Amentep

He's trying to draw someone out by disabling the crime organization maybe? No clue, I've seen none of the SW TV shows, just randomly guessing from what little context I have.

Up until I stopped reading, the story certainly recycled story types (usually regarding Ranma encountering someone with a special talent, like figure skating and having to defeat them in a martial-arts-figure-skating-contest and then next story it'd be gymnastics or something) but still felt like it had forward momentum for the characters (as often the competitions were really there to force the characters to deal with something or someone they didn't want to - like pushing Ranma to have to deal with one of his many paramours or his dad). That said I have heard that as time goes on they increase the level of side wacky characters, too. But I think Rumiko Takahashi can probably make it work.

Weirdly Ranma's first 18 episodes were all 1989 but wasn't a big hit, so they the revamped series which ran 1989-1992. In Japan, the second series was called Ranma 1/2 Enthusiasm and I can't help but think that Bartimaeus' enthusiasm dropped with Ranma 1/2 Enthusiasm...! My first anime movie was Alkazam the Great! (the US adaption Tesuka's Boku no Son Gokū aka Son-Goku the Monkey)*, my first anime TV show was Star Blazers (the US adaption of Matsumoto, Yamamoto and Nishizaki's Uchū Senkan Yamato aka Space Battleship Yamato). This probably explains why I probably skew older in anime preferences here (and have an interest in Matsumoto adaptions). I sorta dropped out of watching anime by 2000. But I'm not against watching newer stuff provided it doesn't have as many episodes as One Piece. Uuuhhii may be lumping Blood the Last Vampire as the earlier series (I think it goes Blood the Last Vampire movie, Blood+ series, Blood-C series, then Blood-C anime movie)? *There's a slight possibility that Jack and the Witch (the US adaption of Shōnen Jakku to Mahōtsukai aka The Boy Jack and the Witch) or The Wonderful World of Puss 'n Boots (the US adaption of Nagagutsu o Haita Neko aka Cat Who Wore Boots) as they all aired the same holiday week when I was a kid.

I'm not saying you can't hate, I'm not saying people in general (or you specifically) didn't hate the Mandalorian either. I'm not even saying there may not be legitimate reasons to hate the Vespa gang. But, given the context of Tatooine and its position as a hub for smuggling, I think it should be easy to assume the gang got a series of space-vespa-bike-things that had 'fallen' off the back of a (space) lorry with the bikes having been intended for some other planet entirely other than Tatooine. Or someone paid a debt off to a gangster with bikes and the gang received them for reasons. Or a ship crashed and these bikes are the salvage. Or the gang is from somewhere else and has fallen on hard times and has been stuck on Tatooine with the bikes that they refuse to give up even if means being stuck longer. Just hating the vehicles because they're 'colorful' (which is what I've read a lot of) doesn't make a lot of sense to me. They probably just haven't been on Tatooine long enough to get faded by the suns (and/or are actually being taken care of by people who have the resources to take care of them AND flaunt those resources a bit).

I confess, I don't get the hate for the space vespa gang. I haven't seen them in context of the show, but it seems kinda like the usual "I'm on the internet and I must show how I hate everything and I couldn't on Mandalorian so I'm going to nit-pick the Boba Fett series apart" kind of thing. But since I haven't seen it, it could also be godawful in ways that I cannot know without having seen it.

After Generations, I always assumed it had to do with the Nexus. My thinking is the Nexus may be immune to Q's powers*, which makes someone whose partially here and partially in the Nexus a big unknown for the Q. He recognizes her as being something other than she appears and naturally sees that as a threat. *I think there's a non-cannon book that has Q claiming he created the Nexus, but I don't really buy that and Q probably claims credit for everything anyhow.

I think Mass Effect had bigger problems than the Reaper motivations. That said back at the end of ME1 I actually thought, when they had them lurking outside the galaxy waiting, that they were going to be still active remnants of a war between two Galaxies. I thought they were waiting to slap down whatever got up enough to trigger the machines to think their long dead enemy had returned. That seemed like it fit the original space opera story type with a nice clean story of derring do to stop the menace that didn't realize it was no longer relevant (and I guess in retrospect, since we're talking about Star Trek, a bit like ST:TOS "The Doomsday Machine"). Then we got space conspiracy theory and space war is hell afterwards...

I haven't been able to watch as many episodes (too many other time commitments). I got to watch "Into the Forest I Go" two weeks ago. Overall, there's a lot of pointless changes the show has made to the ST universe, but accepting DISC for what it is rather than what it is not, I thought this was a fairly fun episode. That said, I can't help but feel its kind of like a game of telephone with this series, if TNG is an echo of TOS, then DISC is an echo of TNG. I do think it suffers from (a) too much Star Wars influence because the writers really, really, really hate the structure of Starfleet and want someone to jump onto the Millennium Falcon or Slave 1 and go do badass things without regard to command or structure and (b) not really being sure whether the series is about Burnham (so it should focus on her as a solo character) or if its like the other shows and focused on the crew of the Discovery in general (of which Burnham is one). This has made it so that she is weirdly involved in a lot of things (because the story is about her) without those things seeming to have real meaning (because the story is about the whole crew, and they need to do important stuff too). Do I have to? I'm pretty sure the writers of TNG didn't always remember the previous Data episodes...

