Bartimaeus

This seems like the same kind of specious reasoning that anti-vaxxers use to say vaccines cause autism. Yes, people who get vaccines also sometimes have autism...but unless the rates of autism between vaxxers and anti-vaxxers is significantly different (never mind the issue of reporting - I would imagine anti-vaxxers would be much less likely to bring in their kids to get tested for autism to begin with), then what are we talking about? Anti-vaxxers being worried about it is true to form - why are the experts?

Hope either/both are able to return. The NFL desperately needs a minor league to allow guys who are good athletes but bad at the football opportunities to grow, and while the CFL in of itself hasn't been exactly great for that, it's certainly a lot better than nothing. Drew Brees retired. Don't think we have any Saints fans here, but still kind of significant news. (e): Also, in Packers news, we just paid Aaron Jones a boatload of money...after having drafted a RB in the second round last year, who even looked quite impressive in the limited playtime he had behind two good backs. Ugh: I was so ready for him to walk and get overpaid by a different team. Paying RBs just...hasn't work out for basically anyone recently - I'd so much rather have the All-Pro center who was one of the critical component behind our collective RBs' success (as well as our QB's MVP season...), but I guess the Packers' brass feels differently. I guess Jones was only paid about 9 million a year with some additional incentives to earn an additional 3 million...and not a lot of it is guaranteed - compared to Elliot's 15 million a year with a big chunk of it guaranteed from a couple of years ago, I guess it's not the end of the world...but then again, Ezekiel Elliot has been an absolute workhorse every year but this past one, so eh.

hey pal, I'm sitting here minding my own business having SUCCESSFULLY FORGOTTEN that and you go ahead and remind me again, what's the big idea

Today is probably S: The Movie-watching day. If not today, then tomorrow morning: hope it's good.

I would've just kept it unplugged until at least ten minutes after the meeting started...juuuust to make sure.

@majestic @Lexx I took a glance at the show. Surprisingly great ratings on Rotten Tomatoes and IMDB - reviews mention that the show is both dark and gory as well as silly and comedic? Odd. I'm not one for straight superhero stuff, but if the main point isn't the superhero stuff, then it's not necessarily a dealbreaker. Animation style is kind of weird to me, but...not terrible, I guess - probably something you can get used to and learn to appreciate if you like the show otherwise.

@majestic @ArtistFormerlyKnownasKP I'm probably going to make pretty liberal use of my right arrow button when I watch SuperS...

@majestic Heh, I saw the original English dub of a scene from that episode a while ago, as well as some other random bits and pieces of SuperS and Sailor Stars. From just the clips I've seen, you'd almost think SuperS and Sailor Stars were just as good as the first three seasons...but I guess it's a bit of selection bias, .

Yeah, that episode is...well, it's just not that great - but yes, thankfully just 10 minutes-long. And now you're onto episode 16, which is significantly better, to say the least!

@majestic Missed your SU update: while I don't mind that episode one way or the other particularly*, I would say the very next one is probably my very least favorite episode of the season (and if not that one, then it's probably competing with only one or maybe two others for the spot). The good news is, there's a pretty good run of more interesting episodes (besides like maybe one) after that. *...Although only in retrospect: episodes like these are what the fandom somewhat derisively labeled "townie episodes" (episodes that didn't really have anything to do with the main characters outside of Steven and instead focus more on town characters), and I recall some of them being more a little more frustrating than others during my original watch of the show. In retrospect, most of them work a lot better and make more sense than you might think...but, you know, that's in retrospect - i.e. not to a new watcher.

this sounds like the very worst parts of the original sailor moon english dub

Al Franken? ...Crappy part is, Al Franken was one of the better senators around (in terms of actually doing their job).

so this is basically doki doki iliterature club but in tv format

All I'll say is that...............I'm glad that I can watch a few more episodes now that you've gotten a little farther in, . Though season 1 is more lowkey as I said, there are definitely details (both direct and subtext) to pay attention to.

Do you actually want me to answer those questions?

I wouldn't go that far - objectively speaking, most everything everyone does is a stupid waste of time, and I'm more inclined to believe the the main reason is sociological (after all, the idea of truly trying to achieve male-female equality becoming actually widespread throughout society is a relatively new one, and the effects of such inequality, same as in the case of e.g. institutional racism, are still heavily baked into and felt by our society, as they will be for decades and decades to come...and Chess, after all, has been a male-centric game for most of its existence). The first episode was my favorite episode - I thought it had a right mix of some funner (albeit small) character stuff while offsetting the more serious themes it was hinting at to come. But then again, I don't hate Chess (in fact I was little annoyed that they didn't spend a little more time showing the actual games at times, at least for the most important ones - there's only so many hours of looking at Anya Taylor-Joy's expressions that I can take!), and I have a positive predisposition towards some of the premise elements of the show. Ah well.

