Castle Magus

I really loathe how Walmart does "deliveries" these days.

2026-04-22T20:08:52Z

Utterly despise it. I made an order with eight items in it yesterday, and today they sent a driver all the way out here to where I live in the relative boonies[1] just to deliver one of those eight items. The rest of the order indicates that it "arrives today by 10pm." I'm (half-)facetiously expecting each item to be its own separate delivery now. I would have picked the "save gas/fewer deliveries" option or whatever it is, had that been presented to me, but it was all showing as one single delivery, so I didn't even get that to select. And yet, here we are, with someone coming all the way here just to put 1/8th of my order on our porch.

As far as I'm concerned, they really can/should wait until the entire order is ready before dispatching a delivery driver, and especially not just deliver a single thing (unless it's the last thing left to be delivered that might have been somehow missing from a prior delivery, which was not the case here).

They used to allow a "shipping" option, in addition to the "pickup" and "delivery" options, in which case, things would just be sent by FedEx or UPS or whatever, and it would usually be delivered in one or two packages tops. However, I did not see the "shipping" option when I made my most recent order at all, which was annoying because I'd have picked it had it been there.

(EDIT - 4:15pm)

Just received a text saying that the remaining seven items I ordered are estimated to be delivered by "5:06pm" today. Also, the delivery driver, according to the fancy-pants active-time map associated with my order on the Walmart website, apparently is "3 stops away." However they are also approaching from a southwesterly direction, which is extremely odd considering that "my" Walmart is northeast from here. Like, seriously, the delivery driver is currently about twice as far away from here to the southwest than "my" Walmart is from here to the northeast. So, possibly, they're delivering from a Walmart that is even farther away than the one I had selected as "my" Walmart, or else they delivered first to people who live even farther away from "my" Walmart than I do. (There are definitely other Walmart stores closer to where that delivery driver is at the moment than "my" Walmart is, though... but not closer to here). Go figure.

(/EDIT)

(EDIT 2 - 5:25pm)

And then, on top of all that, the stupid motherfucker delivered it to the wrong goddamn house, and I had to walk over to the next door neighbors' house and get my shit before one of their several dogs tore it up or pissed on it or whatever. At least the first driver managed to deliver to the correct house.

(/EDIT 2)

[1] - The closest Walmart to where I live, i.e. the one I have selected as "my" store, is around 12 (driving) miles away.

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Nerf Now - "Superior Tastes"

2026-04-19T05:53:40Z

Link to comic

Link to comic

Yeah, Demo-tan/Morgan (the one on the far right in panel two) has always been the character in this comic that I identified with the most (usually). Though I agree with Engie-tan/Angie (the redhead closest to the reputation management drone in panel 2) as well, in that I simply wouldn't be good at games like that (though that's not why I avoid them like the plague).

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"It Was Always The Yellow Hat Man's Fault | Castle Super Beast 368"

2026-04-18T20:16:54Z

Here's a video in which two dads criticize four different pieces of media meant for small children.

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"44% of games industry professionals have considered leaving the industry"

2026-04-17T21:12:26Z

Full headline, yadda Dreamwidth subject field deficiencies blah: "44% of games industry professionals have considered leaving the industry as a result of redundancies"

The modern video game industry is actively, willfully shitting itself to death. Upper management makes asinine, ridiculous, unsustainable, greedy, borderline evil decisions, the inevitable, inexorable, ineluctable failure of which causes them to make the definitely evil decision to treat employees like disposable chaff to prevent the upper management from losing (more) money. And now, more and more such employees and future potential employees just say "well fuck you, then" and look elsewhere for work, leaving behind only the desperate, unqualified dregs who "just want to make video games and don't care how or under what abysmal, nebulous conditions." And, thus, the cycle continues to spiral down the toilet, through the sewer pipe, and straight into the ravenous mouths of oblivious (or militantly disingenuous) consumers, who continue to buy and eat the fetid fecal matter, no matter how putrid it may be, which somehow continues to provide undeserved life support to the continuously death-shitting beast that should've already been worm food decades ago.

