Bartimaeus

Yes. I'll just have to always watch David Lynch films by myself - ignore that I didn't for the two I've already seen, . If I were to try another, it'd probably be The Elephant Man or Mulholland Drive.

if I ever enjoy a David Lynch film even a tiny bit, I will make sure that you're the first to know, KP

Man, I wish we'd gotten to see Makoto beat up Mamoru in the original show. Feel like I've been robbed a little. @InsaneCommander Jesus Miri? Are you sure she isn't just shroomed out of her mind?

Yeah, I'd keep the fog, this looks like a game that needs it.

Roadrunner: A Film About Anthony Bourdain (2021). Growing up, I watched quite a bit of Anthony Bourdain because my mom followed most of his shows, though I was more familiar with No Reservations than Parts Unknown. Anyways, it was a nice documentary covering some of his humble beginnings as a chef, the way he and his perspective on life and people changed as he travelled the world and saw how the lowest rungs of society had to live and yet would still find ways to make it work and be happy - in a fairly direct comparison to Anthony being able to be anywhere he'd like whenever he wanted, not to mention all the wealth and privilege...and yet his perplexing inability to ever be content and happy. It's frustrating to see someone who just can't...ever let themselves appreciate what they have, but I suppose that's part of the human condition. The documentary provides a little bit of closure on his life, and I appreciated that it ended not with people just being sad and weepy about the whole thing, but also showed at least a little measure of anger as well: the final moment of the film is one of his best and lifelong friends destroying a beautiful public mural of the man, and why not? Those of us who live with the fallout, both public and personal, of a suicide have feelings about the whole thing, too. Being angry, being sad, feeling guilt, maybe even being relieved about it are all equally valid.

@Amentep Did you ever get around to watching Giant Robo at all? Have a friend that recently bought the BDs from Discotek, and gotta say, some of the screen caps they sent me make it look like something I might be interested in.

Her (2013). If you've seen Blade Runner 2049... In other news, I didn't see Joaquin Phoenix as being a creepy psychopath in a film for the first time since...well, ever. Admittedly, I've only seen about 4 Joaquin Pheonix films, so it's not the biggest sample size. I saw this one some years ago and thought it was fine-ish, and I can truly honestly say that I have zero memory of Kevin Costner even being in that film. I guess he's the main character. Well, I guess that's just proof on how utterly unremarkable he is to me, .

From what I'm reading, Hersh used to be a well-respected reporter, but years of Osama bin Laden, 9/11, and JFK-truthing have kinda done his reputation in, and the story seems to hinge on a single anonymous source. Not that I'm saying he's necessarily lying or wrong here (objectively speaking, it sure seems like the U.S. had the most to gain from doing it!), just that...you know, skepticism is pretty warranted.

It should be noted that the game is afflicted with Denuvo, possibly a poor implementation of it...though such claims have obviously not yet been confirmed (and how could they be, given nobody has access to a non-Denuvo version?). There aren't many Denuvo crackers left, either - between the usually pretty serious investment of time and work it takes to get around it and the dwindling DRM cracking scene, most Denuvo games have stayed unbroken even years later.

Even when it's just me being a complete bastard? Hey, thanks! Stereotypes...and boxes, and generalizations...are objectively the wrong way to approach people. Every person is an individual informed (or not) by the circumstances of their life. The thing is, for simple conversation, they can be pretty useful for getting an idea across quickly. You know, probably don't use them when you're engaged in a serious discussion (or if you're talking to Gromnir), but for trying to inform some people who likely aren't terribly knowledgeable about a particular subject (such as the current political climate of Austria?) in a fast and easy manner, it makes a lot of sense. Getting mad about somebody quickly noting down an alarming trend of a few particular groups actually being composed of the same people...seems like one of those situations that says a bit about the person getting offended more than anything else.

