Bjorn

2015: Year of the star bit

Somehow I had missed that Sterling had left the Escapist. I stopped going there once Macris doubled down on supporting gg. It does seem like the death knell is ringing for it if they are cutting a bunch of their senior leadership. Tito's announcement has some not so subtle barbs in it.

Yeah, I suppose that shouldn't surprise me in the slightest. I remember hanging out with one of my best friends at a lesbian bar, and seeing the occasional awkward couple who would come in, clearly looking for a third. That would always piss her off to no end. If even a few couples are willing to be that brazen in person, there have to be bunches more willing to do be that way online. And something like Tinder has to make it even worse, with attempting to distill the initial interaction/reaction into as small a time frame as possible.

So I know next to nothing about Tinder (other than its a dating/hook up app), and this just sent me down a rabbit hole of reading articles about it over my lunch hour. Dammit, I think I'm getting old, realizing just how super out of touch I am with some trends. Found this article the most interesting: Oh man, there are also social gossip apps. That has to be the bestworstbest thing. They're probably terrible, and even potentially harmful, but fuck, I want to check that out. I really am a terrible human being in some areas.

I've occasionally heard that from women, was the couples thing really that pervasive on dating sites/services in your experience? I'm a decade+ removed from using one, and am a dude besides, so no frame of reference. It would seem like swinging would be the way easier route with that, but I suppose some people (read, probably dudes) wouldn't be comfortable with that.

That's kind of my point though. For every Weaver role that's that way, we have like 20+ male characters who are over 50 who are represented as being badass, heroic or romantically/sexually desirable.

I only ever played through a handful of levels/puzzles in SpaceChem, saw the trajectory of how complex it could become and decided to walk away from it earlier rather than later.

I think there are other examples of it as well. Call of Duty tends to stay at a higher price to comparable games much, much longer. All Blizzard games hold their prices for years compared to competitors.

I think you could repurpose those costumes/puppets for a Metal Gear musical as well. Also, searching for Starship Troopers musical led me to this late 70s music video that is FUCKING INCREDIBLE! https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1wwilCs4Jqg

Interestingly, the color palette, lighting and cinematography all feel way pulpier to me than what I remember of the first three films (though that could just be because I haven't seen any of them in years). Oh yeah, and I completely agree with Tycho about Marion, both in being glad they brought her back and in that she could have been handled better (she just doesn't get enough dialogue). Karen Allen was in her late 50s during the filming of Crystal Skull, and we have so terribly few examples of that age of woman being either kickass or as being sexually/romantically desirable in cinema, and Marion is both.

You guys are making me want to play Tinder. Thankfully I know beyond a shadow of a doubt that the lady would be up for having some fun with it.

Yeah, I actually liked the inventory and no-UI in the original design as well. It may not be as functional, but it serves other purposes that trump pure functionality for me.

The diner scene is terrific, and there are a couple of scenes where he shows a real anguish and emotional vulnerability that are not typical of a Jones movie, but I ultimately think his character starts really strong and then just kind of slowly peters out, reaching a point of feeling largely irrelevant in the final 15-20 minutes (which is not a fault of Shia or the character, but of the writers not having anything for him to do).

Congrats SBM!

So I did rewatch Crystal Skull tonight, first time since seeing it in the theater. It's really a fine movie. Yes, all the things people complain about are legitimate (the fridge, some mediocre cgi, Shia, etc), but it still delivers a fun Jones adventure, and a better adventure than a lot of contemporary movies. It pays homage to the past without unduly lingering on it. I guess it's just a movie that I don't have any interest in niggling the fun out of. One thing mentioned earlier (I think it was this thread, if not then...I probably went and read too much shit on the Internet about Crystal Skull a week or so ago) that I will dispute though is that Jones is given the Han Solo treatment of suddenly being a character that won't kill. He shoots a poisoned blow dart into a guys mouth, presumably killing him. He beats a guy senseless with a big wooden stick, and then lets him drop into a horde of ants that devours him. He easily could have saved that guy if he wanted. He didn't plug him with a bullet, but he murdered him just as dead. His actions earlier also lead to like a half dozen guys being incinerated alive. That's less directly his fault, but still, he moves through the world as a whirlwind of destruction that leaves corpses in his wake. That he doesn't happen to shoot anyone in this particular story doesn't seem to be any change in the essential character that has been established.

