Bartimaeus

I received a 403 error for just a one paragraph post. Would not let me post it no matter what. I resolved it by editing out all the content, writing one word, posting it, then editing the real text into the post. Not ideal.

I never liked the feeling of paper: sensory issue. I put up with it when I was young, but I haven't read a physical book in...um, okay, like 6 months because someone gave one to me to read, but besides that, a really long time, . Generally, I only try to have physical items of things I already love and where the item itself visually presents as art that is meaningful to me, otherwise I really don't feel the need to clutter up my life with so much junk.

The local film club selected Aftersun as its movie for the week. Do you want to know why? Because I'm the one that picked it, because it's one of my favorite movies of all time. Now you should watch it too. It's a movie that somehow encapsulates both the hazy insanity of my childhood and the darkest terrors of my adulthood, and maybe it will yours too.

My impression has always been such things are an issue of "whose space is this?". Who's the one deciding where stuff goes at a moment's notice, who's the one most familiar with all the different objects inside, who's making instant decisions on where stuff needs to go or how stuff gets re-organized when space gets tight? I know where all the tools inside my toolbox are, but just because you also have a toolbox that you know the ins and outs of wouldn't suddenly make you an expert at finding whatever it is you're looking for inside mine, especially if a lot of its contents are different and unfamiliar compared to what's in yours. Faster compared to someone who's never seen the inside of one and familiar with any of it though, sure. ...But it wouldn't surprise me if some other factors also figure in, like men's mental visualization and pattern-finding skills being better suited for certain things and women's being better for others.

Minnesota and Denver sure have played each other a lot in the playoffs the past few years While Minnesota has won 2 of the 3 series, the one series Denver won they went on to win it all, so...

ABC NewsSupreme Court limits Voting Rights Act in historic decisionThe Supreme Court on Wednesday, in a 6-3 decision, limited the use of the landmark Voting Rights Act.Some more from ABC. The things I hope happen to these (in)justices post-2028...in Minecraft, of course.

a few partial/incomplete louise brooks film were found, restored, and released on blu-ray recently it's like they know i exist

https://slate.com/news-and-politics/2026/04/scotus-voting-rights-section-two-ruling-history-worst-century.html Democrats need to get control of the Senate this upcoming election so badly. I haven't looked into how realistic it is, but Trump cannot be allowed to appoint another one of these jackasses if one retires or bites it. Even as a replacement for one of the conservative judges.

They will, in good time - when the required hardware and software stop being easily usable and there's no-one left (publishers/developers with intent to continue to sell OR independent third parties willing to put their free time into fixing things) to support those games for anything newer, same as it has always been. Everything will die or disappear that way eventually, and some that nobody much cares about already has. But letting a publisher arbitrarily decide the when and where because of the way they've deliberately engineered their games to fail and be unusable? Well, it'd be in line with nobody owning their music, movies, or television anymore and how some things released only on streaming services can permanently disappear from them just for tax write-off or royalty avoidance purposes, I suppose...except for all the dread pirates ripping and distributing them as local files that anyone can own and do what they want with, of course.

the funny man i watched play half-life 15 years ago is speaking to EU parliament good on you, ross

The problem aren't the bots, it's the people who set up and run them...

welp, we're officially in the end times now

Canada, if you're listening, I hope you're able to put a bullet in this guy's brain

Huntress, mainly because she was one of the initially unlocked killers. I have a 70% kill rate over my first 50 games, which doesn't seem too shabby. Her hatchets are such an effective pallet/vaulting punishment that is very difficult for survivors to cope with if you can get their timing and the aiming down, it seems. I've played a little bit of The Nurse and The Dredge as well, but I'm still learning them, they seem much more difficult to get the hang of.

He was the best president this great country has ever had, may he rest in peace,

I got drawn into playing Dead by Daylight by some friends, which is a 1v4 asymmetrical PVP game. Unfortunately, I seem to be a lot better at murdering people (the 1 killer) than I am at living (the 4 survivors), which doesn't really jive with the spirit of co-op with your friends... Whoops.

That's right. I've only heard a little bit, because they've been shielding me from spoilers knowing that I started reading it, but there has seemed to be a general attitude of "haha, the media-illiterate Chainsaw Man fans don't like it but iiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiii sure do". Imagine someone making the smuggest face in the entire world to punctuate that statement, because that's basically what I've seen over the past week every time the subject of Chainsaw Man has come up. I'm genuinely very curious as to how I'll feel about it, especially given everything that happened at the end of part 1. big spoilers for manga, don't read if you've only seen the show

The person who made me watch the Chainsaw Man show and movie says they've been perfectly happy with part 2. I've now finished part 1, I guess I'll be seeing with whom I agree in the coming week or two.

Perfect Blue (1997). Speaking of Madhouse productions, it's been...six, seven years since I first saw it? One of the very first anime movies I'd ever seen...I THINK possibly the first non-Ghibli period. Boy, time flies by, doesn't it? I watched the new 4K restoration, which is actually a real restoration and not a fake upscale (AI or otherwise) like Millennium Actress or Paprika or... It was a bit of a different kind of atmosphere watching it this time, as the reason I was re-watching it was because a friend wanted to watch it for her first time...and then we also had another four other people watching with us. Yep, just six totally normal people watching Perfect Blue, a cute little idol anime movie, together. Probably the funniest thing that happened (at least to me) was my friend calling me out by making this observation...: more stuff, spoilers All in all...it lived up to my Horrible, No Good, Very Bad memories of it. Great movie, little odd to re-watch it for the first time in forever with a bunch of other people for their first time and who don't watch pre-digital anime, but it went well!!

Since Denuvo changed their licensing model a while back, I'm not really bothered nearly as much by its inclusion. Denuvo works orders of magnitude better than any other DRM that came before it, and most games protected by it do not get cracked or at least do not get meaningfully cracked - i.e., maybe one version of the game, usually one close to release, might get cracked, but then nothing after that: it's just too difficult and too time-consuming for cracking groups to really handle. However...while Denuvo used to sell perpetual licenses, they are now a real proper money-gouging "service" (and this is one of the only times I'll ever celebrate that) in that publishers must pay quite a hefty sum to continue to protect their games with Denuvo on an ongoing basis, and this means that even very big games eventually lose Denuvo - at the very least, the singleplayer ones that aren't earning the cash to continue to warrant it. Way I see it, this means games get protected for 6-24 months, which strongly encourages the people who really want to play them to actually buy them (which is good for the prospects of bigger singleplayer-only titles in particular, which have always been at higher risk of being pirated en masse relative to multiplayer titles), but it also means publishers will eventually push clean builds through Steam et al. somewhere down the road...which is good for those of us who either don't want anything to do with (or straight up can't play with) Denuvo, OR for those of us who would be waiting to buy something at a lower price point anyways. I think this is a fair compromise, and a much better and sustainable situation than those nasty perpetual licenses Denuvo was selling previously. Now that they've pretty reliably proven their DRM works and many publishers use it and will want to continue to do so, it makes sense they'd change their pricing model to take advantage of that, and the rest of us can luckily benefit from it.

"Evangelion 30th Anniversary Special Commemorative Showing", or "Asuka + Asuka, Episode 26 + Episode 1", or... I was skeptical for the first few minutes, but I liked it, even with Mari showing up for a few seconds.

Now she has more time to murder her dogs and goats for no reason...

I'm reading/playing Umineko: When the Seagulls Cry, I'm about a chapter and a half through (out of 8). I made this stupid, awful meme after I finished chapter 1. It will make absolutely no sense to anyone here...I think, but here you go anyways. bad meme

KPop Demon Hunters (2025). Despite not liking a single one of the songs (really, more an issue of the choice of vocalists than anything else, I think - it was a truly ghastly collection of singing voices, I'm afraid, though I'm obviously not into kpop which certainly has to play into that issue), I did enjoy the movie overall. Did it feel like I was re-watching what was essentially a dressed-up and restructured version of a certain Disney film released 13 years ago? ...Yes, yes it did. But I like Frozen, so I think that's okay. Also, the above image is surprisingly not from Frozen, it's actually from KPop Demon Hunters but it came like halfway through the film when I was already feeling like I was watching Frozen and, look, they heard my brain, because there's Frozen!

AP NewsSupreme Court rules the Postal Service can't be sued, eve...A divided Supreme Court has ruled that Americans can’t sue the U.S. Postal Service, even when employees deliberately refuse to deliver mail.Shouldn't be using mail-in voting anymore: your post office would seem to be allowed to steal or destroy your mail without repercussion now.