majestic

Oh boy. I... honestly, I don't know. I tend to give TV shows a season to find their footing and start coming up with good episodes but this isn't really going anywhere. They can't even get the manic pixie dream girl/cloud cuckoolander character to be adorkable instead of just irritating. At least Michael behaved like a Starfleet character for a minute or two this episode.

I second the Lucas Arts adventure motion - anything after and including Monkey Island is both fun and funny and most importantly made with Lucas Art's adventure philosophy of not being able to break the game or die by your actions. ScummVM runs under MacOS and a host of other platforms, all you need are the original game files. The remastered version of Monkey Island is available at the Mac Store, so that should be a nice starting point, assuming having ghost pirates in the game isn't an issue. It's also rather mild on the riddles and while some of them are a bit weird they're not outright ludicrous like the monkey wrench one in MI 2 or most of the riddles in Myst or Riven.

The name is just one of Bryan Fuller's shticks, he does that in his TV shows. She shows no signs of being gender fluid so the name might not just be pandering to the hysterics on Twatter. I read a review that suggested Michael Burnham to be a symbol for the harrassment of women of color in general. Like Tilly or whatever her name is wanting to call her Mickey, changing her name. Apparently that's something that happens to women of color in the US. I honestly don't know if that really is a thing. People getting a nickname or a short version of their name at work is very common though, so whatevs. Almost no one ever calls me my full given name, but I'm a white male so who gives a ****. However linking the peer scorn and her being ostracized by the crew of the Discovery to harrasment of women at the workplace is a "bit" of a stretch. She's a convicted criminal - worse, a traitor and mutineer, and according to this week's epsiode the first one ever in Starfleet. I venture most women aren't. As far as stand-ins or mirrors for our society go that's pretty terrible. Nobody trusts Michael not because of her Vulcan background but because to be honest mutineers generally can't be trusted. *shrug* If anything the treatment of Michael Burnham in the show just highlights Discovery's failure as Star Trek. Especially because she's not to blame for starting a war, her actions could have prevented one (most likely, at any rate). In any other Trek show she'd defend herself at a trial and not play the hard ass, get demoted and reassigned, or she would serve some sort of commutable sentence without the shady dealings of Captain Malfoy and his fungal spore version of Sammael the Hellhound. The suggestion to deal with the Klingons in a way they would culturally respect even came from Sarek, for crying out loud. He's only one of the most respected diplomats in Trek history. Nah. I'm not one of the hardcore Trekkers who hated everything that wasn't TOS and TNG. I loved DS9 and Sisko often did things that weren't "Trek" but at the end of the day it was still good sci-fi. Discovery so far is just interpersonal drama against a spaceship background with a war on that was probably meant as a reflection of the problems of our times - mostly religious terrorism and remaining "Klingon", i.e. the current "culture war". I think that's the most depressing part for me. The potential is there and one can see where the original creative team might have wanted to go, before the whole thing got a soap opera redo.

I just had a weird dream. Flew from Paris to Casablanca and then to Sochi... by hanging onto a jellyfish and thinking that it's one bad way to fly, constantly having to take care not to get tangled up and burned, what with the jellyfish and all. The trip ended in Russia because we dipped in cold water and the jellyfish shrunk - I figured it wouldn't be able to carry my weight now. While flying I saw myself on a world map that looked like a game of Civ 4. I often have bizarre dreams, but it's rather rare that I remember the insane details this vividly.

Battlechasers: Nightwar. What else could I possibly be playing at the moment?

I think that was the last stretch of content the original team planned for. Way back in early 2012 there was a planned content leak close to the release of patch 1.2 - just right before the first batch of long subscriptions ran out and EA realized that their precious WoW killer wouldn't exactly... kill WoW. Anyway the leak for the 1.2 update was spot on, suggesting that the leak wasn't faked. The original posts are all gone by now sadly but I found a small summary (the links are all dead, obviously): Patch 1.2 - Prepare to return to Corellia to battle each other for control over the Black Hole, scout the Lost Island, and head to the planet of Denova to battle it out against both the Republic and Empire. Patch 1.3 - Discover the Legacy of the HK series of Assassin Droids, discover the horrors hiding deep within Belsavis, obtain Czerka Technology and aid Gree Droids as the mighty black bisector. Patch 1.4 - Battle with the Hutts on their homeworld of Varl and take the fight directly to them. Patch 1.5 - Trek to the ancient secret capital of Rakata Prime, do battle with a rogue Imperial Warlord and face off against The Dread Masters. So Asation or a variation thereof was supposed to be patch 1.3 (that patch ended up being a massive nerf-bat for all content combined with the legacy system the game was supposed to launch with), not 1.4, HK-51 becamse its own content patch and Varl was supposed to host Scum and Villainy. 1.5 eventually was stretched out to the end of Rise of the Hutt Cartel.

So imma gonna do something a bit weird for such an obvious leftist libtard and say that gun control is overrated in preventing mass shootings. We have four weapon categories (A, B, C and D for military grade weaponry, guns and semi-automatic rifles, rifles and shotguns respectively). While category A weaponry is obviously outlawed category C and D weapons can simply be bought at the store. They're then registered at the central weapon registry and that's it ( and even that only since 2012 so there's an unknown amount of unregistered weapons around that can be legally sold by their owners but not exported, obviously). Category B weaponry can be bought once you've passed a cursory psychological check, a safety course and demonstrating that you need to own a gun. Which is as easy as claiming self-defense or joining up at a shooting range. Still, we don't have toddlers who shoot their family members or regular mass shootings in the way the US does. It can't be the control aspect alone. Of course getting a gun means jumping through some bureaucratic hoops but those are just for show (or who knows, maybe it's the extra effort that deters nutjobs).

