Carlson: So now we’re arming the Taliban and marooning our own citizens in Afghanistan. Who could possibly have seen that coming. Glenn Greenwald is one of the few journalists who did see it coming. He writes for Substack where all … Continue reading →

Glenn Greenwald: "So you have huge number of journalists who believe that, they have the right to lie and even when they get caught, they don't care because they know their audience won't hold it against them." Continue reading →

TRUMP TOLD THE AMERICAN PEOPLE THERE ARE THE SECURITY STATE AGENTS WHO THINK THAT THEY RUN THE GOVERNMENT AND HE STOOD UP TO THEM AND CHALLENGED THEIR ORTHODOXIES AND PIETIES AND SHOWED AMERICANS, ESPECIALLY PEOPLE IN THE REPUBLICAN PARTY ON THE RIGHT, THAT THESE INSTITUTIONS ARE NOT NOBLE OR BENEVOLENT BUT ARE HIGHLY PERNICIOUS. THEY WANT TO INTERFERE IN OUR DOMESTIC POLITICS AND THEY OUGHT TO BE DEEPLY DISTRUSTED. Continue reading →

The home appliance market has been a difficult place to compete during several periods over the last thirty years. It is tough again today. Sales of large appliances have fallen steadily since 2007. Competition is intensifying with the pressure of the South Korean competitors, LG Electronics and Samsung Electronics, on Whirlpool Corp and Electrolux AB. Whirlpool and Electrolux are suffering from rising costs for steel, copper, plastics and other raw materials. To offset these cost increases, the two companies plan price increases of 8% to 10% in the spring.

The problem: the Koreans aren’t playing ball. The two South Korean firms are pricing aggressively and have been doing so since Thanksgiving 2010.

The South Koreans are formidable competitors. At one time, LG was known as Lucky Goldstar, a seller of low-end, cheaply made, products. Today, it has a much better brand name and sells quality products. Samsung does as well. It is a leader in the large screen TV market. The products that the South Korean companies are pricing aggressively are not the low-end products. They are the mainstream, heart-of-the-market, products.

The domestic U.S. market is slow growing. So is the market in the rest of the world. The North American market is growing 2% to 3% a year. Europe is growing 2% to 4%, while Latin American and Asia grow in the 5% to 10% range. Large appliance companies will have no trouble supplying all the capacity the market needs at these demand growth rates. The industry is likely to have excess capacity for the foreseeable future.

If the two Western competitors institute their price increases without the two South Korean companies in a lock-step march, they will be in a Leader’s Trap. A Leader’s Trap occurs when one or more of the leading companies in an industry hold its prices high in the mistaken belief that customers will stay loyal despite the lower prices of competition. Leader’s Traps rarely end well. Either the Western competitors will lose market share or they will ultimately rescind their price premiums.

These four giant large appliance competitors are peers of one another. The only way to stop the Koreans from discounting against the Western competitors is to have a cost structure that scares them out of the discounts. The discounting competitors have to see that their discounts will only cost them margins because the other peer competitors in the market will match their low prices since they have equally low cost structures.

REVIEW – Staying comfortable outdoors has certainly evolved in the last dozen years. Gone are the days of having to start a fire to stay warm. (Fires are still wonderfully inviting and fun, just not efficient.) Ceramic heaters and radiant heaters have been used for a long time, but they are usually large and do […]

I had a board game first this summer: I read an entire series of novels in preparation for playing a board game. When Jamey Stegmaier announced he was designing a new game with Alex Schmidt based on the award winning Red Rising  series by Pierce Brown, his excitement was so palpable that I wanted to understand the draw of the saga held for him. I checked my local library and the first book was already reserved, with a long waiting list in line before me. So I took the plunge and purchased the whole series from Amazon, hoping it would captivate me as it seemed to have done for Jamey.