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"Stop Killing Games has its day in European Parliament and it seems to go very well"

2026-04-17T20:05:49Z

Full headline, for the usual reasons: "'A real concern for millions and probably hundreds of millions of European citizens' - Stop Killing Games has its day in European Parliament and it seems to go very well"

(The guy down in the comments lamenting about the inevitable fate of Elite Dangerous demonstrates why I never touched Elite Dangerous with a ten-foot pool from the very outset. Same for any other game like it.)

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"Visiting a REAL 90s Pizza Hut (kinda)"

2026-04-17T09:40:32Z

We took a trip out to Tunkhannock, Pennsylvania to check out one of the last remaining Pizza Hut Classic locations… and it honestly felt like stepping back into the 90s. (This was actually filmed a while ago, back in September of 2025, when we filmed at Reaper's Revenge haunted hayride near Scranton, PA for Monster Madness. Same day!)

If you grew up going to Pizza Hut, you probably remember it as more than just pizza. The red cups, the dim lighting, the buffet, the arcade machines… it was a whole experience. Something you don't really get anymore. So I went out there with Justin, Ryan, and Patrick and just started talking about all the weird, specific memories that come with Pizza Hut. The ads, the promotions, Ninja Turtles, demo discs, Friday nights… all of it. But at the same time, it's kind of a weird feeling. Because these "Pizza Hut Classic" locations are both a time capsule… and a modern attempt to recreate something that's been gone for years.

So the question is… what place would YOU want to see brought back like this?

Visit the Tunkhannock Pizza Hut:
828 Route 6 W, Tunkhannock, PA 18657

Ah... Book It! Yeah, I remember getting at least one of those free personal pan pizzas as a kid. (We didn't have a fancy pants website/app for it back then, though, or a fancy pants Internet at all, for that matter.)

Pizza Hut is also where I got a cassette tape (sadly vanished into the ether now, not that I'd have a way to play it, even if I did still have it) of the "Coming Out of Their Shells" Ninja Turtles music tour, as I've mentioned before. (And speaking of TMNT, Cinemassacre, and pizza...)

I... do not remember "Pizza Head" at all, though. o_O Nor do I recall ever getting a Playstation demo disc at Pizza Hut.

The old, red-top Pizza Hut in my hometown is basically an abandoned building now, as far as I'm aware. You can see it here in a top-down view in Google Maps. Street view for the old Pizza Hut barely exists. You can kind of see it here, poking up through the vegetation that has partially overtaken it, but that was about the best I could do. (Google Maps erroneously claims that Tiano's Pizza is there, but Tiano's is actually across the street in a shopping center, not its own distinct building. I've submitted corrections in Google Maps for this error, so maybe they'll fix it someday. *shrug*) For what it's worth, Pizza Hut in my hometown moved down the road a bit to this location. It's still a fancier building than some generic rectangle or whatever, but it's definitely not the original, iconic building shape, as seen in the above video. The Pizza Hut closest to where I live now is just some bland, delivery/carry-out only hole in the wall place, which kind of sucks. I mean, the food's still fine, but it's definitely not a place like the one seen in the video above (they don't even have anywhere you can sit down, aside from a couple chairs for people waiting for take-out orders).

In any case, after watching this video, I kind of want a pizza from Pizza Hut now. Don't even care that it's almost 5:30am and I should've been in bed ages ago. ¬_¬

(Been a while since I used that "pizza" tag, though it's likely that I could probably find more recent posts in which I've mentioned pizza than what's there now.)

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"American YouTuber sentenced to 6 months in South Korean prison for offensive stunts"

2026-04-16T18:47:52Z

Good.

Perhaps if more asshats like this were imprisoned in other countries for their stupid, worse-than-worthless horseshit, there might eventually be fewer such asshats like this (looking at you, Paul brothers).

