Zoraptor

Obama hadn't bombed anyone at all (yet) when he won, so there's precedent. Trump winning for North Korea would probably be more legit than Obama's win since Obama had done precisely nothing apart from not being GWBush at the time.

Obviously_this_comment_didn't_age_well.jpg That was... Threshhold level bad. The contrast against the last Orville episode could not have been more stark.

Discovery has the problem all shows have when they try and appeal to everyone and appeal to some retroactively by fixing 'mistakes'- they tend to become a bit amorphous and are focused on annoying as few as possible as opposed to pleasing as many as possible. Addressing criticism is great, but you have to accept that if you 'fix' something for one group of people you're likely to 'break' it for others and that if you get it wrong you will end up not pleasing either group; getting the balance right is tricky and you may just be better off deciding some people are just not your audience. Personally I'm not too worried about the more emo Burnham- she's still recognisably the same character, there are reasons for it, and it was a journey Spock, Data and every other stoic character went on to greater or lesser extents, but I can see how others wouldn't like it as it is too sudden and too extreme and how others wouldn't have liked her in S1. I think they're a bit too concerned with whether viewers like Burnham though, when being liked is not necessary for an effective protagonist. My concerns with S2 are mostly Tilly being Flanderised into... some sort of hybrid of all the worst aspects of Neelix and Wesley Crusher, and the increased use of outright treknobabble to solve problems- S1 had the treknobabble, but it was at least mostly isolated to dealing with the fungus subplot (the weakest aspect of the season); and treknobabble has been and always will be a crutch for bad writers to bail themselves out of the corners they've written themselves into with their bad writing. S1 may have been too dark for many, but it at least established the series as having stakes and some permanent consequences, so far S2 has ducked any real consequences and gone far too far in the fluffy bunny direction. Note: I haven't seen the latest episode yet, vaguely hoping that Tilly gets possessed by homicidal fungus and goes on a rampage to invalidate my complaints. Stewart is probably too old for outright action man stuff anyway, even with a stunt double and makeup, and I'd presume he'd be a flag officer of some sort rather than a captain going off on away missions. I'd like the odd 'Darmok' type episode where he does both, but I'm really expecting it to be others doing most of the action. Which is as it really ought to be, logically, both in universe and out. When I think of the best Picard eps Darmok is probably the only one with much in the way of conventional action, and that still has the talky/ story as focus.

Hitler_reacts_to_Bruno_Ganz's_death.mpg Had forgotten how much I like a good Untergang parody.

Thronebreaker was GOG exclusive for ~a month before being released on steam. And while not quite the same thing if you buy CDPR games anywhere other than steam you get a GOG key, not a steam one. OTOH I doubt Epic could offer CDPR enough money to make 2077 Epic Store exclusive, not really their style and it would involve far too many toys coming out of cots from the steam === PCgaming crowd. We aren't Bobby's target and never have been, shareholders are. And they love that sort of thing. Bobby has zero bonks to give for gamers, so long as he get their money.

While I get the implication of Trump being a buffoon with using Jar Jar, I think that's somewhat unfair to Senator Jar Jar as he appeared to have grown some as a character, even though we never saw that growth. Did you ever hear the theory of Darth Darth Binks? I thought not, it's not a theory Disney would tell you.