Start with a narrative universe politically ordered by a tightly controlled color coded caste system;  pull in the concept of a boarding school with quirky teachers (like Hogwarts from Harry Potter) but introduce some structural changes to the school so that only the most socioeconomic elite in the caste system are permitted to attend; have the students compete in fight to the death brutal competitions (evocative of The Hunger Games but more violent and rape-y); explore the dynamic of class struggles and the penchant for revolution the lower castes foment; and you’ve got a good understanding of the Red Rising series that details the life and times of our protagonist, Darrow O’Lykos. To be honest, it’s an intense and difficult read due to the graphic nature of the violence (definitely not a story I want to see acted out on the big screen). But it’s well written literature and it makes you think.

Once I finished the book series, I was emotionally charged and ready to play Red Rising. I unboxed my review copy, invited over a few friends, and sat down for my first game. Jacqui Davis, Miles Bensky, and Justin Wong designed the artwork for the game and I’d describe it overall as futuristic, with a cartoonish bent when it comes to the character cards.

Before we get into the mechanics of the game, the components for Red Rising  Collector’s Edition warrant a discussion. I loved the weight of the metal influence cubes and fleet tokens handed out to each player. Likewise, the start player token, sovereign token, central board, and house cards are well constructed. And I appreciated the gold foil on the character cards. However, our first group of players gathered around our game table (and subsequent groups I played with) identified nuisance problems with some of the components. Each player’s set of metal influence cubes is  a different color and the yellow and gold sets are difficult to distinguish from across the table. The card holders included exclusively in the Collector’s edition are a disaster.

Every single person I played with managed to accidentally knock over their holder several times during a game, spilling out their hand for all to see repeatedly. Finally, the character cards reveal some questionable graphic design and font choices. For example, it was very difficult for all of us in the middle age cohort to read “obsidian” printed on the black cards.  None of these issues are significant enough to downvote the game, but I hope to see them corrected in future print runs.    

Onto the mechanics… Red Rising  is a mid-weight board game with a primary focus on cards and hand management. At the start of the game, each player is dealt 5 character cards and a house card (which grants a special ability). One of the primary goals is to build a hand of highly valued character cards (tabulated at the end of the game using the interaction formulas printed on the bottom of each card). To build this hand, players will use most of their turns to discard a character card from their hand to the board (called deploying) and then pick up a character card from a different column of the board. 

To spice things up, each card has a deploy ability that is triggered when the card is deployed (for example, a card might let you banish another card, move a card from one column to another on the board, immediately choose another card on the board to redeploy, etc). And each time you pick up a character card, you get a bonus immediately that edges you closer to victory along the path of one of the other strategic goals established in the game – either the receipt of helium tokens (worth 3 VPs each), forward movement along the fleet track (increasing VPs for each step forward), the possession of the sovereign token (10VPs if held at end of game), or influence cube placement on the influence area of the board (worth 4/2/1 VPs each, depending on your player’s rank in the influence cube area population). Instead of discarding+picking up on your turn,  there’s also an option, called scouting, to simply draw from the deck, place the drawn card on a column on the board, and then gain the bonus for that column. This option might be used when you are completely satisfied with your hand and can’t bear to part with any of it, or when you’re trying to pad the columns with cards of certain colors (some cards give you end game points per card of X color on the board) and crossing your fingers you can draw them.  It should be used sparingly since you miss out on the deploy ability when scouting.

I didn’t encounter a lot of analysis paralysis when playing this game, and it plays in under an hour (maybe 90 minutes for your very first time at higher player counts).  There’s plenty of replayability in the box given the large assortment of cards, but I do wonder if they’re going to eventually release an expansion for Red Rising  to keep things fresh for experienced players with different character card abilities or new point tallying interaction rules.

Jamey and Alex have hit on an accessible and winning combination by supporting a large spectrum of player counts (1-6), providing mid-weight complexity, keeping the gameplay tight enough to finish in under an hour, and selling it for under $60 at launch. And perhaps most importantly for players who worship theme and backstory, playing the game feels incredibly personal after you’ve read the books. I felt connected to the characters as they were revealed from the deck because of my experience reading the series. I was delighted to have the Sevro card in my hand, giddy to be given the House of Mars player role, and I flushed with anger when the Jackal card appeared on the board. I spent a lot of the game explaining the highlights of each character to my friends as new cards were laid down. Pretty sure I had to fight back tears when Eo’s card came up. In one of our games, my friend Malinda played Apollo and probably didn’t understand why I worked so tirelessly to thwart her efforts. Red Rising  is a solid OUI! OUI! OUI! from me for those who have read the series (and a OUI! OUI! for those who haven’t). Get the Red Rising  book series and read it and then get the game and play it. In that order. And consider pairing  the series with the game as a generous present for someone you love who loves board games and great dystopian novels.

