This post is a smattering of stuff I've talked about recently; video and board games, SCOTUS, web stuff. Starting with the last one, a few weeks ago Rob linked me the 'nownownow movement'. According to the search engine blurb (since the site didn't renew its certs):

nownownow.com

2015-11-20. A month ago I announced the /now page movement, where many personal websites are adding a "/now" page to answer the question, "What are you focused on now?". At the time, only ten websites had a /now page. Now there are over 280. It's incredible. People are...

It kind of makes sense, especially for the 2015 peak-Twitter mindset: spin a /now page off of your website's landing page that provides your latest status. The post-2015 internet certainly hasn't become less obsessesed with spotlighting the newest content.

But, well, writing something like this takes a lot longer than typing into an app "@SBUX NOT PUTTING ENOUGH VANILLA IN #LATTES NOW. MANY SUCH CASES." I could certainly publish tweetlike blurbs with my latest one-liner or food pic, but this kind of content normally relies on a context or conversation (/emoji reaction) for significance.

One of the federated microblogging platforms might support this? Either way, the distinctness of microcontent and contentful webpages is probably why Twitter has stayed Twitter (more or less) and Blogger has stayed Blogger. And it's why nownownow and microblogs haven't really caught on (apologies to statusbloggers and poemposters).

In any event, the 'now movement' hasn't aged well:


I can't fully fault the technical aspects of the movement for abandoned /now pages. Plenty of personal sites are just people looking for exposure or affiliate money. When they see that linkedin or tiktok is a better way to achieve their goals- *poof*.

It'd be trivial to add a redirect link from chrisritchie.org/now to this page when I click 'publish'. But I'm definitely not playing Helldivers right now (my time) and there's only a slim chance I'll be doing that when you read this. If you want nownownow you have to shoot me a message, instead you're getting recentrecentrecent.

Source.

The Roberts court seems to be reaping what they have sown in overturning Roe and declaring open season on firearms regulations and 'violations' of nondelegation. The US judicial conference recently asked jurisdictions to please not allow activist lawsuits to automatically be assigned to the Matthew Kacsmaryks of the country. I've recently mentioned a few bonkers Fifth Circuit opinions that were stayed, overturned, and/or heavily criticized in nonpartisan editorials.

The Mifepristone thing argued this past Monday wasn't on my watchlist but afterward I read that there were some spicy comments from justices to the effect of, "why are we listening to this?"

Justice Gorsuch

We have before us a handful of individuals who have asserted a conscience objection. Normally, we would allow equitable relief to address them. Recently, I think what Justice Jackson's alluding to, we've had one might call it a rash of universal injunctions or vacaturs. And this case seems like a prime example of turning what could be a small lawsuit into a nationwide legislative assembly on -- on -- on an FDA rule or any other federal government action.

Notably, Gorsuch isn't Jackson, Kagan, or Sotomayor. Roberts pile on shortly thereafter. Erin Hawley, speaking for the petitioner, more or less replied that since an anti-abortion emergency department doctor could be given a patient suffering complications of a mail-delivered Mifepristone abortion there's simply no way to provide legal relief except by banning mail-deliveries of the medication.

Well, I'm pretty sure this suit only addresses the mail delivery of Mifespristone (as I said, this one was on the edge of my radar) so I'm not sure how this would prevent these doctors from ever having to treat a patient that had undergone an abortion. Regardless, most of the justices seemed to settle on the massive disparity between Petitioners' grievance and their demand. Not Alito though, he spent all of his time trying to construct an authoritative medical decision that rebuts that of the FDA.

genesiskiller96

Alito Strikes me as a type of person who after they got to get a young person to unlock their phone, Red faced and embarrassed he goes on a [tirade] about how because they know how to write in cursive that makes them better.

This one will presumably be 6-3, keeping Mifepristone available by mail, with Alito dissenting because he knows more than the FDA, Barrett dissenting because it's the only way to prevent a moral dilemma for ED doctors, and Thomas dissenting because the FDA should have let the Comstock Act dictate their medical approval.

So between the issues mentioned here and fun cases like rearming wife beaters, someone seems to have gotten the idea that SCOTUS is eager to dramatically overturn the status quo and can fast track it through Texas.


Fleet Science Center, GBES at Fall Brewing, some dogsitting, and shoe shopping.

Spoilers if you look too closely:


We've filled out the map of the United States in Ticket to Ride Legacy and have one and a half rounds left. It's been a fun campaign and only really drags in those long sequences where everyone is just pulling cards. I unlocked the platinum achievement where my 3x cross country routes were destroyed by an earthquake event pulled on the caboose's bonus turn.

For our collective mental health day we stopped by a local escape room that was basically a walk-in arcade cabinet that combines Lovers In A Dangerous Spacetime and Barotrauma.

Baldur's Gate: I am the batman

Well I'm not exactly Batman because Batman doesn't kill and I've done very much the opposite. Back in Act II I said:

Me	I'm anticipating a lot of reemergent plot arcs when I get to the city center. It could make for a busy calendar but one full of story/choice payoff. And I do hope that at least some of my 'good' choices come back to bite me in the ass.

In retrospect it wasn't that bold of a prediction, though in my defense I did not realize 70% of the game takes place in Baldur's Gate. But yeah, everything converges in the city and it's mostly about vanquishing my allies' arch nemeses.


Cazador? Killed him. Hag? Re-killed. Raphael? No longer singing showtunes. Shar's lieutenant? You guessed it. Lorroakan? Batman death. Fish people? Wasn't going to kill them but since exploding the Steelwatch Foundry cut off access to the Sealab area I had to get sushi somwehere.

On a lore note, Baldur's Gate (city) seems overrun with oligarchs that have interesting hobbies. On a gameplay note, this makes for neat mini-dungeons (or estates) and boss battles without slogging through wildlands.

Gunfire: we finally beat Gluttony

After quite a few runs that more recently ended with the polar bear final boss, me and J at last got to shoot Gluttony right in his mouth. Our ascension builds were pretty dialed in by that point, so we could basically point and shoot rather than dodge attacks and work together.

Helldivers: afk mostly

Cattle's unending renovation combined with the lack of crossplay crossfriending support means I haven't gotten much HD2 in. But since they recently added mechs and have a drivable technical coming down the pike, I'm happy to keep this one mostly on ice.

Remnant: exploring

Unlike Helldivers, crossfriending does work in Remnant... as long as you are running the Epic client. This is apparently good for J since the in-game text is unreadable on the Deck. We started a new campaign with J's new character and, delightfully, haven't seen any repeated areas.

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