Mod Post: Off-Topic Tuesday
May. 25th, 2021 09:37 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
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scans_dailyIn the comments to these weekly posts (and only these posts), it's your chance to go as off topic as you like. Talk about non-comics stuff, thread derail, and just generally chat among yourselves.
The intent of these posts is to chat and have some fun and, sure, vent a little as required. Reasoned debate is fine, as always, but if you have to ask if something is going over the line, think carefully before posting please.
Normal board rules about conduct and behaviour still apply, of course.
This week has seen the cultural whiplash of the Israel/Palestine conflict and the outrageous behaviour by the leader of Belarus, in the same week as the Eurovision Song Contest.
The BBC found itself in hot water when it was confirmed that it's famous 1996 interview with Princess Diana had partly been set up by the interviewer using falsified documents, and when the guy who'd produced those documents tried to blow the whistle, he was blacklisted from ever working for the UK again.
Of course, whilst the behaviour involved was utterly reprehensible, seeing the current government lecture another publicly funded body on professional conduct is a bit rich, to say the least, and one has to wonder how this might be used against the BBC by those seekign to defund it, despite it being 25 years ago.
Timothée Chalamet is apparently in talks to play Willy Wonka in a prequel.
"Powerpuff", the slightly bizarre idea of a live-action sequel to The Powerpuff Girls cartoon, featuring the trio as adults who feel aggrived they had been denied a childhood because they'd been so busy fighting crime, has had it's pilot scrapped, but it will be reworked and reshot using the same cast and crew
Today is the 20th Towel Day, celebrating author Douglas Adams
It's also 44 years to the day since Star Wars was first released in the USA.
And it's also also, being the 25th of May, the anniversary of the "The Glorious Revolution" in Ankh Morpork. (See Pratchett's "Night Watch" for details)
And, just for fun some random birds who have been making a name for themselves on social media.
It has been commented on that some of the "Random Questions of the Week" have been seeming a little too close to phishing expeditions of late (they're not, but I wish I'd thought of that), so in an effort to confound that trend this week#'s Random Question is "Cartesian Dualism: Yay or Nay?"
The intent of these posts is to chat and have some fun and, sure, vent a little as required. Reasoned debate is fine, as always, but if you have to ask if something is going over the line, think carefully before posting please.
Normal board rules about conduct and behaviour still apply, of course.
This week has seen the cultural whiplash of the Israel/Palestine conflict and the outrageous behaviour by the leader of Belarus, in the same week as the Eurovision Song Contest.
The BBC found itself in hot water when it was confirmed that it's famous 1996 interview with Princess Diana had partly been set up by the interviewer using falsified documents, and when the guy who'd produced those documents tried to blow the whistle, he was blacklisted from ever working for the UK again.
Of course, whilst the behaviour involved was utterly reprehensible, seeing the current government lecture another publicly funded body on professional conduct is a bit rich, to say the least, and one has to wonder how this might be used against the BBC by those seekign to defund it, despite it being 25 years ago.
Timothée Chalamet is apparently in talks to play Willy Wonka in a prequel.
"Powerpuff", the slightly bizarre idea of a live-action sequel to The Powerpuff Girls cartoon, featuring the trio as adults who feel aggrived they had been denied a childhood because they'd been so busy fighting crime, has had it's pilot scrapped, but it will be reworked and reshot using the same cast and crew
Today is the 20th Towel Day, celebrating author Douglas Adams
It's also 44 years to the day since Star Wars was first released in the USA.
And it's also also, being the 25th of May, the anniversary of the "The Glorious Revolution" in Ankh Morpork. (See Pratchett's "Night Watch" for details)
And, just for fun some random birds who have been making a name for themselves on social media.
It has been commented on that some of the "Random Questions of the Week" have been seeming a little too close to phishing expeditions of late (they're not, but I wish I'd thought of that), so in an effort to confound that trend this week#'s Random Question is "Cartesian Dualism: Yay or Nay?"
