Bartimaeus

Yeah, I initially thought it was The Murderbot Diaries and was confused when it turned out not to be. How many different things can be called Murderbot? ...At least two, apparently. I watched Nope twice, and I liked it the least out of Peele's films...but I still mostly enjoyed it. Well, I enjoyed the first half, the second half really tried my patience. The film really went off the rails and in a bad way for me after the "it's above the house" scene and never recovered. I also don't even remotely understand your comparison to Evangelion with it, .

Even ignoring the principal of it...if you live in a big city that where you have a lot of internet and server infrastructure pretty central to you, you might not be particularly bothered by the performance of always-online stuff. For those of us who live a bit farther out, and that's tens of millions of Americans at least and never mind the rest of the world, it can be a little bit of a different story. It's especially infuriating when it's completely unneeded from the perspective of just trying to play the game - it's one thing if it's an MMO and that's just a necessary part of the package, it's another if I'm trying to play a game that is a totally or predominantly singleplayer experience and it's being an unnecessary hassle. If my experience is improved by pirating instead of purchasing the game, you the developer/publisher have made what I would call a very grave error.

and people say wes anderson is more style than substance, really shows them (although real talk, this trailer did a better job of interesting me in a film than the last hundred I've seen, it's somewhat tamed by not actually liking the wes anderson films I've already seen - maybe because his style in short bursts can be fine while not so much over two hours)

I don't care about Steam for anything but being a messenger at this point anyways. Don't much play video games anymore in the first place, but when I do, it's usually retro or weird indie stuff, which is typically on GOG instead. Occasionally, I come across something that's only on Steam, but $5-20 a year for a few things on Steam a year really isn't that bad.

Speaking of gaming on Windows 7, Valve recently announced that Steam will no longer run on Windows 7 (and 8, but not a single person on the whole wide Earth cares about that) on January 1st of next year.

I was able to uninstall it and it does seem to actually be gone, but a broken/ghost shortcut remains in my Start Menu, and it doesn't seem to be easy to remove based on what I've read online. I think this bothers me more than just having it installed. My primary PC uses Windows 10 LTSC 2019 which didn't come with Edge at all, but my secondary PC uses LTSC 2022 which did. Hmm. Winaero Tweaker and ShutUp10 (both of which I highly recommend both for reverting and changing various Windows settings/behaviors) come with settings to at least prevent Edge from invisibly loading and prefetching crap automatically (even if you literally never use Edge), but no actual proper uninstall. (e): Running this short and clean-looking .bat seems to have done the trick for me, though I know not what other consequences might arise from it throughout the rest of the OS, and it seems to be targeted specifically at post-2019 LTSC versions: https://gist.github.com/ishad0w/d25ca52eb04dbefba8087a344a69c79c/27e1e32a40c82f5dc46a81dca87ba8842616ae03#file-microsoft_edge_uninstaller_21h1_ltsc-bat A comment at the bottom suggests this .bat has been superseded by the linked "Aveyo" Edge Removal .bat.

I think PST:EE is the only EE I would actually play - from what I understand, Beamdog didn't butcher it like they did the BG EEs.

Okay, yeah, the strange pauses between every line is usually a big pet peeve of mine as well. I think the only anime where I've tolerated what I felt were way too long pauses was Devilman Lady. So I just watched all of episode 4, and I...kind of get what you mean, because while initially I didn't notice it, when I really started to pay attention, it did start to feel like the pauses were just a beat too long. It's not much, but it's there. Please don't make me start noticing that too, I already get annoyed by too many things that I can't fix - this is fine. IT'S FINE! P.S. The English dub is close to intolerable. Well, Syphas and Trevor are intolerable in the English, rather.

What problem, man? We still don't know what you're talking about: "weird dialogue edit problem" is not very helpful. Is it too fast, is it too slow, are there inexplicable pauses between lines that sound totally unnatural to you, are there strange cuts in the middle of lines? Ya gotta help us out here.