That said, even this one particular fuckwit has already been arrested in other countries, so... maybe not. Then again, this time, he has actually been sentenced to six months hard labor, so I suppose it's possible this might cure him of being a complete dipshit on the Internet. Time will tell, I guess.

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"River City COWARDS | Cast;e Si[er Beast 367"

2026-04-13T19:05:46Z

Typos in the video title are theirs, not mine. I mean, yeah, I've made typos exactly like that in the past, because it's just a matter of having one hand too far to the left or right, but I've also instantaneously seen that it looked illegibly screwed up and immediately fixed it, before I ever posted or sent or otherwise made use of whatever I was typing. At least it's still not as "Did the title writer have a stroke while typing that?"-worthy as "Why IHNMAIMS that it is Made Noise Now? Because Amazing Digital Circus," which still to this day has yet to be corrected into something resembling proper English.

(Pre-post EDIT) They've already changed/fixed it, before I even finished writing this post. The level of cowardice on display has never been higher! I am aghast at the level of bitch in these podcasters' hearts! *eye roll* (/Pre-post EDIT)

Anyway, regarding the topic of the video itself, as is pointed out in the comments below the video, the ending wasn't changed, an additional ending was added. The original ending is still gotten if the game is finished normally, without fighting the secret bosses, and the new ending is what is gotten after fighting the secret bosses. Prior to the update, the original ending was what one got, either way. At least, I assume this is true, because I have never played River City Girls, but Google seems to agree with the commenters. Was it "shitty" and "cowardly" and "lame" for the game developers to make this change? *shrug* Hell if I know. It's their game. They can do whatever they want with it, I guess.

Woolie really seems to like using the phrase "bitch in [insert thing here]'s heart" when referring to anyone being a "coward" or whatever. Go figure.

Also, Pat's response to the original question was just "remove Ingrid from Street Fighter 6," rather than remove/fix/change that whole Alex thing? Weird.

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"'Arc Raiders Was an AI Trojan Horse' | Castle Super Beast 367"

2026-04-12T18:45:44Z

Is this Junghun Lee dumbass not aware that the Trojan Horse was a bad thing for those who received it? Even the more modern meaning of "Trojan Horse" in computing is a bad thing. Calling your thing a "Trojan Horse" is asinine, at least if you're trying to make a good impression on people. And, yes, trying to be "Trojan Horse" sneaky with the AI slop infecting your video game is, indeed, a fucking bad thing.

Good thing I already had less than zero shits to give about Arc Raiders, since it's just yet another worthless multiplayer-only extraction shooter GaaS, same as all the others (well, aside from apparently being even more infested with gen AI).

It's like Woolie has said multiple times before (and repeats here), the problem isn't if the gen AI slop is detectable or not, because it's inevitably going to get to a point where it's not. It's the fact that it's being used at all that is the problem.

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"Pete Hines says he left Bethesda because he didn't want to watch it being 'damaged' and 'abused'"

2026-04-11T20:33:08Z

"Hines, Bethesda's former vice president of marketing and PR, left Bethesda in 2023, three years after it was acquired by Microsoft."

Bethesda was a smaller company that was bought out by a much larger one (or, in this particular case, it was a smaller company whose slightly larger parent company was bought out by a much larger one). So, of course, "getting damaged and broken apart and frankly mistreated, abused, whatever word you want to use" is par for the course in such situations. There is absolutely nothing surprising about any of this.

And yet, smaller companies still sell out to bigger ones, hoping they might be the ones to buck the trend and that only good things will happen to them in the aftermath. It would be funny to an outsider like me, if it wasn't so tragically banal.

Micro$hit sucks, as usual, as does every similar big company who likes to hoover up smaller companies like Bethesda.

Welcome to the new "selling out == doom" tag. I think I got most of the posts I've made in the past decades that even tangentially touch on my lamentation and derision of game companies being bought by other game companies (or companies that like to badly playact at being game companies). That said, I'll (probably) be going back through this new tag later and fixing a bunch of broken lj-embeds of Youtube videos and links that still point to posts on my old LiveJournal instead of the Dreamwidth equivalent posts, but that's not something I'm going to do now.

