread that the legal challenges prevent a clear winner. It's better for everyone if there's a winner one way or the other in the next few days.

Glad they got that sorted out, but I doubt that would have happened without the media attention. The certificate says right on the top of it that the poll watcher can observe any location. There was no confusion at all. Just like the signs that were up at some locations telling people to vote Democrat. These were not mistakes. They were cheating that only rolled back in the face of public attention. Not that Republicans aren't similarly using shifty BS in areas critical to them. The only innocents in this game are the voters (the living ones, anyway. )

Looks like election shenanigans are already underway. From Republicans trying to invalidate 100k plus drive-in votes in Harris County, TX to Republican poll watchers being told they can't observe polls in Philadelphia. It's not a good look when both sides are pulling shifty bs to try to win. I have a preference in who wins, but I'd like to see somebody win rather than have this turn in to some contested 1824 style congress picks the president situation. Stay safe folks - this has the potential to boil over badly.

Texas has great early voting options. The polls are open for multiple weeks and the wait was under 30 minutes even with the covid precautions.

I've been against daylight savings time for decades. It is a constant pita in the software and back office support realms. I once built international invoices that had to adjust time based on the preferences of each country and whatever time zone they considered real at which times of the year. Did you know there are individual counties within states that have their own daylight savings time rules? Like you might be in a state that observes it, but in a county that does not. Madness. Pick a time and just deal with the seasonal changes in lighting like every other living thing on the planet.

That sucks. I'd totally try that out with my currently persistent cough.

There's no download!

Interesting twist in the Biden Bus vs. Trump Train incident from SMPD. https://www.wfla.com/news/fbi-investigating-incident-where-trump-train-surrounded-biden-bus/ The police department also said it has researched the crash and watched online video. It said the “at-fault vehicle” may be the Biden-Harris staffer’s car, while the “victim” appears to be one of the Trump vehicles. “The at-fault vehicle may be the white SUV and the victim appears to be the black truck,” a statement from SMPD reads. “Calls to the driver of the white SUV have gone unanswered and SMPD has not been contacted by the driver of the black truck. Since SMPD has not spoken to either driver at this time, additional investigation would be required to fully ascertain who was at fault.”

yeah, saw that about 10 mins after I posted. Oops!

And now 2020 has killed James Bond. Just 60 more days until we escape this hell. https://www.bbc.com/news/entertainment-arts-54761824

Yeah, there are a LOT of people who thought they'd never own a gun or were even in favor of banning all guns who are now owners. When things start to get scary, suddenly the right to defend yourself effectively makes a LOT of sense.

I would say it was a complete rejection of the status quo that got us Trump. The public was so sick of politicians that they gave the reality TV star and real estate guy a shot. That is a blistering condemnation of the quality of politician we have been getting lately. Comparing what we've seen the last few elections makes the politicians of yesteryear (Reagan, Clinton) seem like demigods in my very old opinion.

Looks like the winter surge is happening. Texas death rate is finally starting to climb and the R0 rate for the virus is over 1 (i.e. spreading) for 49 out of 50 states. Though I don't know that we can fairly dump on leadership for this. Virtually every country in Europe I checked out is seeing a substantial surge in cases as well. So were several countries in the middle east and there are a variety of levels of shutdown across the mix of countries. I think this virus is just so stupidly contagious that we can't hope to contain it. Slow the spread? Sure. Stop it? No. Paris in particular is not receiving the new lockdown news well. https://www.express.co.uk/news/world/1354064/Emmanuel-Macron-chaos-France-second-lockdown-Paris-protest-riot-police-latest-news-vn

I stood outside an iHOP last night talking politics with a friend for an hour in my Artic Cool heat-dissipating shirt. It was 39 degrees. Sounds like some of these folks aren't fat enough.

Almost identical to the conversation I had with my daughter this year. Once I agreed to buy her a big bag of mixed candies she couldn't care less about the costume and door to door collection.

I'd have to pick a time period after we rolled out the 1964 Civil Rights Act. The 80s and 90s were pretty great as I recall.

This part I found shocking as well. It's so readily available here (north DFW area) that I didn't realize how hard it was to get in some places. Like I can (and did) get tested same day at several locations within a 15 min drive.

