Видео

While I still hold election season will be over soon, the political industry is very much like sports. Basically, no matter when you turn on TV there is going to be some sport being played somewhere that is 'in-season'. The same can be said of politics but the game that is being played is very different, at least if it is being played well. Election Season is characterized by visibility, high dollar expenditures and generally treating people like they have the mental faculties of goldfish while trying to outmaneuver your opponent and appear more likable. This is mostly platforming and public speaking with some television adds and rather low-effort polling. Voting Season is the period within election season once early voting starts and mail in ballots are being sent. This is when you start seeing more high-effort polling as you are trying to recognize weaknesses and correct them as they emerge. This is when you start to see people going door to door. Essentially those people coming to your door to talk to you about a candidate are trying to do a few things. They want to verify that their data is accurate and that you are you, and they want to find out who you intend to vote for. If you have voted they won't bother coming. If you haven't voted and intend to vote for their candidate they will likely call and come back. Don't bother telling them you have voted if you haven't, the list of people who have voted (though not who they voted for) is public information. You have a lot of sophisticated games in this. Fatigue Season: Voter and Donor fatigue are very real, so after elections between Election Day and New Years political posturing is still a real thing, but no real efforts are utilized because a) donors are tired of giving and b) voters are tired of hearing about it. This is a very slow season typically unless you are a staffer who who is moving into a position or out of a position. This is as close as you get to a 'politics free season'. Everything Else: Strangely enough this is the stuff that defines an election. They say than an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure and there is a lot of truth to that. This is the time period for 'games' that aren't overtly political. You review your voter data and and update it to better model potential voters, you hold events to get data on new potential voters and collect data from them. Democrats used to do this well but they actually, for reasons I won't go into, started sucking at it. Meanwhile, Republicans never really saw the value in it and what operations have started to do this, have largely proven ineffectual. The best analogy I have for what happens during this time period is think of a candidate as being a mosquito. Like a mosquito, a campaign is annoying, nobody likes them and when cold weather rolls around nobody sheds a tear because they are gone. During this off season, the goal isn't to keep the mosquito alive, it is to build an environment most well suited for your mosquitos in the future. This is, if I am being honest, some of the most fun and effectual work you can get in the world of politics. So while I do think election season is soon to be over, politics season goes though a bit of a winter die off but never truly stops.

Amen!

Really late response, I don't know why but for some reason your comments weren't showing up. Tester is an interesting character. He runs to the right of most Democrats which is pretty much necessary for Montana. He came into office during a very favorable year the DNC and due to piss poor GOP financial management his opponent was not only unlikeable but broke. One of Trump's rather unique electoral strengths is that he drives a lot of turnout from people that don't otherwise vote. He wins the 'I don't trust the process' crowd, which, along with rampant bias in the polling industry, I associate with why he reliably overperforms the polls. That said, I think it would take an unnaturally high rate of ballot splitting for him to retain his seat. Speaking honestly, rural states really don't get much from the DNC at the moment which is why the DNC keeps losing more and more local jurisdictions. In their case their problem isn't marketing, it is platform, so I don't see that trend stopping any time soon as it would require a complete platform shift for the DNC. As an example Trump won 2497 counties in 2020. Biden won 477 with many of those being 'county equivalents' in small New England states. You basically have to go back to Obama's first term to see the DNC winning more counties than they did in the previous election. It has been years since I saw the study but the DNC has largely been slipping to irrelevance in the Rural parts of the country since the early 90s. It has been a slow shift but it is pretty dramatic if you look at maps that show county election results, the whole country looks like a sea of red with some blue dots on it. Humorously, that was part of the reason we decided to call our channel 'The Goths In Rome' and perhaps, one day, we will do a video describing the correlation between that situation and the final years of the Roman Empire because history has a way of repeating itself. Suffice to say it is terribly unhealthy for a civilization to be in that kind of position.

Rest assured, we don't expect an upfront and credible process. We work in the industry and are pretty open about the fact that we aren't necessarily the 'good guys' in how things are done because laws on such things are generally open to 'interpretation' depending on how good your lawyers are. We fully acknowledge that the days of dazzling with brilliance are largely over and have entered an age of 'baffling with bullshit'. That being said, what I believe we miss most is the day and age when 'Baffling with Bullshit' was, at least an artform and one which you had to play carefully... "If you like you doctor you can keep your doctor", "no new taxes" etc were all basically lies... that being said they were at least related to something relevant... as opposed to... "My opponent wants to #u(& a dolphin" or "my opponent enjoyed a hot steamy glass of pony blast" or "my opponent is racist because [insert something irrelevant thing here]"... we have seen under the hood and I will be the first to admit that what is under the hood is janky as hell. At least a few decades ago the body looked good but now the doors are held on with duct tape, the windshield in made of cling wrap, the tires or on fire and I am pretty sure that that is a dead hooker dangling out of trunk. Honestly, at this point, I can't even blame the politicians and their campaigns. The media has become circus. They lack any credibility but because they collectively agree they have it they seem to maintain the illusion. I think the real culprit here though is the average citizen who's standards for both circuses and bread have diminished over the past 1400 years. It is no wonder that western civilization has gone from teaching our children Greek and Latin to teaching our college students remedial courses of their native tongue. Sad times.

