Zoraptor

Looks like the proposed Captain Pike Star Trek show ("Strange New Worlds") is going ahead, covid19 permitting. Yeah, it is. Sisko's actions work because they are the culmination of 5(?) prior seasons of plot and character development; and the other involved parties act entirely in character. They also work because Brooks wasn't telling everyone who'd listen that they were a commentary on [late 90s social/ political issue] instead of being plot driven. Guess what I'd say overall is that it isn't a matter of care for Trek that made Picard's (or Discovery's) plot so shambolic, and it isn't absolutely inconsistent for the Fed either (bit like seemingly half the Fed's officers being Romulan spies, there is a precedent). The key problem is that they simply aren't very good writers, not good enough to make a coherent overarching plot woven from multiple threads, and certainly not good enough to weave a commentary on real world politics seamlessly into the tapestry. But that ultimate problem is the one many other programs have as well and which is a bane of most modern TV writing; that characters and factions have the motivations and capabilities demanded by what the plot needs at any given time, not what has been established by previous characterisation or motivation; ie simple bad writing is the problem- and they'd do (and have done in some cases) the same to any other franchise they were writing for.

The odd thing was that a lot of the people involved clearly do care. Not like Stewart in particular is short of money and doing "By Grabthar's Hammer, what a savings!" type commercials to make ends meet. He's a rich guy in his 80s who could retire tomorrow and want for nothing, he pretty much has to be doing it because he wants to play Picard in particular. And Spiner at least cared enough to refuse to keep playing an increasingly ludicrous looking Data, even if he has the back up of playing yet another identikit android science prodigy Soong no one had apparently heard of previously. (Stewart's Orange Man Bad comments were very ill advised though. Unlike, say, Sisko being involved in/ covering up a false flag that outright murdered neutral diplomats*- which theoretically is completely and utterly antithetical to what a Fed officer should do- you immediately think that the Fed turning their back on the refugees is there because Orange Man Bad, not because it makes sense. Obviously it doesn't make a lick of sense anyway when the Romulan power base seems to be almost completely unaffected and they have 180? warships available, but you're instantly primed to see that discrepancy by Stewart's comments) *been a while, hope I've remembered the details right

Oh yes indeed. I went into it expecting an utter trainwreck and it was... really good. Better than the source material and I'm actively disappointed it flopped. I see Dwayne Johnson and expect Hulk Hogan level dross yet he's almost always a positive surprise (was in Get Smart! too), and even in something of... dubious merit such as the Doom movie the casting wasn't close to being a problem (though nearly everything else was).

I liked it more or less up until near the end where it imploded. Think GD was pretty similar to me too.

The ones I liked were: The Fugitive (very good movie, also did well enough to get a sequel) Man from UNCLE (good, but a bit of a flop) Get Smart! (enjoyed it a lot more than I expected to) Police Squad! (even the notably worse 3rd Naked Gun movie was funnier than most comedy releases) Whatever its creative merits, the Transformers series was also very successful commercially despite it seeming to fall off precipitously recently. I'd also have to admit that I'm fundamentally biased against movies based on TV shows, as most of the time I start from the position that they're imagination lite to free cash grabs aimed at nostalgia.

GTAV free on EGS until the 21st. Guess I might as well bite, free seems like a decent price. I eagerly await reading the internet wide Epic meltdowns from Steam stans.

Not quite, nobody is dumb enough to mistake one of those hornets for a bee. They're trying to do things like poison the hornets, but there are so many more 'normal' wasps and bees than the 2(!) confirmed murder hornets in Washington State that they are, of course, ending up poisoning pretty much anything else instead.

Seems here too that the only overall group that dislikes work from home is the most essential one- middle managers, of course. They also seem to be the ones obsessed with having long and pointless Zoom meetings instead of long and pointless face to face meetings.

