majestic

So Disney is trying to shaft over artists they hired or are in their employ... again. What else is new?

GTA was a fun top-down shooter with a lot of laughs but a modern... oh, wait. You mean those GTAs.

Apparently it is. I don't participate of course. Heh.

Fixed that for you, perv. (It's a joke, really! Promise!)

I don't think it is. In theory I do read enough for it to be worthwhile and Amazon suckered me into getting Kindle Unlimited by not allowing Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows to be picked as monthly library choice (I read the first six novels one by one over six months). The price for the books is quite frankly insane, so I figured a free trial period is long enough to finish the series. Like a good useless consumer lemming I so far haven't overcome my inertia to actually cancel it, and I'm not really reading anything that is on Unlimited. Or let's inverse that, nothing I wanted to read so far has been available on Unlimited. edit: It also looks like Amazon stopped offering the lending library service here sometime this summer. All the menu items are gone from my Kindle, the one book I still have is now listed under Kindle Unlimited and can't be returned (well, obviously, how would you return an Unlimited book). The only thing left is Prime Reading which was always significantly worse than being able to read one "free" ebook per month. Free being relative as you'd still need a Kindle and Prime, but that easily paid for itself if you used your one book per month on books with ridiculous cash grabbing prices (*cough* Harry Potter *cough*) or new releases. Pity. Probably turned out to be a bad deal for Amazon. Offering millions of books on Unlimited and most of them being ridiculous pulp is probably a lot better for Bezos' wallet.

Still chuckle every time at the line: "There's a crusade coming." But... but... Muslims don't go on crusades. *cough*

Does anyone know if any of the updates to Phoenix Point eased the loading times a bit? Loading was really slow for me back when I played right after it came out.

Bernd das Brot was created for a German kid's TV channel (KiKa - Kinderkanal - literally children's channel). The shows where he shows up, especially the ones made for the nightly loop where the station's technically off the air but keeps repeating a Bernd sketch and the parodies of films, books or fairy tales are simply genius. They're silly, colorful and full of slapstick for the children that are supposed to watch them, but Bernd's general disposition, his dialogue and the writer's use of puns and absurdist humor were clearly targetet at adults. It's most evident in one of the film parodies called Kasten (box). It's a parody of Cube and the protagonists wake up locked in a square room with no knowledge of how they got there.

This one seems to be so far. I'm at episode 10 now, Sailor Mars appeared and if I'm not entirely mistaken that means Jadeite is kind of done for in an episode or two. I'm loving every second of it, although I kind of am looking forward to the point where they tone Usagi down a bit (or Bunny as she was called in our dub version too - except ours wasn't mangled liked the DiC dub). Definitely not looking foward to Chibiusa showing up. Oh, and someone recently posted Bernd das Brot: Nerd Party with English subtitles on YT:

It's like a train wreck. I can't stop watching.

Somehow all of this reminds me of our last presidential election (but our president is little more than a ceremonial figurehead). The final tally without mail-in ballots had the right wing nationalist candidate lead by 52 to 48, but projections showed his opponent, an independent runner formerly of the Green party leading after the full count. Not by enough to definitely call it, but enough to see him winning with significant probability. Because statistically mail-in ballots in Austria strongly favor the Green party more than any other, followed by center-left and left wing parties, i.e. all voters with an interest in not having a right wing nationalist as president. Directly after the election the right wingers were posting on Twitter and Facebook that "strange things" were happening with the voting process. Breitbart London even covered the ongoing election fraud, being all up in arms about exit polls being used to declare a winner and posting pictures of the actual tally without mail-in ballots as proof that something strange was indeed going on. Then someone posted pictures of people calculating that some districts had an above 100% voter turnout. This is simply because mail-in ballots are added to the figures (as a separate value, mind) to the turnout of whatever district they are counted in, and they're consolidated and brought to districts with the infrastructure to handle them. That can - and often does - push the amount of votes in a district above the maximum of eligible voters in the district. But extrapolations are not exit polls... and no winner was declared yet - but when did details ever matter to those who see a conspiracy in everything? The other candidate won by .2% and the election was contested by his opponent citing irregularities in the mail-in ballot process as the reason. There were irregularities all right. Mail-in ballots are supposed to be counted on the Monday after the election (our elections are always on Sundays) but some districts already counted them on Sunday and only entered the final tally on Monday. Some were opened on Sunday already but counted on Monday, opening them up to manipulation (in theory, if someone were to break in and switch the ballots over night). For the vote counting each party involved can (and ususally does) send an observer. Everyone involved in the counting afterwards signs a written statement that everything went in accordance with voting law. Which obviously was a lie for the districts that counted early or opened the ballots on Sunday already. In every district that was contested, the Freedom party observers and counters signed the written statement without protest. The subsequent investigation showed that even if every irregularily counted mail-in ballot would have been manipulated to be in favor of the Green party candidate he would still have won. Not enough mail-in ballots were handled irregularily for this to be an issue. The supreme court chose to overturn the election anyway. Because reasons ("this undermines the people's trust in the democratic process, even though the outcome is not in doubt"). We essentially had to vote a second time to silence people spewing conspiracy theories. As if such a thing is at all possible. We voted a second time, and the Freedom party lost bigly. Bigly enough to call the race even before mail-in ballots were counted. Which I found hilarious, if it wouldn't have been such a waste of tax money. The conspiracy theorists just said that this election was simply manipulated with greater care than the last one. Haw haw. Way to go supreme court, way to go.

Imagine Bob Picardo would read this out loud: To complain about it later, of course... but I see your point. Heh.

