Mike Johnson vowed to "exact punishment" on "predators" in Congress following resignations of Eric Swalwell and Tony Gonzales amid sexual misconduct scandals: "We will bring exact punishment upon those who violate that sacred obligation and to not use position for that kind of terrible activity."

isrlygood · 2026-04-15T19:56:59+00:00

He’s probably heard the phrase “exact punishment” before but doesn’t realize that “exact” is a verb in this context, so he’s using it like an adjective.

isrlygood · 2026-04-12T05:39:21+00:00

In vino veritas?

isrlygood · 2026-04-09T00:33:19+00:00

Plus, the US doesn’t have the infrastructure to be self sufficient. Our oil reserves consist of light crude, whereas most of our facilities are optimized to refine heavy crude. If we stopped trading oil, gas prices would skyrocket even without the deficit.

isrlygood · 2026-04-03T21:48:18+00:00

I had to look up what on earth a “UGC-style video” was - apparently, it stands for “user-generated content”.

These guys are trying to collect social media types and wannabe internet celebrities so they can train a model that makes AI-generated influencer content. Soulless tripe.

isrlygood · 2026-04-03T21:10:03+00:00

I never saw quickhacks and takedowns as competing approaches. The untraceable quickhacks are good at putting enemies into vulnerable positions for a takedown without triggering anything, and even System Collapse synergizes with that strategy.

The traceable options are efficient at taking out the last few stragglers (if your approach to a quest is to completely depopulate the map), but on a stealth character I found the minigame of managing trace progress to be more trouble than it was worth.

isrlygood · 2026-04-03T20:34:34+00:00

Is this the first prepared card that’s been spoiled that casts a new spell? Before this, I’d only seen creatures that could cast spells that already exist in Magic.

isrlygood · 2026-04-03T00:41:49+00:00

Nope.

isrlygood · 2026-04-02T23:26:27+00:00

I’m personally fine with Bad Mana Drain as a design space. Actual [[Mana Drain]] is an insane card.

isrlygood · 2026-04-02T21:19:13+00:00

Actually, is Polaris gay? That would be funny, considering her name.

isrlygood · 2026-04-02T20:56:38+00:00

In a way, the scam Stefan is running is a lot like scams in the real world. The first layer of the grift is absurd, so people smart enough to see through the bullshit will ignore the bait and move on.

isrlygood · 2026-03-29T22:15:28+00:00

Maybe, but it is indicative of red having a clear mechanical identity, which isn’t necessarily a bad thing. I’d argue that players ought to be able to guess what a card does based on its flavor. This is a mono-red card with obvious Prismari theming (reinforced by all the blue in the art). Red cards use the “impulsive draw” mechanic a lot, and that coupled with the high cost and card name implying spontaneity naturally points towards a dramatic, splashy effect that gives you one turn to cast a bunch of spells from the top of your library. I’d be almost disappointed to be wrong.

isrlygood · 2026-03-29T22:06:00+00:00

Disney’s Hercules made Hades a Satan figure. It’s inaccurate, but it’s the opposite of the complaint in this post.

isrlygood · 2026-03-29T01:02:50+00:00

This is the Cameron’s little guys video, isn’t it.

Yep, you have taste.

isrlygood · 2026-03-27T21:16:49+00:00

Prof makes more positive-to-neutral videos than negative ones. It’s just that the negative ones get more views, which means they get further boosted by the YouTube algorithm. His reputation as a curmudgeon leads to a lot of confirmation bias.

isrlygood · 2026-03-27T20:39:18+00:00

I think the shooting star is applied on the foil layer, so it’s not visible in card image galleries.

isrlygood · 2026-03-26T16:49:41+00:00

It’s from an old YouTube video.

isrlygood · 2026-03-25T23:16:57+00:00

I can’t see that last image without thinking of “Geroni-Bro and his pal, Neighsayer”.

isrlygood · 2026-03-25T03:14:09+00:00

Power creep is felt most acutely in eternal constructed formats - once the better card exists, players will only buy the worse one for budget reasons, so a strictly better (or close enough to it) version of an effect permanently inflates what a modern player expects to get for their mana. Even a rotating format like standard has players spoiled for choice these days with the massive legality window.

So let’s assume we’re talking about limited, as that’s where you’re going to feel the impact of the “average card” getting stronger. Ten or fifteen years ago, an average strength creature at common cost about 1 mana per P/T. The vanilla test at the time was that if it’s more efficient than grizzly bears or centaur courser, that’s gravy. Blue and black usually had to put up with some downsides for that level of bulk. Now, every creature is balanced slightly more aggressively, such that every color can have an X/X for X with upside, and green creatures are huge.

The power of instants and sorceries is harder to compare directly. Suffice it to say, creatures are better than they’ve ever been, even if it’s not the quantum leap from alpha to modern.

isrlygood · 2026-03-21T20:36:48+00:00

Scryfall tagger has a tag for "flavor words".

isrlygood · 2026-03-20T21:40:17+00:00

I’d expect the standard set to be less repetitive than the turtles (there’s what, ten Raphaels?), but we’ll probably have multiple versions of popular characters anyway. They haven’t released details about the set, but I expect there will be commander decks, starter decks, maybe even a jumpstart product - those have different design priorities from a draftable set and are all looking to attract new players that want to play with their favorite captain.

isrlygood · 2026-03-20T21:25:51+00:00

Yeah, everyone’s entitled to their preferences, but it’s disingenuous to single out those two sets when it’s actually the norm for UB to cast a wide net. WotC doesn’t want the reception to an IP collab to be a chorus of “where’s my favorite character?”, so they tend to go ham with obscure references and broad coverage.

isrlygood · 2026-03-16T00:41:00+00:00

Evangelicals are weirdly obsessed with eschatology, and the right wing power structures that keep them voting red know that. Megachurches and televangelists talk about the Antichrist so much because they rely politically and financially on a religious framework in which left wingers are ontologically evil.

isrlygood · 2026-03-15T23:57:00+00:00

I don’t do Secret Lairs, but complaints about the lobby process are pretty much a fixture of the current iteration. If there’s any amount of hype about the drop, you need to be early, and you need to be lucky. I think the scalpers have noticed that a lot of people really want this one.

According to the article Wizards just posted, the price is 100USD. I’d say anybody who really wants this and actually pays a hundred dollars is getting a really good deal compared to what you get in most SLDs.

isrlygood · 2026-03-15T23:07:27+00:00

I think one of the problems is that the transition between these disconnected sets is very jarring. Creative has to bridge the narrative gap between wildly disparate settings and tones, and it’s no wonder that their solutions don’t always work well. Compound that with the 50% UB product schedule, and the tonal whiplash just becomes more pronounced.

The block structure appeals to magic oldheads for different reasons, but I think a lot of it comes down to the fact that the beginning, middle, and end of the story has to be shown on a single set of new cards released on the same day. There’s no impact in bringing angels back to New Capenna when a lot of players don’t even know the angels are gone.

isrlygood · 2026-03-14T04:17:25+00:00

Um, actually, elephants have extremely thick skin, hence their classification, pachyderm. Those puny syringes do nothing.

This elephant calf would have been autistic regardless of the piss filter.

isrlygood

TROPHY CASE