Lurker > Suprak the Stud

Red Sox you're basically saying you equate "white nationalism" with conservatism.
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Moops?
"I thought you were making up diseases? That's spontaneous dental hydroplosion."

Being conservative has nothing to do with it. There are plenty of Republican congressmen as conservative as him.

There is no one as racist.
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Moops?
"I thought you were making up diseases? That's spontaneous dental hydroplosion."

#13: Sally Stageplay
Difficulty: 2/10
Design: 8/10
Fun Factor: 3/10

Sorry Raka :(

Sally might be the most "disappointing" fight in the game, in that I really like the design here but I don't particularly like the fight itself. It feel like it should be a first island fight with how basic it is, but it'll likely be one of the last fights in the game. I had just finished off Dr. Kahl's Robot before this, so it felt a bit like beating literal Bruce Lee in a fight before moving on to fight some guy named Bruce Lee who is an accountant from Akron.

I do absolutely love the second phase of the fight, and it is another one of those segments that perfectly encapsulates the good of Cuphead. You have Sally attacking, babies throwing bottles from the windows, and little wind up animals that you both need to jump over and dodge from above. There is a lot going on and it can get chaotic, but it is a thoughtful sort of chaotic where it doesn't feel like you're just going to get screwed over by RNG.

I also love the design, both in general concept and in execution. The transitions represent different stages in her life, and you go from a chapel to a house full of babies to more ethereal final forms after she "dies". This is also a great example of what I talk about when I say certain levels don't feel "alive" or feel boring, because it demonstrates what Cuphead can pull off when its really trying. Her concerned husband running back and forth in the background during the first phase is great, and similarly the way he morns at the end of the second phase is a cool animation you may miss if you aren't paying attention. And then she has babies helping her during the second phase, and it really just feels like they thought about how the maximize the background which some of the lower ranked levels just don't do. Compare this to Cagney Carnation for example, which takes place in a forest and doesn't have anything interesting going on in the background and you can see how much something like this really helps elevate a fight.

Unfortunately, Sally relies almost exclusively on the presentation because it is a completely unremarkable fight outside of that. I had a harder time getting the A+ rank on this my first time through not because of the fight itself, but because I kept killing her too quickly during the first phase and I didn't see enough things to parry. This has no business being on the third island, because she's even easier than Cagney Carnation and arguably less difficult than Goopy. If you have the Invisible Dash skill here, the only phase you will possibly get hit on is the second. She doesn't even move during the third phase, and the fourth just has you mostly jumping over an umbrella while shooting upwards.

This is a great example at how a good presentation can make a fight much more fun, because I definitely enjoy this more than Brineybeard or Djimmi even though those are probably better designed from a gameplay perspective. Outside of the second phase here, this is a completely unremarkable fight outside of the presentation, and would probably be bottom tier if I didn't like all of that so much.

Which brings us to the last of the "these were good, but I know there's something better out there tier of fights". Everything else from here on out I enjoy a lot.

Plop Tier
19. Goopy Le Grande

Listening To Someone Tell You About Their Fantasy Team Tier
18. Hilda Berg
17. The Root Pack

The Pink Starburst Tier
16. Djimmi the Great
15. Cagney Carnation
14. Captain Brineybeard
13. Sally Stageplay
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Moops?
"I thought you were making up diseases? That's spontaneous dental hydroplosion."

Iowa currently has three Republican members of the house and one democrat. Current polling has one comfortable flip to Democrats and one that is very close but 538 leans democrat on that race too.

The one race Democrats aren't poised to win in Iowa? Steve King's seat. What an absolutely trash area of that state.

https://projects.fivethirtyeight.com/2018-midterm-election-forecast/house/?ex_cid=rrpromo
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Moops?
"I thought you were making up diseases? That's spontaneous dental hydroplosion."

Clearly no one here has ever played realistic fighting simulator rock em sock em robots before.
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Moops?
"I thought you were making up diseases? That's spontaneous dental hydroplosion."

Is Kevin Nash really Native American?

Gonna need to see that long form DNA test to prove it.
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Moops?
"I thought you were making up diseases? That's spontaneous dental hydroplosion."

#14: Captain Brineybeard
Difficulty: 5/10
Design: 3/10
Fun Factor: 5/10

YAR. I feel like this is just about the classic of classic old school cartoon drawings. He looks like every big brute you've ever seen from cartoons of the era, with hints of Bluto and Pete and all those big loafs you know and love. The hit box here is interesting in that it is completely static and in the top right corner of the screen, meaning you'll have to figure out a good way to attack. Do you go risky and get in close, dodging back when attacks start coming? Or do you play it safe and go to the back and jump and attack, knowing you'll get less hits in but that the incoming attacks will be easier to dodge? It is a nice change from some of the other bosses that move around a bit more during the course of the fight.