I recall trying both and liking the Japanese better is why I asked, which made me curious as to what you did.

is this meta joke if so very hilarious @majestic Did you watch in Japanese or in English...or German?

Peter Pan (1953). I think I actually enjoyed Return to Neverland even with its massive issues more than the original here, probably because at least the core ideas felt stronger (not to mention grouchy Jane seems a way better protagonist than the vague and wishy-washy Wendy). It doesn't help having read the book not that long ago and keenly feeling all the omissions...and the additions. Hook feels bizarrely sympathetic at points, Peter Pan's (lack of) character is inconsistent, the themes are largely watered down or simply not really there, and...boy, those Native American scenes seemed, um, a bit questionable. Thinking back to what I saw of that trailer for the new live-action one, it seems doubtful Disney will try to give a more interesting or faithful interpretation, but I suppose you never know.

I made it through about an episode and a half waaaaay back when there was only one season, I'm pretty sure. Don't remember who Trevor is, but Castlevania certainly didn't seem to be my kind of vampire show. Admittedly, I was probably harder on it then than I might be now, but I'm still not much tempted to return. Frederator apparently animated Castlevania. Same company as My Life as a Teenage Robot, The Fairly OddParents, and Adventure Time, so that's pretty wack.

Smile (2022). Man, I really hate "curse" horror films, even ones with half-decent coats of paint. For 2022 films...dang it, this goes below The Northman. Are you happy, @PK htiw klaw eriF?

Whole milk? Man, I got scammed hard. I never asked my mom to do that. I don't know why, maybe because I knew she would yell at me if she learned that I was skipping lunch and she probably wouldn't have the time or energy to do it anyways. Actually, I absolutely hated asking my mom for money because we were really poor and it was just...difficult, so skipping lunch was kind of killing two birds with one stone. Don't have to ask for money, don't have to eat bad food.

Not usually anything more than very faintly, but last night was a real...oh, that's what they're supposed to look like! moment.

Good man. The issue for me is I didn't like school cafeteria food period, so I skipped it unless it was one of the very few things I actually liked...which, I think only came down to when they served breaded chicken of some kind. Though I moved around during my childhood a lot, I was at that school for grades 2-4, so that was three years of my childhood I didn't hardly ever eat a thing for lunch on school days. And to not even let me have orange juice when you actually have it available so that I can at least have something...cruel and unusual, I says! Though they probably thought it was cruel and unusual having to deal with me, so maybe it all balances out. Don't know what kind of effect not eating lunch most days out of a year has on a kid during that age range, though.

Northern lights were a pretty ludicrous display last night. It's not usually very strong where I am, but it was as though the heavens dumped a dump truck's worth of green-purple puke everywhere.

I still hold a bit of a grudge because grade school wouldn't let me take the orange juice, the only thing I actually wanted, instead of the garbage 2% milk. Who in their right mind drinks 2% milk, and out of a cardboard carton no less? That cow-flavored paper-infused swill water is downright inhumane. No, they said if I wasn't actually lactose intolerant, I have to drink the milk. What, did you guys have a terribly limited supply of orange juice? Fine, I'll go back to eating nothing at lunch - we were too poor for me to be wastin' money on lunches I wasn't going to eat anyways. Of course, looking back now, the easy solution would've been just to lie. Damn, why didn't I think of that back in second grade? What a maroon I was.

I just hope it's not chemotherapy period. My gosh, I hope that stuff is just about completely retired in favor of something far less nasty and more effective someday, and the sooner the better. I have...less than great memories of seeing what it does to people. I also have little desire to suffer through it myself in my middle or old age... I do not believe I would cope well.