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"Anthropic's new AI model is too dangerous to release to public, developers say"

2026-04-11T17:42:58Z

"Experts warn a powerful new AI model could exploit major systems and browsers using simple prompts. Its maker calls it too dangerous to release."

...

"'This is the kind of thing that should keep us up at night,' tech expert Carmi Levy told CTV News. 'We knew this day would come, that AI would get so good that it would be able to break into even the most hardened cyber defences. And that's kind of what we're at with Anthropic's Claude Mythos model.'"

...

"'It's like using ChatGPT to be a hacker,' said Levy. 'It means that our existing defences are no longer sufficient to protect ourselves against these newly emerging threats.'"

...

"While some online have called Mythos 'AI doomsday,' others caution Anthropic's announcement could be a savvy marketing strategy in the race for AI dominance. It could also be both.

"'Many people would be right in saying that this is a little bit of hype, a little bit of press release, a little bit of publicity stunt,' said Claudiu Popa, a cybersecurity expert. 'But we certainly need to acknowledge the capability of that tool and we need to start preparing for such a time when there will be lots of AIs scouring the internet, looking for vulnerabilities.'

"Popa says one of the most worrisome elements of Claude Mythos is that it does not require a sophisticated level of understanding of cybersecurity making it potentially harmful in the hands of bad actors.

"'That's why this acts as not a reason to practice fear mongering, but to raise the level of awareness and concern amongst organizations,' said Popa."

So... yet another reason why this asinine AI bubble needs to burst, and sooner rather than later.

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Doki Doki Literature Club Plus!

2026-04-10T23:15:44Z

Oh... right... I apparently never actually got around to writing a post about this, even though I played it back in September 2024.

So... Doki Doki Literature Club Plus! is essentially the same game as the freeware original game.

Except!

It comes in a new wrapper, which simulates a computer desktop environment (whereas the original game just literally dropped metafictional files into your actual game file folders [none of which are required to complete the game and were things I didn't even know existed during my first playthrough back in 2017]).

Also, vague spoilers, DDLC+ has some additional meta stuff that was not included in the original game. I will not discuss the nature of the additional meta stuff beyond acknowledging that it exists. I'll just say, though, that accessing some of this stuff requires even more screwy UI manipulation than the original game did (which was simply to go look at the game folder from time to time to find the newly generated files). In Plus!, it requires specific (in-game) system clock manipulation, among other things, to find it all. I eventually ended up just looking up the conditions on the wiki to find everything I'd missed.

Oh, and the extra side stories that focus on the origins of the Literature Club (prior to the asshat main character of DDLC proper showing up) are pretty cool, too. If you've never played any version of DDLC, I would recommend playing the main game first, before playing the side stories, even if the side stories are technically prequels to the main game, but if you have played DDLC before and are planning a replay, might as well do the side stories first. Or not. *shrug*

And, lastly, here is the obligatory comment that the soundtrack for the sides stories is pretty good. Some of it is original stuff, and some of it consists of remixes of tracks from the (warning, possible musical and music title and maybe even video thumbnail spoilers for the actual game here) original game's soundtrack. For example.

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"Google removes Doki Doki Literature Club from Play Store"

2026-04-10T21:16:04Z

"Game creator and publisher say game 'violates Google's terms of service in its depiction of sensitive themes'"

This is... a pretty fucking asinine thing to do, on Google's part, in my opinion.

(Some relevant links. Kinda.

And... I just made another new tag, too. *shrug*)

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This subject line links to Google's homepage and not to this post" href="https://www.google.com"

2026-04-10T18:52:19Z

This is an additional test that came about after a discussion (particularly here) concerning this longstanding issue.

Note that if one were to click the above subject line as a hypertext link from my main page (or, presumably, from one's own "/read" page, which I can't personally test, obviously), they would be sent to Google's home page and not to this actual post.

