Raithe

Well apparently rumours have it that WB is carrying out an investigation into Whedon for workplace activities, make of that what you will. And it's Disney+, so as the article mentions if it was true, they'd be toning down if not removing the character of Inara. Fillion has always said he would love to go back if he got the opportunity, but timing is an issue. But from the sounds of it, it would very much be a reboot in a completely new cast and shift in writing style. Not a picking up where it left, or bringing the old crew back together. Then again, it's still in that rumour and sources stage, so I'll take it all with a grain of salt.

I'm not sure quite how I feel on this... Although so far it's only sources and talk, not a definitive announcement. Exclusive: Firefly Reboot Coming To Disney+ (giantfreakinrobot.com)

I'll always remember an anecdote Hugh Laurie told a few years ago. He was invited to John le Carre's birthday celebration at a fancy restaurant in London. During the meal, one of the waiters pulled him aside to make a request... Apparently the restaurant had a tradition of surprising any birthday celebrations with a cake, and since they knew Hugh was a piano player, they asked if he wanted to play "Happy Birthday" when it was about to come out. Of course, they didn't actually tell anyone there that part of the trick was that shortly after the music started they'd switch the lights out briefly as the cake with candles emerged from the kitchens. What had slipped the restaurants mind, was that a large portion of the guests attending happened to be senior members of assorted Embassies - French, German, USA, even Russian (*cough* Intelligence Agencies *cough*) and all their bodyguards. Armed bodyguards. Hugh starts playing. He can see the door to the kitchen open, the cake appears, the lights go off... Lots of startled sounds. When the lights switch back on, a portion of the guests are under the tables and another portion are standing there with pistols in hand and some rather surprised waitstaff are holding a trolley with the cake.

For that interesting social news:

Ah, Japan. https://themindcircle.com/kei-truck-garden-contest/

The last season of Alias was kind of worth it for the Arvin Sloane and Jack Bristow moment. Actually thinking about it, Sloan's journey over the whole series of villain, redemption, ally, protective father turned villain once again in loss (with a touch of obsession) made one of the more interesting and well done character arcs in tv land.

Hey, it was a glorious Jeremy Irons having fun with overacting.

For the random awareness... Chris Pine to Star in 'Dungeons and Dragons' Movie for Paramount - Variety

Heh, I wonder how long before they do put in some way to alter your hair style in game? - "I can switch out my arms, my heart, I can replace chunks of my body with cybernetics as I wish... but I can't get a hair cut..."

Your mileage may very. I mean, sure, I've sunk over 50 hours into it since Thursday, so I'm enjoying it. Then again, I'm using a fairly recently zoomed up PC so I don't suffer too much of the glitches. It's atmospheric, it's got a sprawling city, it's got some mixed emotions to some of the side-gigs and assorted ups and downs. It's got a lot to engage in if you like that, but it is very much a first person RPG game, so don't expect a hyped-up shooter feel, or a car driving feel.

Well, that gave me very little information of any relevance, and 20 minutes of him ranting about the harassment of reviewers for daring not to give something a score over 9 out of 10. I'm glad I only had that running in the background while I was doing other things, or I'd feel that was 20 minutes badly spent.

Hm. First game breaking bug I've encountered. The "Lighting Strikes" mission starts, I get in the car with Panam, and then it goes into an infinite loading screen. Guess I'll go try out a few other missions before re-trying it. Edit: I also like that they have an in-game reason for why you're solo-ing the majority of things. A conversation with Rogue where she points out that your first big-leagues mission went catastrophically wrong, your partner died, your fixer died, all the people associated with it died, and you're the last person standing. So either you're a dangerous liability or you have bad luck and no superstitious merc will work with you, hence no fixer will ask a team to include you in it. Of course, this has a slight lack of coherency in that by the time she told me that I've already raised my Street Cred to 50. But then again, there seems to be the Street Cred reputation for access to things, and that "story" reputation that only goes up with certain key missions.

One thing that has been mentioned is that they aren't actually going to try to do a "book a season" type of story arc. Since it's a little unrealistic to try for 14 seasons, there is going to be some mashup and re-ordering of plot-lines and sub-plots for the tv adaption. So no "Eye of the World" season, or "Dragon Reborn" season. Just "Wheel of Time"...

Well, as I recall from a few CyberSecurity things I attended a couple of years back, about 70% of organised cyber-crime in the world traces back to Russian groups, and about 60% of cyber-espionage traces back to Chinese groups. It's surprising how effective and efficient you can be with those tools without having to be a big, rampant, economical giant.