What I love about this fight is the third phase, where you're dodging three different attacks at once. You have the ship spitting cannonballs, the chest dropping from above, and then combine that with whatever random attack Brineybeard himself is doing. This is peak Cuphead gameplay for me, where I'm frantically dodging attacks from all over the screen and it needs my full concentration. There is strategy to this too, where you want to bait the chest into falling earlier sometime so you can focus on dodging the other two attacks while it is recharging. I love when this happens in the game, where you get a segment and at first you're like "this is impossible" and then after discovering a couple tricks or useful patterns, it becomes completely manageable (as long as your reflexes are great and your timing is perfect).

The final phase is a nice change of pace, too, and I like keeping the chest in addition to having to deal with the new attacks. The huge laser beam, for example, is fairly easy to deal with as long as you've been paying attention to the chest but you can absolutely get hit here if you get lazy and not pay attention to where the chest is going. It is a bit of a let down, I suppose, after how good the third phase is, but there are a lot of bosses like this where the final phase is actually a bit easier than some of the ones before it (presumably because the game thinks you might be at low health and a lot of the challenge is just GETTING TO that part of the fight).

With all that said, Brineybeard overall is a tad on the boring side. This is one of those fights where there is almost no difference between one phase and the next, and while there is a huge shift for the final phase the first three are almost indistinguishable (to the point I wasn't even entirely sure what was added to the second phase of the fight until I played it several times). It adds a new attack, sure, but there isn't a big shift in the strategy here. So the first three phases almost feel like one phase, which is particularly annoying in expert where he is an absolute tank and this goes on forever. All of the best bosses in the game constantly switch things up between phases, offering new and unique challenges with each new phase and Brineybeard is a bit lazy in that regard.

And Brineybeard is essentially just a pirate, with just about everything you'd expect from the battle. There really aren't any cool twists in the fight other than the ship itself joining the fight (and becoming a whale for the final phase) and it just feels like they wrote "pirate enemy" on the design document and didn't get much more creative than that.
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Moops?
"I thought you were making up diseases? That's spontaneous dental hydroplosion."

I actually have the next one written up already because I wrote it first, realized I preferred it to Cagney, and did a last minute swap. Cagney is one I for some reason remember liking more than I did after playing through the game a couple more times, and I guess I didn't realize how basic he was until I got a taste for some of the later bosses in the game.
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Moops?
"I thought you were making up diseases? That's spontaneous dental hydroplosion."

Cuphead
Spyro
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Moops?
"I thought you were making up diseases? That's spontaneous dental hydroplosion."

#15: Cagney Carnation
Difficulty: 3/10
Design: 5/10
Fun Factor: 4/10

I had a hard time ranking this boss and the next boss, because they kind of have a lot of the same positives and negatives to me (CAN YOU GUESS WHO IS COMING NEXT?). Island 1 starts out kind of slowly as the game eases you into things, so a lot of these bosses are pretty simple and Cagney Carnation fits into that grouping. But Cagney at least does enough to be FUN and he's a definite step up over The Root Pack and Goopy.

The first couple phases (or phase?) is kind of basic. There are platforms giving you different places to move around to, which I usually love, but Cagney doesn't really implement them all that well. He has one attack where he attacks the top row or the bottom row, and another where an attack hits the top row and then loops around to the bottom, but other than that there isn't a tremendous amount of use of these platforms during the early fight. You more use them vertically (top to bottom) than laterally (one to the next) which is always more fun to me.

What I had a lot of fun with though is the final phase, where Cagney sends out his roots and you absolutely have to use the top platforms. Roots come up through one platform, then a second, leaving only a third safe to move around on. By itself its a fun attack, but then Cagney will also spit flowers at you at the same time, meaning you're figuring out which platform is safe and at the same time avoiding other projectiles and there is this multitasking you have to do to try and avoid everything. It is the first fight listed here I actually had fun getting an A+/S rank on because getting through this phase without getting hit a single time requires some good execution of your movement. I love it when fights combine this sort of platforming with the combat, and while this is a very mild implementation of it, it does a good job showing you just what kid of stuff is waiting for you.

In terms of negatives, this is one of those fights in the game where the phases don't feel all that distinct and you're mostly doing the same thing throughout the entire fight. I can't even remember if there are two phases or three here, but regardless there isn't a lot of variety during the fight. My favorite bosses are those that have you completely changing strategy from one phase to the next, or have a lot of different things you need to adjust to. The roots are a nice touch at the end, but other than that this fight really starts to feel a little samey since you are only really fighting two different forms. This is also one of the easiest fights in the game, and outside of the introduction fights there aren't too many others that are this simple.

The design is also pretty basic as well. I do love the movement of the flower, the back and forth shimmy he does in between his attacks, and the death screen is weirdly creepy in comparison to most of the others. But Cagney is just a flower, and there aren't too many attacks here that stand out as creative. I like the roots and the sort of air turret he does where he rains down seeds, but the background art is extremely basic and he just sort of looks like a flower without much special to him.
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Moops?
"I thought you were making up diseases? That's spontaneous dental hydroplosion."

Yeah I definitely don't think I've ever seen a good consensus on what the hardest are. Djinn wasn't all that bad for me, but I would at least agree that Ghost Train puts up a good fight.

