Railgun Side Story 2 read:

I finished the second Railgun Side Story volume, which started with a minor army ant outbreak in a shopping mall and ended with a foiled nuclear bomb attack on Academy City, quite the escalation there.  But Mikoto and her friend Kuroko were on top of things and solved every problem with near zero casualties.

That still leaves the third Railgun Side Story for me to read.  The first two were decent but it's hard to get excited about reading another.  On the bright side the third volume has Misaki in it so it should be better than this one, which was basically Mikoto on a solo adventure.

I finished my rewatch of Shadows House S2.  One more great anime becomes officially great now that I've watched and rewatched it in full.  There's nothing particularly bad about this season, but overall it just felt boring and pointless.  Who cares if Maryrose is caught or not?  What difference does it make, in the long run?  It's unfortunate that the series ended here.  Much better content in the manga lies right around the corner.

I decided 'The weight of life - hope' wasn't truly 5-star material and demoted it promptly back to 4-star.  Instead I promoted a vocal piece 'boku janai,' by Angela, the ending theme to Valvrave.  The biggest problem with 'weight' is the slow intro and the dumb guitar outro.  The middle is rock solid, but I'm judging the entire song not the middle of songs.  'Boku Janai' also has an annoying rapper in the background (if the song were perfect it would have been ranked 5-star long ago), but Angela's voice, the actual melody, is hauntingly beautiful and exhilarating.  Between two imperfect songs I have to go with the one that is more moving and memorable, and that will always belong to Angela whose voice is very, very memorable.

Overall I've introduced around 50 songs to my 5-star music hall of fame since the beginning of the year (when I had finalized my music hall of fame after six years of hard work accumulating and listening to all the best music ever made anywhere, anytime.)  That's around 4%, which is pretty impressive.  That means 4% of the best music ever made, the top of the top (the 5-star music category is 1100 songs), all came out this year or at least was discovered by me this year.  Music has been coming out for centuries, since Mozart, so for one year to output 4% of the best music ever is a great year for music.  I'm as pleased as punch with the current lineup.  These 1100 survivors of my list have all withstood the test of time, repetition, and intense competition.  The songs I'm demoting to 4-star are not bad at all, they're very good, but not as good as my new entries.  That says a lot about the new entries.

The midterms are still up in the air, with both the House and Senate undecided.  I'm confident Republicans will win the House eventually, and I still hold out hope for the Senate.  It really doesn't matter what the size of the majority is, if you're the majority you have total power.  A one seat majority means you get your way on every single thing.  I'd be totally content with a one seat majority in the House and the Senate, that would count as a win.  I'd also be content with a one seat majority in the House alone -- given that we didn't have the House or Senate before the midterms, gaining the House is still a step up from before.  Obviously there are entrenched interest groups that will never stray from the Democratic fold -- blacks, LGBT+, single women who desire consequence-free sex and can't be bothered to use birth control, immigrants who want all their extended family to be able to move to America, etc. -- this very quickly adds up to nearly half of all Americans.  So expecting a blowout win for Republicans is asking too much.  Given the percentage of Americans who are decent enough and normal enough people to vote Republican, we're lucky we got 50%.

Even supposing we lose the House and Senate through some stroke of misfortune, the Senate is still within the two-vote safety limit of Manchin and Sinema, so no dramatic actions can be taken for the next two years.  We've safely dodged the bullet either way.

I've already said I prefer DeSantis to Trump and I think these midterms, and the amazing popularity DeSantis showed in the Florida results, firmly proves my point.  With DeSantis we can win in 2024, with Trump there's no way.  Too many people hate Trump personally.  There are people who would normally vote Republican but won't because of Trump.  There are also lots of Democrats who wouldn't bother to vote on election day because it's too much effort if the opponent is DeSantis, but will crawl through glass to vote against Trump.  The winning formula is DeSantis -- all Republicans love him, and no Democrats hate him.  That's how we win in two years.