majestic

Having had some unexpected free time, I've finished some odds and ends that piled up over the lockdowns (which were, working on supply chain b2c transport systems, a tad stressful). Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D., season 7: Well, it was a time travel season, so not all of the plot makes sense, but that also was not the aim. Much like with the preceeding sixth season, it is clear that the series was finished with season five, and every episode afterwards was just everyone having fun. Clearly where the writers of WandaVision got some ideas from, as Coulson and the crew travel through the decades in what is probably best described as a balls-to-the-wall whacky adventure. The title cards of the episodes match the theme it conveys. As far as the cast goes, Joel Stoffer and Clark Gregg, as per usual, totally own every scene they're in. Two of the absolute highlight of the season is an 80ies splatter episode with killer robots with Knight Rider sound effects and red running lights. One of them runs around and yells EXTERMINATE. It is titled The Totally Excellent Adventures of Mack and The D and features Clark Gregg as Max Headroom (it does make sense in context) and Deke becoming a pop star by writing 80ies hits before they actually came out. It's filled to the brim with fun 80ies allusions without it ever feeling obnoxious, but that is perhaps just my eternal infatuation with the decade I lived though my early childhood. Where's my Deke Squad cover album? Hello, Marvel! Come on. Like I said, this is just everyone having fun, at least until the final episode, which is probably one of the better series endings I've ever watched - it is arguably even better than what was probably intended as the series ending at the end of season five. Said it before, still stand by it, Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. is easily my favorite Marvel outing. Outside of the weaker first half of the first season (so, not recommended for anyone who cannot look past middling first introductions, or has problems with "Asian Mary Sue ladies" in a universe populated with Thor, Iron Man, Ghost Rider, sentient Androids, killer robots, super soldiers... well, you get my drift) this is just the perfect mixture of mystery, action and character interactions. It does feature the occasional pacing issue, but which series running for seven season does not? As always, Phil Coulson remains the best character in the MCU. Star Trek: Strange New Worlds, episodes nine and ten: Found myself not caring for either. The ninth episode, which is trying to be Alien(s) in Star Trek using the otherwise comical Gorn from TOS exemplifies the difference between what is actually a fairly decent nuTrek show and actual Star Trek. Arena makes a point beyond "Gorn bad", this here does not. In a way this is really similar to that one episode where someone tries to kidnap a child to prevent it from doing something that is necessary, which then just happens, with Captain Pike trying to stop it. An actual Trek series would have had a morality debate in that episode, and a more modern Trek show would include a request for asylum instead of an attempted kidnapping. Alas, actual Star Trek is as dead as the horse I'm beating here, so I'll just leave it at that. Yes, it was the best nuTrek series to date. It might actually be the best first season of any Star Trek show, if it actually was Star Trek, not nuTrek with a less obnoxious coat of paint thrown over it, and all the pandering in the series? No, sorry, can't stand it. It's perhaps not as bad as it appeared, but such things are highly subjective after all. La'An Noonien-Singh? You might actually be a nice character, but with that name you go into the same trash bin as Noonien Soong's great-great-great-great-great-great-grandfather and his identical looking son from Picard. The tenth episode is just a "what if?" alternate timeline exploration of The Balance of Terror. Kyouma Hououin would call Pike weak for giving up so easily. Well, that's how you end up with a saved Krisu in one series, and a soon to be mutilated Pike in another. Or whatever. Who cares. ** One new thing, Star Trek: Picard, season three, episode five. I was already a lot more negative towards what was basically an unneeded The Next Generation style Wrath of Khan remake (like I said, I have no idea how Mike and Rich can be so positive about this, outside of perhaps being grateful that Star Trek: Picard makes one not wanting to gouge one's eyes out, but that's clearly not a bar I am comfortable with setting for any Star Trek series) than others, and this episode just seals the deal further. Good thing this is finally over after this season.

Kung Fury is absolutely glorious, and that includes the soundtrack. There could not be a better title track for Kung Fury than True Survivor. Still, there's always the option of making a cheesy power metal cover of the cheesy 80ies revival Hoff track:

The third season of The Mandalorian is shaping up to be the worst one yet. Three episodes so far, two stinkers, and one that was "fine", except for the sheer stupidity of everyone involved. They really should have ended it with season two.

I can one-up that, believe it or not. How could you make Matthias Reim any better? Easy: Add some Hoff.

https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/TheyChangedItNowItSucks But yes, it's actually readable now.

Also, like, tagged posters look like this in posts: That's prett brutal. Firefox 110.0.1 (64-Bit).

I didn't even have that far back in mind when I made that concept, because those times are never coming back unless someone comes up with an anime design AI tool that manages to somewhat successfully make modern animation look like hand drawn and hand colored, i.e. something you put in enough parameters and your hand drawn outlines and it puts out 80ies/90ies style anime that looks the part. I thought about something like handing this to the team that made K-On! and Tamako Market, just with a little note that it should not contain any over the top fanservice moments or sexual assault. That would at least instill a level of artistry, even without proper aesthetics. Tamako Market's concept, outside of the silliness with the talking bird, revolves around a boy and a girl being best friends, feeldings that grow into more on one side (although in Tamako Market, it is the boy, not the girl) at first. It is pretty similar, and while it wasn't as good as I hoped it would be, it was still good enough to like it. Hell, I'd have loved the movie, if not for the ass-grabbing (that apparently is also part of Tomo-chan is a girl, because we're back in the 60ies and Charlie on the Enterprise does not understand why he cannot touch Yeoman Rand's butt while every male on the crew keep slapping their asses). That aside, you're right. There sure would be sillier concepts. I mean we all watched a show about girls putting on make-up to achieve super powers and loved it, even if the concept is... ridiculous.

