Agiel

This tweet in response to the news of Top Gun 2 commencing filming gave me a laugh:

I remember towards the end of last year when in my "Youtube Recommends" there was a video (which I did not watch) titled "Where's TES VI?" to which I said "You guys realise that Fallout 4 came out not all that long ago? And that the space between Bethesda releases it generally around four years, right?"

https://twitter.com/ScottFrazier19/status/999977971598413824 Apart from the shocking breach of protocol, I couldn't help but notice Trump's posture at the end with his short arms hanging forwards and his butt jutting out. It's like a pose only the political cartoonists could ever conjure up.

Not something I'm playing, but I found this accompanying Bingo card for the Super Best Friends' playthrough of Detroit humorous nonetheless (link rather than image posted since it contains some profanity and I can't be bothered to swab over the offending word in Paint and upload the censored version onto Imgur): https://imgur.com/a/lxchoBW Still, I actually had a somewhat positive opinion of Heavy Rain (although that's about where my experience with Quantic Dream games ends), as I actually found segments of it genuinely tense in an enjoyable way:

Looks like we're in for a Boba Fett: A Star Wars story. A shame they probably can't bring in Tameura Morrison for it. He was one of the few things I found enjoyable about Attack of the Clones: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Sehm7hcV100

Philip Roth, the man whom for my money is in top three of best American writers, has died at age 85. https://www.newyorker.com/books/double-take/philip-roth-in-the-new-yorker?mbid=social_twitter He had wholly retired from writing after Nemesis in 2010, but still his death among the many since 2016 is the one that hits me hardest.

Speaking of which, strong episode tonight. Idle thoughts:

Rather interesting RAND research memo from 1954, which I found to be as relevant to the US President as the "Lost Boys" who drive trucks into crowds, shoot up schools, and bomb concerts:

Was hoping people who bought the Wood Elves DLC would get an Ariel freebie so that all three Elf factions got their own Mage Queens.

Rumours seem to indicate that the new Obi-Wan Star Wars movie is going to be a bit of a re-telling of the Seven Samurai.

A US Navy aviator I follow on Quora had this question put to him: His answer:

Metro: Exodus delayed into 2019. *Sadface*

It was called Cradle, and it did manage to come out. And in spite of my distaste for most games of that form, I quite enjoyed it and highly recommend it to everyone here.

As Jared and Ivanka were headlining the US Embassy's move to Jerusalem: 55 dead in Gaza protests as Israel fetes US Embassy move

Tonight's episode of Westworld? Ho boy. Best episode of the entire series thus far, but I may be biased as a big fan of Ed Harris. It looked promising to me, but I kept putting it off, so perhaps I'm partly to blame. Would seem at a glance that its ratings were rather mid-ling for a show that I would imagine was as expensive as something like Westworld or Game of Thrones (what it may lack in marquee actors its budget makes up in the SFX department).

Ty Cobb bowed out of the job representing Trump. I guess that gig is a bit like being the drummer for Spinal Tap.

Before you change your avatar, consider: https://i.imgur.com/1MPG3Ug.mp4

I'm not so sure that any variant of SA-10/SA-20 would be so decisively better than an SA-17 against another cruise missile attack, since the extendable mast means at most an additional 8nm extra coverage against something flying even 200ft above the deck that for the cost more SA-17s/22s would do them more good. There's also the fact that simply looking at a relief map of Syria and Lebanon and the location of most of Syria's air defence systems one can come to the conclusion that it's a cruise missile/low-level attack planner's wet dream and an IADS nightmare. This explains how Israel was able to perform open-heart surgery on Syria's IADS network back in 1982 and them largely having its way since 2011.

My own favourite Apocalypse Now scenes are typically the ones that are the most visually far-removed from reality, such as when Willard kills Kurtz and of course the Do Lung Bridge scene: While the action scenes of Heat are admittedly some of the best in cinema, I'm very much partial to the more dialogue-heavy portions: The final scene of the Thing is a near pitch perfect combination of scoring, cinematography, and terror-inducing dread: And of course this classic horror scene which cemented my love for the series (or at least the two good ones and one alright Assembly Cut):

McMaster and Commander, by Patrick Radden Keefe For those inclined to read editorial pieces in the New Yorker chronicling McMaster's tenure as National Security Adviser, if you had to burn one of your three free pieces a month on one article make it this one (no recreation here, due to copyright and length).