Raithe

The Old Guard. Nicely done Netflix adaption, no wasted moments to it, although a couple of elements have that slightly comic book style forced aspect to it. Charlize Theron smoothly plays the part Andy, the leader of a small band of immortals who act as covert mercenaries who has "forgotten more ways to kill than most entire armies learn" and has been around so long she can't remember when she was born, or what her mother or sisters looked like. Of course, modern day arrives, and shenanigans ensue when someone unearths their secret and wants to hunt them down to disect and use as cures for the human condition. To help tell the story to the audience, you also get the introduction of the first "new immortal" in a couple of centuries, so a lot of it is answering her questions on what the hell is happening to her. All set up with an ending that screams "this is potential franchise" for Netflix to run several more films following it. I think the one major misstep to it is it has a very forgettable soundtrack for the most part, so that slice of emotional punch is missing. And I suppose it can depend on just how many stories of weary immortals struggling to deal with always losing friends and families who age and die while they carry on you can take....

Heh. So now Trump is postponing the New Hampshire rally because of "the weather"....

Hard to decide just which thread to put this...

Other reasons why Garak was one of the best Star Trek characters...

"Scotty doesn't know."

Quote for the Day: "Just because I'm gay, doesn't mean I don't know how to please a woman. You buy them a dress that has pockets."

The human body is 60% water. You're more water than anything else. Even your bones contain it. Which means: you contain oceans. You contain low tide, high tide, great depths and peculiar shallows. You also contain one hidden octopus and two vengeful sharks so that's nice.

[the world has ended. Keith Richards walks the barren wasteland, surveying all that is left. In the distance he notices a lone figure carrying what can only be described as Excalibur] Keith: "Oi! Who goes there??" Betty White: "You knew it would come to this, Keith. Now, draw..."

The shopping cart is the ultimate litmus test for whether a person is capable of self-governing. To return the shopping cart is an easy, convenient task and one which we all recognise as the correct, appropriate thing to do. To return the shopping cart is objectively right. There are no situations other than dire emergencies in which a person is not able to return their cart. Simultaneously, it is not illegal to abandon your shopping cart. Therefore the shopping cart presents itself as the apex example of whether a person will do what is right without being forced to do it. No one will punish you for not returning the shopping cart, no one will fine you or kill you for not returning the shopping cart, you gain nothing by returning the shopping cart. You must return the shopping cart out of the goodness of your own heart. You must return the shopping cart because it is the right thing to do. Because it is correct. A person who is unable to do this is no better than an animal, an absolute savage who can only be made to do what is right by threatening them with a law and the force that stands behind it. The Shopping Cart is what determines whether a person is a good or bad member of society.

It had 13 episodes that were all good. No-one ever got to see a bad episode per se, just a couple that weren't as great as the rest. The chemistry between the actors, the dialogue that Whedon wrote, it all clicked together as a great whole. It left a lot of people wanting more and wondering just what it could have delivered if Fox hadn't screwed it over. Edit: And don't get me wrong, I love Farscape, but it hit different Sci-Fi buttons for me than Firefly did. Sure, you had that over-arcing "Mixed crew becoming family as they exist on the fringes of space" idea, but they were exploring different things and going with some different themes. Farscape had the time to really develop the various characters in-depth and show their evolution, it showed them becoming family and changing their goals and what they were doing as it happened. Firefly was much more of a family protecting their "home" from the very beginning.

For a little call back, an interesting article on Kids and how it affected them in the two decades since.. Pocket Worthy - Legends Never Die ; Two decades after a low-budget film turned Washington Square skaters into celebrities, the kids from “Kids” struggle with lost lives and the fine art of growing up.

Well, 2nd season could be fun...

I've been having a few odd glitches throwing up these days, and as I was doing general computer health check I suddenly realised that half my pc is actually 7 years old now. Motherboard and CPU and a bunch of the core components were all put in back in 2013... So I casually wandered over to my local computer stores "build your own PC" tool, and it's like.... Growl. I've got that aging i5 - 3.4Ghz quad core, with 16 Gb DDR3 Corsair ram that handles most things, but having that general aging process kick in. Now I'm rubbing my hands and cackling like an evil genius as I consider on Gigabyt's Z390 Aorus Ultra Motherboard and the balance of 9th generation i5 3.7Ghz, or the push towards an i7 3.0 Ghz. Or what effect 32GB of DDR4 3600Mhz would have. I'm curious on how an M.2 solid state drive would be for boot and windows install. Of course, when playing around with that sort of "build your own" tool, it gets tempting to slap on the Corsair Hydro cooling system or other such silliness....

Buzzfeed - Judge ordered the Dakota Access Pipeline halted Apparently, the judge feels it can't continue without a full and proper environmental evaluation...

To be fair, there's usually a handful of cases of bubonic plague a year, and it is pretty much hammered by current medicine. It's just being considered newsworthy, well, because its 2020 and we constantly expect the other shoe to drop. With tentacles.

Ennio Morricone dies, aged 91, after fracturing his femur in a fall

If we're going to go there.. let's add in: