majestic

Warning, unmarked Discovery spoilers ahead. Not that it matters, anyway. Everything plays out exactly as expected. No weird disembodied, floating Kelpian head Su'kal. But honestly, what was I thinking? Anyway, that last epsiode was actually semi-interesting and somewhat suspenseful, if flat out mediocre across the board, with a lot of dumb in between. If it would have been trimmed of certain inanities and useless subplots one could call it good entertainment, at least, if this wasn't Star Trek. I mean, we've all talked about this at length, but this just once again shows how utterly dragged down the show is by being tethered to a CBS moneymaking scheme Star Trek. Su'kal just turns out to be a regular Kelpien with dilithium fused into his genetic makeup. When he screams, he screams in subspace, which explains why the Burn happened at faster than light speeds, seemingly everywhere at once. He got so scared he screamed at just the right frequency to cause a subspace shockwave that made everything go boom. It's... I don't know. It's dumb as hell, but at least it was in service of a decent moment in the episode. Saru's interaction with Su'kal was actually good. Or it just looked good because everything else was so bad. But still, Abe Sapien has consistently tried to do his best with the material he's been given. Oh, right, and because you can't have enoug dumb on a show with a lot of dumb already, after Adira reaches the hologram world Su'kal lives in, the computer scans her and creates a holographic projection of Gray that everyone can see and interact with (and of course it is only Gray and not every prior host because uhm we want Gray for a weird family moment with Culber). Meanwhile, back on Discovry it turns out the Sphere Data is just like the Borg in Picard. Completely useless beyond showing a movie and saving Lt. Is-Conviniently-An-Apnoea-Diver by pulling her out of a disconnected warp nacelle on time. In Monkey Island being able to hold your breath for 10 minutes was a laugh and a way to get killed in a fun joke from the creators of the game. Here it's a last second addition to Owosekun to explain why she can still run around while everyone else has so little oxygen left that they're dropping unconscious. Getting the effects of carbon dioxide intoxication wrong is a staple in sci-fi, even other Trek, so I'm not really going to hold that against them, but it's still a ridiculous contrivance and... well, and there's a thing called the mammalian diving reflex and a period of concentrated breathing prior to submerging involved in extended free diving, so let's just say nope. That won't work on a space ship. Why bother, though? They can't send the Sphere-Data robot there because it would be harmed by the nacelle's electromagnetic output, but it goes there anyway to pull Owosekun out. Might as well have the Sphere Data say something like "I've learned this from Michael" and lock them in somewhere and go off alone. Tilly and her crew is completely useless because they're just stopped dead by Angry Green Larissa who uses the occasion to lock them somewhere and turn off life support so they die a slow death. Just to hammer home how terrible she really is. She also tortures Book and is all angry and rage so the scientist guy sees how evil she is. Which leads to absolutely nothing. Nothing comes from this. Scientist guy has no payoff. He just gets choked out, falls unconsciouss and is up and about later where the writers finally decide to reveal his only raison d'être - to tell everyone that Book can use the spore drive because he can simply ask the Tardigrade to navigate for him. Then there's an extended action sequence where Michael tries to go to the computer core of Discovery to restore Windows from a backup. Which involves being outside of Discovery's turbolift system for a while. I have no words for this sequence that would properly describe it. Discovery's turbolift system was apparently changed after everyone found it weird the first time it was shown, and it now ends up being this weird interdimensional space that looks like the exterior of the cube in Cube crossed with The Matrix, only blue instead of green. And it stretches on into infinity. Or... no idea. Really. Just go look at it. It's baffling. It's like traveling down V'Ger in Star Trek: The Motion Picture. She eventually leaves Interdimensional Matrix Cube after it has docked with the computer core access tunnel which just hangs there (there's literally NOTHING around it for a kilometer or two) she finds that Larissa is there already, they have an extended fighting scene and Larissa wins by pushing Michael into a wall of programmable matter that Michael then simply leaves while gunning her down. No, really. I'm serious. I... Oh, right. She tells Book that she has "an idea" and then does this: And yes, that's Michael doing an Anakin Sykwalker jumping after the turbo lift cabin. It just drops down, no rails this time. You can also kind of gauge the extent of everything around it. And that's just the beginning of the scene. Holy hell... Then she causes a warp core explosion to make the Emerald Chain flagship go boom, has Book jump back to Planet Dilithium to rescue everyone and gets promoted to captain.

You mean the weird shooters nobody wanted?

I didn't get the joke and have no idea what game that is, do I win?

Garlic and beets at least don't cause rapes, what with this whole virgin cleansing myth that's been going on since like... forever, now? Couple hundred years at least.

Well look at Jon Schaffer right in the middle of the charge: Kay, so given the lyrics of A Glorious Burden this isn't much of a surprise, but still, I mean, come on. Guess he figured he won't be touring for a while anyway.

Well, yes, kind of. I have the Kindle Edition of a 2019 re-release that apparently is either out of print again or really hard to get, prices on Amazon are 80€+ for the three books. I read... Dune, Dune Messiah, Children of Dune, God Emperor of Dune and am somewhere like a quarter into Heretics of Dune, which I stopped until I'm done with LotR. Or maybe a bit longer, not sure yet. I'll definitely will finish reading it, but there's only so much teenage Duncan I can stomach.

I wonder when he wrote the script, never thought Max Landis would get to work on a film like... ever again.

It is. You can reduce the waste by simply using pork instead. Still a tad on the wastey side, just not as much. Doesn't taste like beef either then, but hey... at least you're not commiting a criminal offense against beef.

We can get tested whenver we feel like it. There are free testing sites available but you need to make an appointment and depending on the workload it can take a day or two to get one. Otherwise you can just buy antigen tests in your local pharmacy or to go one of the testing sites where you need to pay for your testing kit yourself. It's quick, easy and... well somewhat affordable, prices ranging from 20 to 120€ depending on what kind of test you want and how quickly you need the result. There is no official explanation. They just came up with the idea of massive nation wide testing in December as a last ditch attempt to prevent a third hard lockdown from being necessary. This second attempt now? That's just the wounded pride and increasing frustration of our glorious leader faced with the rejection of the unwashed masses. Or such.

You're under the impression that Assange would get a fair trial, I disagree. As such, from my point of view, any extradition request from the US of A is to be denied. Period. Regardless of how I personally feel about Assange. Guy's probably a right arsehole. And famous people avoid justice in the USA every day, so that can't possibly be your argument, and no matter how much the Swedish prosecution says that their wittness is credible and they dropped the investigation to allow everyone to move on with their lives, the rape allegations against Assange simply reek of a backhanded effort to get him someplace where he can be extradited easily. And this is leaving out the greater implications this has. Whistleblowers need to be protected in every possible in order to encourage more people to come forward, not made an example of in order to prevent further whistleblowing. Which is exactly why the USA wants to make an example out of Assange or Snowden, should they ever get their hands on them. Which is why people like them disappear in China or Russia. Which funnily enough you take exception to. Rightfully... but on the other hand you don't care if the same happens to anyone that does similar things to the glorious West. Yeah. You spell that h-y-p-o-c-r-i-t-e by the way. With an e at the end.

I think you misunderstand. We're not talking about regular testing here, that's been going on for as long as the tests were available, just like everywhere else. We're talking about Slovakian style weekend mass testing where the entire population of the county is supposed to show up to be tested. Millions of people... in two days, concentrated around public testing sites. Are you beginning to see the issue now? Going to the testing site exposes me to more potentially infected people than I had contact with in the past three months combined. It's ludicrous - and I'm just sitting in a 'burb where a maximum of six thousand people are to be tested, and I can walk to the test site (it's two minutes away, on foot). It's way worse for the metropolitan areas where you have hundreds of thousands of people who would need to take public transportation to reach the test sites. Because let's face it, there is no way you can get a parking lot anywhere near the testing sites. Does being crammed into the subway, tram lines and busses with thousands of others trying to get a test sound like a good idea to you? It also failed spectacularily in Slovakia from what I understand. A week after the testing new infections just exploded. People brought a gift back home from going to the testing sites, everyone with a negative test thought they're safe and ignored distancing rules, etc., after the incubation period it turned out to be a disaster. And our government? Hops right on the bandwagon. Because never let it be said that we don't try things that already didn't work, against the better judgement and advice of actual experts, and someone needs to receive their kickbacks commission for selling lots of test kits (however, seeing how incredibly dumb our government is, I can get behind the idea that they'd be talked into buying millions of test kits from Roche without anyone ever receiving kickbacks for it). Plus the amendment was really bad in some other ways too. It stated that in order to be allowed to partake in touristic activities (i.e. skiing at the moment, or going to the restaurant) you'd need to present an Aryan certificate negative PCR test no older than five days. Five days. The upper end of the regular incubation period. "Coincidentally" the minimum amount of time you need to spend in isolation after exposure until you can get yourself tested. Finally though, even though I really don't have much of an anti-authoritarian streak, honestly... being forced to have a q-tip jammed up my nose even though there are less invasive alternatives that could have been used because our glorios Wannabe-Dollfuß wants to be seen as doing something to stop the spread of the virus? Thanks, but no thanks. Keep your PR events. I'll just stay at home longer.

