Bartimaeus

It was the best of times, and it was the worst of times. Did not believe one bit in the Packers the moment I heard our two star tackles were still out. (e): Meanwhile, Cowboys season may well realistically be over at 0-1 with all the injuries.

The piece that won the competition has the normal telltale signs of it being AI generated (impossible brushstrokes, frightening slenderman-esque faces, fused/smeared/stretched details, and certain other visual patterns that I've never seen outside of AI-generated stuff that I have trouble putting into words...), but the people responsible for voting were clearly unacquainted and more impressed by the idea rather than the technique (the concept is neat and the the lighting looks pretty impressive).

Pastel Yumi. It's essentially the sequel to Magical Emi - made by the same studio (Studio Pierrot), started a mere month after Magical Emi ended, it looks very similar, the setting is the same, the setup is pretty much the same except swap out doing magic for playing violin instead...yeah, it's pretty much the same show, but with a different yet similar-ish cast. There is one big difference that I've noticed after having seen two episodes of this: Pastel Yumi kind of stinks whereas Magical Emi doesn't. Why? ...I don't know. Well, thanks for coming to my TEDx Talk everyone, and have a great day.

Nope (2022) by Jordan Peele. I really love being able to recognize stock sounds from random games I've played over the years: https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/s/c125advjobc7qgt/explorer_3WU1zNjcbn.mp4 (note: the one used in the movie is pretty quiet, so you might have to turn it up to hear it if you're not using headphones) The creature sound effects that have been haunting me for the last 15 years are the dog whine sound effects from S.T.A.L.K.E.R.: Shadow of Chernobyl, as I've heard those sounds used in probably like fifteen other places now. Anyways, in this movie, we learn why we do not use live animals for film anymore as per @Hurlshort. Also, another pretty enjoyable film by Jordan Peele.

How similar mechanically is it to Dark Souls? My quick glance at the game made me think it was something more like Nier: Automata, Devil May Cry, or even Bayonetta than Dark Souls, and if that's the case, I am super out, GOG release or not.

Since Carr was drafted in 2014, Raiders had been my secondary/AFC team up until Gruden became their head coach. I'm not sure if I should go back to liking them again now that he's finally gone.

Going back to the Super Bowl would be pretty cool at least, .

I believe the Saints would still control his rights since he was not fired but rather "retired", but I'm really not sure how much an inhibiting factor that really would be in practice. Note that I said I was only picking non-winners from last year, . I'm not really a big believer of gut feeling or intuition about sports due to their incredibly chaotic nature, so I really only have a few strong feelings about this upcoming season: 1. AFC West and NFC West should both be bloodbaths with possibly 6 playoff teams coming from them. 2. NFC North will probably be bad and should be pretty easy for the Packers to win unless injuries pile up. 3. Packers will inexplicably implode at some point in the playoffs.

Think McCarthy gets canned if Cowboys don't make the playoffs? Jerry isn't getting any younger... Division winners, but assuming none of last years' winners repeat because picking previous winners isn't any fun: AFC North: Ravens AFC West: Chargers AFC East: Dolphins AFC South: Colts NFC North: Vikings NFC West: Cardinals NFC East: Eagles NFC South: Saints

That would probably be the better format for me to play it in. Though for me, that would probably look more like "let the other person dictate the general flow of the room and make the major decisions while I just home in on the minor stuff", .

Making games these days as a small and non-established dev looks brutal. I was just looking through the "interactive fiction" tag in the Steam Store to see if anything halfway interesting caught my eye, and the number of games released within the past few months in that category alone that have between 0 and 10 reviews is like...well, it's certainly doesn't make me want to become a game developer in a highly saturated market, that's for sure. I don't know why I wishlisted this game when it came out a year ago, but I tried a game called Unpacking on Steam. Here's a screenshot from the Steam Store: It's supposed to be a "relaxing" game about unpacking boxes and organizing whatever their contents are into the space that you're given...but I'm like the exact opposite type of person that this game is made for: finding where things permanently belong probably rises pretty close to the level of clinical OCD for me, and that was pretty well reflected here in how distressed the first level made me feel. Anyways, I finally tried it and have now uninstalled it, and at least the last part felt pretty good, . Don't know what I was thinking in trying a game like this.

It's the only thing of Waititi's that I've watched. It's quite rare that I enjoy films (or shows) that fall under the "comedy" genre, and it's almost always the result of the film in question not really strictly being a comedy and making some actual attempt of being a meaningful movie via its characters and themes, which I felt Jojo Rabbit accomplished quite well even with its rocky first 20-30 minutes: the film took a definite turn for the better in my eyes once the third main character was introduced.

SpyxFamily, episodes 10-12 (i.e. Operations Dodgeball, Drowning, and Family Bonding). It was a pretty silly but fairly enjoyable show with mostly nice character stuff (...well, besides that one episode). This joins Vampire in the Garden as the only "modern" anime shows that I've finished (though there'll be more SpyxFamily in the future, but completing its first season is still pretty noteworthy). Coincidentally (or perhaps not?), they're both by the same company, Wit Studio. (e): I forgot about Girls' Last Tour, which I guess also counts since I sort of liked it, but you get the idea.

Jojo Rabbit (2019). Wow, now that's how you do a heartfelt Nazi comedy drama. I wasn't sold on Scarlet Johannson as the mom for probably the first twenty minutes...or really, the film in general, but she and it proceeded to change my mind in a large way. Roman Griffin Davis was fantastic as Jojo.

Now that you mention it, even though Liv Tyler was my least favorite character and casting choice for the original trilogy, she did still fit in much better than the bozos they had in The Hobbit trilogy. I've been pretty cruelly mocking Arwen and how she's used in those movies practically my entire life at this point, I guess I should cool it since it could've been worse. God willing, I will be watching nothing of The Rings of Power.

SpyxFamily, episodes 7-9 (Operation Apologize and the two Secret Service brother episodes). The brother character is too much and kind of stinks, but I think they helped strengthen Yor some as a character (who I have felt is the weakest of the three main characters), which was good. Three episodes left - if they plan on wrapping up the plot here, it's going to have to be at truly breakneck acceleration because so far the show hasn't seemed to be in any hurry to do so (which is not a bad thing), so I'm assuming that there is going to be a second season at least. The show sold itself to me mostly on the strength of the bizarre character writing/reactions/behavior. I mean, my "introduction" to the series was this ridiculous video: ...which, while obviously re-purposed footage from multiple episodes, it's like...this sort of stuff is still actually in the show even if not quite at this density, so it wasn't entirely unrepresentative, .

I genuinely cannot remember if I was surprised by it, if I had expected it, or if it had already been spoiled to me...or if my brain had just gone too numb by even that point to be able to notice or care, . Luckily for me, I can't agree. I actually like the singer, though I don't think the song in question is particularly strong, but not bad either. Maybe it'll grow on me more over time. That was when the entire family blew up, right? Good times.

While (probably?) not as bad as choose-one systems, it still seems like ranked choice voting has a little too much unnecessary strategic voting. As an example, see this Alaskan election: Republicans screwed themselves out of this seat by not voting strategically and eliminating the secondary Republican (28%) instead of Sarah Palin (31%) first. If the order had been switched and Sarah Palin eliminated first, the secondary Republican would have won 55-45 instead and we would not be talking about this*. Approval voting is the commonly touted alternative to ranked choice in order to further reduce strategic voting, but treats your approved choices as being equal without preference, which I don't think is great either (...and I think if the system were adopted, people would eventually start to figure out that the system will wash out their actual first choices if they also approve of secondary candidates, which would start to create some wacky results when you have a large field of candidates and highly splintered/non-plural approval percentages). *Though the Democrat outperforming Alaska's generic Republican tilt of +15 would still be somewhat notable for November in the face of Democrats overperforming in every special election thus far, it's not quite as striking as her winning outright. Sarah Palin was a pretty uniquely disliked candidate (albeit one with a fervent base that clearly should not have voted her first over the other guy if they wanted Republicans to control this seat), which exaggerates how well Mary Peltota did. She will probably lose this seat in November unless voters make the same error. (e): Fun fact: winning this Alaskan House seat more than doubled (104%!) the total landmass House Democrats control in the U.S., .

Sarah Palin defeated in Alaskan statewide congressional special election by Democratic Mary Peltola, first time Democrats have controlled the seat in 49 years. This seat will be re-contested with more or less the same candidates in November, but still a pretty notable loss.

Noir, episodes 1 and 2. Opening song's vocalist reminded me of an album called "Noblerot" (front album cover evidently made by CLAMP, which is probably why I noticed it - looks like Cardcaptor Sakura) that I accidentally came across on YouTube once and went "what the heck is this weird crap?". I kind of liked a particular song from it, which is why I remember it...but to my surprise, it's actually for real the same artist, ALI PROJECT. Weird. Anyways, I appreciate a pretty landscape: Show looks nice, sounds even better. But how good is the show? That I'm less certain of right now, but not a bad first two episode. Surprisingly slow and sappy for an action show about girl assassins taking out contracts to kill people. ...Well, they're clearly girl assassins intended for a girl audience, given the lack of blood when they shoot people in the face - not to mention no slapstick, ecchi, or pride stuff, . Instead, we have mystery and feelings! But really, I'm not sure how I feel about either of our two main characters yet, so only time will tell, but at least it isn't a negative first impression. See, I feel like going "yay!" and "I hope this happens to the others" when a main character (well, a main character hitherto) is is probably a sign that a show is not working for you...

Nearly made me never watch anime ever again.

Wow, talking about moving the needle...straight up into my eyeballs so I don't have to see either of them in spandex, .

I promise I'll stop watching random garbage (or not garbage?) and get to trying the first episode or two soon...ish, . Though I guess I still have some SpyxEpisodes that I keep forgetting to watch as well...

Yeah, I guess that's pretty fair, given that I've only seen her in cruddy action stuff like Marvel, a few minutes of Ghost in the Shell, and like half of that laughably terrible Lucy film...not counting some voiced roles as well, I suppose.

That's doubly weird in consideration to this film, but I can't really explain without at least some major allusions to spoilers. I liked this one a bit more than Portrait of a Lady on Fire which didn't quite grab me all the way even though there was a decent amount about it that I liked, and I have no idea what Wild Zero is, .