New pressure to treat ISPs as utilities

 I've wanted ISPs to be regulated as utilities for a while now.  Of course, that's just been the opinion of myself and a scattering of private individuals, while the view of "let private competition take care of things" has been the stated position, backed up by significant paid lobbying, of the ISPs that would be the target of that regulation.  Unsurprisingly, the ISPs have had their way, resulting in a lack of competition and elevated prices for consumers.

While this won't be enough on its own to change the state of things, in my opinion, I have to take heart from the union representing technical workers for some major ISPs pushing legislation to get ISPs regulated as utilities.  After all, it's one thing for random yahoos like me to say regulate ISPs, it's quite another for the very tech workers for those ISPs to collectively say it's a good thing.

Still gimpy, but gaming a bit.

 Wouldn't do to let a month go by without posting something, hey?  So, quick catch-up, I'm still in a cast, but a less restrictive one, including a much-more-free thumb.  Can't properly hold a controller for any first-person or super-active games, but there are options now at least.

Before, in the old cast, I was pretty much stuck with what I could dredge up from my Steam backlog that I could play with a trackpad and, maybe, the occasional key press.  The best of that lot was Torment: Tides of Numanera, which I finally played through.  I enjoyed it well enough for what it is, but then I do like unique stories in odd settings.

Now, in my latest cast, I may not be able to hold a controller properly, but I can still twiddle the left-hand controls a bit.  That's just enough to let me play some Octopath Traveler, courtesy of XBox Game Pass.  It's early yet, but I'm really enjoying it so far, particularly the varied origin stories and motivations of the characters I've picked up so far (for the record, that's the Scholar, Merchant, Warrior, and, erm, "Dancer").  Fun stories, good presentation, and a turn-based combat system that makes you think a bit, what's not to like?

Involuntary gaming stop

 So, the good news, I made my way to Diamond City faster than ever before in my most recent Fallout 4 run.  Amazing how much faster you can get things done if you don't let yourself get bogged down by the settlement questline they added in this game.

The bad news... I slipped and fell a couple of days back, breaking my left wrist.  No holding a controller for me for weeks to come.  I'm sure I'll fill the gap with some PC gaming of some sort, something mouse-centric, but I'd rather not speculate on what that might end up being just now.  If it turns out to be noteworthy, I'll put up a post.  Otherwise, well, I'll post again when I have two functioning hands again.

Enough of Elex, next!

 Well, as I hoped, Elex tempted me with a fun world idea, in the form of a previously-highly-technically-advanced world doing the whole post-apocalyptic thing due to a comet impact that, incidentally, spread the substance Elex all over, which different factions found different uses for.  But then, as I feared, the execution of the game chased me off.  Combat wasn't the issue so much this time (I'd put in in the OK category, which is better than I expected), but, between storytelling issues and camera oddities, I couldn't see myself loading the game back up again.  The worst of it was likely the bit near the very beginning where the game commits a cardinal sin for any role-playing game, not just removing agency from the player but revising after the fact to meet the narrative they want to tell (I came out of a ruin, saw a man sitting in the path ahead with their back turned to me, so I casually walked up to him, only to have the game treat it like I had tried to sneak up and club the guy from behind instead).  So, yeah, immersion broken, plus general jank on top, all says I'm done with that game.

Next up on the list would be Elite:Dangerous, but, having just put down No Man's Sky, I don't need another solo-flying-through-the-galaxy sort of experience with more complex controls just now... maybe if multiplayer was available to me at the moment, but it's not, so we'll pass for now.  That says the next game is... Fallout 4.  I've generally enjoyed that game, but always gotten bogged down before I could finish the main story line.  So, one more go, before I retire it for good.

Enough political angst for now, back to the games backlog

 Just saw the news, only 7 of 50 Republicans in the senate could summon the spine necessary to try and convict the previous President for his seditious behavior.  Better than expected, but 84% "okay with sedition if it's our guy doing it" is still too high for my tastes.  So, a pox on their house, no sense on dwelling on it further at the moment.

So, right, before all this, I was mostly occupied with XBox Game Pass (mostly for Destiny 2 content), and I've already posted about what caught my eye as interesting or innovative during that time (not much).  With a new season of Destiny 2 starting, I tried it out and found it wanting, and couldn't justify continuing my Game Pass subscription at the moment either, so that brings us back to gnawing on the backlog.

All the way back in September, I gave up on Divinity: Original Sin to spend some time in No Man's Sky... and I'm happy to report that I just found a good stopping point there, having finished one of the major quest lines.  I enjoyed the time I spent there well enough, and I've certainly gotten my money's worth from that game... but, while there's always more to see and do, without a story to follow or a group of friends there to drive my continued play, it's time to move on.

So, I briefly fired up Dragon Age: Inquisition (that being the next game alphabetically in my XBox One backlog).  I'm guessing that must have been a very early addition to the XBox One library, based on the character models and animations I saw (and was unimpressed by, for a AAA game).  How much the visual issues and combat issues have to do with inheritance from Dragon Age 2, I don't know, but it kind of seemed like they took a lot from Dragon Age 2 (including characters) and decided that the big problem with the prior game was the lack of travel scope and a worldwide threat of some kind.  I quickly decided that this wasn't anything I was interested in pursuing, and moved on.

Now... well, the next game in my Xbox One backlog is an odd little game called Elex, from a company I recognize as having both odd little ideas to base their game worlds around (which I like) and odd/janky combat mechanics (which I don't).  Historically, that's usually enough to tempt me to get the game, while leaving me disappointed after trying to play it.  Let's see how things turn out this time.