Okay, but just to be clear in case you did not do even a quick Google search, it's specifically grapefruit that can hurt/kill you. Not limes or lemons or most oranges, grapefruit. Grapefruit messes with metabolizing enzymes responsible for fully breaking down and flushing drugs, which means those drugs can stick around in you for a lot longer and in higher concentrations than they should, causing more severe side effects and/or possibly even overdoses. Here's a random excerpt from a random article that at least gets the idea across: With most drugs that are affected by grapefruit juice, “the juice lets more of the drug enter the blood,” says Shiew Mei Huang, Ph.D., of the FDA. “When there is too much drug in the blood, you may have more side effects.” For example, if you drink a lot of grapefruit juice while taking certain statin drugs to lower cholesterol, too much of the drug may stay in your body, increasing your risk for liver and muscle damage that can lead to kidney failure. Many drugs are broken down (metabolized) with the help of a vital enzyme called CYP3A4 in the small intestine. Grapefruit juice can block the action of intestinal CYP3A4, so instead of being metabolized, more of the drug enters the blood and stays in the body longer. The result: too much drug in your body. The amount of the CYP3A4 enzyme in the intestine varies from person to person. Some people have a lot of this enzyme and others just a little. So grapefruit juice may affect people differently even when they take the same drug. Although scientists have known for several decades that grapefruit juice can cause too much of certain drugs in the body, more recent studies have found that the juice has the opposite effect on a few other drugs. “Grapefruit juice can cause less fexofenadine to enter the blood,” decreasing how well the drug works, Huang says. Fexofenadine (brand name Allegra) is available as both prescription and OTC to relieve symptoms of seasonal allergies. Fexofenadine may also not work as well if taken with orange or apple juice, so the drug label says, “Do not take with fruit juices.” Why this opposite effect? Instead of changing metabolism, grapefruit juice can affect proteins in the body known as drug transporters, some of which help move a drug into our cells for absorption. As a result, less of the drug enters the blood and the drug may not work as well, Huang says. Hope you make it through the medical issue you're dealing with. If it's chemotherapy (and I don't know that it is and nobody here needs to know if that's what it is...I've just had family and friends who have gone through it and have repeatedly said how awful it is, and how it makes it so they simply cannot eat), there's a strong possibility you do not want to be having grapefruit with it - everywhere I see seems to say "DO NOT MIX CHEMOTHERAPY WITH GRAPEFRUIT". If your doctor has okay-ed grapefruit, then okay.

Minnesota became a blue trifecta by the thinnest of margins this past election, and so far...I don't think I've had any cause for complaint.

Uh, did you make sure that the grapefruit was a-okay for whatever medication that was? Grapefruit has potentially fatal interactions for a pretty wide variety of medications. Grapefruit is probably my favorite fruit, but there may come a day when I'm too old and take too many medications to be able to safely eat it anymore...

Yeah, I get it. Over the last couple of years, Packers football has become purely stressful without basically any of the positive stuff that used to come with it. It's why I'm relieved Rodgers is finally moving on, even though the Packers are likely to be somewhere between bad and very bad for the coming years. Have been way more excited and have had way more fun with the Milwaukee Bucks' core group of players than I have with the Packers', and it's what made their championship journey so sweet (as opposed to just...the championship itself). Meanwhile, if the Packers had won another Super Bowl with Aaron Rodgers taking all the glory, I'd...certainly be conflicted. Maybe that's somewhat enabled by knowing that the Packers have already won four SBs and a pile of pre-SB championships though, as opposed to other teams who have never won anything ever and are desperate for any kind of legitimate chance at the thing. Doesn't matter either way though, as I just don't enjoy rooting for a team whose players I don't like. My "hmm" reaction was actually more about trash can man than not understanding you moving away from enjoying watching the Suns, .

Pheonix trading for garbage can man didn't change your tune about them any? Huh, weird... I'm greatly curious to see how far the Nuggets get. They have kind of earned a reputation for being tough yet falling well short over the last handful of seasons... Given how absolute trash the Warriors have been away this year, I do believe they may have some difficulties going all the way this postseason...