Kilroy was here

Moore v. Harper was just decided by the overwhelmingly-conservative Supreme Court last month, and it rejects this. State legislatures can do what they want, but state judges and federal judges can tell them to go jump in a lake.

Also, representatives are elected popularly, and after the 17th Amendment, senators must be, too. Governors would be tricky for state legislatures to do, because each state has its own state constitution that would need amending—and even states with effective one-party rule still have a difference between a governor and a speaker of the house. Even in a one-party state, no governor would want to be a creature of the legislature.

But is it possible? Sure. If legislatures pass an amendment through their state-constitutional avenues, then it happens. But that’s a high bar indeed. And it might just be completely ignored or dismantled—in Florida in 2018 the voters overwhelmingly chose to amend the state constitution to give released felons the right to vote—then DeSantis did a run-around by miring it in paperwork. The amendment still stands, however.

My illustration isn’t to prove that people aren’t underhanded, but rather that with sufficient masses of people, and with governors who want to appeal to voters, things happen. The whole point of populism is that Guy X’s ranting and raving about “I speak for you” involves voters actually feeling good about voting for him. Put another way, Trump-loving voters love Trump more than their state reps or governors, and as much as they want Trump in charge, they want to be the ones to make him in charge, or else they don’t get to vicariously enjoy what he does.

Big ol’ asterisk on the 2020 election, though:

• Covid
• Wide action to change voting to get around Covid
• Wide belief among Republicans that Covid wasn’t real
• Ergo, wide movement against changing elections around Covid

For these reasons alone, using any election map like this from 2020 is outside any norm. What about the 2016 or 2012 map? It may look similar, but won’t be nearly as drastic.

How is this not a campaign finance violation?

I think I found the defense strategy: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lJsQDPK-vvg

I dare you to start posting flags of that all over Colorado to force them to assume it’s right, realize their mistake, and take it down in shame and lament. That’s a better flag because it better converts the C from letter to symbol. And lines are supposed to line up.

It’s healthier than Babylon 5, which is a much smaller property, under the thumb of more incompetent leadership at Warner/AT&T/HBO/Max, and is still coming out with a Blu-Ray remaster later this year.

Trek is fine. There may be some doldrums, but it’s healthier now than in the post-Nemesis (2002) post-Enterprise (2005) landscape. And even then, it was only four years before Star Trek (2009).

Again, there’s a smaller gap between Enterprise and JJ Abrams than there is between Discovery s.1 (2017) and today. Stay calm.

27 inch would be better!

It depends. It’s a promo card, so my first thought is that it was somewhere between a collector’s special and an advertisement. Also, how common is the misprint—if the entire run was misprinted, then it’s not too special.

FOUR PLAYER FARM

This. Climate pressure is agriculture pressure is economic pressure is political pressure.

Doesn’t seem to bode well for the Great Green Wall project, does it?

It’s less expensive than the Apple display if you make the Apple display more expensive! Also, it comes with Smart Hub if you want to watch TV on your computer without using your computer to watch TV. Bonus feature: plasticky.

1, 5, 4.

I like Nordic Crosses, and the star’s a good color in a good placement. If you want an snowflake star, 4 is the best version.

But 1 emphasizes the rivers!

But the music! And the Darth Maul fight!

Always upvote a hoovaloo reference!

Most unbelievable part: Texas has a US flag but no Texas flag.

I’ve been playing a lot of Galactus (less dominant since the recent nerf) but my first love is always my Wong / White Tiger / Odin deck. Moon Girl / Devil Dinosaur is fun too!

The problem is that the game is so open to different paths. Here’s a basic basic basic basic list:

• Talk to everyone all the time; give people gifts (random fruit is fine mostly) twice a week
• Buy seeds and plant them. Harvest and buy better seeds. Make sure to water them!
• Be on the lookout for forage-able fruits and flowers. Chop down trees so you have wood to build. Learn where stuff is and where gates to future progress are. Mostly they’ll tell you what you need to proceed.
• On rainy days when you don’t have to water, fight monsters in the mine.
• Talking to folks gives you quests. Following the quests gives you stuff and teaches you the game.
• Exploring the world and checking the achievement list teaches you, too.
• The wiki is fantastic, but so are the game interface and menus.

Some quick links:

• https://itch.io/c/1044509/list-of-nes-homebrews
• https://itch.io/c/1024610/nes-homebrew-games
• https://nesdoug.com/...
• https://github.com/retrobrews/nes-games
• https://www.romhacking.net/?page=homebrew&category=&platform=1&source=&perpage=20&title=&search=Go

In the rural southeast, those are more like 300,000