Raithe trigg'ring fools like a boss, but anyway... Trolls are frequently hilarious, just not to those who are targeted by them. Wow, British heroes are all... uh, fictional? Which would be the single most pathetic thing ever, if Britain were so bereft of heroes they have to resort to literal fiction to find any. Of course, actually write down a list of British heroes and you get a different, but problematic, set of results which is why you get a list here of made up idealised people, from fiction. To be fair, some on the British hero list would be like David; it was later King David, after all. Yep, whoever wrote this had no class, no charm, no coolness, no credibility, no compassion (OK, no evidence either way really), no wit, no warmth, no wisdom, no subtlety, no sensitivity, no self-awareness (to quote the great philosopher Daniel Bryan: "Yes! Yes! Yes!"), no humility, no honour and no grace. ... Yes, the British Empire... happened... because... the British... hate... bullies... :roflcopters" ..."no self-awareness" And let's be honest here, any list of actually existed British heroes will have an awful number of objective bullies on it, that's just the nature of such things. lolwut? You can argue niceness vs politeness I guess, but even then, lolwut? Can't even keep the clichés straight. Gotta be frank, it reads like he has his head rammed up his fundamental alimentary egress port. And I don't even disagree with the gist of it, Trump's a prize knob much like all politicians and worse than most. That, however, is the sort of hypocritical diatribe which is squarely aimed at making the writer feel superior, it's basically masturbation in written form and the writer lacks even the most basic ability to self edit for consistency. Him accusing anyone else- even Trump- of having no self awareness is ludicrous. On the positive side, every British hero being fictional was pretty funny as was the British hating bullies, even if were utterly unintentionally funny. Kind of wish it were trolling, as it would work decently that way.

The problem is the deficit money was spent on social welfare for corporations and other stupidities, not that it was deficit money. If they'd spent it on sensible things- and yes, New Deal like infrastructure is a very good example- they'd have had an investment for the money, it would have been spread around instead of concentrated in the hands of a few already rich and the recovery would have been on more sound foundations than the blatant funny money/ share/ housing etc bubbles generated by Chinese pyramid schemes and US money printing that it's based on now while the people who make and buy actual stuff get comparatively poorer and poorer. Obama was crap economically, I 100% agree. He allowed privatised profits but socialised losses from the big companies when he should have been brave and kicked the vested interests who generated the 2008 crisis in the arse. His only excuse is that he genuinely did inherit an utterly borked economy from that even worse economic cretin GWB whose over spending in relatively good times was on even worse stupidities and who had far fewer excuses for his deficit spending. In the end they spent the money on reinforcing the same old mistakes so that the whole thing could repeat itself 10-20 years later just with the average person being far poorer and the top echelon far richer next time around.

Deficit spending during a recession is exactly what you should do, assuming the spending is on Sensible Things and to get money into circulation, at least*. What most governments have trouble with is the corollary of that: you should save (pay down debt) when you're in the boom segment of the cycle. Instead leftist governments tend to increase spending more then and rightists decide to cut taxes so you never get around to paying down the debt. Austerity as a response to a recession has been almost completely discredited. It made Britain's recession worse and they still haven't recovered from it and it made Europe's recession worse, only mitigated by Europe's ridiculous economic system which ensures the strongest economies eat the weaker ones making austerity appear to work for the top economies (plus cancerous tax havens). *which it wasn't in that case since it mostly amounted to corporate welfare and printing money for banks and billionaires while everyone else stagnated or worse; so Obama's economic management was crappy, it was just what he spend the deficit spending on which was the problem.

The Ockers never actually had a shut down then. It would theoretically have happened, at the end of November, but never actually did since the contentious Supply bill was passed in mid November (on the same day Whitlam was sacked and largely because... he forgot to tell his party's senators he'd been sacked and it was being passed for PM Fraser instead). Also Westminster System vs a US system which doesn't have the same concepts of Supply to anywhere near the same degree nor Confidence- at all effectively- and has an Executive President while the Governor General is decidedly non executive except in this sole case. Fact check status: Not factual let alone ultrafactual/ Pants On Fire/ Fakenews SAD!/ More war on truth from the alt left/ whatever other clichés I can't be bothered writing. (For US types the equivalent would be the House and Senate disagreeing on a budget; Guam and Puerto Rico being granted Senators which could give D a majority in the Senate; Pelosi is effective executive head of the government as the House trumps the Senate but the Senate can still block legislation; the President being appointed rather than elected and their only real power being the power to sack ministers and which has never been used; ministers are appointed by Pelosi who is herself a minister and can be sacked; and if Pelosi cannot pass Supply or Confidence measures then whoever the R minority leader is gets a crack at being executive head of the government and if he fails you get a full deck election of both houses. Pelosi cannot pass Supply measures, Supreme Court says she cannot appoint senators for Guam/ PR but there must an election by mid next year, President sacks Pelosi but Pelosi doesn't tell everyone, Senate passes Supply measure for new R Speaker with D senators thinking they'd won the standoff, R now run the government and decide to dissolve Congress, R win elections, President eventually resigns and leaves the country because D are butthurt, Pelosi eventually becomes well known for wanting to turn the US into a constitutional monarchy to avoid the situation repeating)

