Bartimaeus

Peppermint Soda (1977). The hilarious, somewhat depressing, much higher budget, awkward teenaged version of the aforementioned The Pupil. Instead of a small orphanage of Italian girls being rather miserable with life, it's an entire French girl's school of them (though the film predominantly focuses on two sisters, their respective social groups, and their relationship with each other). It was very French/10, but also quite enjoyable (especially at the scale that this was depicted - so many students in such a huge school!)...well, except for one of the main supporting cast turning into a Nazi as well as the girls being preyed on by creeps, but what else is new? I don't know what's going on here, but I like the cut of their jib.

well, brad dourif is a national treasure, so who can blame you I didn't keep up with this enough to understand the whys, but I sure thought it was odd the Republican House overwhelmingly decided to impeach him but the Republican Senate overwhelmingly decided against convicting.

Yes, and Android phones still let you manage the phone via ADB (the Android Debug Bridge). It was practically the first thing I figured out when I bought an Android phone...the iPhone I'd previously been using going straight into a trash compactor being the next. Don't think I ever got so consistently enraged at a piece of tech than the year or so I had an iPhone, it was utter misery.

The impermanency of what you've experienced is something that really bothers me about online-only games.

I had to go through the squirrel conversation in act 1 twice because of a glitch that lead to me closing and reopening the game, and the first time Shadowheart was sarcastically like "well, wasn't that wonderful?" when I kicked the squirrel to death...but the second time I did it, I instead got Astarion yelling at me for all the blood being wastefully spilled (hello Mr. I'm Totally Not a Vampire!) - nothing from Shadowheart. I got the feeling that for certain quick and relatively unimportant events, the game might just pick one reaction instead of letting all possible reactions play.

Yeah, but then you'd be supporting the public library having licensed it. A reminder that stealing things is always an option, and sometimes the only option that's actually ethical. Biden really is at his worst when he's publicly speaking. Once in a while he gets something that's hilarious and pretty poignant off the cuff, but he's many times more likely to do the opposite instead. It's not nearly as bad as Trump's constant word salad, of course, but...Biden is definitely not the most inspiring speaker or character, to say the least.

I think I agree, actually: their scenes worked the best when they were bouncing off of each other. Listening to Wang Miao neurotically repeating his own thoughts himself ad nauseum, not so much. I suppose you're probably not being subjected as much to that, watching the TV show instead of reading the book and all. Countdown: Yes...though from what I see, it and the video game stuff will be resolved and the book (or, well, show) will finally get on its way to where it wants to go after that.

Who's the other lead in the TV show, the crass military dude? Anyways, I got real tired of the countdown nonsense, so to then segue to the video game stuff...and then right back to the countdown again, is what caused me to drop the book. In my defense, I prefer Columbia.

Suffice to say, 2028 should be a lot more interesting than 2024 in terms of potential presidential candidates.

Everywhere seems to list the PoE soundtrack at exactly 26 tracks, with the exception of the early/prototype physical CD that they released as part of the original Kickstarter (...which is 9 tracks and 25 minutes shorter than the web soundtrack). What're the 36 tracks that you have that are missing?

I know you're joking, but the surgery and rehab is 8 months at a minimum, usually longer...even for young players. These sorts of major injuries are not fun or easy to recover from from either a pain or conditioning standpoint to get back to game shape, and I could honestly see that being the reason why Rodgers might not want to bother - knowing that he's basically taking a year off of his life and normal level of freedom just to dedicate himself to getting back into playing shape again.

Silver linings that you weren't allowed to build up much hope, I guess. I think he'll be back next year, can't see him wanting to leave the game like that, but who knows if he'll be able to do it physically anymore at that point even if he does. Anyways, that's a long ways off, not worth worrying about right now. Very unfun fact: Jordan Love was pressured twice over the entire Packers-Bears game...Aaron Rodgers three times in the four snaps that he played.

