majestic

Don't know why people are so soft on Picard season three. Yes, it as massively better than the turd that season one was, and it would probably break the laws of physics to make a season worse than two, but that just made season three less bad. It wasn't good, most of the time, and the cringe factor of the Millennium Enterprise attacking the Death Cube reactor was over nine thousand. But yes, I am definitely one of those who wanted nothing more than TNG Season 8 out of the series after the Discovery debacle... and all we got was more yum yum.

Moved the really important parts of my digital life to a new e-mail address. I've had the same mail account at a small non-profit for almost thirty years, but the service has since become unstable. I have toyed with the idea of migrating for the better part of a year now, but talking to another user of the service raised a major red flag beyond some instability a few days ago. He has - or perhaps more apt to say had - the pro subscription (once upon a time this was for unlimited timeslot access to the BBS part of the system, which no longer matters, as there are barely any users left and no one ever runs out of online time) and said they've stopped charging his account for the subscription fee. They no longer react to support requests either. We don't really have any idea if someone's left working at the non-profit or if the service is just running because the hoster's been paid in advance. How old the non-profit is can be gauged by its name, it is mostly a BBS and mail service provider calling itself Club for the Promotion of Youth Communication. As if the youth of today would even know what a BBS is, or use e-mail to communicate outside of work.

Yes and no. It is a trailer for a Johnny Cage martial arts movie in the Mortal Kombat universe. It is real insofar as Karl Urban is going to play Johnny Cage (which is pretty weird), but it's not actual scenes from Mortal Kombat II.

No, but it is fair game to infer from what Trump posted about. Saying the Epstein client list was written by Obama and the Clintons on Turd Social pretty much confirms that the list is at least equally - probably more so, even - as harmful to influencial Republicans as it would be to Democrats. Elsewise the list would be public by now. Wouldn't even have to be an official release, Laura Loomer is awfully well informed about the goings on in Mango Mussolini's regime.

Until this recent Scam Blondi hooplah with the Epstein list/files I was under the impression that the high level MAGA influencers were all in on the grift (like Fox news), and just out to profit from the, uhm, cognitively challenged MAGA cultists. Why else harp on about Epstein's client list even though the reincarnation of Cyrus the Great almost certainly partook in his offerings. Apparently not, the reactions to Bondi trying to hush down the topic appear, if nothing else, quite genuine and sincere. I have no idea how you can be that far up in the MAGA cult ranks and not realize that Trump wasn't the victim of a witch hunt, but it is what it is. The Laura Loomers and Dan Bonginos and Kash Patels of the MAGA-sphere seem to really be under the impression that the problem is Pam Bondi, and not Pam Bondi under orders by the Great Tangerine to drop the investigation. Dan Bongino going on record saying the suicide of Jeffrey Epstein was really a suicide basically ended his right-wing influencer career, which is but a small solace: he probably made enough off the cult for him and his family to live comfortably for the rest of their days, unless Lutnick and Bessent really kill the economy.

Done with D4 season nine. Hydra sorcerers are hilariously overpowered. Squishy compared to other classes, but with that kill speed it's fine. Once again made the mistake of playing a melee character in with the current T4 meta, so it took me a couple days longer than it would otherwise. Not significantly better than the last season, but less much annoying journey elements. With Blizzard removing the secret achievement for completing all the elements, I can also pretty much just leave the grindy ones. Don't really care about running a ton of nightmare dungeons.

Or Yoshifumi Kondō. Not that I have watched The Boy and the Heron (yet).

Eh, maybe you should play SOMA if you haven't already. The gameplay is a bit lackluster, but it's a great sci-fi story.

For a moment I thought you were talking about Ahsoka, but then I realized you meant the other pretty useless Star Wars series. I actually liked The Acolyte more than Ahsoka, but that's just me being me. I also thought The Book of Boba Fett was more interesting than The Mandalorian for most of its run, but people hated The Book of Boba Fett and loved The Mandalorian - well, except season three. I think that was universally reviled, and rightly so. Edit: The funniest thing about The Acolyte was everyone complaining about the sexist lesbian force cult, as if the former Star Wars canon did not have the Nightsisters of Dathomir, a secretive, matriarchal and sexist cult of force users who made no real distinction between the light and the dark side. They even rode rancors to battle just to make them even more ridiculous.

