That’s the problem with the separation of powers… The executive branch is supposed to be the one that enforces the laws… The judicial branch has very little power to actually enforce their rulings. And Trump is the head of the executive branch.

It is a failure to pass a law that appropriates money to government agencies. Not all government spending is subject to appropriations – in particular, Congress is still getting paid, because their salaries are not subject to yearly government appropriations.

Yeah, it’s worth noting that the government shutdown is not budget related. The budget has already been passed. We know how much is going to be spent, and how it will be spent… This shutdown is because the appropriation was run separately, meaning the budget has passed but the various accounts for the budget have no money in them yet. The money already exists. It could be spent. But it’s not in the correct accounts, so the various agencies can’t access it. Thus, those agencies are shut down.

Can confirm. The most important test for my mixes is the car test. Get your buddies together, and hopefully they have a variety of cars. Play it in a nice car with great speakers, play it in a shitty 2001 Corolla with a blown out cone in the passenger door, and as many in between as you can get. The more homogenous the listening experience is across those cars, the better your mix will sound on a variety of systems.

For most people, their car is the best sound system they own. It’s also where people do a lot of listening, because very few people drive in complete silence. So if it sounds like ass in the car, people will stop listening.

I hate that motion smoothing is turned on by default these days. I know it’s because sports fans want it enabled, but it makes literally everything else look like a garbage low budget soap opera.

You don’t typically shoot up meth or cocaine. Coke is usually snorted, meth is usually snorted or smoked, crack is usually smoked. Heroin is the only one that is typically shot up.

You can shoot up meth and coke, but it’s not the go-to method since it’s harder (and needles can be difficult to source). It’s usually only used by the hardest users, because they’ve become too tolerant for other methods to get them high.

We actually know that documents were photocopied, because many of the documents he had were obviously photocopied. Classified documents have a colored border that goes all the way to the edge of the paper:

But the vast majority of photocopiers can’t print to the edge of the paper, (it requires specialized printers which aren’t commercially viable except in specialized print shops), which means photocopies of classified documents don’t have that solid colored edge. Photocopies have a thin white edge where the non-printable area is. And many of his documents had that white edge, which meant they were photocopies and the originals were missing.

Talking about Cheney? I’m not sad he’s gone, but you had me way more excited.

iOS automatically detects certain key words/phrases, and does animations. Or you can just hold down the Send button to trigger it (and a variety of other effects) manually. This person went out of their way to intentionally trigger the confetti with the “I think we should see other people” message, by holding Send and then selecting the confetti option.

Even worse, one of those two votes is often enough to kill the entire thing, because they have unilateral “it has to be unanimous” or “this one specific country can overrule everyone else” rules on the important shit.

Long press on their username, then “Edit Tag”. Once the tag is made, that Edit screen will have a little comment button. Pressing it will take you to the comment you used to tag them. Handy for when you can’t remember why someone is tagged a certain way.

Every day I thank the Voyager dev for user tags…

I’ve had them tagged as “bOTh SiDEs r bAd” for months now, and it has virtually always held true. Nearly every single time I see a post from them, it is some sort of “but but but Democrats caused this. We should be blaming them instead of the people who actually voted for it” type of rhetoric.

So first off, this isn’t actually the ad described in the article. Which means this has happened more than once.

But even with the ad you linked, I went into it thinking “eh, how bad can it be?” It’s worse than I could have imagined. It’s like they went out of their way to make the worst “train wreck in slow motion” political ad possible.

“Exile” to a gigantic mansion on a sprawling estate, with a £100M annual stipend? Yeah, he’s really being punished. This is just a payoff from the crown, so he doesn’t go author some tell-all book that exposes the rest of the pedos. It’s hush money, plain and simple.

Yeah, Radcliffe is in the uniquely special circumstance, where he has more money than God but he also wants to keep making movies. The result is that he only does the movies that he wants to do. He doesn’t attach himself to movies just for clout or money, because he doesn’t need either of those.

Metagaming is broken into two halves. There’s the acceptable “suspend your disbelief” type of metagaming, where the entire table just sort of agrees that certain things (like a character being able to hike miles at a time while carrying 300 pounds of gear, just because they have a good Strength stat) is a perfectly normal thing. When people discuss metagaming, that’s usually not what they’re referring to.

When people discuss metagaming, they’re usually referring to when the player acts on knowledge that their character doesn’t have. For instance, maybe the player has already read/played the module before, so they know where all of the traps in a dungeon are. And maybe they take a route through the dungeon that conveniently avoids or bypasses every single trap. It’s one of those things that’s difficult for the DM to police, because delineating the difference between “the player got lucky/had a suspicion because of something I said when describing the room” vs “the player already knows what is going to happen” would require mind-reading. And notably, the only person who enjoys this type of metagaming is the metagamer. If the DM and the metagamer are the only ones who know the module, the metagamer is ruining a lot of the suspense and potential dramatic twists for the rest of the players at the table.

