Amentep

Would you rather some random symbol than the letter X? It doesn't HAVE to be X. It could be ⌂ or something.

@Guard Dog 1989 episode of Twilight Zone - "The Mind of Simon Foster"?

Ah yes, The Thing remake is good. I knew there were more, but nothing was coming to me.

The Man Who Knew Too Much? House of Wax? Ben-Hur? The Hammer remakes of the Universal horror films? Casino Royale? That said, I'm surprised they remade Total Recall rather than take the basic idea (someone goes to Rekall, gets a vacation, are things real or not after that?) and build a new movie out of it. Seems like the perfect set-up for a series of loosely related films, and my understanding of the 2012 film is that its different enough plotwise that they could have probably done it had they not chose to use the names from the original film and a few other story elements.

I can only suspect that Netflix needed something to come out now but there was no way all the episodes would be done in time to release the whole thing now.

I'd heard of that before. Thankfully ours wasn't that bad!

I remember a listserv back in the day where an out of office message war began between two dude's emails on the listserv broke out. Amid the 100s of "I'm out of the office" emails were hundreds of "Remove me!!!!!" which started new chains on the out of office messages. Good times....

Are you saying the people-free nonobot only world would be bad?

Still doesn't mean the technology is bad, just that there are bad people willing to do bad things!

To be honest, I'm surprised no one had done it earlier. There's been a few people online using deepfakes to improve CGI recreations or de-aging of people for some time. I don't think the technology should be shunned just because its possible to do some bad things with it.

As I understand it only the top two at the national trials got an automatic spot on the team. Had Biles dropped out after the national trials, the top two would be Sunisa Lee and Jordan Chiles who are both on the team. The remaining spots on the national team (2 more team, 2 specialists and up to three alternates/replacements, I think) are picked by the athletic selection committee.

Looks like Biles has pulled out of the all-around competition. Hope things get better for her, but it is better to err on the side of caution rather than risk losing focus halfway through flipping in the air and injuring herself.

Disgraced pharmaceutical exec's one-of-a-kind Wu Tang Clan album auctioned off to cover his debts.

Note again my comment was not to dredge up the discussion about the video again; by the nature of the way moderation works, there will always be subjective calls. We rely on Fionavar to guide us to our decisions as he's the final arbiter for us as to what Obsidian wants. Lets return the thread to weird-random-interesting things.

I thought the Picard facepalm screencapture was the unofficial forum facepalm image.

Note that my comment was not to dredge up the discussion about the video again, but just to counter ComradeYellow's assertion that it was "some kind of illusory psychological stigma that has no basis on reality" because "(b)ased off of (his) life experience and interactions with the world, Russians and Chinese appear to be far more civilized and wise than the violent and angry people from North America".

Since much of the medal hopes kept being pinned on her, I kind of get what she's saying. Its not an easy position to be in.

Indeed, congrats to them and congrats to the UK for their Bronze (first medal in Gymnastics since 1928 if I understood correctly). Hopefully whatever issue Simone Biles is having isn't too serious; silver isn't something to be sneezed at, even though I know the US team were wanting the gold.

Yeah, they didn't have a clear role for Riker I think once Picard could be diplomat and man of action. And yeah, its obvious several times that Troi is absent because her abilities would render the conflict moot (or, something had to cause her powers not to work if she was there).

Locally, there's been a rash of road rage incidents that started as traffic began going back to normal (surprise, you can't go 90+ MPH on the expressway anymore), more robberies (which typically have been opportunistic and desperate) and more random violence (signs, perhaps, of people going a little weird during lockdown, or having to wait to settle grudges until their target left their house). There really hasn't been a defunding of police (although stories have indicated police morale is way down). The Boxer incident seems to fall in the opportunistic snatch and grab (and run) variety.

Well they also couldn't decide if Riker and Troi were: Rekindling their romance not rekindling their romance and okay with them finding happiness with someone else not rekindling their romance but interfering in each other's new relationships for various reasons

Perhaps it'd be fairer to say "The video consisted of a man and woman beating on each other" as they both were fighting one another (and clearly had been before they got to the elevator).

I guess what I'm pondering is this: TOS had three main regulars (Kirk, McCoy, Spock), 2 frequent reoccurring (Uhura, Scotty) and the rest used as needed (Sulu, Chekov, Chapel, Yeoman Rand, Riley, Harrison). Plans had been made to expand Sulu so he'd probably have been the 3rd frequent reoccurring, but it got scuttled by Takei's role in GREEN BERETS and the studio wanting to add a youth character that became Chekov. There's not much to go on, but The Cage seems to set up three main regulars (Pike, Number 1, Spock), and at least 1 frequent reoccurring (Dr. Boyce). Phase II would have had three main regulars (Deckard, Ilia, Xon), 3 frequent reoccurring (Uhura, Scotty, Bones) and the rest used as needed (Sulu, Chekov, and Chapel(?)) plus a big unknown in Kirk (who could have been a series main regular or a guest star admiral a couple of times a season). When we get to TNG, you'd think based on the way they're set up, they'd have 3 regulars (Picard, Riker, Troi), 3 frequent reoccurring (Data, Yar, Crusher) and the rest (Wesley, Worf, Geordi, the Engineering guy who appeared in a few episodes of the first season, the secondary doctor). What they do though is set up a large ensemble show cast (like, say L.A. Law that started the year before TNG) but don't change the structure of the stories to match the idea of an ensemble cast, instead sticking with TOS style one or two episode stories that are self-contained. This gets you things like Yar and Worf having the same role in stories, Wesley and Data competing for some stories, Geordi having little to do, and early on what seems to be an indecision as to who was Picard's confidant (Crusher or Troi). When re-watching the show, it struck me that it felt like there were too many characters fighting for screentime. From a production standpoint, we know Picard-Riker-Troi is modeled after the idea they had for Kirk-Deckard-Ilia, but Troi gets marginalized a lot throughout the series (partially due to her role on the ship being ill-defined, I think). Denise Crosby leaving allowed them to restructure the cast so that everyone had a better role (Geordi goes to Engineering, Worf no longer competes for stories, Wesley gets the former Geordi role, some of the minor reoccurring characters get jetisoned). It just makes me wonder why they went with the large regular cast and then so poorly use them in the first season. And why did they not have a regular in Engineering? You'd think the utilitarian role Scotty had played for TOS would have made them realize they needed a regular character there.

The post was a notice that a video that had been posted to the thread was removed by a moderator after review by the mod team. The video consisted of a man beating a woman in an elevator in Yekaterinburg, Russia. In the end of the video, the woman helped the man clean the elevator of their blood (he was bleeding when he came into the elevator indicating they'd been fighting elsewhere) reportedly to avoid having to pay to have the elevator cleaned after they realized they were on security camera. Reports in the news have also indicated the couple have been spotted having physical fights around town and have had the police called on them for other 'antisocial' activities (like playing their music too loud).