(And I was being tongue in cheek about this being definitive, if that wasn't obvious!)
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Moops?
"I thought you were making up diseases? That's spontaneous dental hydroplosion."

That actually wraps up the "eh I'm kinda bored" tier because this next batch of bosses I like a decent amount better. In fact, pretty much everything from here on out is fun. Jeez its like Cuphead is a good game or something.

Plop Tier
19. Goopy Le Grande

Listening To Someone Tell You About Their Fantasy Team Tier
18. Hilda Berg
17. The Root Pack

Which brings us to...

#16: Djimmi The Great
Difficulty: 6/10
Design: 3/10
Fun Factor: 4/10

This is a huge step up from the last plane battle, and you at least get flashes of the better plane fights at the end of the game. Of the fights I talked about so far, it is really the first one that gives you multiple things to focus on in earnest, which occurs during the fourth phase of the fight. The genie both throws out his hat (which fires bullets) and summons a puppet (which fires energy blasts) and you're forced to move back and forth, dodging both incoming projectiles. It is parts like this that the game really shines for me, when I'm juggling like three different things and barely paying attention to whether my bullets are actually hitting him or not.

There is also that fun amount of randomness in the battle, particularly in the first fight when the attack he uses is completely random. Will he summon swords, giving you pretty much a free pass to the next phase of the fight or is he going to summon those DAMN CATS again which are particularly a headache on expert difficulty. I like it when enemies have a random element to their attacks like this, because it makes them significantly more interesting to fight on subsequent playthroughs.

Part of the issue here is this is a boss of middling difficulty and middling design, so it doesn't really excel at anything. It is challenging enough, but he was the easiest (for me) of the second island bosses and while all of the phases were fine there weren't any that were particularly fun except the fourth one.

Another annoyance is the pseudo-autoscroller after the first stage. There are a bunch of pillars you have to fly through by destroying the face portions, and it really slows down the fight to a crawl. The first phase is pretty easy while the last couple might take a couple tries to get used to, which means you'll have to repeat this autoscroller several times while you're learning the boss. This is the only fight like this in the entire game, where there's a portion you just have to get through some obstacles before getting back to the fight, and it doesn't work too well with the pace you get from the other fights.

On top of this, I'm just not crazy about the design. The level feels lifeless compared to some of the other levels, and this might be a bit of a complaint that not too many others share but I always loved it when there was something else going on. Other levels felt alive, with either background characters or small little enemy support units like fish or bees, but here everything is pretty much just the genie. The level feels a bit sterile because of it, and the background is probably the ugliest in the entire game. The genie himself is "fine" but I would certainly put him on the lower end in terms of creativity and design. There are some good ideas here for the various phases, and I particularly like when he gets all HUGE and PHENOMENAL COSMIC POWER at the very end, but so many bosses in this game are so cleverly designed that "pretty cool" almost feels like a let down.
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Moops?
"I thought you were making up diseases? That's spontaneous dental hydroplosion."

Ohhhh that at least makes a bit more sense. Good for eyes -> third eye -> psychic powers is a bit of a convoluted thought process, but I at least see how they could get there.

A+ job Raka you're alright
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Moops?
"I thought you were making up diseases? That's spontaneous dental hydroplosion."

#17: The Root Pack
Difficulty: 1/10
Design: 4/10
Fun Factor: 2/10

Like Goopy, The Root Pack is a fairly straightforward introductory fight. Well, as straightforward as a fight against three giant evil vegetables could be. And it does a pretty good job introducing you to the basic concepts of the game. You've got dodging projectiles, avoiding a mini bullet hell in the form of onion tears, and an enemy with a hitbox that requires you to aim upwards. It is pretty much everything you want from an introduction level, and so it gets points for that.

You also get the first "different enemy per phase" fight and while other fights do that better its still interesting to see what is coming next. You start off against a potato spitting dirt clods, move on to a crying onion, and finish off with a...psychic...carrot? Is that a thing? Unlike Hilda Berg, the next phase feels like a logical continuation of the previous one, even though in this fight you're fighting entirely different enemies. This level is also easy enough it works great to show it off to people. It captures that old timey cartoon feel perfectly, and it is easy enough that most people can beat it within a couple tries so it is a lot more accessible than some of the later fights in the game.

In spite of all that though, this is just sort of a boring fight. I got the "S" rank here on my second try, and that was only because I killed it too fast and didn't have a chance to get a third parry after missing one of the incoming worms. The attack patterns of the first two foes are particularly boring, and while it works great as an introduction it is decidedly far less fun to play through once you have the hang of everything. There are a lot of fights I played through a bunch of times to get higher ranks, or because they were fun, or just because I felt like it. You don't really go back to this fight because you won't need to and it wasn't all that interesting your first time through.
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Moops?
"I thought you were making up diseases? That's spontaneous dental hydroplosion."

