Can dimly remember what he looks like. Apparently he looks like someone's creepy uncle who was always doing sleight of hand tricks to wow the little kids
This will be interesting if allowed to play out. The president* is immune to prosecution, but none of his flunkies are. So he has to do every last thing himself because nobody is gonna risk their neck. I would pay to see that.
This is why I joined a track-a-week music challenge this year! I've been dabbling for 5 years and still have no idea what I'm doing musically (no theory or anything) but I figured cranking out a finished song every week throughout 2024 would force me to get better and it's really working!
I mean, I'm still cranking out garbage, but now it's higher quality garbage and I can make decisions faster, let go of ideas that aren't working without a second thought, and learn from other people taking the challenge.
As far as art goes, I've been drawing live caricatures for 15 years and I'm WAY better than even a few years ago. Definitely stick with it. Be too stubborn to give up. Keep doing the thing. Skill will develop the more you persevere.
"Boosting their numbers" in the single biggest election doesn't make them a viable party. Third party candidates got an average of 5% of the vote in the 2016 presidential election (unless you include Utah to blow the bell curve to a whopping 7%).
Getting that party's candidates established in local governments across the nation so they gain a following, experience, and momentum is what does make them viable. It's not easy, but it's the only way. Zero people care who didn't win the presidential election or why - it's winner take all. No message is received.
Not voting for them only "sends the message" that you are not their constituents, not engaged, and/or comfortable with the status quo. If you are not engaging, you literally have no say.
And all voting is of course conditional. If you help get them in office, you have more clout when you call their office and say "I knocked on doors and volunteered and worked to get you in office so you could convince Congress to stop funding genocide. Now get moving." If they don't, THEN vote them out.
Speaking of which, the president's hands are tied by decades of deals, agreements and other (largely misled) laws passed by Congress to support "our ally" Israel. It's a stupid, massive tangle that can't be easily undone, and Congress is not interested in changing anything because it'll make Jesus cry or something. We need better representatives AND a more progressive president before anything will move.
And finally I do agree with you - coming out and actually saying "hey I don't support genocide" is the bare minimum she can do and it's frustrating that she's not.
I am with you on every one of these points. The image selection process is terrible now, where before it was quick & simple. And in the past couple of updates, sending larger images and gifs was sporadic until now I always get an error. I was happy when they added message reactions, then puzzled when they just stopped at six, half of which are rarely useful.
I've been a paid user for years, but now I'm causally shopping for something else. If they're giving up on their app, so am I.
Seriously. USA is like the generic video game starter character before anyone's had a chance to customise it and level up. At all. And I say that as someone who lives here.
It has been surprisingly un-stressful so far, probably due to the ridiculously supportive community there. The best part is that everyone's submissions go live at the same time every week, so there's a whole new playlist of brand new music to enjoy!
Yes, yes, yes, of course he will, and I think the new outrage is that he is literally only disclosing the stuff he gets caught on, which begs the question, exactly how deep does his corruption run - not to mention the other "justices" (ahemcoughALITOcough)
First of all, excellent username.
Second, I would love a chance to win the Tomb Raider I - III remaster just for the nostalgia.
Third, the cool new thing I've done this year is take part in WeeklyBeats, a year-long challenge to create and post a new music track every week of 2024. So far so good!
Fourth, I don't have a decent meme to share but here (if I can get photos to work) is a photo of my void.
Another vote for the T480. I have a T480s running Mint and it's been lovely. No driver issues and for office/light media creation/consumption it seems to work without a hitch.
A Mary Sue can fail, but those failures don't usually have a massive impact and are easily reversed without the feeling that the MS had to struggle to earn the reversal.
The more flaws a character has, the more they have to work to balance them out. Readers are more likely on the side of a character that has to work and make sacrifices to make it through the difficulties the plot throws at them.
Random Example: Diana Rowland's "My Life as a White Trash Zombie". Protagonist Angel has a criminal record, drug addiction, abusive home life, and generally makes very bad decisions. Because of her life course, she has very few resources (she can't go to the cops, nobody she knows has money or connections, etc) but she can think quickly and has a sort of desperate resourcefulness.
Because everything is working against her, she has to fight for any positive forward movement, and one misstep can be a serious threat - and those happen frequently, undoing any success and forcing her to burn her resources to try a new path. IIRC in one of the books the B-story is her trying just to earn her GED as the main plot around her is utter pandemonium. Just that struggle to graduate high school is a herculean task given the deck stacked against her. Readers aren't thinking "how will she win", they're thinking "well what's going to go wrong this time?"
TL;DR: If every time your protagonist has a setback the readers shout "can't she ever catch a break?" instead of "ah she'll just breeze through this" you should be doing okay.
Treez nuts