Bartimaeus

As I sometimes do, I decided to watch the movie first before the RLM review. ...But I haven't actually done that yet. Speaking of, I watched Us (2019). I'm not much of a horror person, but I do like the odd one here and there (The Thing, Alien), and I thought this was pretty decent. Certainly better than the cheap jump scare factories that most horror movies are now. There were times where I really had to turn off my brain because of logical realizations killing my suspension of disbelief, probably caused by a little too much overexplaining. Still, pretty decent.

...Is it actually industry standard to work with powers of 10 instead of powers of 2 there?

"Generic" protagonists I tend to think of as fulfilling a few archetypes. The good-natured but otherwise poorly characterized hero is one (most regularly found in stuff more aimed at children like Disney movies, sometimes with the addition of having like one negative trait they have to get over to resolve or otherwise successfully get through the plot of the movie), your generic witty action star is another (note my distaste for Marvel movies here, since that's so many of those characters, both male and female), the ultra-specific objective-driven protagonist is one of my most particularly disliked characters (bonus points if they're annoyingly angsty on top of it - "I have to find/avenge/whatever my father/mother/child or die trying!" is usually enough to make me stop watching or reading about anything), and there's probably a few other such archetypes that I can't think of right now that annoy the crap out of me after having seen them used way too many times. Note that I did not actually call Gosling's character in Blade Runner 2049 generic - just bland and underacted. Which, while not necessarily generic when seemingly done deliberately, can still understandably miss the mark for me when I have to watch nearly 3 hours of him barely being a character. 5 hours? Oh boy, can't wait for that Director's Cut... Yeah, it's a shame when a movie with apparent ideas and substance and when it was clearly made with a lot of expertise fails to come together as an actual movie to properly and enjoyably convey those things to the viewer. Apparently it was very well-liked by critics, and pretty well by audiences, too...and yet just barely broken even in theatres. Whoops. Shame is, I like the idea of replicants and am very intrigued by what exactly makes one human and intelligent and aware and such (although I'm more inclined towards intelligent machines in this discussion rather than clones or bio-androids or whatever replicants are supposed to be), yet both Blade Runners (and especially this one) have done pretty little for me on that front. @Gromnir It was about the hour-fifteen mark that we started undeniably having that sinking feeling and wanted it to end. I knew that stupid memory-maker was going to be the prodigal replicant, too, and very audibly groaned when that was the case. The near-OCD need to tie everything perfectly together by the end of a 2-hour movie is something I hate so freaking much for its prevalence. Never does a film feel more artificial. It tends to work better in TV shows and books due to their greater length and your greater investment into the work.

Yeah, I really only care about more meta stuff like that if I enjoyed the underlying movie to begin with, which I sadly didn't. I was rapidly switching between impatient, bewildered, and tense (that was then often deflated by the other two feelings) too often to like it. I'm not against slow movies, but I was internally groaning at where the plot was heading from nearly the start (for the record, I did not know Harrison Ford was in this movie, and kind of expected a plot completely separate from the original's), there weren't any particularly interesting or likeable characters for me to latch onto, and I'm just not the type of person that's very intrigued or wow-ed by 3D CGI in of itself, even though this movie's seemed very good. Didn't come together for me. (e): Also, I should repeat (since I've said it a few times before) that generic or bland male sole protagonists is very often one the biggest death knells in fiction for me, and well, yeah, K (Gosling) in this was bland and underacted (no doubt deliberately following the original movie, but still) to the extreme.

Blade Runner 2049 (2017). I did not care for it much. Some of the same issues I had with the original movie (although I still liked the original overall), I felt this one had even more problems and I unfortunately fell on the other side this time. A plot that gave the impression of being complex yet was stupidly simple and ultimately hackneyed (I also really, really hated that they tried to tie it back to Deckard and Rachael from the original - oh boy did that feel like a gigantic mistake about the time the Evil Corporation Overlord started spouting vague, pointless poetics at Deckard for minutes with near total incomprehensibility and inauthenticity). Just like the original, I didn't like our main character or find him interesting at all (actually I was more interested in the motivations and objectives of the replicant assassin lady...which didn't really turn out to be much anything, and she just got murdered in like the movie's only big action sequence that went on for too long with a lot of pointless and weightless kicking and punching which I hate in pretty much every movie). Much too slow at a lot of points (2 and 3/4ths of an hour...). In spite of the things I didn't like, there was some tension at various times, which is good...but it just didn't end up working for me overall.

Yeah, going into it, he was my least favorite Democrat in this race *that I know of*, and my results certainly supported that. Also wasn't surprised with my senator Klobuchar being my second least favorite known Democrat (I don't know anything about John Delaney). I went through all of the additional questions (although there were a number of questions that I did not feel comfortable answering due to either disinterest or particularly strong lack of knowledge).

lol @ Biden's "sense of humor" being his top-billed trait.

Well, it's not like I'm going to switch to Chrome. Having to browse the internet without any of my addons made me realize how completely terrible the internet is, though. uBlock Origin, Ghostery, Privacy Badger, Canvas Defender, Dark Reader...internet's garbage without all y'all.

Still not effective for me (on version 66.0.4). Have to manually run this script through the console every day to re-enable my add-ons. I think I read that they're aware the fix was not effective for everyone, so I hope a better fix is coming down the line sometime soon here.

Q: Did Bob Mueller support your conclusion? A: I don’t know whether Bob Mueller supported my conclusion. Q: Reports have emerged recently, general, that members of the Special Counsel's team are frustrated at some level with the limited information included in your March 24th letter. Do you know what they are referencing with that? A: No, I don't. -Attorney General Barr's Congressional Testimony on 4/10 "Mueller reportedly wrote a letter to Attorney General Barr objecting to his conclusion that Trump did not obstruct justice in the Russia probe" on 3/27. Whoops.

this is like a jimmy neutron mod or something, right (e): actually, I haven't seen jimmy neutron in nearly two decades, it's possible it looked better and had better writing than this

For people having trouble with linebreaks, you can use shift+enter for the old single linebreak instead.

The Three Caballeros (1944). Really weird, bizarre, and kind of off-putting movie that still had a lot of interesting stuff. Some of it seemed kind of acid-induced. The "Love is a Drug" scene:

@Fenixp Looks so much better with that clean-up script, thanks. This shows at the top of my profile no matter how many times I click on it and try to "complete" my profile. Additionally, would like to mention that we regular users don't seem to be able to set our profile banners, which makes for rather clashing looks. Should either be disabled or be able to set it, IMO.

Oh my goodness garlic gracious, my above post is exactly why bbcode mode is so necessary. What happened to my post, and why can't I edit anything to do with the spoiler except delete all of it outright? Let's try that again... I can edit that one, but not the one in the previous post. Sigh... And on that note, when I wrote "your ignore script doesn't work" to "Lexx", I actually meant @Fenixp. Whoops. I would fix it, but it's not worth the trouble in wiping that entire section and starting over again.

Line breaks are huge. I guess the idea is to get rid of the need to create double line breaks to separate between paragraphs like we used to, but everyone's signatures that haven't updated are way too big right now. Our avatars are now circles. The images we use to create them are squares or rectangles at worst. This new trend of circle avatars has really got to go. A lot of classic avatars from old users are currently in shambles. Guess I can bring out my vectorized, transparent background avatars, though.

I'm bad at sleeping and I should and do feel bad for being bad at sleeping.

Yes, I mentioned that I was surprised a couple of pages back ago when he did his town hall with Fox that they didn't try to gotcha him about guns, considering that he has not been historically nearly as "progressive" about guns as his peers, and it was a good chance to make him appear bad to both conservatives and progressives - one of the few issues that he'll probably be pushed further left on than he'd perhaps like if he wins the nomination. Also, on the most technical of technicalities, Sanders is still technically an independent...

I think I like a President & House vs. Senate split more than a President & Senate vs. House split, seeing as the Senate is much more powerful than the House and has powers of confirmation that, if perpetually given total control in to one party, will seriously unbalance the judiciary as well as which party actually has effective executive control (seeing as there'd be absolutely no oversight in who's appointed to what...).

I half disagree. I'm unsure what a Pence administration would look like in the face of a Trump impeachment/resignation - maybe it would humble Republicans a little and help bring them somewhat out of the crazy train they've been riding since at least Trump became the nominee, and we can all move a little more the center. With a now Democratic House majority, I'm not as worried about a semi-competent Republican administration as I was when Republicans controlled both the House and the Senate. On the other hand, Trump continuing to be an eternally scandal-ridden malus on Republicans nationwide (for the most part) probably makes a Democratic trifecta come 2020 all that much more likely...but I'm not sure if I really want that, either. All I know is that I'm thankful Trump was such a trainwreck that Republicans got so little done with their 2 years of a trifecta compared to what they very well could've with an even semi-competent party leader. Trump's (and McConnell's) biggest legacy will be the courts, no doubt, but he didn't need a trifecta for that - just the Senate.

