Emerald Zeea

My minimal situation to consider travel like that would be:

1) No evidence of unreasonable Canada/US border incidents within the past couple months.

2) No specific signs of upcoming serious US/NATO military conflicts.

3) Not going to a city occupied by CBP/ICE.

Abolishing and prosecuting ICE and purging CBP would be great, but can't be done by just threatening a shutdown or defunding DHS. Need overwhelming Democratic power, which is hard under ideal circumstances and way less likely under Schumer.

Unfortunately, the OBBA gave ICE a huge emergency fund, so they could last quite a while without DHS funding. Best options are probably serious restrictions on ICE and CBP, removal of Miller and Bongino and Noem, outlawing tear gas and pepper spray, banning ICE/CBP firearm carrying in cities, etc.

Sorry, tried to link directly to article that linked to the bill but accidentally linked to the reddit post linking to the article that links to the bill. Just click through a lot.

From the transgender community on Reddit: The Final Anti-Trans Provision Has Been Removed From The ‘Big, Beautiful Bill’ Explore this post and more from the transgender community

It got quietly removed at some point within the past 6-12 hours, so apparently the point of order wasn't needed? Awful bill, will hurt lots of folks, but doesn't single us out now.

This article has a link to the final version of the Senate bill after the vote-a-rama.

www.reddit.com/r/transgende...

Also, Ron Wyden or someone else will bring up a point of order here. Things are definitely being done. It just doesn't get reported on because the news would rather post half-assed vague summaries of today's vote than bother looking into any procedural specifics.

They aren't. They're trying a 60 vote majority to get around the Byrd Rule, which isn't part of the Constitution, and it's legal to do that but also very unlikely to work. GOP are just trying to force a vote because they wrongly think later transphobic pandering will save their seats.

Cannot stress enough that this is a pitiful action by a weak, scared, pathetic group of insecure, wannabe authoritarians, and they should be mocked until the end of time for wanting to bring in the military over some people protesting them at a Home Depot.

I remember. They've had a lot of changeover in leadership since that time, and they might not screw it up this time, but I'm not going to make any bets. Video game companies don't usually understand or properly value tabletop properties (or their consumers).

I think we all figured out he was a racist back in 2010 when he became one of the leading birther conspiracy theorists.

You know, even without the Street Fighter license, it'd be pretty easy to make a new tournament fighting game genre setting with very similar rules. A ton of the SFRPG content was original White Wolf stuff, anyway. (Like basically all of Player's Guide and its elementals, cyborgs, mutants, styles)

The Corporate Speak in the announcement definitely doesn't help with that sort of thing.

Promethean is cool, though!

A more competent administration would have taken it slowly, built power, and given conservative courts as much justification as possible to approve their schemes. Then we'd be in more danger. But fascism isn't associated with competence.

It's basically a race to save as many people as possible and limit the damage he can do before his power collapses completely. And it's depressing and stressful and infuriating. A moral injury.

But the court rulings absolutely do matter, is my point.

Yeah. I think they will hurt a LOT of people before this is said and done. But that's different from the Bluesky doomer thing where Trump just acts like a dictator and rules by decree and the courts are powerless. The courts are weakened, but still quite powerful.

So he's been complying with most of the orders and whining about it, and just testing the limits of his powers by trying to use obscure rules and claims of state department authority to get around courts. It's petty and stupid and harmful, but it doesn't mean he can just ignore any court order.

The more court orders go against him, the less legitimate his regime. Combine that with low approval ratings and governors and others start feeling way more comfortable defying him in the confidence that he simply won't be able to get the military to do anything about it.

He's had to comply with the overwhelming majority of court orders. He can get away with violating the human rights of immigrants because this nation is sociopathic at its heart, but he has a limited amount of credit to spend and he's already running lower on legal resources and SCOTUS patience.

I am extremely upset about their violation of these people's human rights and sometimes wake up from sleep stressing over it (sounds melodramatic but I have PTSD and stuff that makes me sympathetic.)

But Trump would be doing this to hundreds of times as many people if he could just ignore the court

They're trying to argue that technically, they didn't violate the order. They definitely are, but federal court normally moves at a glacial pace and stalling for a few months while nitpicking isn't unprecedented.

The plane from Qatar is unethical, but not a violation of any court order.

You'd be great at it, too, definitely. It'd be different from Rose, but also great stuff.

Rose is basically the platonic ideal of the WoD tabletop developer, yeah. Give her complete authority and automatic approval for projects and she'd deliver the best WoD ever made.

It seems like they mostly pushed away from that mistake, so maybe they've learned better by now. It would definitely be great to have a win in the "gaming corporation" department.

I've heard Wizards of the Coast's recent scandals (OGL, failed VTT) blamed on video game execs not understanding the hobby or the industry.

Paradox tried to get someone they thought understood, but they got a loud-talking self-promoting creep because they didn't know enough to spot his flaws.

Optimistic me is hoping for a new era based on the best parts of the Onyx Path days without the problems. Pessimistic me is dreading an all-star team of broken stair edgelords. I imagine the result will be in the middle somewhere.

They should probably also prioritize getting someone who won't alienate the property's core consumer base of geeky queer-friendly anti-racist goths who care about consent.

Swedish Dracula's edgelordery has permanently stained Vampire 5e and I think they need to start a new edition.

He's burned up massive amounts of legal resources, he's losing support from his own base and politicians, he's alienated his own Supreme Court, and his admin couldn't even find anyone willing to risk perjury charges by calling Abrego Garcia an MS13 leader in court. That's not an invincible strongman

In the United States, following the news daily, with the benefit of actually having gotten my grad degree by specializing in the history of white backlash politics in the U.S. and the rise and fall of Nazism in Europe.

So far, he's getting away with even less shit than Dubya did.

Yeah. I'm not automatically against this or anything. I just really, really wish they'd affirm that they aren't going to mess up things for everyone else. But there _is_ a chance this turns out really well.