Tenpure!! Available:

Circus, the maker of Da Capo, also makes other visual novels, and one of them has now been translated -- Tenpure!!.  Circus is the premier eroge company so any game by them is sure to be good.  I just wish they had translated Da Capo 4 or Da Capo 5 instead of Tenpure!!.  It seems like a massive misattribution of resources.  Everyone knows Da Capo is the best visual novel franchise of all time, so why are they translating anything else?

I don't have time to play Tenpure right now.  I have the World Cup to watch, Xenoblade X to finish, Magic to play, the new summer anime season to watch, etc., etc.  It feels like the busiest year in my life.  But I'll get around to it someday.

The monthly refresh came in Heaven Burns Red, and I did get two useful limit breaks -- cute Chie and admiral Mion went up to limit break level 2.5.  This gets me to 22 seraphs stuck at 2.5 or 3.5 limbo.  Admiral Mion's level 3 limit break ability is outlandishly good, though, so I'll concentrate on improving her first.  So long as your special ability costs 15 sp or more, it doubles the strength of your attack.  Obviously I've placed admiral Mion in a squad full of high-sp-costing-attacks, so basically she just doubles the strength of all my moves for free, as a passive ever-present ability.

This is the inverse of imp Yayoi's ability, which doubles the strength of sp attacks that cost 8 sp or less.  Imp Yayoi's ability is also insanely good and I have a squad designed around it too, full of low sp attacks.  That's squad 8, my best fire squad.  Admiral Mion is in squad 10, my best dark squad.  But both of their squads are built around this doubling ability.

Cute Chie is in squad 3, my other dark squad, which the computer gives a much higher power rating than my squad 10, which shows what the computer knows.  It's actually my weakest squad.  If she could get from 2.5 to 3, she would buff the frontline's skill attacks 30%, which is nice, but not the 100% Mion is buffing.  But squad 3 could really use the boost to make it competitive, so it would be reasonable to get her to level 3 next.

At 3% annual inflation, which is what it looks like 2026 will have, I lose about $12,000 automatically.  If I make over $16,000 to counteract that inflation, I suddenly have to pay federal income tax.  Damned if you do and damned if you don't.  How absurd is it that you have to make $12,000 just to tread water, but if you make $4,000 more than that you're punished for earning too much.  As though anyone can live on $4,000 a year.  It's such an absurd tax code, coming at you from in front and from behind.  Chasing you to make more money via inflation, and then punishing you for making said money.  Luckily I've found a loophole, which is municipal bonds.  Any money made from them is exempt from the federal income tax, I assume because the federal government wants to encourage investors to help fund state and local spending projects.  But it means I have a way to both replace the losses from inflation and make enough to pay my bills, all while not paying taxes to this evil government I don't want to give a single dime.  I have no intention of funding a single bomb headed towards the little girls of Russia, Gaza or Iran.

Capital gains also are exempt from the federal income tax, but I find the stock market to be so chaotic and so completely out of sync with any business justification for which stocks go up and which go down, that I've given up on it.  The guaranteed return from bonds is the only thing I can rely upon, so it sucks that the federal government taxes bonds but not stocks.  It's like the government is encouraging people to gamble their money away.  Again, why is the tax code so batshit crazy?  You'd think that you could at least find a safe haven by buying gold, but there's a 30% tax on gold profits in this country, which makes any investment in the metal impossible.  They're fine with you gambling your money on stock bubbles, that's a 0% capital gains tax, but God forbid you try to stow away your money somewhere safe.  If there was any doubt whether the law code was tilted towards oligarchs, there's your proof, now you know.

I had over 56,000 pageviews last month, probably a new record.  It's funny because I'm writing far less interesting posts now than in the past, but only now am I getting attention.  The internet works in mysterious ways.