See, the beauty of wording a right proper "this should be totally against the rules" insult is in theoretically allowing the person you're talking about an opportunity to back away and not immediately prove it as being true while obviously knowing that they never will. You can call someone all sorts of nasty things straight to their face as much as you like if you make it just ever so slightly vague. I never specifically said this person is a moron...just that anybody saying the things they happen to be saying would have to be one in order to be saying those things, and that's totally different! All I did was lay out the conditions for someone to qualify as a moron, and if they decide to post right after I do while matching the exact qualifying criteria, well, that's on them and not me. I didn't make them do that, it's not my fault! Of course, it breaks down a bit when the conditions you lay out are very specific, like say...oh, I suppose I shouldn't.

Coincidentally, a (real) blu-ray of the show very recently released for the first time. I say "real" because another blu-ray had already existed for a number of years before, but it was just an awful fake upscale.

Steam's 2 hour refund window: A few times, I've used a pretty wacky trick where I renamed the directory and .exe of a game I was playing to that of another game I had installed, then used Steam to boot up the renamed-to game and it thought I was playing it, so no playtime accumulated on the real game. But...that's not necessarily always possible depending on the folder structure of the game you're playing, and maybe Steam has tightened the process up since I last did it a few years ago. I don't think I've ever actually refunded a game on Steam before, though there have been a few close calls (and there is one game that I really regret not doing so...Nioh, that awful garbage).

I've unfortunately seen both of those. Kevin Costner is the worst.

Technically, it's a little bit of a lie, because I've seen like the first ten minutes of Avatar. It came on TV back when I had cable and I was like "oh cool, Sigourney Weaver!". Then the blue people showed up and I was immediately done, not wanting to projectile vomit and all.

I don't even like mac-n-cheese, but I'll take that over what I have seen here. Noodles with ketchup? Good lord. As a pretty proud hater of ketchup, I would at least try the stuff you made to see if I feel any differently about it. Haven't found one I liked yet, but you never know...

did the forums recently update and then break again, all my posts longer than a sentence seem to be breaking for various reasons again

Writing... ...with the quotes around it all by itself causes posts to fail. As does apparently...

I did know GOG worked differently, but I have zero experience with Epic's launcher, so that's neat. Not that I'm likely to ever use it, since at this point the only reason I use even Steam is for Steam Friends...

Snowpiercer (2013). I'd been looking forward to this one for a long time after having seen and loved Parasite. It was a fairly bleh Hollywood-feeling affair through and through, though I would say at least above average for that - still not my cup of tea. I'm glad Bong Joo Ho decided to do something different after that, though this leaves me in the position of not knowing whether or not I should check out the rest of what he made.

Not likely, since they all do the same thing, hiding in the tray and in background processes and such. Anyway, wouldn't it be easier to just disable it from auto-starting up? Unless you're using a shared PC or something...

I don't know why everybody isn't using year/month/day...anyone who's ever sorted anything by date should know that's literally the only way that makes sense. I had one of my Windows PCs run for about a month and a half straight. All sorts of weird crap* started happening for the last couple of weeks, but for reasons, I couldn't shut it down until just a few days ago. I wouldn't necessarily worry about it. *Like File Explorer hanging itself over and over, SMART data not being reported by the disk drives, disappearing disks, desktop UI straight up refusing to do anything I tell it to, massive memory leaks in certain processes that are usually perfectly fine, network adapter randomly dying, certain programs refusing to open, empty folders taking minutes to open... All fixed with a restart. Don't leave a Windows PC running that long, I guess.

I would definitely prefer Sony to put Bloodborne on PC as well, especially considering, well, as you saw, emulated Demon's Souls works just fine (heck, IMO, it's better than on either the actual PS3 or PS5). I'm not convinced Sony's ever going to do it though, and PS4 emulation has a ways to go...

The remaster is only on PS5, and I would prefer the original at the very least due to the fact that I've listened to both game's soundtracks and the totally new soundtrack for the remaster is quite awful. The art style is also pretty different with a ton of redesigns both small and large, but I don't feel as strongly about that from what I've seen of it. In short, I just didn't see what the remastered version improved in the face of being able to emulate it at 60 FPS / [whatever resolution]. Multiplayer, I guess.