#18: Hilda Berg
Difficulty: 4/10
Design: 2/10
Fun Factor: 3/10

Early on in the game there was a point where I was like "oh I just don't like the airplane fights" and to a certain extent that is true. It kind of takes away a major component I love to a lot of the boss fights, which is a certain level of precise platforming and a restriction on movement. In airplanes you can just sort of fly anywhere, and while that does add a certain strategy to some of the fights (where is the best place on the screen to position yourself, if you should move forward or back, etc) it doesn't really make up for what it loses. You don't have your choice of secondary weapons here and a lot of the perks are just useless, so you lose that element to the fights as well.

BUT there are actually a couple airplane fights I quite enjoy because they do a better job working within the airplane mechanics so this is a bit more than "ugh stupid airplane fight". A lot of the attacks here are pretty basic and unlike some of the better fights later on, they don't really do a good job mixing attacks together. So, yeah, she can say "HAAAAA" like the hype man at a late 90s rap concert, and planes will come in and fire off attacks, but there really isn't all that much complexity to this and it is very easy to figure out where to position yourself.

My main issue here though is I just kind of hate the design. The fight was probably a bit more fun than a couple of the ones I'm listing next, but at least those had enemies where I was like "oh hey that's pretty cool". This just didn't feel cohesive, and I'm not entirely sure what I was supposed to be fighting. "Ok so she's a blimp on a unicycle? Who turns into a cloud bull? And...is that the moon?" I guess it is supposed to be some air themed boss, but I like it where the transitions at least kind of make sense, and this kind of just felt like a hodgepodge of ideas that people yelled out at some point and they all made the fight. It plays a bit like they made the boss using Mad Libs and I just didn't like the transitions like I did with a lot of the other bosses.

Something I did really like about Hilda Berg though is she is the fight where Expert Mode shows up a bit and kicks you in the teeth. A lot on the first island aren't all that tough, but the changes in speed and extra things flying around the screen really made me appreciate the fact I moved up a difficultly. Oh, and I did like the timing of the UFOs at the end. Figuring out which ones to dash through and which ones to trigger and then move back was pretty cool.
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Moops?
"I thought you were making up diseases? That's spontaneous dental hydroplosion."

If anyone else tells you otherwise, they are wrong and lying to you and not really your friends. Just keep that in mind.

Cuphead is great and you should play it.

AND GO

#19: Goopy Le Grande
Difficulty: 1/10
Design: 2/10
Fun Factor: 2/10

This is the only boss I beat my first time through. I also beat him in one go on Expert mode and honestly there isn't much of a difference between the two. A lot of boss fights in the game will have you pulling of insane platforming, or proper dodging, or figuring out the best combination of perks and upgrades to get you through in one piece. Not Goopy, who just slowly jumps back and forth and very clearly telegraphs all of his very slow attacks. I don't know if he is "technically" supposed to be the first fight in the game, but he is far and away the easiest.

I think they were going for a slime motif here, borrowing from games like Dragon Quest and the whole blob monster trope but it just doesn't really work. Look at all the other enemies in the game and their design and then look at Goopy. The gulf between them is crazy. It's like you have the starting line up of the Dream Team and then some drunk 15 year old that managed to sprint out onto the court before face planting. There isn't anything good to say about Goopy, and even his final phase as a tombstone is pretty poorly thought out and implemented.

Plop Tier:
19) Goopy Le Grande
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Moops?
"I thought you were making up diseases? That's spontaneous dental hydroplosion."

I think Montana, Alaska, and Maine are all "weirder" but yeah WV is definitely up there in terms of strangeness of local politics.
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Moops?
"I thought you were making up diseases? That's spontaneous dental hydroplosion."

I've been going over some House races in my free time and I think I'm going to just briefly summarize some I find interesting just because I'm bored. (Also if you're looking for candidates to support, these might be some of the ones to look into because they're in competitive districts.

The first is WV-3. The Democratic candidate is Richard Ojeda, who looks like the kind of guy who should be in an advertising broacher about the marines:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Richard_Ojeda

This race has no reason being competitive because it is WV-3 and 538 rated it as one of the 20 most conservative district IN THE ENTIRE COUNTRY. Think about the entire country, and then think about the demographics of what the third most district would look like. Theoretically, if Democrats won this district than Republicans should have just a handful of seats in the house, max. It has no business being competitive and 538 reports the district voted for Trump 73-23 and, going by the fundamentals of this year, the Republicans should win it by 24 points.

And yet, the two most recent polls of the race have Ojeda trailing by only 5 (Sienna College/New York Times) and only 2 (Monmouth University of approximately the same time frame). A Monmouth poll in June actually showed Ojeda UP so 2 points down is a bit of a disappointment for him!

https://projects.fivethirtyeight.com/2018-midterm-election-forecast/house/west-virginia/3/

Why? Well, Ojeda is kind of weird. He voted for and endorsed Trump in 2016 (and won his WV state senate seat in a district that went for Trump 78-19). He's more of a populist that tends to focus on economic issues rather than social issues (even though he says that while he's pro life he doesn't want to ban abortions because that would disproportionately affect poor people). WV-3 also appears to have gotten ever so slightly more liberal since 2016, as 538 now has it as the 43rd most Republican district in the entire country (the Cook PVI has it just outside the top 20 still).

Are Republicans scared? Yes. Breitbart has started showing ads demonstrating what an EVIL LIBERAL he is (the guy who voted for Trump, yes) because he later changed his mind after seeing Trump for a while and called his presidency a train wreck.

https://www.breitbart.com/politics/2018/10/15/exclusive-tv-ads-expose-radical-west-virginia-leftist-richard-ojeda-for-opposition-to-trump/

So will he win? Nah, probably not. 538 is very pessimistic about his chances and is guessing he'll lose by 9-10 points even though all polls have been closer than that. I just think it shows Democrats could compete literally anywhere if they found the right candidates. If they lose this district by 10, there is no reason they couldn't win other presumably conservative districts if they found good candidates that resonate with the population of the district.

I just think its a cool race because you can go down the most conservative districts in the country and they are all safe red, except for this one which is surprisingly only a lead republican.
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Moops?
"I thought you were making up diseases? That's spontaneous dental hydroplosion."

When does this start?

I may actually be down for a hydra game!
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Moops?
"I thought you were making up diseases? That's spontaneous dental hydroplosion."

UltimaterializerX posted...

ChaosTonyV4 posted...

Its a family story thats getting blown out of proportion.

There is a 100% chance, assuming you grew up with them, you grew up being told by your parents family stories that may or may not be true, but you believed it and have repeated it to others.

The straight-up facts are that theres no evidence she actually gained anything by it, so who cares? Move on. Lasa calling her a lunatic for it is classic Lasa overreacting in a failed attempt to be reasonable, the same way he said most people in this topic confuse Red Sox Devils advocacy for trolling.

I dont remotely care about it outside Warren lying to get into what was it? Harvard Law? Something or other?

This isn't how it worked, to my knowledge. It wasn't "oh hey maybe if I claim minority status I'll be hired!" She was hired without that being reported or taken into consideration. All the people that hired her said he was eminently qualified and that wasn't on her application.

It was however, later put on by Harvard when they were trying to show off how they weren't all white people. Essentially they went around and asked people if they had any minority ancestry and she was like "oh yeah sure" based on the old family story of hers. This is still bad because 1) rather than actually hiring POC if that was important to Harvard, they were hoping they could just find someone who was a 1/16th something and call that a day and 2) Warren clearly hasn't faced discrimination because of her race so she probably should've known better than to let Harvard boast about this even if she didn't mean in maliciously.

Again, someone can correct me if I'm wrong as I admittedly didn't follow this very close because it bores me, but the impression I got wasn't "she lied to get hired" but rather "she/Harvard lied or exaggerated to make their own faculty look more diverse".
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Moops?
"I thought you were making up diseases? That's spontaneous dental hydroplosion."

Start now, roles later.
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Moops?
"I thought you were making up diseases? That's spontaneous dental hydroplosion."

If you watch the full video she also talks to roughly 10 people that all say "no we didn't consider any thing like that she was one of the best law professors in the country at the time.

Which, again, is why that video looks like a "hey I'm running in 2020 please look at the following considerations" kind of video.
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Moops?
"I thought you were making up diseases? That's spontaneous dental hydroplosion."

Corrik posted...

HarrietTubgirl posted...

Suprak the Stud posted...

https://twitter.com/elizabethforma/status/1051783184390664192?s=21

So shes running for president 100% now, right?

1/1024 Native American lmfao

It is borderline psychotic that she is talking about this

She had to throw it out there because she knows she is gonna get roasted in the election about it.

Which is why this looks like shes 100% throwing her name in. Sure, she was like 99% before, but you dont put together a video like this unless you are planning to run for something else.

It basically was a point by point addressing of the major issues against her.
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Moops?
"I thought you were making up diseases? That's spontaneous dental hydroplosion."

https://twitter.com/elizabethforma/status/1051783184390664192?s=21

So shes running for president 100% now, right?
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Moops?
"I thought you were making up diseases? That's spontaneous dental hydroplosion."

Not_an_Owl posted...

Something I don't think was discussed here - in a 5-4 decision (Kavanaugh voted in the majority) this week the Supreme Court upheld a North Dakota law requiring voters to have a physical mailing address, not just a P.O. box. Why is this important? Because in North Dakota there are thousands of Native Americans living on reservations who do not have addresses, only P.O. boxes. Before now that was never an issue, but now they can't vote, and with less than a month before the midterms there is precious little time to do anything about it.

Just in case you thought GOP voter suppression was no longer a thing.

https://www.cbsnews.com/news/north-dakota-voter-id-law-upheld-by-supreme-court-could-affect-senate-race/

1) Kavanaugh didnt vote because he wasnt present during arguments
2) Breyer and Sotomayor voted with the 6-2 majority

Unless youre talking about a second ND voter ID case Im not aware about in which case sorry for my snark!
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Moops?
"I thought you were making up diseases? That's spontaneous dental hydroplosion."

htaeD posted...

I guess we agree to disagree. In my eyes Scum was overpowered.

From my point of view the Jedi are evil.
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Moops?
"I thought you were making up diseases? That's spontaneous dental hydroplosion."

Corrik posted...

https://www.foxnews.com/politics/senate-dem-hopeful-kyrsten-sinema-said-i-dont-care-if-people-go-to-fight-for-taliban-against-us

She is done. Arizona will go red.

Between 2005 and 2006, Sinema co-hosted a radio show together with Jeff Farias. Farias is a conspiracy theorist who signed a 2008 petition that claims the World Trade Center collapsed because of explosives planted inside the buildings by the U.S. government.

Farias frequently promoted 9/11 conspiracy theories during his radio show up until 2010 and was the co-master of a conference in 2007 that rejected the governments explanation of the 2001 terror attacks. The conference was attended by InfoWars Alex Jones.

How did her opponents not dig this up when she first won her seat in the house in 2012?
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Moops?
"I thought you were making up diseases? That's spontaneous dental hydroplosion."

Also, trying to complain about the balance doesn't give scum enough credit because they absolutely steam rolled here in a way I'm not sure I've ever seen. Without the lawyer this game is maybe the worst rout of all time.

They convinced town to lynch their best player (AND protection) day 1 and to lynch their scanner (with 0 other scanners claimed) day 3. That is incredible. That's top tier manipulation.

Scum drove the lynch onto Chris and town bought it. Then dowolf buried MZero with a great (but fake) case and town bought it. Scum got almost zero of their powers to work this game other than the ninja vig and the double vote (which again was known scum and scum didn't even use it most days). That's the power that came into play.
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Moops?
"I thought you were making up diseases? That's spontaneous dental hydroplosion."

I think it was dowolf who said that it wasn't unbalanced so much as it had the potential to snowball, which is absolutely true. I took that in mind and tried to put in some protections for that, but that was part of the design of the game (for example, both Ghost and Viserion got stronger the better their faction was doing).
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Moops?
"I thought you were making up diseases? That's spontaneous dental hydroplosion."

Yeah I think town was greatly underestimating how good some of their power was (and overestimating scum...for some reason). People were complaining about how powerful scum was when all that had flipped was a RB and the role swapper, which is beyond bizarre.

Like red pointed out, in probably 50-75% of games role swapper is useless. It was included because of how powerful Dany's role was and I didn't want that randomly getting stuck on some dead weight player. It would allow scum to swap it over to whoever they felt was deepest but in a lot of games (like this) you may just keep it on whoever rolled it. Plum was literally (and not just functionally!) a vanilla. The GF in this set up but it isn't like he had special powers and obviously being a vanilla doesn't even clear you. Scare was useful but very limited. Like I pointed out there were only four total town roles that moved and two of them should have no reason to target scare if they're playing well. Plus town had a full time poison doc.

Their best two roles were bp roleblocker (obviously strong but fairly standard and nothing crazy) and Dany's role. The ninja vig was awesome, the double vote was obviously huge (but again not overpowered because town knew it was a scum vote - look how scared scum was to use it at all) but mostly for parity. The obliterate skill was very difficult to use and was mostly just there to let scum know "uh hey there might be something going on with the DVC".

Keep in mind scum had NO strongman and NO scanning. It may feel like it because of how good their kills were, but that was pure good play and detective work on their part (plus some luck)

Vs town who had watcher (very powerful and scum only has a one use ninja vig to counter - think how powerful watcher is in most games where roleblocker is alive and blocking claimed town power) and a rolecop (secondary scanning, but could confirm almost all of town's unique roles as being what that person claimed. Scum had vanilla for gf and town had ninja for miller, but rolecop tends to be more powerful than cop where innocent and guilty can be argued about more that "oh uh you scan as role swapper care to explain?")

Plus SBell with a permanent kill redirect AND a restriction free lawyer (that doesn't even kill him if he's wrong!). And Chris who was an every day jail keep or poison doctor. AND MI who had a double vote and could hide it so as to not draw attention to himself.

Not even to mention town's best role: Han. Han got killed because of his whole "yeah I'm just going to steamroll the scum team here" but if that got put on a different player it could be killer. Scum can't bury scans. They can't bury strong town voices. Imagine a scenario where they blind kill the rolecop or watcher on night 3 say, before they claim. Normally thats a "shucks three scans lost". Not if Han is alive. He gets those scans AND if scum knows who a scanner is, they have to effective roleblock + kill or obliterate to stop that from getting out.

If anything I thought scum might be underpowered!

The fact they were overpowered came from the fact it was literally red, plum, dowolf, Scare, and ben. Like, that's fucking overpowered right there. It was who they were and not what they were that decimated town.

Plus town gets no sympathy for lynching their literally claimed scanner day 3 with half the game dead and no scanners claimed.
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Moops?
"I thought you were making up diseases? That's spontaneous dental hydroplosion."

Well that -14 poll ended its polling period before Tay Tay made her endorsement.

MAKE YOUR TIME, REPUBLICANS, WE'RE COMING FOR YOU.
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Moops?
"I thought you were making up diseases? That's spontaneous dental hydroplosion."

CoolCly posted...

