Amentep

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.

The positive side I guess would be that as far as I recall, Microsoft has indicated they wanted to put out a lot of different styles of game with large and small teams and budgets. So I'd say the door isn't necessarily closed on any particular style of game. But ultimately how it's all going to shake up is unknown. How these divisions are going to work at MS and how Avowed does being big unknowns ATM for the possibility of a POEIII.

OH MY GOD!

No I'm not saying that, and I can't really speak to how its presented now (as opposed to back in the day when I was in school) or even how it was done outside of my county in my state when I was a kid. Also, having been educated in the south, while there were cracks in the "lost cause" narrative, it hadn't completely fallen apart when I was in school. You couldn't avoid the topic of slavery, but that didn't mean that it addressed everything about it either.

I'm not sure I'm ready to see Lucifer do the run of shame after the DNA test results are revealed...

I think in Marvel, Lucifer/Satan only has the two known kids. But then Mephisto has pretended to be Lucifer a number of times, and I think "Satan" is treated like a title, so there may be other demons who were Satan who had other kids that wouldn't be related to Lucifer/ the Hellstroms. She probably won't suck the life force out of Bruce...probably.

I dunno, I'm old and most of my life I've been told the opposite, that the history of white people in America is pretty glorious (other than the trail of tears and that civil war thing and segregation). Being told the converse is still novel, I guess. Seriously, though, most of these things that I've read about aren't about telling white people they're all about colonial oppression (or, at least, their ancestors were), but actually trying to teach that there was colonial oppression which was traditionally glossed over back in my day (yeah it was there if you thought about it, but it wasn't really discussed a lot). While there may be a point to argue that its possible to over simplify (and/or that some of these approaches are over simplifying) such that you're basically recreating the same problem in the opposite direction, I think its better to try to get at a best understanding of the past than to be "America great!" or "America bad!" without any critical thought on the subject. And anyhow arguing that white people's contribution to history is racism and oppression really isn't what CRT is (even if that's what the people who rail against CRT wants it to be) as I understand it.