Bartimaeus

Here is what I remember about seasons 3 and 4 of Stranger Things: 1. The new characters (i.e. Robin, Erica, Eddie) and how they played off of the old characters they interacted with most (mostly Steve and I think Dustin) were generally a thumbs up, probably because they were new characters and the writers actually had motivated reason to add them to the mix. Robin was my favorite out of the lot, and from what I gather most people seem to agree on that. 2. Literally anyone and everyone else could've been killed in the most brutally horrific way possible and I would've been sitting there applauding the show for finally getting one of its many deadbeats off of my television screen. Joyce, Jim, Mike, Eleven, Lucas, Nancy, Jonathan, Will, Max, and Murray...any of these I would've been overjoyed to see get axed - with especial emphasis on Eleven, Jim, Murray, and Jonathan. No hate for the actors, you were all a great lot in the first season (well, excepting Max who only shows up in season 2) when you actually had fun and/or compelling parts to play, it's sadly the writers who have done you wrong. ...and that's pretty much it. I guess I remember vaguely about some incredibly awful Russian stuff with Joyce and Jim, but I think my subconscious has once again done me a solid by blocking out most of whatever that stupidity was. I don't even remember who Vecna is, I don't think I have even the vaguest concept of what he looks like or anything he was about or did...but in all fairness, I think I mostly skipped all of Eleven's stuff in season 4 on account of it being soul-shatteringly drab and repetitive by that point, which probably plays into it. I'm still as of yet undecided whether I shall hate-watch season 5 or not.

The only issue I've ever run into with LTSC was with the old versions e.g. LTSC 2019 being feature-outdated for a couple of newer games, which is what necessitated me upgrading to LTSC 2021. But they would just straight up not run - otherwise, no problems I can think of, it's pretty much just Windows 10 but a little lighter and a little less annoying. However, I have not ever used Edge and I have not played Anno 117, so I cannot comment on those. You could try temporarily disabling UAC entirely (i.e. everything is run as admin all the time always) to see if it resolves the Anno 117 saving issue. Admin permissions can be a little flaky with Windows: in theory, an application you start as admin should also open other stuff as admin (e.g. in the event of running secondary executables), but somehow it doesn't always necessarily work out that way. Someone also posted having a similar issue with the game, and it actually ended up being the fault of Windows Defender:

Weapons (2025). Wasn't sure how I felt about it for most of it, but the hilarious ending pushed me it into liking it overall.

Marjorie Taylor Greene announced her resignation come January. Years of trolling and fighting the left, but only lasted about a week against the MAGA death cult threatening her for her "betrayal"...what a pity.

32A (2007). Irish film. Writing-wise...it was a little basic, all the beats you'd probably expect, but otherwise I thought it was quite nice. A little silly, a little cringey, a little funny, a little drama, a little sad - all the things you'd probably want in a girl's coming-of-age film, without ever being too much in any particular way, and executed in a nice style with good casting. Jared Harris...probably shouldn't have been in it. Too small and simple a part for him, he sticks out like a sore thumb in an otherwise very natural cast. I didn't initially place him, but I burst out laughing as soon as I heard his voice. A little too recognizable for his own good, I think. I don't think I wrote about it here, but I watched My Girl (1991), another girl-coming-of-age film, a while back with my nieces, and I can't understate how much better 32A is, despite how much simpler and straightforward 32A is. Hollywood films can just be so painfully dumb and misguided with all the silliness they pre-occupy themselves with in an attempt to earn back the money they cost for their big names, which a smaller foreign/indie film can just ignore in favor of...trying to make a decent film that will resonate with the demographic it's being made for. It's good for this kind of film.

The eyes and mouths are a little freaky, but you mostly get used to them in motion. I'm not saying it's my favorite, but...as far as modern anime art styles go, you could do worse. Do I think it would only take some lighting/color tone changes to make it look like horror instead? Yes...but beggars can't be choosers. My problem with this movie isn't the art, but rather the general direction. It's one of those movies where it has what you want...in theory, but something's just a little bit off, so you feel disconnected and it just doesn't really end up working despite its good qualities. Frustrating, as usual. Another one to add to my proof wherein I feel it's not actually the art/visuals that's the root cause of my issue with modern anime, it's the general direction and style overall...which the visuals are sometimes married to, but not always.

Look Back (2024). Sigh, I almost liked it. That poster looks kinda horrifying, the art direction generally looks a lot better in the movie.

I think there's been a pretty consistent trend of "Trump on ballot = wild overperformance for GOP, Trump not on ballot = mild to severe underperformance for GOP" ever since 2016, so it's not too surprising. The man certainly knows how to rev up those baskets of deplorables, that's for sure. The good news is that Trump can't appear on a national ballot again...for the moment. With this particular Supreme Court, I genuinely do not feel 100% confident that that will hold, though I'm at like maybe 80% right now.

Play it before they wreck it with their trash DLC.

