Bay 12 Games Forum

I... hell, why not? I feel momentary self-loathing, so In!, I guess. I hear the bots are pretty decent, at least

Kudos to webadict, no need to include me in the drawing.

UGH. [snip]

Internet provides a lot of info, once you filter through the bullshit ad stuff. Incumbents have a voting record, which is public, if occasionally hard to actually get at, and related political history. If challengers don't have previous political positions, you can look at job history and organizational affiliations (and occasionally campaign contributions), which is again usually public if hard to find. There's a paper trail, basically -- 'net makes it a bit easier to get at these days, but there's physical records laying around... somewhere. Newspapers, court rooms, city hall etc., so forth, so on. You can put your feet on the pavement and find out yourself if you've got the time (and occasionally cash) for it. Generally you base what you can off that; see what they've done, extrapolate into the future based on it.

As for the random chance bit... yeah, more than a little, really. And campaign/get elected, well. Someone with money decides they either want a political position or want a friend (/person somewhat indebted to them) in a place of power, and then throws cash at advertising until they get enough name awareness people will vote for them. That's basically how it operates on any level besides the very, very small (and usually even then, the process is the same just on a smaller relative scale.).

Of course, that's if you're actually trying to be informed. Most folks, it's more or less like Aqi said

Though I'm not really sure what happens in situations where there's only one person running, other than victory by default barring write-ins or something. Doesn't happen very often where I'm at, at least since I've able to vote.

How do you set ramen on fire?

A friend of mine once managed it by only putting a thin film of water in the pot and then ignoring it for two hours. Why I trusted him to cook in my house I'll never know. The smell lingered for months.

Basically that. The same way you set anything else on fire when cooking. Inattention.

I actually can't think of any other root causes of cooking fires, short of maybe sudden equipment failure or something. Which, again, has its fundamental cause in not paying attention to the state of your cooking tools.

TV ads have seemed to slacked off a bit where I'm at... some. Some. And tomorrow's the sixth. There's plenty of billboards and shit along the side of the roads.

We still got three or so robocalls today. Which was fairly standard volume for, like, the last month. Or two. At this point, I'd vote counter to republican just because they wouldn't stop fucking calling. If I hadn't voted some time last week, anyway. Dems had a bit of it too, but at least where I'm at the RNC or some shit had their machines running hard. Never people. Just automatic, canned calls. From morning into the night.

Frankly, political phone calls (advertising calls in general, really) should be fucking illegal. We've missed a few important calls this year because those asshats were on the line

E: Oh, and mailboxes full of junk. Don't forget the mailbox full of political junk. That's been more equitable across party lines, but gods know there's a few forests no longer existing because of that stuff. I'd swear we've trashed probably a good hundred pounds of politically charged cardboard and paper this year, and that's with absolutely zero exaggeration.

Five hundred USD for a keyboard breaks my brain. That thing better be invincible, able to be gifted to your grandchildren's grandchildren in full working order, and cook breakfast in bed for you every tuesday.

E: What I'm saying is it needs to be able to transform and roll out into the perfect robot maid and/or butler. Then it can take diction while it cleans your house.

Coming soon to home theatres near you: Movies you need to be always online to watch! It isn't for DRM, we promise! It's so we can use IP-tracking to put in Bonus Content(TM). By allowing us access to where you are, we can insert your name into our movies! will never buy from legitimate sources again! Score one more for copyright infringement, go goddamn stupid marketing go!

I almost even care! I'm suddenly more pleased by never watching movies. This is offset fully by the knowledge that, if at some point in the future I decide to change my mind, massively fucking stupid shit like that is going to force me to have to wrestle with illegality in order to avoid privacy violation. Bloody hell corps, figure this stuff out. It's not rocket science. Back the hell off and stay out my home.

If not for the reinforcement bit, it'd sound like X-COM... if no one has a better idea, try this list. Pretty solid chance it's on there, somewhere.

Also, Godwins? He talked about Nazis three times?

Brought up Nazis in something like three separate and distinct contexts in about a five minute period, if that. It was almost impressive, in a morbid sort of way.

And the stars are right. Again. For the Nth thousandth time since 0 A.D. And etc., and so forth, and so on. Jesus is apparently an antediluvian nightmare from the beyond the stars, because some of his cultists might as well be beatboxing f'taghn.