Officially, Daredevil was not cancelled for any external factors, it was cancelled for not being successful (enough). Unofficially Disney+ must have had an influence at least, but there were also some other intrinsic issues that were known about before hand like Netflix wanting 10ep seasons and Marvel not budging on 13, and the shows were fundamentally very expensive to make. It also seems likely that cancelling the poorly performing shows would make the better performing ones less economic rather than more. My personal opinion is that Daredevil would have continued if Marvel had been flexible but that some cancellations were absolutely inevitable whatever that situation. And whatever else, Daredevil was one show, every other Netflix Marvel property was regarded as at least a tier lower.

They already make at least one though it isn't an 'independent' chip but a coprocessor, it's their 'security processor'/ mandated NSA backdoor chip. Intel also made ARM chips via their purchase of the DEC part of the joint venture ARM/ DEC StrongARM chip (and, being Intel, some legal strongarming too), and StrongARM was a genuine potential competitor on desktop (up to 300MHz in 1997, and you could daisychain up to 8 (?) processors via Hydra, though for some reason that feature got killed off...) StrongARM is a bit indicative. ARM on desktop is like mainstream VR gaming, game streaming services and the Year of the Linux Desktop; it's always just a few years off. My dad actually went to university with one of ARMs founders and got a tour around their facility in Cambridge in 1992, and we had a Acorn RISC PC with a StongARM in it- indeed, it's still in my shed. No doubt nVidia will be very keen to get ARM into laptops though as a way to even the playing field vis-a-vis Intel and AMD; though their Tegras really aren't competitive as well as being hamstrung by, well, Jensen being Jensen. The Switch jailbreak has been described as a security flaw but it's actually a feature, documented by nVidia.

Yeah, Daredevil quality wise was great, but it was cancelled at least ostensibly due to not being successful enough- ie being too expensive for the subscribers/ views it got. You also have to take the whole lot of Marvel shows into account rather than just one title. As for the Titans trailer being too movie MCU, I didn't get that at all- it was meant to showcase an ensemble and be sort of grimdark, but I don't really associate ensemble (solely) or grimdark with MCU. If anything it was like a Legends of Tomorrow trailer if that were a grimdark show with no fun allowed. All the CW DC shows do ludicrously well streaming and internationally and even Gotham does decently there, plus Titans has done well too- in the end that's why there are so many of them with more coming. You can argue the quality of them, but not their success. The non Netflix Marvel adult orientated TV portfolio is not exactly packed with runaway, heh, success and it would be positively inhuman to make people sit through some of their efforts. AoS is fine but it's only about as successful as Gotham, Agent Carter I liked, but IIRC it was literally the lowest rated show on the big 4 when showing. In the end though the only objective way to judge success is longevity of the series. Since Arrow debuted there have been 14 DC TV series in total with 52 seasons between them, 2 have been cancelled (Constantine and Powerless) under 5 seasons; with iZombie and Gotham to finish after their S5s, to be fair, but a 5 season show is at least fairly successful. Over the same time frame there have been 12* Marvel shows covering 25 seasons, only one has made 5 seasons and 6 have been cancelled, with Punisher and JJ probably to be added. Also, subjective as it may be, I haven't even heard of 'The Gifted' or 'Cloak and Dagger' which are ongoing despite being pretty well informed, and I've barely seen anyone discuss Runaways either. *Legion is excluded if we're talking MCU, since it's the one (?) Marvel TV show that isn't MCU. It's also, sadly, cancelled after s3 due to ratings. Artistically, it's very good but it's a failure commercially and I'd argue that S2 was just too esoteric for its own good. IIRC he said in series that he can transform into other things- but frankly, CGI budget. Even just with the Tiger it's a bit hmm in terms of animation and integration into the scenes.