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Date: 2021-05-25 10:34 am (UTC)What is Cartesian Dualism, might I ask?
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Date: 2021-05-25 10:59 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2021-05-25 11:03 am (UTC)No matter
What is the matter?
Never mind
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Date: 2021-05-25 11:00 am (UTC)Now that cinemas are opening up and movies are coming out again I'm excited to get down to the cinema soon.
I've been watching Castlevania at last. Never saw it before. But so far I like it! Only seen season one but Trevor Belmont is the kind of charming asshole hero I always enjoy, Sypha seems fun and Alucard is gorgeous and shirtless I mean um he's visually appealing. Yes. Plus any show that has this many scenes of fascistic asshole religious fundamentalists getting stabbed, shot, set on fire and eaten alive is always going to make me snicker. My favourite was the bishops death because there's something especially hillarious about the fact that the last words he ever hears is "Your god hates you"
On a less happy note apparently the usual pack of pearl clutching puritan sex negative dipshits have come a-slithering out from under whatever garbage pile they normally lurk beneath to start pissing themselves and throwing a man-child baby tantrum about how they don't think kink belongs at Pride.
To these whining bigots and to those who have any problem with kink or BDSM in general I say: They should really go fuck themselves. Because no one remotely gives a shit about their feelings or their whiny pathetic sex hating bullshit. And we definitely don't care if they're "Offended"
Maybe if they started having some fun sex and some actual orgasms they'd be less of a bunch of miserable hateful tossers
Moving on from people who piss me off to people who make me happy, Taika Waititi is apparently in a poly relationship with Rita Ora and Tessa Thompson. If I didn't love each of them so very much I'd be insane with jealousy right now but instead I will raise a glass to them and wish them a long life of all the mindblowing pleasure they deserve
We shall be getting Luke Fox suiting up as Batwing on the CW's Batwoman show this year which is exciting news for those of us who enjoy the character in the comics and especially enjoy Camrus Johnsons wonderful performance as him in the series. I like to hope this means Mary becoming Hawkfire might be on the cards for season three as she seems to fill the role Bette Kane did for Kate in the original run of her ongoing.
A "Scandal" has started around John Barrowman that seems to be, in the words of the great bard, "Much Ado About Nothing"...people getting themselves all bothered and apopletic about the fact he sometimes take his clothes off on set as a joke despite the fact none of the cast or crew he worked with having complained about this and it clearly just being a little bit of foolishness between friends at work. But of course we live in a world where everything has to be a goddamn ordeal so people are acting as if he was Harvery Weinstein-ing it up and not just being a bit cheeky and having a laugh with people he worked with
Black Lightning sadly came to an end this week after four marvellous seasons and I'm going to miss it dearly. A great show with a fantastic cast that delivered a brilliant mix of superhero drama, social commentary and compelling characters. Having seen the finale last night I can say that it was a great send off to the show and it leaves enough open that it could be revisited in a spin off. But if this is the last we see of these characters I am very glad that things ended on such a positive note and that we got a satisfying pay off to the long running battle between Jefferson Pierce and his loathsome foe Tobias Whale
We also got news that we're getting a new Superman animated series which is being pitched as a workplace comedy with Clark, Lois and Jimmy. I hope that it will milk the insane things that happened to the three of them in the silver age and some parts of the modern age of comics for all the comedy potential they're worth
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Date: 2021-05-25 11:18 am (UTC)(no subject)
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Date: 2021-05-25 11:08 am (UTC)"Well, that's because their best works, often came after a few years of writing, as they honed their craft. In addition, the best work has been hallowed by time, there are probably elements of their work they're not fond of, or things they didn't like at the time. Besides that, these stories have already been told, try to draw on things you've done in recent years that could be the basis for interesting stories",
"You know brain, that's actually quite useful."
And now, that I finally focus on a potential project I realise how much work it's going to be.
What a moving finale episode of Adventure Time: Distant Lands. Truly a moving note to end the franchise---what do you mean there's still another one to go?