'Vaccine euphoria' is fine with me, probably the default position in some ways and completely understandable. One thing I've learned from games, especially games like Bridge is that sometimes you just have to assume that the particular sequence of events you need is the one that you'll get, even if you think the sequence is unlikely. If you don't get that sequence, you've lost anyway, and if you presume you won't get that sequence because it's unlikely and act accordingly then you'll lose as well. As long as proper planning is done for there not being a vaccine or long term immunity, hoping that a vaccine will come is fine. The fundamental problem with herd immunity as a strategy is that if it works then a vaccine should also work. In the gaming analogy it's assuming that the sequence that is needed to 'win' won't happen- except for the most important/ fundamental part of it, ie there being immunity. If you do get a quick vaccine release then herd immunity strategies potentially just killed or exposed to long term health effects a whole lot of people unnecessarily, if you cannot get a vaccine release then herd 'immunity' is itself a misnomer, as you're highly unlikely to get a long term effective immune response to a virus, but not to a vaccine based on the same antigen. OTOH, probably less direct economic effects so there may be increased capacity to fund ongoing healthcare for any subsequent outbreaks. There are of course exceptions where circumstance or good management means that the virus can be fully controlled to eliminated or even locally eradicated so that, at least in the short term, the question of a vaccine for prevention is moot; but they are only feasible when the virus isn't already widespread.

I really wouldn't be putting all metaphorical eggs in the vaccine basket. Politicians kind of have to, since it's the only really feasible way they can 'win' they have to act as if it's coming. Vaccines for upper respiratory tract illnesses are notoriously problematic due to it being more or less treated as 'external' by the immune system, which is partly why (other reason is below) there are so many cold viruses and the like and you get them so often; and vaccines for ssRNA viruses are problematic too, you need a flu jab every year for example and it isn't 100% effective even then. A vaccine may well be effective for preventing any ancillary organ damage (hearts, kidneys etc) though, which would be a plus and quite possibly worthwhile by itself especially if the stroke like side effects some have noted can be prevented too. That Oxford vaccines seems to be pretty solid in theory as it is targeting a virus protein which seems to be under strong selective pressure to not be altered, but there's a lot more to it than having it work in monkeys. There are literally dozens of vaccines under development, we'd be lucky if even a handful make it through to full development let alone 'work'. End of the day the reason we don't use RNA, let alone single stranded RNA, as genetic material because it mutates way too readily and produces far too many variations. But that is also precisely the reason so many common viruses use it, and why we typically don't have long term immunity to them. All the lovely antibodies in the world won't help if the antigen they're looking for has shifted thanks to some random UV photon hitting the wrong/ right base. Measles isn't a good analogue for sarscov2 though, it's one of the most infectious viruses around and is for example fully airborne. You can get some idea of what the actual herd immunity level would have to be by looking at the peak R for sarscov2, iirc it's about 2.4 average transmissions per case with (approaching, not literally) minimal precautions. So if ~60% of the population is immune R will be below 1 and the outbreak will slowly die out. At least in theory. And that 60% is certainly a lot.

Yeah, and that's perhaps the single most disappointing thing about the film since the potential was actually there. You're not meant to 'know' that BC is playing Khan at the start they had a great opportunity to show the charm and manipulation side properly in the first half setting up his plot and actioning it, and the ruthless side later post reveal. It was a technically good performance from BC, but I ended up thinking that character wise Tom Hardy's Bane (!) was actually a more convincing Khan analogue. If one were to be charitable one might say that they deliberately tried to steer away from a Montalban style performance due to it being iconic, but if so it was a mistake. Then again since it's JJ that's probably overthinking it, and he was too busy doing 'clever' stuff like reversing Kirk's 'Khaaaaaan!!!1111!!!' line to pay attention to irrelevant details like characterisation.

That narrative shift is just politics, Trump's consistently botched everything in the US response and still goes on about victory and the like. Got to make the sacrifices feel like they mean something, and the reality that there will be potentially hundreds of deaths per week, week after week, even in 'victory' and after lock down isn't one any politician is going to want to admit outright. But, that is what the oft repeated 'flatten the curve' means in practical terms. Fewer overall deaths because the health system doesn't get overwhelmed, but still a lot of deaths spread out over a longer period. That's not really a palatable sale for a politician to make though, it's a far more sellable proposition to talk as if victory means that the virus will wave the white flag and run off back to pangolins or whatever.

