Bartimaeus

these five hundred guests are outta control, who said they could browse my obsidian forums and make the whole thing lag? this is outrageous, it's unfair

Wrong. *laughs in Demon's Souls* Never mind all the "must obtain every spell, weapon, armor, and ring" achievements, it sure would suck if one of the weapon materials necessary to get the "Obtained Best Weapon by [Upgrade Material]" only has a sub-1% chance of spawning on exactly one type of enemy. I have a friend that farmed this enemy for about eight hours and never got one...their Demon's Souls achievements are still not 100% to this day. Not just for being able to move/roll: do a light attack in DS2 and try to follow it up with a heavy attack (or reverse the order, or try to cast a spell instead, or use an item, or...), then try the same in DS1. It's atrocious in DS2. In theory, DS1 has the slower, weightier, and more limited movement between the two games, but it didn't actually feel like it at all to me in practice because of all the inexplicable delays they added in between different types of actions for DS2 (not to mention the harsher directional limitations to prevent you from turning between attacks too quickly, which feel like they were designed specifically to help the noobs who never learned to turn off camera targeting while kneecapping those of us who did). You can either chain light attacks or chain heavy attacks, but not one off of the other, and don't try to do anything else because **** you. As I said before, I could forgive most everything that was wrong with Dark Souls 2 (and boy was there a lot that was wrong) except for the fact that the controls made me want to strangle someone. Dark Souls 3 mercifully reverts back to being a bit more like Dark Souls 1, thankfully. Yeah, it sure would suck if you were a player where you generally try to stay out of reach of a boss until you have some time to look at and comprehend a boss' move set before you try to take them on and tried to fight Gwyn that way...yep, it sure would suck. It would suck even more if you had defeated most bosses on your first try due to that strategy having successfully worked up until that point and then being unprepared on what to do when a boss just won't give you the opportunity to stay back and figure out how they work. I remember my first time with Gwyn not being very fun because of his sword being too long and his move set being too erratic - not to mention his inclination to suddenly fly at you when you're out of range. It wasn't until I actually tried to take him on properly - after dying a bunch of times while not really trying to fight him - that I realized that his bark was a lot worse than his bite, and that trying to not die to him was having the opposite effect intended. And then as soon as you learn you can parry him, it's basically impossible to lose. The infamous "we ran out of time and money" half of Dark Souls 1. Truly gaming at its finest. I kind of wonder if the love for Dark Souls' passive/environmental storytelling seemed a breath of fresh air compared to the long cutscenes, bloated exposition dumps, and "standing around" sequences of yesteryear. You don't have to engage with Dark Souls' world or storytelling at all...if you don't want to. Clearly, you didn't want to, so you did not, and that's fine...but a lot of people did, and they seemed to get a lot out of Dark Souls in that way specifically. I especially think of it in comparison to Half-Life 2, which was hailed for moving the medium forward in terms of characters having dialogue and the game telling a story while not jamming the player into unskippable cutscenes...contrasted with the fact that I personally much prefer to replay Half-Life 1 (or even better, S.T.A.L.K.E.R.!) precisely because I find Half-Life 2's style of telling its story to you (or maybe more accurately, around you) while you have to just impatiently stand around waiting for conversations that don't really involve you to end before you can get back to playing the game. I think Dark Souls is similar to S.T.A.L.K.E.R. in the sense that it's kind of what you make of it, and some people will make nothing of it because they're not interested and some people will make a great deal of it because they are, but at the end of the day, if you're one of the people that don't want to make anything of it, at least it's not being constantly shoved down your throat at the expense of everything else: I maintain that there is nothing worse than a game/movie/book/show that has a terrible story that just won't get out of the way of whatever you do like that is making you keep engaging with it, whether it's characters, atmosphere, music, or gameplay.

The key with Rebuild is to just repress your traumatic memories: that way, you'll remember...maybe only 5% of it.

Maggie Smith

(The joke was that this "scene" is part of the preview for the next episode, but what they thought was going to be in the next Rebuild film kept wildly changing so all the stuff that appeared in those previews never actually happened, so that picture is just nonsense.) IIRC, @majestic's favorite bit was the tea party(?) Rei threw in the second Rebuild film, while my favorite bit...was when it was over. Okay, not including that, and not including the funny misleading/erroneous previews, my favorite part was when they were all just chilling in that post-apocalypse village in...I think the fourth film - it didn't even feel like I was really watching Evangelion during that section, which was a welcome reprieve from everything before and after. Just a sudden departure to a totally different tone and style, no yelling and screaming or seizure-inducing animation. So my favorite part might also be your favorite part based on what you said, though I'm not 100% sure because I'm not sure if that section happened in the third or the fourth movie.

Truly my favorite part of Rebuild:

Brewster McCloud (1970). It's the third Robert Altman movie I've seen (3 Women and Popeye), and it's three for three so far. The man makes the most inexplicable but nevertheless entertaining films: he is a psychotic director, and I have no idea how he kept getting funding for his weirdo films (also why he was selected for making Popeye in the first place given his history of work...). I also just read that he's the one that discovered Shelley Duvall as an actress and insisted upon her appearing and starring in his films, which explains why she's been a major part in all three of the Altman films I've seen.

From what I can find out online, for the most part, but there are some specific exceptions carved out for certain states. For example, I just read that there is a law in Illinois specifically allowing chiropractors to be able to advertise themselves as offering "physical therapy" despite having no degree-holding licensed physical therapists on staff. I'm not sure exactly why Illinois is giving a bigger platform to chiropractor hacks, but yeah, I guess it'll depend from state to state.

