Messages

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That STD has really lowered the bar.

EVERY time I see this I have to remind myself of what it is referring to, not the result of a an unprotected encounter ...

The producers are painfully aware of this, and have struggled for years to make "Disco" the abbreviation used among fandom.  Fandom is... uncooperative.

[even lower.]

There was a running joke in Trek fandom that after DS9, every new Star Trek show was the worst Star Trek show yet*, but STD really tested that theory to destruction.  And then Star Trek: Picard somehow set the bar even lower.

The third season of Enterprise is a hoot (even though the limitations of the cast are never more apparent), and season four is a bit of a mixed bag, but it finally manages to thread the needle between fan-wankery and faster-paced stories meant to draw in new viewers - though sadly, both those and die-hard Trek fans had already written the show off because of the dreadful first two seasons, which promised much but were ultimately just a Star Trek greatest hits compilation album you bought from a pound shop that turned out to be a bunch of synth instrumental covers when you got home and put it on.
But fair play to Enterprise for at least being the last Star Trek show with an actual theme tune and title sequence, rather than just some leftover instrumental music from the show cobbled together over some random gifs.




*  For many years, Brannon Braga was the whipping boy for fans, but retrospective examinations of the show's behind-the-scenes dramas seem to lay the blame more at the feet of producer Rick Berman, who may or may not have had issues with The Gays™, women, and non-white cast members.

It's a shame that's not a real Labour Party ad, because it would be one of their better efforts.

Murdered teenager fined by police for attempting to prevent her own death.

Give Keir Starmer a chance.  He's just keeping his powder dry.

"Anything to bring this nightmare to an end."

Those are truly terrifying words.

The country turning into Chile circa 1973 is slightly more worrying to me tbh.

A strung-out, under-resourced and undermanned police force with nothing to lose and everything to gain by brutalising anyone with a camera?  That can only end well.

This shithole of a country is currently brewing-up the perfect recipe for accelerationism and at this point, I'll take it.  Anything to bring this nightmare to an end.

The good news is that the pigs what bashed-up those women at a vigil didn't go rogue after all.
The bad news is that they didn't go rogue.

Also late to the party, I found Spacewarp #1 less flashy than the prog, but its content was more objectively interesting.  The biggest hurdle was the shared universe conceit, which I don't think I'm being terribly controversial in saying is getting a bit overdone at the moment, but Pat pulls it off.  I'll risk sounding uncharitable and offer that this seems to be the work of someone more obviously invested in the material than the guy who wrote recent prog offerings, and he's produced some memorable characters - mainly villains.
I don't think the price hurts this as much as some like to think it will, as the comics market has already set a costly precedent, and I think what will most help or hinder this project will probably be its social media footprint, though luckily that seems to be going well.
Looking forward to more, if/when it appears.

[Ratchet & Clank]

Ratchet & Clank currently free to download on PSN as part of Sony's commendable Play At Home initiative, with Horizon Zero Dawn Complete Edition and Subnautica (among others) just announced as still to come.  Even if you don't plan on playing these games, it's worth downloading them at least once while they're available for free so that they'll always be available to download in future from your PSN account.

THIS IS FINE.

Always wondered what I'd be doing if the country ever started slipping towards fascism.  Guess now I know.

"We're here today with globally-recognised millionaire tv celebrity Piers Morgan to talk about how he's been denied a platform.  Piers - what would you like to say to our 8 million viewers?"

Actually to be fair, he said (according to you) that the Soviets won ww2. What I said, and what I've read, was that they played a huge role in winning WW2.

I think the argument is that since they got to Hitler before the Americans, the Soviets were responsible for ending the Nazi threat and thus the war the Nazis instigated, but this kind of reduces the Japanese campaign that continued for months after the fall of Berlin to an afterthought.  As for "American money", this might be a reference to the Marshall Plan, though that was a pretty public initiative.

An interesting conspiracy theory was that the Americans bombed Nagasaki and Hiroshima purely because they feared the Soviets might get a foothold in any ground war in Japan, but the truth turns out to be almost laughably straightforward: America was so hopped-up on its own anti-Japanese racist propaganda that the newly-installed president Truman feared for his election chances if the public ever found out he had the option to bomb Japan and didn't take it.
So basically for the first and last time in history, disaster occurred because America was very racist and there was an ambitious incompetent in the presidential office.

[Dear Esther]

Dear Esther - first of the walking simulators, but not the first I've played.  I expected it to be technically unimpressive, but it's fine, and doesn't outstay its welcome.  I liked the island and the atmosphere, but found the story a bit forced, and often wished that guy would shut up so I could enjoy the view in peace.

Suicide Guy - fun but problematic 3d puzzler where your aim is to escape a themed level (spaceship, farm, dragon's lair, laboratory, etc) by dying.  Some of the puzzle solutions are amusing, like flying the spaceship into a sun, but others - like flying your aircraft into a building - are definitely in "I have notes" territory.
Really enjoyable, though, even if the levels/puzzles are neither long nor difficult.

Streets of Rage 4 - OW MY FINGERS exactly what you would expect from a fourth installment in terms of gameplay, but arguably to a fault with some of the limitations on characters' movement and abilities.  I haven't really played a beat-em-up this straightforward in quite a while, so I may have been more inclined to stick with this than others will, but I thought what there is of it was well-made old-school fun.

[are]

I took it that while Q was single username, a group or several groups of people were collaborating through a discord (aptly named) to decide what truth would be revealed by the account. Kind of like reverse sock puppetry.

It wouldn't be the first time the far right have done this.  I forget the name of the most high-profile offender - was it "Phillip Cross"? - but there's supposedly incredibly prolific Wikipedia editors who edit 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, 52 weeks a year, and compose their edits incredibly quickly, but it isn't major edits, it's tiny things like how something is phrased, when/where certain facts are presented in the descriptions of contentious events, what constitutes "official" sources, and so forth - basically, there are people who work day and night to make sure Wikipedia articles are aligned with the exact same political narratives espoused by Wikipedia founder Jimmy Wales, a notorious tea-party libertarian.
To be clear, though, I'm not saying these editors definately are shared accounts, as it's possible that Mr Cross really is just a regular man.  Who hasn't slept or gone to the lavatory since 2007.