The whole thing is very much ad hoc, but it is a novel virus. The justification is however epidemiological, and is (more or less) based on what is achievable as opposed to what people might like to be achievable. Epidemiologists as with every specialist group tend to use jargon which may not play well with common definitions. This CDC page has a pretty good definition and examples near the top. Epidemiologically speaking the asian countries used as a comparison are at- or very very close to- 'Elimination' rather than 'Control'; ie instead of managing the incidence effectively over the whole population they're able to jump on it case by case as they would with something like measles. Denmark cannot do that yet, and it would likely take a lot of extra time- probably 6 to 8 weeks- to get to that status. At the time they started lifting restrictions had an R of 0.7, ie the average covid19 patient infected 0.7 people, and it is still in controlled territory now at ~0.9. The approach in most places is very much about trying to manage the infection rate against the other factors that are important. On a more meta level the good/ effective response from some countries tends to be due to geography more than anything, with a healthy dollop of culture/ experience too. If you're an island or have very easily controlled land borders (Taiwan, RoK, NZ, Australia etc) you have a massive innate advantage, if you had experience with SARS1 you have a big advantage because a lot of the behaviours learned there were maintained and it acted towards preparation. Unfortunately the vast majority of Europe has neither of those factors working for it and indeed have some of the most open borders with each other. The ultimate reason why Denmark will only be able to use a Control strategy is simply that there are too many infections already, and there is no realistic way to stop ones coming in from outside. Once that is accepted relaxing some controls- while keeping R<1- is the orthodox strategy.

China is definitely hiding their real numbers; it's a totalitarian information control dystopia- albeit with some leaks, and which was literally welding up buildings to enforce lockdown- and that's what they do. They also definitely spread it across the world, and if it wasn't a deliberate policy it was so willfully stupid and abjectly moronic a decision as to make no difference to it being deliberate. You can't shut down domestic travel because of the risk but allow international travel- with threats and complaints against people imposing restrictions, even- then claim it was not your fault and you didn't know. Of course it's your fault, and of course you knew; you shut down domestic travel because of the risk after all. And while there's zero evidence at all that it was man made or manipulated the coincidence of it originating in the same city as China's big research facility into coronaviruses is certainly a striking one. That being used by Orange Man to deflect criticism doesn't make it any less of a striking and suspicious coincidence. It just isn't proven (and the default position from history is natural transmission/ transfer, not in/ ex lab, so it has to be proven or at least have more evidence provided than coincidence), and given China is an information control dystopia is extremely unlikely ever to be proven.

I certainly wouldn't rate Into Darkness as good; but I had managed expectations so it was at least entertaining. Unfortunately, I simply found TMP... boring. Which is the one thing that will always mean I don't like a movie. I seldom like the standalone episodes of the same style either. If I were to do a rewatch I wouldn't skip it though, haven't seen it for ages and tastes change.

Watched The Boys. It was very good, though I found it a bit grating that every single one of the 'bad' superheroes we learned anything about kind of wanted to be an actual superhero but were held down by the corporate machine, except for Homelander- and even he was the way he was because of the corporates. Also Karl Urban's english accent was all over the place. Also watched The Terror. Good as well, but probably spent just too much time on build up- time on the ships, mostly- as opposed to pay off, and some of the ancillary threads like the ladies trying to organise a search expedition were pretty pointless in the greater scheme of things. Guess without that it would have been a complete sausage fest though. It also never really explained the main bad guy's appeal and how he was able to attract anyone; a complete novice caulker who hadn't been on a ship let alone an arctic expedition does not make a compelling alternative to someone, anyone, who has. Nevertheless, very well shot and excellently acted, and recommended with a few reservations. Currently watching The Expanse and The Magicians (because apparently I only watch series that start with a definite article nowadays). Haven't seen the later series of either. Two and a halfish Netflix season potentially and pending agreement from Tom Ellis- it's been successful enough that they're trying to add a season 6 too.