Currently the right-wing narrative is much more focused on the pride month and rainbow parades at the moment, but I wouldn't be surprised if the alleged white genocide is part of it. They are, basically, integrating everything they can find to oppose the system into their narrative - COVID-19 conspiracy theories, Russophilia, anti-vax positions and the culture war. Genocide against white people largely ignored by the woke mainstream media is too tempting to not make use of. In that way all right-wing reactionary movements are peas of a pod, whether they're led by Trump, Wilders, Kickl, Le Pen or Orban. The only odd one out is Kaczyński insofar as you can't really say that being pro Russia is part of his party's stance. He's still helping Russia indirectly though, as everyone who opposes a more unified European Union does. This is just the state of the world today, Ned Stark had it right: "The lone wolf dies, but the pack survives." At least people are finally seeing that the USA aren't our allies, let alone friends. Baby steps.

That is probably because he's from the Greens, not the FPÖ, but that's just a guess.

Well, I can remedy that.

What's that supposed to mean? I was suitably excited about a chatbot necro of an old thread talking about news now almost three years past.

Composer Mark Snow, probably most famous for his work on the X-Files. Back in the 90ies when I was a wee lad, we used to watch X-Files together. If there's one thing I miss about the linear TV experience, it is gathering once a week to watch a series we all watched, and then discussing the episode with my friends at school. We were probably a bit too young to watch X-Files. Still remember how my brother was quite afraid while watching Darkness Falls. Snuck up behind him and just touched him. Heh. Almost had a heart attack. Most certainly woke all the old people in the neighborhood with his screaming. Good times.

Incidentially, Great White Sharks have been rated the worst possible pet by Clint recently, coming even behind the previously lowest scoring pet (human children):

no longer needed 😄

Satisfactory co-op with a 12-year-old: I'd love to say there's a hidden system in this chaos, but there isn't.

On the bright side, the film can't get any worse than Quantum of Solace or Skyfall. That's physically impossible.

X-Files had a small revival with two new seasons airing in 2016 and 2018, in case you missed it. Had some pretty good episodes. Well worth watching for old fans of the series, probably no real appeal for new viewers. The overarching storyline remains silly and pointless, as it was beyond season six (or probably earlier, depending on how much you liked the alien rebellion).

Repeated application of blunt force trauma to the head for liking Picard.

More and more I am finding that Satisfactory is the perfect game to wind down for a software developer working at a supply chain management company. The game is fun and all, but uh, yeah, like... feels a "bit" like work.

You guys should really go through the romance. Top tier, that romance, really.

Face tanking any lair bosses on Torment IV isn't really an option as sorcerer, even with full barrier. The barb that I played initially could tank a lot more, having both fortify and barrier through boss powers, but I found the damage wanting and being in melee range of many of the bosses wasn't my idea of a fun time on Torment IV. The earthquakes also made boss abilities really hard to see. Duriel just has eleventy billion and a half hitpoints, but the fight is a pretty easy snoozefest. The Andariel fight on the other hand is complete chaos, and that final phase doesn't look like it was ever designed to last as long as it did in this season - if you can't burst her down quickly enough or deal with the supressor field totems (or whatever they are) fast enough you WILL die. I'd rather fight Lilith. Lilith can randomly create patterns that can't be avoided too, but at least if you play through the rest of the encounter well enough that doesn't instantly kill you at the very end of the fight.

Wasn't it fun to fight hit point sponge Ladder bosses with their own boss abilities which almost never fit into any character build? The difference is ludicrous. My sorcerer could reliably kill Belial in under five seconds on Torment IV. Equipping the Lilith boss power for the season journey? Oh, have fun fighting 15+ minutes because suddenly your damage potential is down in a ditch. The absolute dumbest thing was fighting Andariel with her own boss power, which activates after standing still for a second, which is pretty hard to do when the entire screen is full of moving one-hit kill zones during her last phase, but you need to damage enemies with your boss powers because all the other damage boosting effects procc from damaging enemies with your equipped main boss power. This was easily the least fun season since the first one, although that was by far and large my own fault for not switching characters. Barbarians were really, really bad in season one. Learned my lesson though - haven't played anything but FOTM OP builds since.

I was disappointed with both Odyssey and Breath of the Wild. Both games seem to have been designed as a case study for what one could do with a hybrid portable console. Play somewhat longer sessions at home when docked (i.e. Zelda's "larger" dungeons or Odyssey's "larger", more linear levels) and do busywork while on public transport, like getting a Korok seed or two, doing a small puzzle shrine or getting one of the myriad moons. Ultimately both ended up being weaker entries in their franchises, although Breath of the Wild still has the distinction of having really, really good exploration mechanics. That's just not something I care a whole lot for. Edit: That Donkey Kong game made me realize that I would really love a Blast Corps remake, or at least another game like it.