-------------------------------------------------

Publisher: Stonemaier Games
Players: 1-6
Actual Playing Time (vs the guideline on the box): About 45 minutes per game
Game type: hand management

Rating:

Jenni’s rating scale:
OUI: I would play this game again; this game is ok. I probably would not buy this game myself but I would play it with those who own it and if someone gave it to me I would keep it.
OUI OUI: I would play this game again; this game is good. I would buy this game.
OUI OUI OUI: I LOVE THIS GAME. I MUST HAVE THIS GAME.
NON: I would not play this game again. I would return this game or give it away if it was given to me.

1. Germany to hold snap election in February after government's coalition collapse  ABC News
2. The briefcase, the Porsche and the collapse of the German government – podcast  The Guardian
3. Germany set for snap election following collapse of Olaf Scholz’s coalition  The Conversation
4. President calls German early election plan 'realistic'  DW (English)

1. Legitimacy of two Victorian local government elections in question after duplicate votes detected  ABC News
2. Victorian council election results 2024 LIVE updates: Suspected postal vote tampering in council elections  Sydney Morning Herald
3. VEC investigates potential vote tampering in two Melbourne councils  The Age

The European Space Agency’s Hera spacecraft launched on Oct. 7, 2024, from Cape Canaveral, Florida. It will travel to the Didymos-Dimorphos asteroid system to study the aftermath of the first-ever field test of an asteroid deflection technique.

An overview of what U.S. space policy might look like under a Trump or a Harris administration.

Joey Logano sat down with FOX Sports to discuss the wild pace-car wreck, the playoff format and the feeling of winning the title at Phoenix.

With summer in full swing, the National Fire Protection Association (NFPA) and Electrical Safety Foundation International (ESFI) are joining forces to remind people about the potential electrical hazards in swimming pools, hot tubs and spas, on board boats and in the waters surrounding boats, marinas and launch ramps.

"I’m always on the lookout for songs that include a gear-change moment in them: so useful for figuring out those climactic moments in a short story where a turn happens."

"For this playlist, I’ve strung together some favorite songs that reflect the subject matter and themes of the stories and that serve as fuel for my creative process."

Dogecoin shot higher on Tuesday night, extending its postelection surge after President-elect Donald Trump formally announced the creation of the Department of Government Efficiency, which he referred to as "DOGE" in his statement. Tesla CEO Elon Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy, former Republican…

Musk and ex-presidential candidate Vivek Ramaswamy to head up Department of Government Efficiency (Doge) Elon Musk and former Republican presidential candidate Vivek Ramaswamy will lead the newly created Department of Government Efficiency, Donald Trump said on Tuesday. Despite the name, the…

The Foreign Ministry summoned the ambassador of Russia, but also the chargé d'affaires of Georgia, for comments by country's prime minister it said called into question the integrity of Moldova's polls.

Fake social media accounts are being used in Romania's ongoing presidential and parliamentary election campaigns to artificially boost the popularity of certain candidates and promote content targeting their opponents, according to an analysis by the Romanian Intelligence Service (SRI). The SRI…

Asia-Pacific stock markets were trading mostly lower Wednesday, tracking losses on Wall Street as the U.S. post election rally stalled overnight. Asian traders assessed corporate goods data out of Japan, which showed year-on-year producer price growth, or wholesale inflation, in October reached…

The reelection of Donald Trump as president last week brought a wave of jubilation to X (formerly Twitter). The influencers and megadonors who supported the Republican nominee delighted in the defeat of his opponent, Vice President Kamala Harris, while giddily speculating about the extremist…