The only Star Trek movie I disliked was TMP. All the others (yeah, even Into Derpness) have their good points and were worth at least one watch. Wrath of Khan and Undiscovered Country I'd rate as genuinely excellent.

Isn't the Guardia Civil a literal paramilitary force, complete with fasces? Then again just about any overseas police force is paramilitary compared to here where they still don't regularly carry guns.

Originality is pretty far down the list of things any Star Wars offering has had. It's fundamentally a derivative series. Even the first movie was very heavily influenced by Kurosawa and Flash Gordon, at very least. ROTJ had a lot of issues apart from originality- ewoks, bad pacing, poor plotting to name a few. Rogue One was derivative, and in terms of contribution to continuity almost completely pointless but it was a fun movie with few obvious plot flaws and good pacing. It also had a good villain with memorable lines and one scene that comes close to any other scene in the series in terms of being iconic. That's enough to place it pretty high in rankings overall, and very high in the post Lucas hierarchy. Also has to be said, when they sort of tried to get away from the derivative you got The Last Jedi and Rian Johnson's expectation subversion; and a significant number of fans would have swapped that happily for 100 minutes of Wicket and Jar Jar getting into 'hilarious' hijinks instead.

Rogue One was good. Solo was a lot better than it's generally given credit for as well; it was just rather an unfortunate choice and rather unfortunate timing. They're pretty irrelevant though, Star Wars is 'judged' on how well the main sequence films are received and the sequel trilogy were... divisive. And in real world terms ended up underperforming expectations; so much so that they've gone from an annual release plan to no scheduled release even before covid19. OTOH, I do find reactions from disaffected fans hilarious, so I'm 50/50 on Kennedy, either way I win. A Taika Waititi Star Wars film might be a disaster, but at least it would almost certainly be an entertaining disaster. And it certainly wouldn't fail due to lack of passion.

LARPers invade Michigan State Capitol demanding Bethesda properly support Fallout 76 andor the quick release of Stalker 2. (I told everyone you'd look like you were in a cool post apoc street gang if you made your custom N95 from a bandana... yeah, might have been wrong there)

That Jared has been seizing supplies and doling them out for political and financial gain/ influence has not exactly been a secret. I wouldn't hold my breath for anything to come of it though, any more than I was holding my breath waiting for revelations from Epstein before he didn't kill himself. There will be a lot of very rich and well connected people who have made a lot of money out of this, many of whom will also be owners of the major media outlets tasked with reporting about it. To be blunt, people like Jeff Bezos- despite being theoretically a vociferous Trump opponent- won't be too keen on reporting this in the WaPo because a lot of the seized stuff will inevitably end up being sold on Amazon. If Trump loses the election Kushner will be the fall guy, but will probably be on a plane to Tel Aviv the next day. If Trump wins, not even that.

My Olduvai peeps would like to dispute this.

IIRC NYT and WaPo both give you a limited number of 'free' articles (5?) per month before enforcing a paywall. Fortunately, I never hit the limit because both papers are utter trash, and am never tempted to subscribe for the same reason. That was the lesson of the GFC too, though it doesn't seem to have been politically expedient to learn it. I don't particularly blame countries for throwing each other under the bus when it comes to covid-19 supplies and the like, if they have to (so definitely not exonerating China, who didn't have to leave their borders open) but it does expose how quickly the theoretical talk of european brotherhood gets unceremoniously thrown out the window whenever it's convenient. The response to both the current and that crisis show that the EU should never have progressed beyond a trading union. That part has always worked well, most of the ancillary political guff post Maastricht has been both unnecessary and counterproductive to the parts of the union that worked (though none of the political integration has done so much overt damage as the Euro has).

I dunno about that, sounds like something that could be tackled by a very small gun shooting very small bullets to me.