Reportedly, Obama went to Senator Majority Leader Mitch McConnell to try to form a strong bipartisan response to Russian election meddling, but the Senator did not have much interest and all we got was a watered down and Russia-unspecific message instead. If the FBI did "try to take him out", then that should be investigated; if the Clinton campaign did try to collude with Russia, that should be investigated as well. If there is an actual legal basis for investigation, I'm of the opinion that it should be investigated. After all, the Mueller probe already more than paid for itself (literally, in terms of money regained by the federal government from those whom it convicted). On the matter of Trump, I think Mueller, a Republican himself, has shown himself to be an exemplary and even-handed investigator and prosecutor, and he has a record before this Russian probe that speaks to that excellence both in terms of his actual work as well as the praise he drew from all sides of the political spectrum when he was appointed. If there's not enough evidence for collusion, there's not enough evidence for collusion, and I'm fine with that. Trump clearly had corrupt intent regardless, but we knew that even before this report - you don't ask for foreign countries to dig up dirt on your political opponents on stinking Twitter, but clearly, his supporters did not care and he got elected anyways, so corrupt intent is just part of his game. Regardless, Mueller clearly intended to give this report to Congress to make the judgement themselves, since it's standing Department of Justice policy - although not exactly law - that the president cannot be indicted except by Congress. But as I've said before, I think we're at the point where Republican congressional leaders simply don't care so long as their voting base doesn't care, so unless this does something drastic to Trump's approval numbers (unlikely), we've still got two more years of this madhouse klepto/kakistocracy.

His principal summary that Trump and every media outlet were using to declare "NO COLLUSION, NO OBSTRUCTION" was completely and utterly bogus in the face of reading the actual (his redacted!) report, and he has continued to try to obfuscate matters since then up until today. Just today, he insisted that Trump "fully cooperated" with Mueller...even though he repeatedly refused to be interviewed. That's a very gracious interpretation of "full cooperation". How has he come across well?

A few fun headlines from the redacted Mueller report I've seen so far: "Barr says he ‘disagreed’ with Mueller on whether Trump obstructed justice ahead of redacted report release" ...Which is to say, Mueller believed Trump did obstruct justice, . "The President's efforts to influence the investigation were mostly unsuccessful, but that is largely because the persons who surrounded the President declined to carry out orders or accede to his requests." Alternative way of framing this: "The woman's efforts to have her husband killed were mostly unsuccessful, but that is largely because the hitman who the woman hired declined to carry out orders or accede to her requests." "President Trump reacted negatively to the special counsel's appointment. He told advisors that it was the end of his presidency, sought to have Attorney General Jeff Sessions unrecuse from the Russia investigation and to have the Special Council removed, and engaged in efforts to curtail the Special Council's investigation and prevent the disclosure of evidence to it, including through public and private contacts with potential witnesses"

What Christians are you referring to? Catholics tend to love their gaudy symbols. Iconoclasm. I think it's considered one of the big causes for the break between eastern Orthodoxy and western Catholicism, although I think there's also some debate about exactly how much. There was also a smaller split I think with Catholics and Protestants, though it was less iconoclasm and more 'getting rid of the excesses' Also, you may be thinking of the part about worshipping false idols, which just means that god doesn't care whether you pray at a golden statue as long as it's HIS golden statue. From what I recall, there was a period of time after the Western Roman Empire had fallen, but after which Roman Emperor Justinian had again retaken Italy and integrated it back into the (previously Eastern) Roman Empire, that the Roman Empire had outlawed all kinds of icons - of saints, of God, of Jesus, etc. The western part of the Roman Empire, especially in Italy, had no interest in enforcing this policy, leading to increasing religious and political autonomy from Constantinople. It also didn't help that the Roman Empire had more literally started to lose territory in Italy in the couple of centuries beyond Justinian, among other reasons leading to the pope eventually looking for protection elsewhere and subsequently embracing and crowning the German/Frankish king Charlemagne as the "Holy" Roman Emperor while rejecting Roman Empress Irene (funnily enough, an iconophile herself). As Gorth mentioned, the Great Schism (a couple of centuries later) would be the more or less official point in time that Orthodoxy and Catholicism were completely divorced from one another. (edit): Also, "a smaller split I think with Catholics and Protestants"? Not sure that you can call the Reformation "a small split", really, .

What Christians are you referring to? Catholics tend to love their gaudy symbols. Iconoclasm. I think it's considered one of the big causes for the break between eastern Orthodoxy and western Catholicism, although I think there's also some debate about exactly how much.