This report is from today's CNBC Daily Open, our international markets newsletter. CNBC Daily Open brings investors up to speed on everything they need to know, no matter where they are. Like what you see? You can subscribe here. U.S. and Asia markets slip U.S. markets retreated on Wednesday after…

The EU is considering replacing Russian liquified natural gas imports with US shipments — a move that could hit President Vladimir Putin's war chest. Contributor/ Getty Images Trump's presidency may pressure Russia's oil and gas industry. The EU is thinking about replacing Russian LNG with US…

Germany’s election campaign kicks into high gear on Wednesday, when Chancellor Olaf Scholz makes his case in a public address for another term, despite polls showing voters are overwhelmingly looking for a change. Most Read from Bloomberg Scholz’s Social Democrats will tout the chancellor’s…

You must watch this warning from a soldier who has everything on the line. ... READ MORE

Unless it’s absolutely necessary, do not accept a provisional ballot. Watch this clip from our recent Save Your Vote broadcast to find out why — and what to do if someone tries to shunt you to a provisional "placebo" ballot.... READ MORE

Edit: this is actually a targeted promotion.

Sony started a new promotion today.

Buy and activate a ps5 console before October 20th and get a free digital download from the following games:

○ Marvel’s Spider-Man: Miles Morales

○ Marvel’s Spider-Man: Remastered

○ God of War Ragnarök

○ Horizon Forbidden West

○ Ghost of Tsushima Director’s Cut

○ Ratchet & Clank: Rift Apart

○ Demon’s Souls

○ The Last of Us Part I

○ Sackboy: A Big Adventure

○ Returnal

○ Uncharted: Legacy of Thieves Collection

○ Death Stranding: Director’s Cut

Full promotion:
https://www.playstation.com/en-us/legal/upgrader-program/

Uncanny Valley-$2.59

Batman: Arkham Collection-$5.99

Ends 11/2/2023

$50 off
https://cag.vg/X2Et

Half off select accessories via verizon up. Elite 2 controller 89.99

https://www.verizon.com/featured/verizon-up/?cjdata=MXxOfDB8WXww&URL=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.verizon.com%2Ffeatured%2Fverizon-up%2F&CMP=afc_h_p_cj_oth_fios_2022_04&

$50 Numskull SEGA Shenmue Ryo Hazuki Figure 10" 28cm Collectible Replica Statue Amazon

https://www.amazon.com/dp/B09YD53SJR

1) Are the Democrats too Right or Too Left?

2) The Democrats Have A Media Problem

3) Being a Democrat should be a Membership With Benefits

The first is a debate, the second is inarguable even if the prescriptions differ, the third is something which is also a good idea but no one ever  follows through with it.

There actually was a lot of money pumped into a media effort recently, and I don't like to dump on it because I suppose any effort should be encouraged, but that most of you have never heard of it tells the story.

Self-reflection may seem simple, but it holds the power to transform your life in surprising ways. It’s about taking the time to pause, look inward, and really understand your thoughts, emotions, and behaviors. But why should anyone care? Well, because understanding yourself is the first step to improving anything about your life. Whether it’s better ... Read more

The post The Power of Self-Reflection: Transform Your Life from Within appeared first on LifeHack.

Report 68 published by the Social Care Institute for Excellence (SCIE) in November 2014. This report will help readers to understand the Learning Together methodology.

Report 69 published by the Social Care Institute for Excellence (SCIE) in November 2014. This research, commissioned by the Department of Health (DH), set out to identify what could be learned about current policy and practice in self-neglect, experienced as a highly challenging aspect of contemporary adult social care.

New on Latin Leche, a Say Uncle site: You are horny all day at your job and you just can’t wait to get home and fuck your main squeeze… and fuck they just want to argue, talk about blue balls! So, you head to the gym and after an intense session you enter the sauna….... View Article

The post Say Uncle | Latin Leche: Rodrigo El Santo and Alexander Rajesh appeared first on QueerClick.