My main problem with the DC trailer for Titans (apart from the song and to an extent the pacing) was that the 'f___ Batman' line gave the impression it would be stupidly edgy for the sake of it rather than being mature in the more positive sense. The Netflix trailer fixed those issues. Then again I'd never paid the slightest attention to (Teen) Titans beforehand so didn't know/ care if anyone had been left out etc.

In movies, sure. On TV, nah. The 'universe' part of MCU has been great for the movies but pretty close to actively terrible for TV since TV is seen so much as a secondary medium. DC's approach of letting the shows do their own thing and link as much or as little as they like is far better for TV. The only really bad thing about DC's approach to TV is being arbitrary about who and what can be used due to whatever movies they're planning as if people couldn't tell TV Deathstroke or Deadshot plus multiple others apart from the movie versions. Movie wise DC is a mess, that they have two Joker movies with different actors in production at the same time just about sums things up there perfectly. But in terms of successful adult orientated TV shows Marvel is miles behind, albeit in part due to the, heh, meta issue of the Disney vs Netflix stoush. Titans' (DC made/ US/ original) trailer was not great either. The international Netflix trailer and the actual series though were good. Personally I think Doom Patrol is inherently a bit of an odd choice, but I'll give it a chance. Plus, it has Tim Dalton.

Can't forget what you don't know about. This looks really neat, thanks for the tip. It's on sale at GOG 60% off for the next day and a bit if you do want to pick it up. I'd heartily recommend it as well, though 'hard and unforgiving' is certainly an accurate description.

I would have thought that the changes for touchscreens in the phone/ tablet versions would be harder to pull off than adapting for controllers, and from what I've been told the mobile versions are decently enough adapted. Guess things like selecting the characters might be a bit cumbersome/ annoying if they can't work out a decent quick system since you have to do it so often. But while I doubt they're a particularly good fit for consoles or will sell well they should be a quick and reasonably easy port with the major consoles being AMD PCs under the hood.

I guess my view is predicated on the EU being an 'infinite expansion' project for its architects- they don't want to do anything that would limit it, so they don't want the UK gone permanently even if it would give short term satisfaction (and discourage other potential leavers). I'm certainly no fan of the EU but within the stipulations mandated by their worldview I think they've handled the UK leaving quite well. If it were a less important nation they'd probably do more to try and end run the referendum or outright blackmail/ threaten to stick the knife in, but from their pov they really do need the UK back and preferably in such a way that they won't be continually on the verge of leaving every few years. If so, they'll take up the mantle of William Wallace (movie version) and ensure Scottish freedom. Hmm. Scotland has oil, and they won't let Trump build any more golf courses, and the locals don't like his hotels being there which are there. Might need some long term occupation and stabilisation.

That was a theory, but Dinah still being around in the flash forwards seems to make it pretty unlikely.