Wisdom governs a lot of “I want to find out something about the environment/this NPC” skills. Perception, Insight, Animal Handling, and Survival can all be used to notice things in different scenarios, (notice a trap, catch a lie, intuit an animal’s intentions, follow a trail in the wilderness, etc,) and all of them are governed by Wisdom. The only real exception is Investigation, which is governed by Intelligence. But Intelligence is mostly focused on “you remember this thing” skill checks, rather than “you notice this thing” skill checks.

As a result, Wisdom checks are often targets for metagaming. For instance, Perception allows you to detect things like traps or environmental details that would otherwise go unnoticed. Maybe a treasure chest has a false bottom, with extra loot hidden below it. The metagamer has already read the module and knows about the false bottom. And the metagamer will usually try to find ways to “force” certain results that they want, or will blatantly act on knowledge that their character wouldn’t have.

In the above “treasure chest with a secret compartment” example, maybe the metagamer (knowing there is loot under a false bottom) says they want to thoroughly search the chest. The DM calls for a Perception check as they rifle through the contents. The metagamer rolls, and the entire table can see that it is low. The metagamer knows they failed the Perception check. But they still want the loot at the bottom of the chest. So they say something like “when I don’t find anything worthwhile, I smash the chest in frustration.”

Now the DM is in a tricky spot. Do they reward the player and reveal that by smashing the chest, the player finds extra loot hidden in a secret compartment? Or do they try to punish the metagaming by saying that they find a bunch of smashed (now worthless) loot in what used to be a secret compartment? It’s a judgement call on the DM’s part, because the DM can’t read the player’s mind to know if they were trying to metagame.

For another example, maybe an NPC tells a lie. The metagamer asks if the NPC is lying. The DM calls for an Insight check. The metagamer sees the low roll, and the DM says the NPC seems to be telling the truth. Now the metagamer is in a spot where they (as the player) don’t believe the DM. But the metagamer’s character believes the lie, because they failed the Insight check. Now the metagamer may try to find ways to circumvent that failed Insight roll, by finding other ways to catch the NPC in a lie. Maybe they try to poke holes in the NPC’s story using History, Religion, Arcana, Nature, and/or Investigation (all governed by Intelligence) checks instead. Or maybe they go out of their way to find evidence that would disprove the lie. Even though their character would have no reason to do so, because their character believes the lie.

By hiding Wisdom checks from the players, it helps eliminate a lot of metagaming. Especially in the last example. If the Insight check was hidden from the player, the player wouldn’t know if they failed the check. So they just have to take the DMs word when they say the NPC seems to be telling the truth. It eliminates the entire “player saw the low roll and doesn’t believe the DM” part of things.

I took it another way, where Wisdom specifically controls skills like Perception, Insight, and Animal Handling. Basically, skills that allow your character to notice or intuit things about the environment/NPCs.

Let’s say an NPC tells a lie, and you ask whether or not they’re lying. The DM asks you to roll an Insight check, and see that you rolled a 1. This means you (as the player) know you can’t trust when the DM says the NPC is being truthful. But your character believes the NPC, because you obviously failed the Insight roll. And that’s where the metagaming comes into play, with the player finding alternative ways to be able to act on what they believe was a lie, even though their character believes something to be a truth.

By hiding the Insight roll from the players, it obfuscates the pass/fail, and eliminates the entire “player knows someone was lying but their character doesn’t” metagame.

I read it as “go into the presidential bunker” because the demo’ed section of the White House sat on top of the bunker entrance. I was like “well yeah, the ballroom thing is just a ploy to renovate the bunker before Trump needs to use it…”

Yeah, my favorite taco place is in the back of a gas station. The cashier doesn’t speak a single word of English, but you can get by with some pointing at the menu, hand gestures, and “más queso por favor, y extra picante. Limón apardo.” Tacos are $2.50 each, a giant cup of refried beans is another two dollars, and he’ll usually slide you some extra tortillas to go with the beans for free if you’re a regular.

Sadly, I changed jobs and haven’t been there in a long time. I still occasionally think about making the trek across town, just to get some tacos. I hope he’s okay with all of the ICE raids… People that are pro-ICE shouldn’t be allowed to eat seasoned food.

Yeah, this will hopefully end up being a huge boon to her campaign. It’s proof that she’s not just an empty talking head; She actually puts her words into action. People are sick and tired of out-of-touch nonagenarian lawmakers shitting in the pool right before they get out.

Twinkubus