Apparently the baddy in Indian Jones 5, will be a former Nazi scientist who got a job with NASA. That's a surprisingly political message for a Disney film, which makes me wonder if their going to try and sidestep parts of that. Assuming that its accurate.
I started watching Star Trek. Truly it highlights the collaborative nature of fandom, and how things can grow beyond a specific individual becoming a collective of people joined in shared love.
I sure like Uhuru, I hope she gets a lot of focus and screen-time, (he says bitterly).
I saw Kirk chase and fight an Irishman, and it satisfied me on an almost spiritual level. It was amazing.
Evidence that Star Trek takes place in a Dystopian Hell (all in good fun of course)
1. McCoy views mental hospitals, as being barbaric cages. He's told that they've much improved in the last 20 years, but this still means they were really bad within living memory.
2. After Captain Pike is terribly injured, they put him in a metal coffin and leave him alone all the time. They couldn't give him two littles?
3.They claim to be against bigotry, but everyone's really mean to Spock for having a different ideology to them. Especially when he keeps on saving other people.
4. Phasers are seemingly on the Kill setting by default.
5. The universe is full of powerful godlike beings, who believe that they can do whatever they want to primitive races.
6. Regulations state, that spaceships must examine space phenomena, even when delivery vital medical supplies.
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Date: 2021-05-25 11:19 am (UTC)Don't say that he's hypocritical!
Say rather that he's "Apolitical"
"Vunce zer rockets go up, who cares vere zey come down"
"Zats not mein department", says Werner Von Braun
"1. McCoy views mental hospitals, as being barbaric cages. He's told that they've much improved in the last 20 years, but this still means they were really bad within living memory."
To be fair McCoy also thinks not being to live for a long time without a brain in your skull is a problem unique to Vulcans. He's a nice man but I don't think he's a real doctor
"2. After Captain Pike is terribly injured, they put him in a metal coffin and leave him alone all the time. They couldn't give him two littles?"
Thanks to Futurama I choose to believe he can get out and walk around any time he just likes zooming about in that thing
"3.They claim to be against bigotry, but everyone's really mean to Spock for having a different ideology to them. Especially when he keeps on saving other people."
I mean Rodenberry wrote this in the sixties. "Not literally comitting hate crimes in front of a burning cross or nearly starting world war III over someone's skin color or belief system being different from yours" was probably about as optimistic as he was able to get when it came to how accepting human beings were capable of being
"4. Phasers are seemingly on the Kill setting by default. "
I like to think at the end of each mission Kirk takes the crew members with him on it to one side and is like "I'd thank you all to not be a narc and not tell the Federation about all the men, women and Gorn that I murdered with this awesome space laser they gave me"
"5. The universe is full of powerful godlike beings, who believe that they can do whatever they want to primitive races. "
You're not wrong but I would say this is less a case of it being a dystopia and more a Lovecraftian "The universe isn't uncaring but in fact actively despises you" situation
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Date: 2021-05-25 11:22 am (UTC)Over at my blog, I talk about a martial arts revenge movie that has some problematic elements (even more so than usual.) http://www.skjam.com/2021/05/24/movie-review-golden-swallow/
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Date: 2021-05-25 11:33 am (UTC)There is a horse. The horse says "I don't think." and disappears.
This is a reference to the Descartes quote "I think, therefore I am."
But if I had explained that earlier, it would have been putting Descartes before the horse.
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Date: 2021-05-25 11:50 am (UTC)(no subject)
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Date: 2021-05-25 11:33 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2021-05-25 11:46 am (UTC)In other comics news, I have been re-reading the adventures of Best Batgirl. A revisit of the Stephanie Brown Batgirl series is also on the cards.
This also got me thinking. If Cass is the best fighter, Dick is the best acrobat and Tim is the best detective, then what is the point of Batman?
