SecretAsianMan

I watched Homecoming over the weekend and this mostly encompasses my feelings as well. There's too much Tony Stark (seriously, can we get a movie without him being mentioned every other scene?) but the rest of it felt pretty good. A small part of me is disappointed there's no origin stuff but it was a smart move not to show it (although showing a bit more of his motivation to be a hero might have helped). I liked it overall.

Beyond was such a complete mess. I'm willing to do a fair amount of hand waving in service of an entertaining flick but Beyond had me questioning so many things I just couldn't deal with it. The jokes were bad, the action was meh, the visuals were only ok, and I felt like none of the actors really wanted to be there (except for maybe Anton Yelchin (Chekov). Such a shame about him). I too am baffled by the reception the movie got. I like the first MI because even though he's very skilled he's completely in over his head and just barely manages win the day. Every other one that follows is Ethan Hunt super-agent. He basically doesn't need a team, he does everything himself anyway. Arrival was quite good, I just felt some of the scenes went on a bit longer than they needed to. I also had the main plot conceit spoiled but it didn't detract significantly from my enjoyment (although it's probably why I felt the scenes were too long).

After remembering that Amazon Prime comes with Prime Video, I watched some random stuff. Star Trek Beyond: I liked the first Star Trek, the second was mediocre, this third one was straight garbage. It felt like a long, poorly written episode of a TV show (not one of the actual shows) with a bunch of extra crap thrown in because they needed to fill for time. Mission Impossible Rogue Nation: Ok. Not great, not terrible. I liked the first movie, hated the second, don't remember the third, liked the fourth. This one was fine. Arrival: The pacing was real slow but I otherwise enjoyed it. It was very refreshing to see a movie with aliens that's not sci-fi horror or action.

I showed TN.FN.CN to my wife, who is a native Chinese speaker. It pretty much says what Chris/Google Translate thinks it does.

It's been a few months since I last played this game so I decided to see if anything changed and boy has it. There have been some major reworks. Besides the usual new areas/enemies/weapons, some big mechanical changes were implemented. Stats were reworked into three groups, Brutality, Tactics, and Survival. Weapons now fall under one (or in some cases two) of these groups. Finding a level up scroll in the world allows you to boost one of these categories which increases the damage or effects of weapons in that category. In the case of weapons belonging to two categories, it picks whatever stat is higher. There are also special colorless versions that will use the highest stat; right now these can only be found in cursed chests. Boosting a stat will also give you more HP though you get less of an increase as the stat level goes up. In between levels you can also equip a mutation. These are basically perks that fall into one of the three stat types above. For example, one of the Survival mutations gives you some HP each time you kill an enemy while a Brutality one increases damage if there are at least two enemies nearby. A couple of the mutations are general ones that don't relate to a stat, such as one that doubles the amount of ammo ranged weapons have. Since they're tied to stats, leveling a stat will also increase the mutation's effect. You start with none and can equip one more after each level up to three (there might be a way to equip more, not sure yet). You can change the equipped ones at the cost of some gold. Shield use changed too, they work like I wanted them to before. If you hold them out they reduce the amount of damage you take. If you time it correctly you can parry which negates all the damage and increases the shield's effect. For example the spike shield damages enemies and deals critical damage on a parry. Besides all that, the game also got more difficult. Enemies are a lot tougher (or maybe you're just weaker) and healing items heal for much less. I used to be able to beat the game fairly consistently before. Now I haven't even made it past the 4th area yet. Some other change include new movement runes, more level variety, some weapon reworks, and changes to how cells are spent. They can still be used to upgrade weapons but you have to reach the blacksmith in the third area to do it. The collector unlocks blueprints, mutations, and some other general stuff like letting you reroll shop inventory. Also everything you unlocked before is still unlocked. One final bit of craziness, the game now interacts with my Razer keyboard. The color of the backlight changes to match the level I'm on except for the number row, which is green and acts like a display for how many charges are left in my healing flask. The entire keyboard flashes when I take damage or pick up a cell. At first I thought my keyboard was being glitchy (wouldn't be the first time) but after a while I noticed the pattern. This is the first game I've ever seen actually use this function.

Jake mentioning Nick's screen briefly glitching out immediately conjured an image of Max Headroom but with Nick instead. There's got to be a plugin for that.

I watched both Guardians movies over the weekend. I was pretty disappointed by both. Not to say they're bad movies (by MCU standards anyway) but I just didn't leave them with the same level of satisfaction I had at the other movies. Rather I felt like I did when I watched Avatar; lots of pretty visuals but paper thin plot and characters.

It technically is not dead yet, I was being a bit dramatic because of how pissed I was about the vote. And where there are a number of groups and individuals out there trying to fight it or get other protections in place, I'm not overly optimistic about the outcome. I'd very much like to be wrong.