Sorry, @the_dog_days, load of total crap for your Jets as per usual. Saw lots of Jets fans basically saying "well, yeah, we're the Jets, so it was pretty much what we already expected".

I honestly forgot about that, but you know, now that you mention it, I think that the Harpers' level of incompetence is directly proportional to how many bards they have...it all starts to makes sense.

video game appearances of the harpers have pretty consistently made them out to be the most worthless secret superhero society that I've ever seen give me batman over those jokers, at least he's good for punching people in the face

Had a friend look at my bicycle, they asked to do a quick test ride. Just fifteen seconds later, they test the brakes and they've flipped themselves over the handlebars head first into ground. One trip to the hospital and an hour later, their memory of the whole event has disappeared: they don't remember what they were trying to do or anything of what was said leading up to (or after) the incident. Diagnosed with a concussion and bruised ribs, but CT scan doesn't show any brain abnormalities. I can only assume that my front brakes were much tighter than they were used to and they didn't think to test them more gingerly to start out with: can't really think of any other reason why someone who I do not believe to be dumb and who is an relatively experienced bicycle rider would suddenly flip themselves over into a traumatic brain injury literally just seconds into testing a bike. I have a few notes from this experience: Always wear your helmet, because between other people trying to kill you and split-second decisions you may make without clearly thinking them through before you do them, your head is worth protecting...even if it's for just a casual and "totally safe" quick test ride. Even though it's not really my fault, when you see someone suffer a horrific injury that could've easily been avoided if you had just said "test the brakes before you do anything else" (which I literally do every time I get on even my own bicycle because I have a mortal fear of brakes not working correctly, which has potentially saved me from a similar fate once upon a time when my back wheel brakes had inexplicably disconnected), it's really difficult to not feel responsible for them getting hurt. I might need a new bicycle. So...how was everyone else's Sunday morning?

The original ending is indulgently long - isn't it like...15, 20 minutes of extra footage? It's great, but it also doesn't flow super well with the rest of the film, and it's not the normal "happy ending" that audiences would want for a tonally cheerful musical extravaganza (ignoring all the thematically heavy horrors and violence depicted there within - if everything is said and done with a laugh and a smile, does it really count?). But with the theatrical ending on the other hand...

"Switch Too" sounds like an alarmingly similar innovation to "Wii U"...kiiind of thinking they're not going to tempt fate with that one. At least the Super Nintendo was successful, though it was obviously forever ago and marketing has hugely changed since then.

They better call it the Super Nintendo Switch (SNS).

rip bozo

If past history is anything to go by, they should be back to being bad by next year at the latest.

I saw this comment recently: "Starfield is like you're over 40 years old. There is a universe to explore, but you're already tired from work and it's time to sleep." ...I'm not over 40 years old (or even particularly close to it), but it still struck a chord.

The movie is quite horrid, and I actually foresaw that it might be someone's only frame of reference for it, which is why I ended up editing "book" into the spoiler, . The original book is pretty good, even if it has some issues...the sequels, uh, have some interesting ideas, but largely devolve into some kind of overtly philosophical soap opera. Not for me, to say the least. Ken Liu's English translation: I thought the writing prose was fine. It's not particularly interesting or complex or distracting or...really anything. It's just fine. If you're interested in the ideas, perhaps that's enough, but it's difficult for me to say fo rsure.

I got like a third of the way through The Three-Body Problem book before I dropped it. The opening, which takes place in the throes of China's Cultural Revolution where Ye Wenjie's father is lynched during a struggle session, was awesome and I was super hooked from that...but after that, we quickly move forward to the present, and the book did almost nothing to capture my interest from thereon. I'd had quite enough when we got to the video game section of the book: I'd started to have this really sinking feeling that the series was massively derivative of (or otherwise painfully similar to) the series, and so I started reading a summary of the rest of the book, and well...both yes and no, but regardless, I had zero inclination to get any deeper into the series.

Stress-free Packers football for the first time in close to a decade, it should be a nice respite for a season...but hopefully not much longer.