Gorilla (the Japanese word used in the last episode title is Gorira/ゴリラ/Gorilla not Gerira/ゲリラ/Guerrilla)

TNG: Inheritence Data meets Juliana Tainer, former wife of Dr. Soong

Supēsu Kobura aka Space Cobra aka Space Adventure Cobra Episode X: "Irezumi no Himitsu" aka "The Tattoo's Secret" When last we left Cobra, he and Dominique were being attacked by the Snow Gorilla all-girl gang and their Piragators. With the map revealed, we get the set up for the next episode: *I've been watching the old Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea series, and typed "Admiral Nelson" originally. Most likely not the same Nelson. Then again, Terasawa could have been a fan for all I know.

I didn't say anything about virtual learning, good or bad, I said from the articles Virginia schools weren't closed. Having school but not liking the modality is different from physically not having school.

Unless I misread the story, they weren't closed, they were on virtual learning.

Keaton was great (and I'm sure you're sensing the 'however' coming up), however, Keaton employed camera tricks just like Lloyd (there's a forced perspective shot about 0:41 seconds in on the video you link, and a dummy used at about 5:55, for example). Lloyd also did many of his stunts for real (its how he lost part of his hand; so when he's doing the climbing and holding on to the clock as shown in the short "Safety Last", its without a thumb and forefinger on one hand). Chaplin did as well. If you go through all three's films, you'll find gags/stunts that were performed live for the camera while others that used some form of 'effect' (forced perspective, wires, undercranking film, etc). Other comedians didn't do as many big stunts - comedy acts like the Three Stooges or Laurel and Hardy did some of the vaudeville style pratfall stunts but employed doubles or dummys for major stunt work. That said, they didn't not do those type of stunts. There were stunts like those in the Keaton video done as The Stooges did a number of ceiling drop gags, some 'live' some with dummys, for example. Keaton (70), Lloyd (77) and Chaplin (88) all lived long lives. As did most of the Stooges (Moe: 77, Larry: 72, Joe Besser: 80; Joe DeRita: 83) and Stan Laurel (74), with Shemp (60), Curly (48), and Oliver Hardy (65) passing younger than Keaton (bonus trivia, Ted Healy the comedian who became the straight man to the Stooges in his stage act and later in film died at 41). Keaton really loved the "safe in the window space from a falling wall" gag. I actually can't place the lady with the dancing eyes, but I'm sure I've seen the short before. If anyone remembers the short, let me know.

More like IllumiNOTi, amirite?

I backed the second game, but still have yet to play it. I just barely finished the first. At the risk of sounding like a filthy casual gamer, the mechanics was a bit more than I wanted to deal with in the first game and all through the production of Deadfire it just seemed like they doubled down on the mechanics. It seems to work well for some people, but it made the game feel a bit of a chore to me.

Would you say the part added great value to the film? That Gollum was...precious? ... ... I'll get me coat.

A few random points about the current topic (I was going to post more, but then I finished reading the whole thing and realized much of what I said had already been said) - I think its easy to forget that people feel loss more keenly than gain. A lot of people - rightly or wrongly - feel that popularity of a thing makes that thing less special. I think this fuels a lot of the antagonism fans have against other fans; its less about the 'fake fan' and more about fear at the prospect of losing ones own fandom by having it transformed into something you don't recognize. Its less about the fake fan and more about the fan with the issue, really. I think I've mentioned here that fans obsessions can be a bit off putting if you're not a part of the fandom - I've never read A Song of Ice and Fire - even back when I was reading a lot more than I am now - because fans (around the time the second book came out?) turned me off of it (after being told about how great it was that it was gritty and realistic and the singular description of why it was gritty and realistic was that it had a brother ****ing his sister and a lot of death.) I also left a Doctor Who group because the leadership decided at a convention to make fun of Pern dancers. I may not get other fandoms, but I'm not going to mock other people for it. I admit that part of why I haven't gravitated towards more recent animes is...I'm not really that big of a fan (ha) of what I perceive (rightly or wrongly) as the modern fanservice elements in it. Sure, Cobra has had nudity in it, but the nudity has been (so far at least) appropriately situational. Arguably a bit gratuitous, but contextually it makes sense and doesn't detract from the narrative, really. Its probably a lack of experience with modern product, so I'm really put off by my perception of a lot of current anime that may or may not actually be accurate, but I haven't been interested by what I've seen that seems to indicate that fanservice (upskirts that aren't even disguised as coming from a contextually appropriate camera angle to frame action or story, jiggly breasts jiggling all the jiggling time, etc) is at an all time high. It probably doesn't help that there's a certain type of modern character design I don't really like either - which may be a product of growing up on 70s and early 80s anime designs.

That reminds me, I need to watch that Lizzy Borden show that Ricci was in...

Yeah, the insistence that literal CRT (as opposed to Boogeyman CRT) is being taught in elementary schools is...confusing. But I also imagine that the GOP politicians cynically figure they can make any kind of claim or arguments and the current climate shields them from anyone looking too closely (lest they be accused of being disloyal or somesuch).

Oh sure, it could. Like I said, everything is unsettled at the moment, so prognosticating is probably a futile effort. I could see them wanting a wide variety of games for a variety of markets (dedicated console, PC, Mobile, cloud) and I could see them having a narrow field and using the draw of IPs to back either console or cloud gaming.

It should make a difference, but for a lot of people "CRT" is a placeholder for things that they don't like that they think is being taught in primary/secondary schools. What politicians rail against is the boogeyman, and they call it CRT.