What period are you interested in?

@TheGothInRome 2. The 2000's / buikd up to where we are now. And the earliest- the first elections. (I admit i'm interested in the entire timeline but those 2 in particular)

Speaking candidly, at this point, I am kind of expecting a 'Controlled Burn Dumpster Fire' at the DNC. The 'Enthusiasm' for Kamala is very manufactured and isn't organic. Back when she first ran for office in 2010 she almost got beaten by a Republican... in California. She only won that race by about 1%. When she ran for president in 2020 she couldn't even get interest enough to stay in the race through the first vote. She basically got eviscerated by Tulsi Gabard in the debate and that was that. My personal expectation is 'Mickey Mouse Games' to try and make that manufactured enthusiasm look as genuine as possible. Roll out everybody even remotely charismatic in to try and serve as an advocate for her. I think you will see fewer candidates stick their neck out to speak at the convention because being tied to her would be bad for their own election chances. I think they are going to throw out some kind of hyper progressive talking point to roll the dice with the youth vote... Supreme Court Reform for example. Something they can't realistically do but will do to try and increase turnout enough to prevent the full force of a generational loss. Speaking honestly, I still wouldn't be surprised if they wound up doing a Kamala switch. It is not inaccurate to say that Biden was coup'd from within his own campaign, how it happened made that obvious. You don't pull a candidate because they have dementia... you pull a candidate because they are failing so hard in the polls that they have no possibility of winning. Kamala just got her honeymoon phase... and it ended quickly... if she keeps dropping from her already miserable position, well... the man behind the curtain you are supposed to ignore might pull some levers!

It was actually both... Yesterday was a day much like any other... until I got a call telling me that hey... a candidate looked up 'dolphin woman' and apparently the powers that be are trying to paint them as a 'Dolphin *ucker'.... Now imagine they are doing it as professionals in a field in which you have devoted YEARS of your life. It is honestly infuriating that this is the state of the industry at the moment...

Somehow the the throwaway lines of a socially anxious, depressed, parasomniac who died damned near a century ago are still more inspiring than than anything produced for the mass market in the last two decades... I would tell you why... but there are some secrets too great and terrible to be comprehended by the minds of mortals.

What I have found staggering in all of this is the sheer lack of respect surrounding the situation. Joy Red on MSNBC compared Biden having Covid which has a very high survival rate... to Trump literally being shot in the head. Hell, there was some guy called 'Destiny' on Peirs Morgan's show who actively said he was perfectly okay with the assassination attempt and felt the people who died essentially deserved it. It is funny how history has a way of repeating itself. Left pushes too hard, embraces socialisttic ideals. In the same way it is hard to say 'Big' without following it up with 'Dumb', it is also hard to say 'Socialist' without preceding it with 'Militant'. Hell, the sheer number of people online, especially teachers (seriously, a huge number are public school teachers) who have insisted that they wish the assassination attempt had been successful is deeply concerning and speaks to societal problems... but perhaps the answer is at the bottom of the next bottle of bourbon?

I hate to say it but at this point I have to lump in the comedians into this... I get not liking Trump, I get people who are openly hostile to his policies. I fully get that and I understand valid reasons people have for doing so. I also get why people like him and why they view him as a political messiah. I understand their reasoning and I I can't say all of it is invalid. That said, we have a full generation of young people who have gone to school with teachers screaming "EXISTENTIAL THREAT". When they want to become aware of the world they turn on the media and the talking heads scream "EXISTENTIAL THREAT". When they go on Reddit or any number of other platforms.... they see "EXISTENTIAL THREAT". When they look to leaders who should be role models they hear "EXISTENTIAL THREAT". When they look to be entertained and watch something funny what do those comedians say? "EXISTENTIAL THREAT". Don't get me wrong, none of these people are directly to blame for the shooter, that shooter pulled the trigger... they made that choice. That said, they are responsible for creating an environment where people feel they NEED to do that because they are part of a larger societal problem and it is high time that they recognize this and work to undo damage done.

you aren't entirely wrong... that debate was physically painful to watch... hilarious... but physically painful... seriously, I have real questions about who is running the US right now because it CLEARLY isn't him.

Literally uploading as I write this.

I guess on RUclips, regardless of channel contents, it is impossible to not make references to Game Theory.