Lies, stupidity, and ignorance are the central axes by which Trump and his administration function, and this web of chaos infects virtually every function of government, including even these health exams. Trump is absolutely dumb enough to think that taking and passing the MoCA is a great feat - if he's the one doing it, anyways. But do we even know for sure if he actually took it, much less passed it, or are we just relying on his word? Under Biden, the full Walter Reed health reports were published on the White House .gov site, but as far as I can tell, Trump makes the whole damned staff there sign NDAs and diddly squat is ever officially published. The other times he's apparently taken the MoCA were not even at the behest of Walter Reed, but rather just the White House Physician, and we all know how 'respectable' that position has been under Trump, so that could be a bunch of crap too. Frankly, I'm surprised something like MoCA would even be a part of any serious testing of the president - isn't it a whole team of a dozen doctors and physicians? You'd think they'd be a little more involved than using just your standard single page assessment, and Walter Reed hasn't apparently ever administered or asked to administer the test to any president before. I really don't know: it's possible he's the one insisting on taking them because he's done them before and he's a giant manbaby showing off his kindergarten art drawings, it's possible the medical team think he's mad as a hatter and wanted him to, and it's possible that it literally wasn't even a part of the health exam at all. He could even just be getting confused because he apparently took one back in April with the White House Physician again (if that's even true). It's 1984 with this administration and he's a lying nutjob, so how do you not question literally every last thing that came out of his mouth? Until at least a single respectable and trustworthy source attests to Trump actually taking the test and passing it, you might as well just assume the whole thing is a big bag of lies and throw it all out, because right now all I'm seeing are liars flying off the handle as per usual and the actual decent people with their mouths firmly gagged.

I confess that I didn't put much stock in Trump taking the test again: it's at least the third time he's taken it and bragged about it after the fact for reasons only understandable to the uniquely stupid person known as Donald J. Trump. Every time it's been administered, there's been the same sort of "the fact that a doctor forced(?) him to take it implies bad things about his mental state" media reaction to it, but like most "surely he's doomed now" headlines concerning Trump*, that unfortunately really just doesn't matter to anyone who didn't already care the first, second, third, fourth, fifth, sixth, seventh, eighth, ninth, tenth times they read it. The amusement I got out of it was the irony of Trump conflating a cognition test with an IQ test, but it's not like we didn't already know the guy was dumb. *Everyone should know all too well by now that the only headline that will convince anyone of Trump's certain doom is the one that announces his actual literal death. Until then or maybe until the economy really explodes and we've got tens of millions of people demonstrating in the streets weekly, I'm afraid that he will unfortunately continue to get away with just about everything. Not that we should ignore everything in the interim, but we've clearly decided as a nation where we're going with this until we reach a real boiling point that actually gets through to the average news-disconnected moron in our great country of proud ignorance and inequality.

https://people.com/donald-trump-mistakes-dementia-screening-for-iq-test-11837935 Canadian neurologist Dr. Ziad Nasreddine, who created the MoCA test in 1996, told NBC News that the screening should not be used to measure intelligence. "There are no studies showing that this test is correlated to IQ tests," Nasreddine said. "The purpose of it was not to determine persons who have a low IQ level. So we cannot say that this test reflects somebody's IQ.” I always like it when news stories bother to add these "expert opinions" to stories like this, bonus points that it's literally the creator of the MoCA* this time - as if this is a serious story where we really need context to fully understand what all of this means, when actually...yeah, we know the guy is just a dumbass. *

There are a few things you're supposed to be able to eat at this stage...applesauce, soft overripe bananas, warm milk, jello, yogurt...but I have a condition called reactive hypoglycemia that means I really can't eat sugars unless I can balance it out with solid protein. Essentially, the more sugar you eat, the more your blood sugar decreases due to having overactive insulin that corrects too hard for it - ergo, fasting is actually better for me than trying to eat most of the stuff they recommend that you eat after removing your wisdom teeth, though it does mean I'm feeling a bit woozy and don't have a lot of energy right now. As a child, I used to show all the normal symptoms of low blood sugar, so adults would keep trying to make me eat more carbs/sugar, e.g. a cookie, and I'd argue and refuse to eat anything of the sort due to having learned the hard way that it just makes me worse. They'd get really mad at me, but lo and behold, I learn that it's a real thing as an adult. Nope, to fix low my blood sugar, I have to...not eat any sugar and instead eat eggs, beans, or meat. Even stuff like milk and peanut butter has too much sugar compared to their protein for it to balance out for me (also, I became strongly lactose-intolerant out of the blue last year anyways). I'll be better off once my gums stop bleeding and swelling and I can have something like soft scrambled eggs or refried beans. Thanks for the well wishes - I haven't been too bothered by the pain yet, day 3 tomorrow, just taking an ibuprofen and tylenol here and there so far. Honestly, I have way worse chronic pain from my busted-ass neck, which has bothered me more - especially as I'm supposed to keep my head elevated while sleeping, which as someone who mostly sleeps on their chest, is not something I really do very much.

I'm a couple of years past the suggested/recommended age range myself, mainly because they've never bothered me and I'd never had a dentist tell me I should get them pulled until recently. I'm unsure if that played into why the roots were deeper than normal. The bottom ones in particular were pushing my teeth together a little too tight, which would make cavities likely in the future...at some point. Better now than later, my dentist said. Despite them having to cut up my gums and sew them back together, the bleeding is close to stopping and the pain really isn't too bad yet, so it'll just be a matter of dealing with the swelling and avoiding dry socket/infections, I think. And being hungry for the rest of this week, since I'm not supposed to eat anything.

I got my wisdom teeth pulled yesterday. My dentist and the surgeon thought they would be simple pulls because they'd all surfaced fully and without any major impacting, but they ended up having to cut into my gums and drill them apart because they had gnarly deep roots and refused to be pulled. 20-30m procedure turned into 3x that. Fun. The worst part so far was the anxiety leading up to it (I decided I'd be IV sedated...and that was almost certainly the right choice), but we'll see over the next few days.