Her actor is very good and is very natural with every other actor in the series, but the character herself just has too much baggage for me stemming from her introduction and consistent poor writing/ plotting, which all the new recruits suffered from. Even really simple stuff like her having literally the same name as Laurel's mother/ Quentin's wife is never addressed as if the writers were hoping no one would notice. Haha no. They clearly have an endpoint in mind for Barbara but their journey to get her there has been contrived, even for a Gotham plot line, and she's been used as a sidekick for more interesting villains most of the time as they have no idea what to do with her by herself. Diggle's wife Lyla (Audrey Marie Anderson, iirc) is also in the same episode and a few previous, playing The Governor's girlfriend. Agent Liberty on Supergirl (Sam Witwer) was in the series 1 Walking Dead Finale in the tank Rick gets stuck in too and has been in heaps of sci fi stuff like BSG, Force Unleashed, Smallville. All the CWDC shows are pretty big on the stunt casting, especially Supergirl. I like Kacey Rohl, but there are far too many hackers in Arrow. Just doesn't have a purpose, especially with Mr Terrible being around, unless Felicity leaves. Wild Dog though is fine, now that they're not doing the idiotic Civil Bore storyline where he was insufferable. (To be honest, I'd move Felicity and Diggle into a 'not the suicide squad' show and out of Arrow if I were in charge, even with Thea and Quentin gone Arrow still has core cast bloat)

I'd be a lot more charitable than that, not something I usually am when it comes to the EU. Being obnoxious and obstructionist would only ensure that Britain would be gone, permanently, instead of probably coming back at some point. It would also provide more ammunition, not less, for EU skeptics due to the appearance of trying to force the referendum to be set aside* and would be justifiably labeled as part of 'Project Fear 2' in the UK. "You don't want to play with us? Well, we're taking out ball and going home!" doesn't even work well in the schoolyard. *which, lest we forget, has been the usual approach when 'anti EU' referenda have passed in member countries. Well yeah, they've been relatively open about not expecting leave to win and by inference never really did any preparation for a non remain result- Cameron would never have called the referendum if he thought he would lose. About the only prep they did was the Project Fear 1 research about how much the economy would contract if leave won; and that's been counterproductive since the estimates were absolutely miles more negative than reality has been. And to be fair, the Northern Ireland situation is not really something that has a precedent and can be planned for in a way that would satisfy anybody.

I wouldn't defend the FIFA/ Madden/ CoD annual releases as being consumer friendly- though ultimately, it is the consumers' choice to buy annual releases which encourages them- but they do at least consistently work. The issue with Paradox is usually that they add stuff and accumulate bugs andor imbalanced gameplay as a result of adding stuff, then don't get around to fixing all the stuff they broke before releasing the next dlc, that breaks more stuff. So the net effect is that the games accumulate bugs and broken systems. Don't worry; Mods Will Fix It! seems to be their ultimate attitude. That's apart from the usual accusations more common to dlc in general that they parcel up systems that should have been in the base game to sell later. As for Imperator being on GOG, it's good news but I'd be very reticent about Paradox's approach since they seem to be intent on gating at least extras through their own portal- and they retroactively trojaned steam into the 'drm free' version of CK2 as well.

Apex is same universe as Titanfall as well, isn't it? Definitely looks like at most it was genre shift of a genuine TF3 project, most likely though it was people presuming it was Titanfall 3 being worked on when it was Apex all the time. Despite having pretty good reputations neither of the Titanfall games sold all that well so some sort of shift was always on the cards. Seems to have been fairly well received too. I have no interest in BR games at all but a million players inside a day seems decent for a title that dropped completely randomly on a moderate sized platform- and it seems to have a decent rep for its monetisation model as well.

At this point I'm actively hoping they go the whole hog and actually make her a retroactive villain. She's definitely got the background set up for it, and it would give the flash forwards an actual point too. Apart from the nuking there's also the soliciting torture from an identity thief impersonating an important judicial official and breaking a terrorist out of federal custody in S5 either of which would usually make you an outright bad guy. Kind of funny how she's been treated on the other shows. She was always better written on Flash since she wasn't the showrunners' pet, but we got a passive aggressive comment about her wedding gift after the hijacking which was almost certainly designed as a WTF? to the Arrow writers; and she was summarily and fairly graphically killed off in Legends' Doomworld.

IIRC straight sequel to K1 (and largely ignoring K2), primarily if not entirely SP. It got retasked to an MMO very early on though; and LucasArts were developing a K3 internally which was cancelled a year before TOR released.