Well to be fair who wants the French on their servers but other French? My old World of Warcraft realm was in a realm group with French realms. Fun times during random BGs and dungeons. They were always the only ones not trying to communicate. Well them and the Russians, but eh, they have an excuse. Stupid Cyrillic character set. Srsly. /racist rant. I could fake interest in the new GSF map but I've been away for so long that I probably won't be able to overcome the intertia to try. Also obviously would no longer have a group to play with and solo queueing GSF means waiting an hour or two even on a busy night thanks to the way the matchmaking works.

So apparently First Officer is a rank in Starfleet rather than a position a commissioned officer holds. I wish I was making that up. Who writes these scripts? Now that this is out of the way I'll freely admit that I liked this episode much more than the first two, but I think it should be its own show with its own lore. This isn't Star Trek and slapping the Star Trek label on it and having it play out in the Star Trek universe isn't an asset, it's a detriment.

It's more than most people in an MMO can boast of, so more power to you.

Ghost Busters 2016 I suppose. Which is a film were pretty much everything else that's not Plan 9 bad would be a greater film.

You remember how they used to tell you drinking kills brain cells? And that the effects were cumulative? I bet you believe them now! am pretty sure the brain cell kill off from alcohol has been relegated to myth, but if it makes y'all feel better, am a teetotaler (though we do cook with alcohol) and have noticed an "old dog, new tricks" problem as we age. The brain damage is only indirectly caused by alcohol(ism) and it comes from substituting alcohol for proper meals over a longer period of time - essentially malnourishment usually caused by both a lack of appetite from the substance abuse and a lack of money.

18 years and a couple of days, yeah - and no real end in sight.

She is, terms in Germany are 4 years.

Whoa! I guess Merkel's 20 years (at the end of this term) are nothing in comparison. Not to rain on your parade there but Merkel's chancellor since 2005. She might get 16 years at best, assuming Jamaica works out (and that'll be fun with the FDP and the Greens in the same government). Kohl also had 16 years, so that's not even a record for Germany. And I suppose Tage Erlander qualifies as the longest continously serving, democratically elected leader in Europe post-WW2.

So, right, Discovery. Not sure where to put it yet. It was better than what I expected (then again I expected Into Darkness levels of bad) - except for the Klingons. And there I thought Into Darkness' Blingons were terrible. So, a few observations: Trek can be good with wartime stories as we saw in Deep Space 9. Of that there was little in the two episodes so far, but it's too early to tell at any rate. The Klingons suck. Everything about them sucks. Their ships, their clothes, even their way of talking. What the hell? I get why the new Klingons are essentially religious fanatics as enemies for the Federation. The Klingons of old were Soviet stand-ins, now it's holy war. That might actually not be so bad... if this weren't... ...a prequel. Seriously, the Soviets turned into religious fanatics? Anyone remember the TNG episode where some Klingon religious weirdos cloned Khaless and the Empire's reaction to it was initially "burn it with fire" and Worf convinced them to use the clone for political means? God I hate prequels. So fancy hologram communication on pre-Kirk old Starfleet ships? It's a prequel. Let's make up Kelpiens, why not. Enterprise made up crap all the time. Vulcan subspace telepathy... Did I mention that prequels suck? Gromnir has it right, Rihanna is the worst first officer ever (I know it's not Rihanna). Looking forward to see Captain Malfoy in action. Gonna be interesting to see how much that weird me out. In terms of rating I'd put it above Broken Bow but below every other Star Trek pilot so far. *sigh*

Have fun forming a government Germany.

I'm playing Apotheon as well. It really is just a bit too long, with areas that are just a bit too big at times (...the underwater section, good lord). I'd say Artemis was the worst for me. A huge map, one hell of an annoying boss fight and the trophy of the wilds quest. Poseidon comes in as a close second due to the sheer enormity of it all and the time it takes to traverse the ocean. I liked the more focused levels of Ares, Athena and Hades, but that's probably just me and my need to uncover the maps as much as possible.

On the off-chance that I commit some Irish heresy now: Because I'd rather have a Kilkenny?

I think it's telling that D3 has an adventure mode that essentially allows the player to level through grinding alone, and it's even the better option if you want to progress on the ladder. *sigh*

Played (and finished) Apotheon which was interesting if a bit too long for its own good, now dabbling in Mario Kart 8 Deluxe before I'll proceed to Breath of the Wild.

Finally finished Gardens of the Moon. I don't have much time to read at the moment, work's pretty busy and I find myself relaxing in front of the telly at the end of the day, not reading a book where I need to pay attention to the details. In a way it reminded me of Hohlbein's Anubis, 700 pages of extremely slow build up and in the end nothing much happens with any of the stablished plot threads, and then it is suddenly over with the climax dropped in lieu of something happening that was fuzzily alluded to. Ultimately disappointing, but decent enough to make me grab the next book in line and hope for the best (I did like the plot setup and the setting, just not the resolution). I also noticed it's been a long time since I actually read high fantasy with mages and gods that actively interfere in mortal business.

And riddled with project overruns, coming out years after the planned release. The single player campaign was probably really just slapped together and released without much thought or quality control - we were supposed to be able to import our Baldur's Gate characters after all. Oh how that could have gone. Instead we got ToB and the NWN OC. Of course Volo is right when he says NWN was well worth the money for the user made content, one could potentially play for years without getting bored.

Dave Gaider made Ascension on his own after ToB shipped. So yeah, I'd consider it semi-canon.

I may be remembering this wrong, but I think there was a series or a pilot out there in which the Greek Pantheon was transposed into modern day New York making their way among mortals. Aphrodite was played as a drag queen who worked phone sex lines. Well... not a sitcom but: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IcaHutZQiIA