The article doesn't say and I can't seem to figure it out - what's the exact significance of it being abbreviated to "SAP"? All this whining and complaining from both the left and the right about DINOs and RINOs is kind of hilarious. Very often, these types of politicians are where they are because they are the only ones who can win given their locale. Joe Manchin is a conservative Democrat, and sure, that sucks right now for passing a progressive agenda...but he's the only kind of Democrat that can win in West Virginia at all. He might be literally the only Democrat who can win there at all given his long family history with the state. So if it wasn't him or someone just like him, the Senate would still be 51-49 Republican right now. Same with a few Republicans like Susan Collins of Maine. I bring this up because Trump is whining and screaming about RINOs in that linked article - whether you're Republican or Democrat, those compromise candidates are critical to being able to control the Senate - if you instead nominate a crappy full MAGA or full Bernie Sanders candidate in an area that isn't receptive towards them, congratulations on automatically losing any shot of winning that seat and instead handing it over to the opposite party. Though I bet it felt great for a while to be utterly deluded and nominate someone who was predictably and inevitably going to walloped, right?

Finished the final episode of The Queen's Gambit this morning. Bleh. Final thoughts on the series, some general but not particularly specific spoilers:

Okay, so yeah, seems very similar in setup, style, and tone to the original Dragon Ball. Also seems to have been made around the same time. Guess it makes sense I was moderately entertained by it. @majestic Takahata: Now that you mention it, most of his stuff does seem to be more grounded and bittersweet if not outright dark and depressing. I think I tend to favor his work over Miyazaki's - I like my fantastical stuff to be a little more low-key and grounded, which he seem to be all too happy to oblige with when he bothers with fantasy at all. Also, it helps that Takahata can write satisfying endings to his works, which I think tends to be Miyazaki's greatest flaw. That show looks to be *so* not my thing outside of the fact that it's an inversion of the genre, but...you did say it was only 12 episodes, which is nice. I guess I can give it a try!

Write up on some anime thingies I've watched over the past week or two during my break of Sailor Moon: Horus, Prince of the Sun (1968). Isao Takahata's first film... I had a lot of trouble getting into this one. Extremely stilted, has a very generic sort of boy adventure story with very standard and kind of uncharming characters, and wasn't funny or entertaining in some other kind of way to really make it worthwhile. Congratulations on finally making something I explicitly didn't like, Mr. Takahata - the closest things to it before this were My Neighbor the Yamadas (which wasn't...bad, just the vignette format didn't really work for a long movie) and Panda! Go Panda! (which at least was weird enough to make it sort of entertaining). Ranma 1/2: The Movie, Big Trouble in Nekonron, China (1991). I knew I was in for some trouble when they introduced literally what felt like two dozen characters who all seemed to be part of what felt like an ensemble a la Dragon Ball Z within like the first 5 minutes, especially in the way that they did it. Hoo boy...and lots of other confusing stuff I had trouble catching on to for a while as well (like why are there grandma and grandpa characters that literally look exactly the same with opposite personalities...why does this lady suddenly transform into a cat out of the blue...wait, is the main character a boy or a girl - or are they both, what's going on!?). ...This movie wasn't necessarily great, but it was at least pretty funny and kept me entertained, so good job, movie. Still watching an episode of Heidi every once in a while (it's enjoyable and I like this sort of laid back natural world experience Heidi is going through...but it is a show that you probably don't want to watch too much of at a time), and I'm about halfway through gosh-danged stupid Speed Racer because I keep getting roped into watching it. Speed Racer is bizarre in that like 1/3rd of the episodes are surprisingly competent and actually decent entertainment, 1/3rd of the episodes are hilarious memes, and then 1/3rd are just inexplicably bewildering and terrible. If I wasn't actually watching this with someone else, there's no way I would've stuck with this, but as far as absolute pants shows go, it's decently entertaining. (e): Also, no, I've never heard of that show, and I don't recognize anything from it, but that would make sense.

Something to note with no-trade clauses is that they only matter if the player doesn't want to move; so if the player agrees to a trade, then the no-trade clause is irrelevant. I see Cowboys' situation being pretty similar to the Seahawks once Wilson got paid - unless your team manages to get very lucky and draft great over a couple of years while retaining all the right players and not spending on the wrong ones, you'll be forever doomed to make the playoffs most years, but not ever get much further. A lot of teams these days are going all-in on winning a Super Bowl when they get a good QB on a rookie deal while they can, and the Cowboys did take a crack at it, but for some reason mostly underachieved (probably coaching!).