Grand Old Party of Sedition

 First, as a side note, I really wanted to post this a few days back when the impeachment finally went through.  Unfortunately, we had a bit of a wind storm run through my area, and I just got power back at my place last night, so... better late than never, I guess.

That sentiment kind of encapsulates the sum total of my positive feelings about the past week in Washington D.C.  If everyone there was on the same page about the seriousness of a mob attacking the Capitol while the House and Senate were there performing their duties as required by law and the Constitution, you might have seen that four-page article of impeachment created and voted on the day after the event, passed over to the Senate on Friday, a trial scheduled for Monday, and President Trump removed from office that evening.  But that's not what happened, is it?  Granted, the legislative branch isn't noted for its speed, and the Speaker of the House was a bit distracted early on with contacting military leaders to make sure no random nuclear launches or war-starting would happen while they worked things out, but still.  Basically, the House waited through the weekend, hoping Vice-President Pence would trigger the 25th amendment of his own accord (which everyone should have gotten a pretty big Not Happening signal when cabinet members that would have been involved in that process started resigning the night of the event), then wasted time putting together an advisory vote calling on Pence to do what we would have done earlier if he was so inclined, then finally managed to get the impeachment article voted on a week after the insurrection, in part because some Republican members were doing what they could to stall the article coming up for a vote.  Not that it would have mattered a lot if they did manage to get that step done earlier, because the Republican Majority Leader of the Senate had put the Senate in recess, so, short of no Republicans objecting, the Senate couldn't come back to deal with the results of the impeachment vote in the House until the 19th of January at the earliest.

Now, all of that might be considered "normal" maneuvering under ordinary conditions, but we're talking about a direct assault on the Constitution here, something everyone at that level of government should be taking very seriously.  Yet, the results of the vote on the impeachment article give the lie to that idea.  Exactly 10 Republicans found it within themselves to both recognize the gravity of the situation and uphold their oaths, while nearly 200 voted against impeachment (or, just over 200 if you include the "didn't even vote" group of Republicans).  The reasons for those Republicans voting against impeachment are sure to be varied, but broadly would fall into three categories.  Either they literally fear what their constituents would do to them if they voted to impeach (since I gather some of those that did vote to impeach went so far as to acquire body armor in response to death threats); or they acknowledge that President Trump did something bad, but not so bad that he needs removed from office (like the ones calling instead for censure, the only consequence of which is shame, which it's safe to say at this point that President Trump doesn't feel); or they have no problem with what President Trump attempted, and possibly even actively supported that attempt.  None of those answers suffice for anybody that's supposed to be guiding and protecting this country, as far as I'm concerned.

So, at the end of the day, the Republican party has been marked with an indelible stain.  They may not all be seditionists, but, based on their votes in the House, they look to be about 95% OK with sedition.  Maybe there will be some sort of grand "house cleaning" in the weeks to come that will change my mind, but, barring that... well, I don't care what anyone personally believes, as long as they're working from a basis of facts and reality.  But, if you proclaim yourself to be a Republican at this point, I can only assume you're rooting for the overthrow of the government, and I want nothing to do with that.

If you've been paying attention, yesterday shouldn't have been a surprise

 So, yeah, for anybody stumbling across this post in months or years to come, yesterday is when a mob, gathered and incited by President Trump and his associates, descended on the Capitol, forced their way in, and attempted to stop the count of votes that would result in Joe Biden becoming the new President in a couple of weeks.  While there are plenty of surrounding issues to be picked over (for example, the lack of police presence that allowed this to take place, and the disparate treatment of the protesters in this group by police compared to other protests across the nation), it's essential that we don't lose sight of that central fact.

No more whataboutisms, no more "both sides are bad".  We have a small group, led by our current President, that has brainwashed a portion of our populace to the point where nothing, not the will of the people as reflected in nationwide voting, not the rule of law as handed down by the judges who reviewed the many attempts to discredit or invalidate that vote and found them wanting, not even basic facts placed in front of them for their own review, nothing but the words of the man at the top of the heap seems to matter.  Yesterday, President Trump and crew unleashed that mob on his co-equal branch of government because he wasn't getting his way.  Argue if you want over whether what the mob did yesterday counts as sedition, but what President Trump and his cronies did sure looks to meet the dictionary definition of it.

On the plus side, this event seems to have made some people rethink their priorities a bit.  There have been some lawmakers who were happy to ride on the President's coat-tails up to now that seem to have decided that maybe the destination isn't worth the ride, and there have been some White House staffers who have decided to resign.  To my mind, they're still tainted goods, and I honestly can't think of anything they would be able to do to regain my trust in them individually or any party they belong to, but at least they finally saw the end-game and, given the choice, stayed on the side of the Constitution.

President Trump and his closest remaining allies, on the other hand, have demonstrated beyond the shadow of a doubt that they are enemies of the Constitution.  Mind you, I'm not advocating violence against them or anything like that, but anybody who's taken an oath to support, uphold, and defend the Constitution against all enemies, foreign or domestic, should hold that oath in the front of their mind for any further dealings with those individuals.

What does need to happen, however, is the removal, by Constitutional means, of President Trump in particular from office, ASAP.  Sure, it's less than two weeks until he's supposed to be gone anyways, but two weeks is plenty of time for mischief on a variety of scales, from pardons for the insurrectionist mob to nuclear launches, if what he's been feeding his faithful is a true reflection of his state of mind.  Whether it's the rumored discussions of implementing the 25th amendment from the executive branch or another go at impeachment by the legislative branch, I can honestly say there is no more pressing issue that needs attended to by those bodies, and I'm including the ongoing pandemic in that list.  Here's hoping I can come back to update this post with the good news shortly.