I agree with most of what you're saying, but we're talking about an illness that is killing less than 1 person per 1,000 and causing 100 people per 1,000 to lose their jobs. A number that I expect to go up the longer the shut downs are in place. You're completely correct. We can't just spin up new doctors and nurses in a few weeks or even a few months. Nurses take a couple years and doctors take close to 10. I feel like we're going to cause more damage with our completely ineffective solution - shutdowns - while the disease continues to spread rampantly around the country. Currently 47 of 50 states have an R0 rate over 1.0. We have completely failed to contain this disease. We're not going to suddenly contain it. Hell, we can't get 1/3rd of the people to wear their masks correctly. It's a done deal. Given that the average age of theater employees is about 20 this is wildly unrealistic. They are either not going to know they are sick or they're going to shake it off in 2-3 days. Kids in this age range shake this illness off so easily it's ridiculous. Mortality rate in the that age group is 0.2%. Out of all coronavirus deaths only 2 per 1,000 are 24 or younger. At the point in time the USA had 207,000 Coronavirus deaths only 462 per 24 years old or younger. It's unbelievably rare in that age group. Think about that for a minute. We're talking about 0.2% (24 and younger) of all American who have died of Coronavirus (225,000 roughly) which is 0.07% of the population. 0.2% of 0.07% is a whopping 450 deaths in a country with 330,000,000 people. That's 5x lower than we lose to car accidents for just 13-19. Are we going to forbid everyone under 25 from driving? Forever? Just for a frame of reference we lose about 645k per year to diseases related to being fat asses (like me). And really this is my big issue with the shutdowns. Why are we shutting down the age bands that have incredibly low death rates? Quarantine the old and sick. About 80% of the victims are 65+ and 94% of those have a major illness/comorbidity. Why are we quarantining and unemploying millions of healthy, young people? Our current solution will not work if this disease rampages on for multiple years or, as seems likely, indefinitely.

I don't know about this. I work in the industry and our company has had 5 out of its 6 best years in the last 6 years. Like, lots of money rolling in from all of the MARVEL hits. Your overall points are accurate. We do make the majority of our profit from concession sales. But concession sales have remained solid for years and years. Making money hasn't been a problem for us. Though, despite not being the biggest of the USA chains we also have a higher profit margin per theater because we avoid high cost real estate like the plague. Here's our revenue generation up through 2019. Obviously 2020 is a dumpster fire. Reporting and testing are so spotty from country to country. India has millions of cases, but we're supposed to believe China still has less than 100k? I think the reason the USA is topping the list is because we're a large country AND we're doing a lot of testing. Though it does seem globally we're spiking upwards hard for winter. Currently the R0 in America is above 1.0 for 47 states. Several which are in the East Coast and the highest of which is New Jersey suggesting NY might be getting a second round of abuse soon.

There was this article below and some others that basically say the same thing. Then Tony Bobulinski's little press stunt and his stated intention to be interviewed by the FBI very soon. https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/news/fbi-and-doj-do-not-believe-hunter-biden-laptop-part-of-russian-disinformation-campaign https://www.foxnews.com/politics/fbi-interview-request-hunter-biden-ex-associate-tony-bobulinski-senate-committee Some of the electoral map landslides have been whoppers.

I think the cooler weather combined with season cold and flu infections will spike the Coronavirus related deaths up substantially. I also think the CFR is substantially inflated since half or more of the people who get Coronavirus don't have symptoms and so they probably don't go and get tested. Everyone I know personally who has been tested did so when they felt sick or were exposed to someone who tested positive. Especially outside the big population centers in Texas it wouldn't surprise me if most people who get sick don't bother to get tested unless they are VERY sick. Hard data won't be available for another year or so - most likely - but I have heard several anecdotal reports from first responders and hotline workers that are reporting increases in load on the order of +400% or more. I have zero hard evidence to back that up, but whatever the real numbers ends up being I don't think the general point is false. People working on those fronts are saying the suicide, overdose and alcohol related deaths are way, way up. I generically agree, but in crisis scenarios you often have to run with best guesses because you can't wait 12-15 months for the data to solidify. Though, the data nerd part of me wonders why it is so hard to get data like this. If I can't provide data aggregated and distilled to my customers at least twice a day (and some of our stuff updates every 30 minutes) they tend to lose their !@#$. Profit motive right now I suspect is merely attempting to survive for many, many companies. I work in the theater industry and if we take another year off I suspect all three of the major chains in the USA will collapse entirely. Nobody is shooting for profits. They're trying to generate enough business to not go bankrupt before they cease to exist.

This is pretty much where I went with it. The timing is incredibly suspect. But now there have been multiple intelligence agencies confirming it's not part of a misinformation campaign. Then Biden's business partner on some of the emails is testifying to the FBI about it. No idea if it's legit at all, but it feels like its moving in that direction. I think it's a bit of a miss campaign wise. Top voter issues are more likely the economy and the handling of the Coronavirus pandemic.