These clips make me sad, because in capable hands the premise could make for a really entertaining anime.

It is also a lot less fun than it was ten (or more, by now, I suppose) years ago. The tropes stopped having reference names (e.g. the current Creator's Pet being formerly known as The Wesley on tvtropes.org), and it became more serious. Not necessarily a change for the worse in terms of quality content, but certainly for having fun while browsing through tropes.

Can't believe they're still "cautiously optimistic" after the last three really badly paced and badly paced episodes. Did I mention the pacing was terrible? More than anything else, they had three full episodes, almost three hours of Star Trek Picard, and the content of a 42 minute TNG episode for it, filled up with mostly pointless scenes on a dark, dreary ship, with character motivations that make no sense or are just rehashes.

Heh.

Uhm... yeah, happens to me too, all the time.

Some context, with helpful links, that might explain - in part, at least - a certain poster's attitude.

The power of expectations at work. I went into the film expecting to feel like the posters from the image you linked, and ended up feeling cheated out of my precious time. Worse, I never shook the feeling that the emperor is naked, and nobody is talking about it because everyone expects a Lynch film to be a masterpiece, so it just has to be one. I see you still have some layers to uncover. Think about it for a while. As for practical jokes, we could interpret Muldholland Drive as the same type of joke that we could interpret Rebuild of Evangelion as: the directors making fun of the audience while they gobble it up and talk endlessly about it. I am not convinced that was either Anno's or Lynch's intention (fairly certain that Shinji ending up with Mari was), but viewed as such these films are still not enjoyable to watch, but they do get a fun meta element.

Well, if you use liquid metal in your build, you should probably know what you're doing, else you're going to brick expensive hardware. Or almost brick it, at any rate.

@Hurlshort so, did you build the computer? If yes, what did you get?

Minako ropes Rei into having to give a concert at the hospital for sick children. She's rehearsing with Usagi, who looks a little bewildered. Rei asks if she was that bad, to which Usagi replies that her singing is fine, but that Rei is a little kowai. So that's it then, Usagi also thinks Rei looks terrifying. Good to know I'm not alone.

There's a bunch of other stuff too, like Riker trying the same thing twice to the same effect (keep going straight into that portal from the portal gun, stolen directly from Portal™), Picard dipping back into his flowery nonsense when talking to Riker, the ill-fated role reversal between him and Riker, and finally... I've pretty much given up on writing all the stupidity up. It's hard enough to watch this to be done with it, really.

Keep having to pause Picard S03E03 to do something else. It's... not very interesting. The real TNG crew would have figured that out by now. Easily. Edit:

A 3070 TI would run me 600€ vs. the 900€ for a 7900 XT, but I already got a 3060, so getting a 3070 TI for that amount of money isn't the best choice. There was a point in time when rebates made the 4070 TI dip below 900€, I should have bought one then. Looks like I'm going to ride this gen out, unless something magical happens and the 4060 type cards suddenly offer much better value. Really doubtful. Edit: Wee, double posted, meant to edit this one into the other reply, bah.

Theoretically, but practically they're just going to lock it, like the others.

That was a jab at the fanboys, not so much a direct comparison, although we're looking at an MSRP increase of 55% over the 5800X3D for a 20% uplift in gaming performance (sometimes less). When looking at street prices that becomes even worse (that's 800€ vs. 300€ at the moment), and unless you're not GPU bound, that's just going to be even worse in real world scenarios. No, market shares aren't comparable, and CPUs aren't GPUs, but the pricing is ridiculous. And then we're not even talking about making the players use the XBOX Game Bar because the performance uplift over the normal equivalents would otherwise not be guaranteed. Yeah. :smh: Edit: never mind AMD turning off half the cores of these CPUs in games, which is the entire reason these CPUs exist in the first place. Kinda baffling. Why not just launch an uncrippled 7800X3D and leave it at that... Indeed, in the meantime, the 7900 XT and the 4070 TI sell for the same amount of money here, which makes the 7900 XT look good - comparatively, at least. The 7900 XTX though, that's... still going for as much as a RTX 4080.

TL;DW remains the same. [X] SKIP, this time Steve even agrees on account of this not topping any charts and therefore not getting a "chart topping bonus" (that no reviewer should give out anyway and just leads to 13900K CPUs). Anyway, for gaming, as expected, the 5800X3D still makes all of the new ones look like bad value for the money. Well, unless you really want those 850 FPS in Rainbow Six Siege and CS:GO, but in those cases one should either get the 7950X3D or an i9-13900, not this... whatever it is supposed to be. What was it Steve said in the video, you're paying 15$ per 1% performance uplift. That's just bad value. Guess we now know why AMD didn't provide review samples. In games where the extra cache helps, it helps up to 98% of the performance of the 7950X3D, but the results are really incosistent. Looks like AMD really took 700Mhz off the upcoming 7800X3DX in order to not kill their own higher end CPUs in gaming. Let's see how well these things sell. If they do well enough, at least the AMD fanboys will have to shut up about nVidiots buying overpriced trash that was intentionally gimped to fleece gamers.