I wanted to make a snarky joke but I'm so tired of this bullshit that I just can't. Net Neutrality be dead. It was clear this was going to happen so I'm not surprised in the least but still. I'd be less upset about it if Pai weren't such a complete tool.

I think it would also be nice if they put some kind of indicator on the main screen that you had requests for help. When you get a new friend request or a kudos, you'll get a blue dot icon on the menu button but a quarry help request icon is only shown when you actually look at your friends list next to the person asking. I've probably missed several requests simply because I just didn't know they were there.

I showed the commercial to a friend of mine and they initially mistook it for a Mr. Show bit.

I finally got around to watching The Martian last night. I really loved it. It feels somewhat incomplete, probably due to content being lost during the book to movie transition, but I still found it very enjoyable.

Mobile feels like a really good fit for Animal Crossing. A game designed around bite size interactions that refresh every couple of hours is much easier to do with a device that's always with you instead of having to carry around a gaming handheld or turn on a console. I don't even mind the microtransaction stuff. In a way it feels like using Leaf Tickets is counter to AC's philosophy of taking things slow and chill and letting the game develop over time. Plus the three hour game cycle renders a lot of it unnecessary. The only thing I've used them for so far is adding crafting slots. That said, I do hope there's more to this game. It lacks a lot of the more interesting bits that the full games have. I've only been playing on and off for the weekend and already I feel like I've hit the limits of the game. My favorite part of New Leaf was actually expanding and improving the town. It made me feel like I was actually improving their little digital lives. In Pocket Camp I'm just collecting junk to cater to the whims of whatever animal I haven't yet maxed my friendship with only to kick them out and start the process over with someone new. I'm also disappointed that Isabelle isn't a camper I can have over. Talking to her over in the market area just isn't the same.

Added everyone, mine's 9759 0618 868

You're both probably very correct. I consider myself an outlier in regards to platformers and other similar games in that I find even the "hard" ones less difficult than it seems most people do. I'm no expert but I'd like to think I'm above average. Who knows, Cuphead might kick my ass. The two things that I constantly hear about Cuphead are how amazing it looks and how hard it is. The first part I agree with. The second part I just keep thinking about other games that are known to be brutally, punishingly hard to the point of being unfair and yet I feel I've heard more said about Cuphead's difficulty than those. Maybe because Cuphead being hard is unexpected? And to be totally clear, I'm not trying to belittle anyone who thinks the game is hard. This is entirely one of those cases where I see something and I think "I could do that" regardless of whether this is true or not.

I really want to play this game, not because I think it looks especially fun (though it does look fun) but because I want to prove to myself that it's not as hard as people say (or that I'm better than the people I see playing and everyone else is a baby). From what I've seen of it, it doesn't seem THAT difficult.

I liked Shadow of Mordor quite a bit and what I've seen of Shadow of War seems like its going to expand on SoM a lot, especially in terms of the Nemesis system. There's a gameplay demo that was shown off to the media that talks about how you can now build up your own army with its own internal hierarchy. The demo seemed rather tailored and scripted but it still got me excited.

Rather than wait and binge the entire season at once, I've started watching the current runs of the Arrowverse via the CW app. I'm caught up on Arrow and almost caught up on Flash. I'm saving Supergirl for later and may not even bother watching Legends. In a couple ways I commend Arrow for trying to do something different than a complete retelling of the comics such as but I'm pretty disappointed that they're doing so by such forced methods. None of the plots feel natural or logical. Granted those are two characteristics that are super hard to pull off when your source material is comic books but I wish there was less soap opera twists and drama and more actual character. The Flash continues to be the Flash. It's dopey as hell but compared to the forced gravitas of Arrow it feels refreshing in a way. Looking forward to starting Supergirl.

You should read this for an alternate take on that scene.

No worries. Your original point of the gif being tangentially related to your original topic is valid. I just found that knot interesting in the same way you did the original article.

One interesting thing I was reminded of that came out of Beyond Stranger Things

If you follow the link I posted along with the gif, the creator of the Ian knot talks about which direction to tie the starting knot so as not to make this mistake. If you look closely at the gif it begins with the starting knot already in place. The Ian knot is functionally identical to the bowknot or standard shoelace knot, it's just a faster way to tie it. And in the interest of pedantry, technically the square knot or reef knot is a different kind of knot. A square knot has no bows in it. Its what you get when you tie the starting knot twice in alternate directions.

If we're assuming that clothes and ink might not transfer with your time delay ghost, then I'm going to also propose that anything spoken wouldn't function either unless the vibrations in the air are also somehow captured and recorded in the ether the same way your ghostly personage is.