I also started to re-read the classic New Mutants series. I prefer the Epic Collections because they include issues not collected in the New Mutants Classic trades. The Classic trades don't include the issue of Marvel Team-Up that introduced Karma or the Team-Up Annual with Cloak and Dagger. The Annual is important to understand events that come later in the New Mutants series proper. The first time I read those issues, I didn't get why Rahne amd Roberto were acting funny.
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Date: 2021-05-25 11:58 am (UTC)To paraphrase a comment about Noel Coward: "There are people who are smarter than Batman, stronger than Batman, faster than Batman, better fighters than Batman, better acrobats than Batman and more resourceful than Batman, but those would be six different people. He has all those skills to an certain extent and, in being so, creates a whole which is greater than the sum of the parts." (In Cowards case they weren't discussing his combat skills, rather his various artistic endeavours... though now I DO want to see a "Noel Coward: Batman" Elseworld! :) )
Bruce should have no qualms about having to consult with people who are experts in their field, if it's not a field he's expert in, because the important thing is he knows who to ask. It's one reason I tend to find UberGodMode Batman, or some takes on Sherlock Holmes (Looking at you "Sherlock") insufferable.
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Date: 2021-05-25 11:46 am (UTC)I attended an online workshop last week. We received evaluation forms in our inboxes this morning. They were pdfs, which would have been terribly easy to fill in as a paper copy, but much more difficult on a laptop.
Making Google forms/Microsoft forms to collect information like this is super easy and I'm annoyed that they haven't done it that way.
People are making second rate versions of how we used to do things, instead of first rate versions of a new way to do things.
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Date: 2021-05-25 12:10 pm (UTC)Polish public health care no longer subsidizes drugs administered against early breast cancer. The patients would have to WAIT UNTIL THE CANCER METASTATIZES, PUTTING THEIR LIVES IN GREAT DANGER. Poland has the lowest rate of early detection in Europe, as well as highest breast cancer mortality. Were I a conspiration theorist I'd thought that this out of nowhere decision is a punishment against women collectively for anti-governmental protest against the abortion ban - but then again, this is exactly the take some right wing bloggers take! I haven't found any coverage on that in English.
Due to gross negligence 21 athlethes froze to death during an utramarathon in Jingtai, China. Among the dead are Gobi Ultramarathon champion "General" Liang Jing and paralympian Huang Guanjun, who was running marathons because he couldn't find work otherwise. It's unbearably tragic. More: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gansu_ultramarathon_disaster
There are other heartbreaking things that happened to my kith and kin, but that's of much lesser scope and this comment is getting too long already.
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Date: 2021-05-25 12:52 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2021-05-25 01:32 pm (UTC)Apparently it only works in Europe, but I know there is an American equivalent, just google it.
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Date: 2021-05-25 03:20 pm (UTC)(no subject)
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Date: 2021-05-25 02:56 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2021-05-25 07:04 pm (UTC)Apparently there's some kerfuffle about the head or the like. Which sounds very like Hasbro these days.
But still! Another version of a pretty darn good-looking mold.
Had a mini-holiday over the weekend. Well, not a holiday as such, since it was looking after an elderly dog, which does kind of take the fun out of relaxing, having to make sure there's no lakes of pee to clean up.
Spent a lot of it watching Mystery Incorporated. That was fun.
A month or so ago, wandering around reading fic, I found a surprisingly nice fic about two characters who I don't typically ship. Well-written enough even to look past the occasional continuity errors it had, which usually bug the heck out of me.
... I just can't remember what it was called, and I know if I went looking, it'll be like it was never there. Tis the way.
Bought a collected edition of the Lee / Kirby Fantastic Four the other week (not the whole run, just a selection).
It's... ... very of its time.
By which I mean "Reed Richards is appallingly sexist."
Caved into the urge and bought ME: Legendary Edition.
...
... it's only randomly crashed three times so far.
And it is a liiiitle odd how apparently the devotion to transplanting the games directly means including some of the bugs that were already there, like the sound cutting out when Liara does the mind meld. Plus some new ones. Had to redo the drive in Noveria three times because the Mako went unresponsive.