The Dark City DVD menu did include a game. And yes, I cut off the back half of your sentence to make that point

Oh wow, a remastered version of the original Resident Evil was released on Steam yesterday. It looks surprisingly good. I'm super tempted.

Well, Half-Life is the gold standard of walking simulators, so obviously it started the whole "not a game" thing.

If I switch, it will probably be back to Sprint. Of all my phone services, I've never been happier with call quality, coverage or network stability than I was with Sprint. I ran a remote business location off one of their 3G USB Sticks years before that was a thing you could do with any other carrier. Oddly, I never even had the customer service issues other people did, but then, I think I only needed help from CS a couple of times over the course of a decade. We only left because they were not handling the transition to smartphones well, plans were a nightmare, crazy expensive and there was no ability to mix n' match features between phones within one plan (so with my family plan my kid would have ended up with all the same bells, whistles and data rates that I needed on my work phone, needlessly driving up the price of the plan). But all that seems to have become much more sane and reasonable in the last few years. I'd rather stay with TMobile though, its still cheaper. We just got a free wireless router from them, one that is supposed to be able to prioritize their WiFi calling better, thus improving call quality in the house for everyone but me with my Nexus. I spent a chunk of this morning trying to set up wireless calling using my Google Voice number through pbxes.org. I got outgoing calls working (which already worked through the GVoice app, so no gain there), but couldn't get them to ring in. I'm sure there's some setting in the remote server or trunk setup I missed.

Ah, I had missed the news of a new series being developed, but I had seen a couple of quotes from Wilmore about branding and the concern about people thinking the show would only be about minority issues.

My nexus 4 has the same behavior with randomly shutting down, though it only happens about once a week or so. I've never had a phone I liked more than it, so I'm loathe to upgrade. On phones, I'm super frustrated with carriers again. We're on TMobile, which I love for their plan structure and pricing, but ultimately their network blows. We get shit coverage at our house, they have terrible roaming agreements, and WiFi calling doesn't work with the Nexus series. But I really don't want to see our bill double in order to go to one of the other big 3, particularly when so much of that fee is related to data service. Collectively we use less than 1GB a month on three phones. Sprint is cheaper/fairer than the other two, but still would have to get all new handsets for all of us.

There is the Philip K Dick story (with the movie version starring Tom Cruise), but I never saw them reference it as a reason for the name change. The official reason was to unify the branding with the Daily Show and that they didn't want the name to lead people to think that it would only be a show about "black" issues or news.

Yeah, they chickened out, plus wanted to align the branding more with The Daily Show. The topic of the first episode was the state of protest in the US, and tonight's episode is going to be Bill Cosby.

The Nightly Show with Larry Wilmore premiered tonight, and for the first time in years I made it a point to watch something live on TV that wasn't a sporting event (I think the last time it happened was when Drew Carry took over The Price is Right). There's a bunch of promise here. It's functionally the old Politically Incorrect format (a panel of people talking about something), except that Wilmore actually has a more intriguing point of view than Maher, and is a lot funnier. And hey, look, a group of five people talking and only one of them was a white dude. The #keepit100 segment is a great idea, but felt a bit forced the first time out. But compared to what I have thought of new talk/comedy shows in the past, Wilmore was a lot stronger out of the gate than Colbert or Stewart were when they took over their shows. Its definitely getting worked into my regular lunch time rotation.

Okay, I'll totally concede the question mark curse, it's the worst. I do wish the other two curses were as interesting as the XL floor curse.