Rachel Maddow reminds Americans how Trump told his followers, "You don’t need to vote. I have so many votes." The Republican candidate said multiple times that he had the votes he needed to become president, implicating something other than votes would give him power.

Votes are still being counted in many states, almost one week after the election. Republicans are close to getting control of the U.S. House but Newsweek reports many races are too close to call. I'm not ready to put on a foil hat but isn't it worth looking into some of the odd things surrounding the 2024 election?

I'm not saying the election was "rigged" or unfair. All I am suggesting is that there are strange things about the 2024 election that merit a second look. Since democracy of the free world is at stake, it's worth the trouble.

Trump Doesn't Need Votes and Secret With Moses Mike

As Maddow noted, Trump telling voters he doesn't need their vote is a red flag. The GOP candidate said it multiple times. Trump also made several comments about the "secret" he and Speaker Mike Moses Johnson had about the election.

read more

Bluesky, the social media platform whose interface most resembles Twitter, has picked up more than 700,000 new users since the election, as users seek to escape misinformation and offensive posts on X. Via The Guardian:

The influx, largely from North America and the UK, has helped Bluesky reach 14.5 million users worldwide, up from 9 million in September, the company said.

Social media researcher Axel Bruns said the platform offered an alternative to X, formerly Twitter, including a more effective system for blocking or suspending problematic accounts and policing harmful behaviour.

“It’s become a refuge for people who want to have the kind of social media experience that Twitter used to provide, but without all the far-right activism, the misinformation, the hate speech, the bots and everything else,” he said.

It's not a natural fit for bloggers, because you can far too easily get kicked off for saying mean or controversial things and hurting people's feelings. So I'll straddle both.

Photo by Elliott Stallion Last week, Georgia blocked Trump-backed election rules that had been recently passed by the State Election Board. Of the seven rules implemented, three gained immense pushback, which included one that required ballots to be counted by hand after polls close and two that dealt with the certification of election results.  Fulton County […]

The post Georgia Judge Blocks Trump’s Election Rules appeared first on Feminist Majority Foundation.

By Matt Solomon Published: November 10th, 2024

Don’t you hate it when the candidate “on your side” acts as if he’s trying to throw the fight? I voted for Donald Trump and urged others to do the same in 2016 and 2020, and as soon as early voting opens in my state will vote for him again in 2024. Not because he’s […]

It is possible, even likely, that we will not have a projected winner of the presidential race on Nov. 5 – Election Day. And that doesn't mean there's something nefarious going on with the vote-counting.

The post Election Night Expectations appeared first on FactCheck.org.

A misspelling of former President Donald Trump's name occurred on an optional ballot review screen in Virginia, prompting an unfounded claim on social media of "election fraud." The error was a typo that appeared only on the ballot review screen, not on actual ballots, and would not affect any votes, election officials said.

The post Typo in Trump’s Name on Ballot Review Screen Is Not ‘Election Fraud’ appeared first on FactCheck.org.

Social media users have spread a quote attributed to Democratic Rep. Jamie Raskin, claiming he said "we won’t be certifying the election" if former President Donald Trump wins. Raskin responded, saying the quote is "100% fabricated" and that "America is having a free and fair election and Congress will certify the winner." The origin of the posts appears to be a misleading account of Raskin's comments in February.

The post Raskin Didn’t Say He ‘Won’t Be Certifying the Election’ appeared first on FactCheck.org.

Social media users alleged bias against former President Donald Trump when a Google search on Election Day for “where to vote” returned an interactive map to find a person’s polling station when including the word “Harris” but not “Trump.” The reason is because “Harris” is a county in Texas, whereas “Trump” is not a location.

The post Google’s ‘Where to Vote’ Search Result Reflects Quirk of Candidate Surname, Not Bias appeared first on FactCheck.org.

Some social media posts falsely claimed that CBS News reported there was "cheating" in the 2024 presidential election that benefitted President-elect Donald Trump. We found no evidence of such a report, and a CBS News spokesperson said the outlet "did not report or say there was cheating in the election."

The post Posts Falsely Claim CBS News Reported ‘Cheating’ in Election appeared first on FactCheck.org.