They also seem to have altered the combat system to be more like 2 and 3's and... well, it's a square peg in a round hole dealio. It makes it a lot harder. Or maybe it just feels harder? Dunno.
... also they backported kaidens permastubble and i hate it so there.
But it is very very pretty.
Got started on 2 the day. Not seen enough to make any judgement on it but... they changed Kelly's look. Bastards! But on the plus side, you get to keep your money from the first game, which is great.
Because 2 was more tightfisted with money than a Scottish duck.
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Date: 2021-05-25 07:15 pm (UTC)(no subject)
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Date: 2021-05-25 07:51 pm (UTC)The season 2 finale of Amphibia finally hit the air, and HOO BOY. Disney even put up a warning beforehand that it might be too intense for younger viewers, and I can't remember the last time (if ever) that's come up before a Disney animated series episode. (TBF, without going into spoilers, that particular moment was intense indeed!)
And I'll wrap up with something personal that I still can't believed happened at my job today. I work in retail, and I was unboxing garden statues. This particular statue was of a small puppy, (the statue itself was about the size of a child's lunchbox) and I moved to put it where it belonged, when something caught my eye. I paused, looked at it again... and saw, erm, how to put it delicately... parts that indicated the puppy was male. The two and one, as it were. Now, it's not like these things were huge, and given it was made to sit on dirt, no one had any occasion to look under it anyway.. but... WHY WOULD YOU PUT THAT THERE IN THE FIRST PLACE?! What purpose does that serve?! Artistic integrity?! I'm still baffled.
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Date: 2021-05-25 08:55 pm (UTC)Statues and figurines of animals here do often show the genitals. Because the animals have them. It's... normal.
I mean, my Schleich bayala unicorn is officially sold as a child's toy, and it has a clearly defined penis with balls.
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Date: 2021-05-25 08:09 pm (UTC)https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=FkNhIVE4tM0#
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Date: 2021-05-26 03:38 am (UTC)(no subject)
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Date: 2021-05-25 09:35 pm (UTC)The CW has announced a few holiday specials:
A Waltons movie
A Scooby Doo "reunion" special
And lastly:
Beebo Saves Christmas.
Yes, an animated Beebo special. The character from Legends of Tomorrow. And it appears to be basically it's own thing which is... a thing that definitely exists.
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Date: 2021-05-28 10:55 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2021-05-25 09:58 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2021-05-26 03:39 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2021-05-26 04:41 am (UTC)My first plan is to do my shop errands - and then go to a local coffee shop - order the fanciest shit on the menu - and cry in a corner.
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Date: 2021-05-27 12:28 am (UTC)(Honestly all of that seems like a pretty appropriate reaction to things)
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Date: 2021-05-26 05:07 am (UTC)I got really mad at the people saying that celebrities are coming out for clout. Mamy voices call to "think of the children" and stay in the closet, and I am thinking of a Polish pop singer who stayed in the closed into his 50s because of homophobia. It's especially insidious when people insinuate that the celebs are being paid for coming out. I fucking hate everything.
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Date: 2021-05-27 05:02 pm (UTC)(no subject)
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Date: 2021-05-26 07:31 am (UTC)Heh...fancy that. I finished all endings in The Nonary Games version of 9 Persons, 9 Hours, 9 Doors today, which unlocked the achievement 'Don't Forget Your Towel'.
If I'd known it would be that appropriately timed.... I probably would've fucked it up. It took me 2 days to get through just the True Ending (literally just the ending...getting through the game up to that point was barely an hour, due to skipping stuff I'd seen on other endings), so trying to unlock it on Towel Day, I'd have probably failed.
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Date: 2021-05-26 12:35 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2021-05-27 12:41 am (UTC)I'm more curious about the sequel since we've all had a year of unlearning social interaction.
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Date: 2021-05-26 02:28 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2021-05-26 02:40 pm (UTC)(no subject)
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