For what it's worth, I've worked with...nine different PTs over the past six years or so, and I'd say six of them were somewhere between bad and terrible at their jobs and only made my injuries worse. But the other three were good at diagnosing the root issues of injuries and how best to work with and through them, understanding personal limitations and what was too much (or sometimes too little!), gave very personalized care that wasn't just rote nonsense from what they studied, usually had a very hands-on approach as warranted (as opposed to the types who just...stand back and tell you what to do while chattering on and on until your session is over), and ultimately were genuinely helpful. They didn't cure my chronic pains, but they did help make them better and life a bit more tolerable. If you or someone you know tries PT and you're not feeling like you're making any progress over a month or two, just...try out a different one - the level of knowledge, specific skills and abilities, overall approach to your care, and even just the ability to notice what's working and what's not can vary wildly from one to the next.

The most experimental part of that video was when they randomly used an Age of Empires sheep sound effect. It may be a stock sound effect, but A. I've never heard it anywhere else unlike a whole host of other random stock sounds that I've recognized between many different games, movies, and TV shows, and B. it sounded just as low quality in the video as it did back in 1999.

I haven't been getting ads, but have been getting inexplicable 30 second pauses every few minutes where nothing happens and I have to just sit there...syke, ain't nobody got time for that, in those 30 seconds I open yt-dlp and download the video to watch it locally. Suck it, Google.

I always love it that whenever Trump has a very rare moment in public decency, his crowds are always there to immediately tell him "no, don't do that". Trump and the hate-filled right are an interesting chicken-or-the-egg situation: on one hand, the latter definitely existed before Trump came along, but usually a lot quieter and more on the fringes of political discussion; on the other hand, without Trump legitimizing and bringing them to the mainstream, they may have well kept to the shadows and never reared their ugly head in public to be able to convert 40% of the population to their way of thinking; on the third hand, moments like quoted above make it pretty clear that despite everything, Trump is just a symptom, a manifestation of these people's hate and rage, and now that they're fully out of the closet, it seems quite certain they're going to be legion for a long time to come.

Didn't get any shots off...more a concept of an assassination, really.

Despite being someone who dislikes her voice and who especially dislikes her lyrics most every time I listen to a new song of hers, I've contrarily had the misfortune of having to be the one to defend her a number of times over the years. It's become especially bad recently as of the last year because of her new fandom and subsequent media presence with regards to American football and how much impotent rage there is directed towards her because she merely exists and the TV networks want to capitalize on showing her off. It's not a position that I love being in, but I guess at least she's tried to be helpful with recent elections.

Of all the Soulsborne games I've played, Dark Souls II is by far the...second worst, only beaten by Nioh. The thing is, Dark Souls II coulda theoretically been almost tolerable if not for the trash-tier controls that made me question the health and sanity of the people who made it, whereas I'm not sure if there's a single thing I didn't eventually hate about playing Nioh, so I can't rightfully say Dark Souls II is worse...but certainly more disappointing given that I quite liked the first Dark Souls.

I actually tried to read this manga recently (Junji Ito's Uzumaki from 1998), but I only finished the first volume (of three) before tossing it. Cool art and all, but didn't do anything for me.

I got involved with the Taliban.

Taylor Swift endorses Kamala Harris

Trump: "I have concepts of a plan" Okay, I take it back, maybe Kamala will be fine, she's handled some of the tougher questions just about as well as she could and avoided going completely off the rails like he has multiple times.

They're eating the dogs and cats.

The debate is tonight. It seems unlikely this will go great for Kamala: 1. Trump voters are wholly committed at this point, so it doesn't matter if he looks and sounds worse than Biden did at the previous one, they will not care. 2. Kamala is currently sitting atop a very fragile big tent coalition, and even small missteps could discourage sizable sections of her voters. 3. So-called "independent" voters (i.e. the unengaged and low-information voters - who, in all likelihood, lack internal monologues to drive any kind of intelligent thinking process, which is supposedly somewhere between a third and half of all people - that walk among us) aren't likely to be watching this debate in the first place: at most, they'll maybe read garbage headlines by garbage media tomorrow morning, the vast majority of which will judge Kamala and Trump by completely disparate standards. 4. ...And that last bit of the previous sentence really should've been a point in of itself. I think the best case scenario, she gets a good line in like Biden did in 2020 a la "will you shut up, man?", which is one of the very few times I can remember someone going toe-to-toe with Trump and coming out the better for it. It's not often someone gets one over him with a line like that. 5. I saw someone recently compare Trump to Vladimir Harkonnen of the Dune series, and I haven't been able to get it out of my head ever since. ...Point #5 didn't really have anything to do with the debate, but I feel it was still worth mentioning.

My understanding is that streaming services generally analyze their shows in terms of creating new subscribers as well as tracking already existing subscribers who watch it immediately as it comes out. By the time stragglers that put it off because they were busy with other things or just not in the mood for it yet actually get to watching it, the show may have already been cancelled. This has been widely agreed upon by everyone to be an excellent business model that has in no way left the streaming landscape as a veritable hellhole of shows that were inexplicably cancelled just as they were starting to hit their stride and grow a popular following, and it has absolutely not made audiences reluctant to grow attached to or even try to watch new shows out of fear that they'll be suddenly cancelled. In short, everything is exactly as it should be, especially once you realize that the initial lowball contracts they hand out for the personnel working on and creating a new show only last so long, and so studios prefer to cancel or at least have a show wrapped up before they might have to re-negotiate those contracts in the event of renewing a show past its expected due date.

I'm apparently voting for the same people that former vice president Dick Cheney will be voting for this upcoming election. I really want off this timeline.

Now, is that pronounced "tee-eye" or "tie"?

Were they 2560x1600 panels? They're pretty rare and expensive, would love to get my hands on a few... Screw ultra-wide, I just want my 16:10 back.