Anyway, I of course also watched the new Discovry episode. Anyone else find it odd that the Federation would leave a seed vault starship alone with a family of four somewhere months out of reach? That seems kind of silly even if the Burn has stranded it there. Which it most likely didn't, I mean, that family wasn't there for 120 years or however long ago the Burn was. Almost as silly as that ship having no way of detecting a coronal mass ejection or shields to prevent such an event from being problematic. In (by now) time honored Discovery tradition Stamets, Tilly and Madam Irritable (eh, Commander Reno, I guess) treknobabble a bit about how one of the people on board was thrown out of phase while everyone else died. They come up with the idea that one of the vault ship's crew was currently in the process of beaming into the vault when he got showered with a nice helpful dose of beta radiation from the aforementioned CME. Yes, beta radiation, the thing that we know from junior high will not penetrate thin aluminium foil. Let alone an intact starship hull. Oh, and Burnham got upgraded again. She can do it all. Whether it is being Spock's hitherto unbeknownst adoptive sister, a Federation commander and first officer, scientist, counsellor, part time doctor, all around arsehole, all around nice lady, all around nice lady with an authority problem and last but not least, the person who always reaches for the best in everyone. Cue tears. Terrans from the mirror universe are all evil because it's in their genes. Georgiou promptly rejects that idea and says that she's one bad arse mofo because she wants to be. She's interviewed (well debriefed) by a not-at-all sinister looking person with an interest in Terrans from the mirror universe and fake glasses. Holy moly, such suspense. I wonder where this is going, surely nothing untoward happened during the interview there. Lol. edit: Admiral Levi Shur also confirms that the bad guys of the galaxy really are the "Andorian-Orion Syndicate", funny how the Federation and a couple of other Star Empires didn't survive the Burn, but a crime syndicate came out on top and apparently runs things now. Or at least has become Dune's Spacer Guild for the rest of the galaxy. edit 2: I'm going to call it now: The Burn was actually caused by someone from the mirror universe, or is in some way related to the mirrow universe "moving away" from the regular Trek 'verse. It kind of makes no sense to still seek revenge for what Kirk did a thousand years in the past, but hey, that never stopped Alex Kurtzman. It's the same guy that came up with the guy who brings a massively overpowered Romulan mining ship into the past by accident and then waits around to shoot at Spock instead of hauling his arse back to Romulus to warn them about the supernova that will threaten the galaxy and, dunno, maybe conquer their enemies with his hyper-advanced super miner that carries a weapon loadout that would make the Defiant blush. Geez. Am I being too harsh on this tripe?

Curious, does that come up in the series and I missed it or is that meta knowledge from the source material? And go me for finally making it into someone's signature.

I found the ending to be convoluted and unfitting. Kinda came out of nowhere.

It's also borderline hentai at times.

I unlocked the Gunslinger in Enter The Gungeon. Whilst I still have a few items that are not yet unlocked I'll consider that game finished for the time being, and since the Epic version has no achievements I cannot enlargen my e-**** by continuing to play. Achievements might not be content but for me they can give me some decent extra value in a game. All in all not too shabby. For the first 50 or so runs I never thought I'd beat it even once, let alone unlock all characters and kill their pasts. Now... now losing a run only happens when I stop paying attention. It does have - like any rougelite - a decent chunk of RNG, but it's not nearly as bad as other games. Good luck can still get you a loaded run, but bad luck won't give you an unwinnable one like, say, FTL does. Great game, well worth the nothing I spent on it. Doubly so when it makes Epic give the studio the money for a copy sold.

Sailor Moon ist just awesome for its entire run. But I've said it before, I fear Bartimaeus will not like the tone shift in the later seasons. Anyway, this thread convinced me to rewatch the anime. However, watching Sailor Moon is something that lies comfortably in my past, very much long enough ago to only have fond memories of a better time. Thinking back gives me the same good feeling that watching Stranger Things does. Which is part of the reason why I love that show so much even if every season seems to be the same and becomes more and more ludicrous. Rewatching it might break that memory or reaffirm it. Rewatching Disney's The Black Hole for instance broke it. That film is... not good. That didn't bother me as a child, but it did as an adult. Playing the games on my SNES Classic Mini on the other hand simply made me realize that console gaming was awesome in the early 90ies. Guess I'll take the plunge. If my experience is positive then I might just try watching Knight Rider. It's been on Prime for a while now and I don't really have the heart to watch.

Things don't seem to look very bright for Erdolf in Turkey right now. The Lira's not doing so well either and his son-in-law wants to resign. Or has resigned, or something like that. Must be kinda bad when even your extended family jumps the ship.

Tracked down the weirdest database update conflict in the history of update conflicts. It ended up being a query that was meant to update complimentary data and didn't account for the very unlikely case that the complementary and the current record are actually the same. It's probably better if you don't ask how that can be. (the answer is of course user error, what else could it be)

Kinda goes for all food. Looking delicious and being delicious are, sadly, separate things...

Stop talking to yourself.

Whenever I fire up a game of Baldur's Gate I am, every time without fail, impressed with how good the ambient sounds in the game are. I sometimes just turn off the music to stroll through a woodland area or two listening to the breeze and the chirping of birds. I think I'll go face the new Lord of Murder once again. Yes and no. CS focuses more on the tactical element of the XCOM games. Strategy is limited to a small city map and sending your squad members on missions, trainings or giving them tasks to do (help with research, gather money, etc.). It's a fun, albeit short game that was worth the 20€ they asked for it when it launched.

Luzianus you mean? I thought of him immediately when I saw that picture. I guess Luzi, oby and Qis will still be meme-ish posters here on this forum long after everyone who actually read their posts will be long gone.