That's interesting, the average person is fine with it, yet the federal government is so hard line against it.. I wonder how much Session's hard stance on marijuana impacts all of the regulatory agencies also being hostile towards the Canadian marijuana industry. Does he have influence over them? Is Trump against it too?

Well part of the issue is the way the American government is set up. It doesn't always matter how many people support something but rather where those people are located at. Keep in mind that Clinton won by 2% points in the popular vote but still lost the electoral vote by a significant margin.

Now, that isn't as much of a factor here because that gap is so big you would expect that even if it was broken up by state, you could still cobble together enough senators that would come from states that support it. Another fact is look at the breakdown by age. The oldest generation opposes it while boomers are just barely in favor of it. Guess which two populations dominate our senate and house of reps? So you have smaller, more conservative states having an equal weight in the senate to states like California, so even if there are millions more in California that support and a couple thousand more in say North Dakota that oppose, those two get equal weight in vote for this. Plus the fact that a majority of senators are old and even most of the democrats aren't pushing for reform on this issue.

Just on anecdotal evidence, I can say those numbers look right. And even people that oppose it tend not to care that much. You'll walk by a bar or something and smell it and people will just go "ugh I hate that smell" and move on. But since this isn't a big issue even for people who support it, they aren't necessarily pushing their congresspeople on it. So its probably a lot of factors.

Interestingly, the racial group most in favor of legalization is white while the most opposed is hispanic, while it shows Republicans oppose and democrats support. Kind of weird numbers there.
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Moops?
"I thought you were making up diseases? That's spontaneous dental hydroplosion."

(Also: Congrats!)
---

Moops?
"I thought you were making up diseases? That's spontaneous dental hydroplosion."

DAD CLUB

Come join us we have beer.
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Moops?
"I thought you were making up diseases? That's spontaneous dental hydroplosion."

For Cly:

http://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2018/10/08/americans-support-marijuana-legalization/

Wildly in favor of it. I couldn't find any comparative Canadian polls, but I couldn't imagine support there would be much different than here?
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Moops?
"I thought you were making up diseases? That's spontaneous dental hydroplosion."

https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/can-heitkamp-pull-off-a-second-upset-in-north-dakota/

tl;dr

Probably not.

Oh and Bredesen's odds just took a big hit too. WEEEEEEEE
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Moops?
"I thought you were making up diseases? That's spontaneous dental hydroplosion."

Corrik posted...

ChaosTonyV4 posted...

For people who dont know, the people on CNN who said Kanye was what happens with a negro who doesnt read (not CANT, important distinction), were black people, and its a reference to a Chris Rock bit.

Thats all I have to add to this dumpster fire of a topic.

Yeah, I agree this thread is a dumpster fire. Literally have people calling for violence in it.

Jeff Flake, for all of his flaws, was one of like four Republicans even willing to criticize Trump and he lost his job for it. So calls of violence against him are particularly wrong headed (not that any calls for violence are a good idea, mind you, but uh yeah).

Rock may have been joking (or not!) but saying someone needs to break his nose because you think he's being disingenuous isn't how politics is supposed to work.
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Moops?
"I thought you were making up diseases? That's spontaneous dental hydroplosion."

It actually gives Republicans better odds in Missouri or Indiana because of the partisan lean of the state. So if it is liberal bs he may want to rethink his method since it shows worse results for democrats.
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Moops?
"I thought you were making up diseases? That's spontaneous dental hydroplosion."

Eddv posted...

Corrik posted...

Assuming 7 tossups.

Tennessee
Florida
Missouri
Nevada
North Dakota
Arizona
Indiana

This is lumping in leans.

The two true tossups are NV and MO.

Republicans are at +1 on the odds because you can basically assume one breaks for GOP and one breaks for Dems.

This is 538 and they take into more complicated stuff like incumbency effect, lean of the state, lean of polls, and numerous other factors. They have a polls only model which is basically in line with RCP.

(At least, 538 has the true tossups as NV and MO at the moment, so I'm assuming that is what you're referring to!)
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Moops?
"I thought you were making up diseases? That's spontaneous dental hydroplosion."

Corrik posted...

Assuming 7 tossups.

Tennessee
Florida
Missouri
Nevada
North Dakota
Arizona
Indiana

44 Dems
49 Repubs

In Tennessee and North Dakota there are some polls with Repubs with double digits leads.

Heller has taken leads in recent polls slightly in Nevada.

Arizona is closely Dem right now but close. As is Florida. Both within 2%.

Indiana Dems are up around 3%.

Missouri Republican has started to take the lead in polls slightly also.

There is a possibility Repubs could pull away with a lot more seats than initially expected in this Senate race. Warning flags have to be flying all over the place regarding it for Dems. Unless a change in trends happens in the next month.

Did you pull this from RCP?

Your breakdown is right (44 safe Dems 49 safe Reps), but North Dakota isn't the toss up, Montana is. North Dakota is lean Republican. Tennessee is about to slip out of toss up range too, so you're looking at 44-50.

So basically Dems would need a clean sweep to gain a single seat, which based on the polling is increasingly unlikely. It think Tester is likely ok in Montana (could change, obviously, but Montana is weird like this and Tester is still well liked). But even then we'd need to win 5 out 5 in Nevada, Arizona, Missouri, Florida and Indiana just to gain a single seat. Polling in Missouri has been down for a while, and 538 has Heller favorited in Nevada now too. Arizona has been trending more red in recent polls.

Like, it would be *great* for the democrats if they pulled out Indiana and Florida considering how competitive those two are, but they could still lose seats. This is just such a nightmare map for Democrats. Although, if they can't pick up Heller's seat who isn't even that well liked in what has been a blue state for a long time, we don't really deserve to win.
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Moops?
"I thought you were making up diseases? That's spontaneous dental hydroplosion."

But werent the real RKOs the friendships we made along the way?
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Moops?
"I thought you were making up diseases? That's spontaneous dental hydroplosion."

IfGodCouldDie posted...

Suprak the Stud posted...

Yeah your past couple of days really redeemed what I thought was a very bad start of the game. You were the only one with the correct scum team at the end, after all.

There was a lot of bad stuff before it, but you did fine by the end. Most of your issues were questionable behavior type things which I think are pretty easy to fix so yeah not a huge deal.

I know the emotional overreactions(calling Blade and Sbell names, trying to get Chris modkilled, tempting people to lynch me) are some of them, the 22 seconds after deadline(which was totally unintentional, but inexcusable) what else?

Those were most of them!

You @ing people and demanding they Lynch you is also borderline not playing to win, but you at least came around and were yelling at people to help you solve the game so it wasn't clear game throwing.

That's...just a lot for a single game. Again, nothing major, but a lot of little stuff like that.
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Moops?
"I thought you were making up diseases? That's spontaneous dental hydroplosion."

ScareChan posted...

You played very well, you can be scum MVP or Supraks number 2, thats fine

but as a team player you were not very good. Individually sure, but as a team you were our weakest link easily

It was very hard to rank the scum team (OUTSIDE OF THAT TRAITOR BEN).

Scare was lynched but he was super slippery and got two town mislynches in a row.

Red was the leader and drove the team (especially day 1) and his plan of murdering a town power player almost went perfectly (if not for a lawyer). He was also really involved in the scum board and good with the various plots and evil doing.

Dowolf got scum's true power role and managed to ride it to end game. This game is much harder if dowolf gets killed and he fought back well. He also almost single handedly drove the MZero mislynch (ON TOWN POWER DAY 3?!?!) and wasn't even heavily suspected the past couple of days.

I thought the entire scum team did great.
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Moops?
"I thought you were making up diseases? That's spontaneous dental hydroplosion."

Leafeon13N posted...

masterplum posted...

Scare, you didn't want to play around anything. It's so easy for town to have a vig that lied and I get shot if I save you last second

We flipped two town that had ways to kill us without a lynch already.

Lawyer + bomb is also completely unfair for scum as that is two ways for a good mislynch to be messed up.
---

Moops?
"I thought you were making up diseases? That's spontaneous dental hydroplosion."

ScareChan posted...

Suprak

if Dowolf dies does Viserion live for a day like Ghost?

No he instantly leaves the game.
---

Moops?
"I thought you were making up diseases? That's spontaneous dental hydroplosion."

masterplum posted...

There was like a 30 minute period where I wasn't sure if I believe him before suprak told me he was lying

Also, in plum's defense, the only reason he believed it was real was because he had a similar (?) kind of role in one of his games. Otherwise he might've assumed it was a joke too.
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Moops?
"I thought you were making up diseases? That's spontaneous dental hydroplosion."

Yeah your past couple of days really redeemed what I thought was a very bad start of the game. You were the only one with the correct scum team at the end, after all.

There was a lot of bad stuff before it, but you did fine by the end. Most of your issues were questionable behavior type things which I think are pretty easy to fix so yeah not a huge deal.
---

Moops?
"I thought you were making up diseases? That's spontaneous dental hydroplosion."

Yep plum was top 2 player this game for me. Second only to the MURDEROUS HAN who was bodying scum all day 2 only to be mostly ignored by the rest of town.
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Moops?
"I thought you were making up diseases? That's spontaneous dental hydroplosion."

Yes my use of the world "eliminated" in the rules made Chris and Dels skip over it so they didn't see they weren't supposed to talk to each other yet. So Chris got booted out of DVC halfway through day 2 (he didn't post anything he shouldn't since he didn't post again after talking to Dels).

I've never had to modkill a player not in the game before...
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Moops?
"I thought you were making up diseases? That's spontaneous dental hydroplosion."

Dels posted...

suprak says that plum previously hosted a game where a dead player could become a new third faction and recruit a living player

so like

i guess

I don't know if that was it exactly, but he said:

(In my game of thrones mafia game I actually did have a power that gave scum the oppurtunity to defect)

So...something that convinced him that Chris was legit on his offer.
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Moops?
"I thought you were making up diseases? That's spontaneous dental hydroplosion."