(EDIT)

When the page source is viewed from my main page, the above subject line shows up as:

<a title="This subject line links to Google's homepage and not to this post" href="https://www.google.com"" href="https://kane-magus.dreamwidth.org/1774353.html">

This is pretty clearly a bad thing, not intended behavior.

(/EDIT)

(EDIT 2) Here is the associated Dreamwidth support ticket. (/EDIT 2)

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"Invisible Baby Meters | Castle Super Beast 367"

2026-04-09T17:31:31Z

Woolie, after talking about "hidden meters" and "UI" when it comes to his baby: "Does that make sense?"

Pat: "You're mentally ill. You have an illness in your mind."

Anyway, this has been another quarter hour dad-cast with Woolie and Pat. Still probably my favorite part of their podcast these days, mainly because it's one of the increasingly rare parts where it's not just super depressing in the way that is most news about modern video game industry stuff (which is what they normally talk about roughly 90% of the time).

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Penny Arcade - "Hidden Mechanics"

2026-04-09T08:11:17Z

Link to comic.
Link to blog.

This is another one of those "the associated blog is actually of more interest to me than the comic" comic posts.

(EDIT) Yet another post to fall victim to that bizarrely still existent "can't have 'Hidden ' in the subject line" bug. (/EDIT)

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"No Man's Sky goes full-on Pokémon in new creature-battling update"

2026-04-08T22:47:24Z

Sounds like Hello Games might finally be scraping the bottom of the barrel of updates for their space sim game.

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"Miracle Piano (NES) Lost Angry Nintendo Nerd episode from 2006"

2026-04-07T06:12:52Z

April 6th 2006 was the day that the @JamesNintendoNerd‬ channel was created (even though the first video was posted on April 8th), making today the 20th anniversary of the Angry Video Game Nerd and Cinemassacre on YouTube! For the special occasion here is a lost Angry Nintendo Nerd episode from 2006 on the Nintendo Miracle Piano.

For the past 20 years, this "episode" only existed as raw footage. I didn't think it was very good, and I later covered the Miracle Piano in the NES Accessories episode, deeming the original footage obsolete. But after all this time has passed, I decided you may want to see it, since it's a vintage piece of Nerd history. So I finally edited it!

Yeah... ...I can see why he thought it wasn't very good.

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"Feature | The DNA Of Hideo Kojima, Video Gaming's Greatest Auteur"

2026-04-06T17:56:25Z

"'So much can be offered only through the medium of games'"

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"Eidos Montreal minus 124 | Castle Super Beast 366"

2026-04-05T16:44:02Z

Yet more horror stories of/from the modern video game industry.

Woolie: "My takeaway here is there's games that could be in development right now that, if they had a chance to come out, would be successful, but they're not going to get that chance to, simply because the implosion is happening too fast. And it's not that your brush stroke wasn't perfect, it's that the fire behind you roasted your hand and cooked the entire canvas before you could put the finishing touch on it."

(EDIT)

In a previous post, I said:

Just to note, it was to Embracer Group that Square Enix sold all of their cast off Western devs when Squeenix decided to go ham on crypto/blockchain/NFT bullshit, so I expect we'll be hearing about Embracer causing the likes of Eidos and Crystal Dynamics to go belly up in the next few years, too, for whatever asinine reasons similar to the above.

So... yet another case where I hate having been right. Or, at least, heading that way, anyway.

(/EDIT)

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"I Visited the Monsters of Ray Harryhausen"

2026-04-05T00:57:12Z

"James Rolfe visits the Ray Harryhausen: Miniature Models of the Silver Screen exhibit at The Mini Time Machine Museum of Miniatures, on display from September 30, 2025 through May 3, 2026. This special exhibit celebrates the legendary work of Ray Harryhausen, showcasing incredible miniature models and artifacts connected to his groundbreaking fantasy and stop-motion film legacy."

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"Woolie Got End of Serviced | Castle Super Beast 366"

2026-04-04T19:50:14Z

Here's another start-to-finish rant from Woolie and Pat about the abysmal state of the modern video game industry and just the economy in general.

They also lament the disappearance of things like Blockbuster and other rental stores, as well as the ability to pool money with friends and buy a single copy of a video game to share, which kids in today's shitty economy, and today's miserable state of the modern video game industry, don't have available to them anymore. There was also the bizarre and grossly depressing anecdote from an article they were talking about in which some "kids these days" were given console games for holidays (as in whole-ass video games, as opposed to the free-to-play smartphone trash they were already playing), and the kids didn't see the point in playing them because the newly gifted games didn't have "daily login bonuses." Jesus wept.

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Pam Bondi has been shown the door by Trump

2026-04-03T23:27:28Z

Bondi wasn't as effective at covering up Trump's voluminous presence in the Epstein files[1] as Trump wanted.

(The previous sentence is the rough equivalent to saying "Guess a handheld sponge wasn't as effective at preventing the Niagara River from falling into the Niagara Gorge as Trump would've liked.")

[1] - Remember those? Just because Trump has started an illegal "excursion" into Iran and that's all the media is talking about now (as intended), that doesn't somehow negate the fact that Trump raped children (aLlEgEdLy).

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"MechWarrior dev Piranha Games reportedly affected by redundancies"

2026-04-03T22:14:29Z

I'm not posting this because I specifically care about "MechWarrior dev Piranha Games" or whatever (I don't). I post this because I simply "love" (and by that I mean hate) how the modern video game industry (and, by extension, the modern game journalism industry) have adopted phrases like "affected by redundancies" and "economic restructuring" as euphemisms for "laying off a bunch of people." And it's "funny" (and by that I mean shitty) how it's also being phrased as "conducted a round of layoffs," like it's just a natural, expected thing that happens as regularly as the changing of the seasons. (And, yes, I'm aware that those are terms that the general business world has been using for at least half a century now. Doesn't make it better.)

Then again, this is the modern video game industry. I suppose news of companies laying people off showing up as often as the winds change direction has indeed become a normal, routine thing now. I still don't like the attempt at circumlocution.

"'Despite the phenomenal work by the team at Piranha, the game failed to reach new audiences and expand its core audience as expected and therefore has not met the necessary sales targets, which has forced us to undertake necessary actions,' said EG7 CEO Ji Ham."

Yet more corporate horseshit shrouded in worthless, flowery language.

"Despite the phenomenal work by the team at Piranha" == No, we don't actually give a shit about Piranha, we just have to make it seem like we do, because if we really thought they were doing "phenomenal work," we wouldn't be kicking them to the curb right now

"failed to reach new audiences and expand its core audience" == isn't being purchased by everyone in the world, multiple times, on every available platform

"has not met the necessary sales targets" == didn't bring in a sum of money roughly equivalent to the current GDP of the entirety of planet Earth

"undertake necessary actions" == shitcan a bunch of people because we're greedy management dumbfucks who lack the first clue as to what we're doing here, but at least we will still be here

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"Whispers in the Supreme Court as Trump takes a front-row seat for oral arguments"

2026-04-02T05:48:37Z

"We are the only Country in the World STUPID enough to Elect Donald J. Trump as President, not just Once, but Twice! The First Time was Already BAD Enough. SAD!"

(Seriously, why does Trump erroneously capitalize words when he """""Truths"""""" his greasy shit out onto the Internet? I guess his grammar is just as piss poor as his... well... everything else.)

That said, nice that even his own bought-and-paid-for SCOTUS justices seemed to be essentially talking shit about his shitty idea pretty much right to his face (despite them never even acknowledging he was there, which had to chafe his narcissistic, porcine ass something fierce), though. That said, I don't plan to just assume that they'll strike it down, of course. They've made far too many other horrendous, ass-backwards, Trump-favoring decisions in the past for anyone to be giving them the benefit of the doubt now, after all.

Anyway, in conclusion, to hell forever with Donald Trump, as usual, and the sooner the better.

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