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[AMATEURS!]

Spag-bol sarnie. Yea or nay?

AMATEURS!

Spag-bol on folded goodfellas pizza toastie

[Airplane!]

Airplanes go over my head regularly, but it's just been pointed out to me that in the movie Airplane!, there is a constant drone of a propeller engine in the background, despite being set on a jet. I haven't watched the whole movie since learning this half an hour ago, but both the clips I have watched on youtube this morning have it.

Yes I am serious and don't call me Shirley.

Ron Graham, as in Graham's Number, it's kind of a big deal.

This is very much out of the alt-right's playbook. Over politicise an issue so they can shut down/easily withdraw from discussions for being "too political".

I think that approach ends up a bit unintentionally patronising to Abnett. "We know you can't beat John Wagner, but if we tie his arm behind his back, you might last a bit longer." It heads off down a reductive rabbit hole: "How much can be taken away from Wagner till he's level with Abnett? Is Dan Abnett better than Balls Brothers?"

To be fair, this whole tournament was patronising to every writer that isn't Wagner.

[maybe]

Maybe, maybe, maybe we could have a poll between Abnett and Wagner, but excluding Dredd work?

XCOM 2. Way more then I should.

Have you got the War of the Chosen expansion? Ramps us the difficulty, but also the satisfaction when you win. Plus there's a big chunk of the Enterprise D's bridge crew doing voices.

Man, I need to get back to that. I abandoned my game years ago cos I thought they'd ramped the difficulty into unfun levels, but I feel like giving it another go.

Yeah, I've always found that XCom games don't really have a difficulty curve. It's more like a wall you have to dash your soldiers against until you break through.

For reasons best known to the Algorithm I get Daily Express stories pushed into my news feed.

Try to keep it that way. Ye don't want to be stuck in an echo chamber.

Having said that, try to filter out the Daily mail, because half their headlines alone make ye feel like a pervy wab.

[Skyrim*]

Skyrim*

Because I wanted to play a game where you can run about in wide open space for some reason. I found it was a good way to test my eyesight. There's not much to say that hasn't been said, no doubt some of you will play this game again on the next iteration of consoles (with inferior graphics**). RPing as Lemmy. So no stealth, just a big loud electric wizard who goes smashy smash.

*modded tae fuck
**GLORIOUS PC MASTER RACE

pointerpointer.com

(doesn't work on mobile)

The problem is always going to be the English

I agree

I expect the tories (Gove most likely) will try to tell us that the numbers are actually being overreported.

Right now, I'd settle for the MPs we have got actually being allowed to vote. The farce that Rees-Mogg has enacted by enforcing in-person voting should be getting a LOT more attention.

Every time a Tory/Brexiteer claims there is a modern technological solution to the British border in Ireland, I will point them to the farcical social distanced voting system in the house of commons. These are not people who support technology. You could take all of Boris' recent speeches and replace "The Science" with "The Bible" and no meaning would be lost.

I've always felt that the problems with the prequels was that Lucas tried to make an entire movie in post production. He was so enthusiastic about using the new fangled CGI he neglected the rest, and didn't delegate enough.

In preproduction, he needed to polish his script more. He should have built more complete sets instead of hanging up some green drapes.

This had a knock on effect to the shoot, where actors had to wrangle awkward dialogue while having very little to physically interact with. It seems like Lucas just wanted dialogue shots in the can as quickly as possible, which must have been challenging for the cast, it certainly looks that way because some very fine actors gave dodgy performances.

So when Lucas finally got to the bit he wanted to do the most, with all the shiney spaceships and sumptuous CGI sets, it was too late. It doesn't matter how cool the stuff projected on the green screen looks, because the actual important stuff, the characters and what they're saying, is just flat soap opera style shot/reverse shot scenes. There might be a cool vista of Coruscant out the window, but our characters are just sitting on a sofa. They might be walking through a huge impressive Jedi Temple, but their movements are slightly off because the actors weren't sure how big a space they had to move about in, again the shot is a bit flat. In a real set, a director can work out interesting angles blocking by walking around making two "L" shapes with his fingers and thumbs, but Lucas was just pointing a camera at some people in front of a green screen.

Any scene that wasn't action was flat and boring with some background CGI noise thrown in. Then the action scenes tended to be all CGI noise.

All of this is not to say CGI is bad. I think Lucas accelerated the advance of cinema CGI by over a decade. I remember before the prequels, directors would tout how many scenes/minutes of their movies contained CGI effects. After Clone Wars, that seemed to be a redundant boast. I think the Lucas' problem was he was so preoccupied with making things look real in CGI, he forgot to make those things tell a good story.

I'm not a prequels hater, but I'm in no hurry to watch them again.

More ad hominem rhetoric. Still nothing about their thinking.

There's such a thing as the fallacy fallacy, where pointing out a fallacy in an argument doesn't negate the argument. The fact that Dawkins is a smug wanker is relevant, because his air of moral and intellectual superiority damages his cause. A dickhead like him makes it that much easier for cynical bad faith (pun intended) arguments that cast science as the enemy of religion when it doesn't have to be. Dawkins indirectly perpetuates backwards tribalism. Something he is fully aware religion exploits.