Hilarity ensued last week. As I've posted before, the first round of mass Corona testing was a complete disaster for our government, so they discussed incentives at first and then went with a second round of mass testing where you'd get an Aryan certificate negative test result that would allow you to leave the lockdown a week earlier, while people who refused to participate would be locked away for a week longer. Unless you were found to be a Jew positive, in which case you'd be quarantined for another 10 days, instead of a week if you simply didn't show up (does that make sense to you? Sure doesn't to me). The necessary amendment to the epidemiologic legal framework was published on December 31st, 2020, with a request for comment period until January 3rd. That means not a single work day (January 1st is a public holiday here) time for the parliament (National Council) and the public to read the proposal and comment on it. Oh, right, and also the web server where the proposal was hosted died immediately after publishing due to the "unexpected" amount of traffic. The amendment was so bad that even the Ministry of Justice issued a scathing comment just yesterday. The Federal Council already stated that they plan to refuse to approve the amendment, which means it will be held up for at least eight weeks (until a majority vote in the National Council can still pass the law). So now everyone is under lockdown until January 25th, instead of January 18th with an Aryan certificate negative test result. Well at least our glorious leader can now play the victim and tell everyone that he wanted the lockdown to end earlier, but it was simply not possible because democracy of the opposition in the Federal Council.

Depressed or not, there's a case to be made that nobody inside the US prison system is fine. You're such a fascist. Guilty until proven innocent?

I have a full set of the Star Trek Fact Files. At least I think it's complete, I never actually bothered to open them beyond the first few issues. Not entirely sure where they even are.

Dunno what the issue is. It's Witcher 3, only interesting. And yes, I also would rather have a small number of interesting side quests (like, say... hum... the original Witcher game maybe), but that's dead and done for, I guess. Thanks Obama Ubisoft.

And also, the sequel:

As always:

Now I'm really curious to see if Hurlshot will know which one of the buttons means "yeah I'm old enough to look at alcohol" and all that stuff in the pop ups. No cheating with google!

Nah, mustard and sour cream (for the side of potatoes/fries). *blasphemes on*

Right on, burnt to a crisp on the outside and bloody rare on the inside. Can't get any better than that. Plus, to get even more blasphemous... you do have the basis for nice gravy in that frying pan. Yep.

I don't know if quoting out of thread will give a notification, so just to make sure: @Bartimaeus Just noticed I haven't really replied to your mention of Lindsay Ellis yet. I haven't seen her work on GoT yet, but I enjoyed her take on other things (I watched her videos on Transformers, for instance), and Axiom's End is on my list of to-read books, but that list is just as long as the list of films and shows I need to watch, so who knows when I'll get to that.

Ah, fun, remembering dialogue. There was a time, many years back, where I could quote the entire original Star Wars trilogy, scene by scene. Today I need to see the movies to quote along to prod my memory a bit, but remembering things generally still works very well. Former colleague of mine watched Star Trek: The Undiscoverd Country during his lunch break at work, at he end of the film he removed his headphones from the laptop, and I heard Spock say "Go to hell", so anyway, I look at him and go: "Second star to the right, straight on 'til morning." Kirk quoting Peter Pan there, and all that. Heh. People sometimes get annoyed when I do that. Managed to make someone leave the cinema once by talking over the first Lord of the Rings movie. In my defense, it was a triple feature for the Return of te King premiere, so come on. Plenty of time to see that film before that. Also plenty of free seats, could have gone someplace else he could (see that's me trying to justify being obnoxious in the theatre).

Yay, the first patch day of the year. Granted... not much to do other than shutting down batch processing which can be timed and then turning it back on when the Windows updates are through, but meh. I don't mind spoilers that much, even though I remember them, or rather, make no active effort to not remember them. Either the plot twist or development is good enough to work on its own even when you know it is coming or it's not worth getting upset over. If someone told me, before watching Star Trek TNG, that Tasha Yar would die in die first season, well, that's that. It was a completely pointless and random death in one of the episodes that only happened due to Denise Crosby wanting to get out of the show. Having it spoiled as meaningless as the death of her character is. As someone who read the books before the show was even as much as an idea at HBO (well except the fifth one, that came out while the show was already running) I knew all the major plot points already. Well, at least until the show overtook the books, "coincidentally" a point where the quality of the writing took a turn for the worse. That did not change my enjoyment of the show. Hell, sometimes casting choices are a spoiler. When I see Michelle Rodriguez in a movie it's a surprise if her character survives (or a deliberate deconstruction like in Machete ).