I try to avoid talking about product quality or artistic value. In this case the D&D movie from 2000, I think the best reason to try and forget the older D&D movie was just because of how poorly it performed financially. Taking all the same things into account. The estimate of $45,000,000 for the films budget means the actual cost was likely somewhere between 67,500,000 and 90,000,000. The worldwide returns were just shy of $34,000,000 but the half of that went to theaters so the real returns were $17,000,000. (Like 75-81% net loss) So a loss of $50.5M to $73M.... if we take into account inflation what we have is a loss of between $93.8M and $135.6M. I would have loved to be a fly on the wall while this was being discussed because you know there had to be at least one person in that meeting who pointed to the original and current drag on the film industry and say "hey, you know what, maybe this is a bad idea!"... I don't know who that person was, but I would suggest they be made the President of WotC. 🤣

Oh, I know its bad... but I'm not an art critic. I'll give you a bit of a spoiler for when we touch Disney though... The Rise of Skywalker had a budget of$461 million dollars. There is no way that the marketing budget for that film wasn't AT LEAST 50% to 100% of the production value meaning we NOW have to add in another $461 million... and then there were issues related to reshoots which I won't even begin to estimate but suffice to say that this film cost AT LEAST $691.5M $922M dollars. Rise of Skywalker made $1,077,000,000 in theaters. Disney's take of that is likely around 70% just because they could easily negotiate that for a Starwars movie... but... 70% of of %1,077,000,000 is about $700M which means that Rise of Skywalker, speaking purely for the film itself and not for merchandising either A) Broke Even or B) Lost Money. I don't care about whether the film was good or bad, I care about the fact that George Lucas made a goddamn money printing MACHINE and somehow Disney broke it!

100% agree... Since I have been paying attention to the podcast all this time, I've picked up on the fact that alot of big budget movies (and video games) will spend almost the same amount on marketing... Which... Ok... it's Star Wars (in this case), why do you need that Fortnite tie-in? As you said, Lucas invented a money-printing machine... JJ Abrams, Frank Miller, M Night Shayamalan... these people work on a gimmick, and have nothing else to them; that was obvious to all the Trekkies when Abrams made Trek-Wars... who gave Abrams the greenlight? Because they should be fired! I recently rewatched the Sequals, and everything in the Force Awakens is JJ Abrams "mystery box", which any Lost fan will tell you, he can't deliver on. I'm rambling again, because this is just so infuriating... As one of you said towards the end, you don't put someone unqualified into the top dog position... and it feels like at some point, that's what Disney did at Lucasfilm; and their internal corruption spread from there across Disney...

Think of it like the leadership of a country or the captain of a ship. If a president dies 2 days before the change of power there is still a new president because emergencies can happen. If the captain of a ship dies even the ship is a week away from port where it is going to be scrapped they will still tap someone to fill the captain's shoes. You need an authority figure to guide operations, even if temporary. If they were planning to Sell WotC they wouldn'tt want the value to drop so they would at least put some kind of temporary president over it to keep it from losing value before a sale. They would essentially promote internally to rush through the paperwork. Either Cynthhia was desperate to get out of there ASAP OR Hasbro had to determine a temporary lapse of leadership wouldn't be as detrimental as her remaining. Both of which are possible. The important thing to remember is that essentially ALL of these disasters occurred during Cynthia's tenure. There are a lot more questions than answers currently and if Cynthia had NOT overseen so much decline I would argue that this would be a bad look for Hasbro... but her tenure was fraught with problems and so, I don't see too much pushback even from shareholders. Quite honestly, Every single problem we found with hasbro was a Cynthia Williams decision or a problem caused by someone who was likely one of Cynthia William's direct or near-direct reports.

The 'Dumbed Down' thing is in many ways dependent upon the time period in which you were introduced to a franchise/genre though I hold that players of Non-Linear/Western RPGs and Grand Strategy genres in no way benefit from it. Where you like D&D, I would encourage you to give Might & Magic 6 & 7 a try (not Heroes of Might and Magic). They are probably a couple bucks on GOG, you can run it on basically any computer at this point and they are a good example of 'genre decline' if you would like to see how badly your generation is being cheated. Think of it as the missing link between Skyrim and TTRPGs... and it has a fantastic soundtrack! Indie Games have been quite successful recently! Palworld (Legally Distinct Pokemon with Guns) actually holds the number 2 spot for concurrent players, and PUBG holds the number 1 spot and both are Indie Titles. You have no idea how right you are about writing. For RPGs the story makes or breaks the game, even with bad mechanics being successful if the story is good enough. Mass Effect was a great example, the original had fantastic writing, it was a terrible shooter but the story was so great that people didn't care! Unfortunately plot got sidelined for more shooter mechanics in the later games... and then quality was completely abandoned by the time Andromeda came along.

Cleopatra VII

My first experience with fire ants was as a kid but strangely enough I remember the treatment more than the pain of the bites. Growing up in Appalachia we have a lot of 'old timer' treatments for such things and the treatment for fire ant bites was to have someone who was chewing tobacco to spit on the bites and let it dry. Crazy as it is I still use that treatment today, works better than any topical ointment I have found.