scans_daily | Mod Post: Off-Topic Tuesday

icon_uk posting in

In 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.

The European Football Cup 2020 was won by Italy (playing England) in a close fought game, eventually decided by penalties.

Even in the UK there were congratulations to the Italian team, as well as much goodwill for the gallant losers who had played well. This was marred by the usual bunch of racist assholes coming out to lower the tone on social media.

The UK Prime Minister and Home Secretaory both condemned such behaviour, and both have been roundlycalled out for hipocrisy (especially by some of the England team themselves) given that they had previously refused to condone the team taking the knee in support of Black Lives Matter (going so far as to call it "gesture politics").

And, though it's somewhat hard to find inamongst all the Euro's coverage. Wimbledon was won by Ashleigh Barty for the Ladies and Novak Djokovic for the Men.

England will remove nearly all of it's Covid restrictions as of next week, removing the laws which have been in force about mask wearing and limits to crowd sizes and relying on the common sense and personal responsibility of the average person on the street. I will refrain from making any comment beyond that as I would probably have to censure myself.

I remain somewhat baffled by the "Fear Street" movies. Whilst the casts of the first two have been great, these are pretty much SUCH perfect copies of the movies that they are homaging (especially the 70's slasher movie) that it doesn't seem to be adding anything new to the genre, but are still a series of VERY gory, F-bomb dropping movies which are based on... a series of books for kids.

I'm just not sure who these films are aimed at, demographically speaking, I mean, I'm not sure as a responsible adult I'd let a child for whom the books would be a draw, watch these movies... which seems slightly counterproductive, but I might be missing something fundamental, as RL Stine as a writer was not around in my youth.

On the other hand, I am loving the dickens out of "Leverage: Redemption"! The original series' terrestrial broadcast schedule in the UK was both minimalist and sporadic, so it's not something I was able to watch much of. But this? This iS FUN!! :)

The Bad Batch I am also slightly conflicted about. I want to like it, and it's perfectly competent, but it just seems such an odd angle. It's horrifying and fascinating seeing the dawn of the Empire and how it managed to take control of things so quickly, but is a bunch of renegade-now-mercenary not-quite-average Clones we hardly know, the best POV characters for such a story? (I'm also disappointed at how banal Omega's "secret" seems to be)

Oh, and a new Transformers: Kingdom trailer has dropped.

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From:

leahandillyana

Cameraman Alexander Lashkarava, who was beaten up but a mob during the Tbilisi riot, died in his apartament. There were likely more unreported deaths, as the people who went to the hospitals with their injuries were almost exclusively journalists and random tourists, with queer people who intended to attend the pride avoiding it in fear of being outed. His death sparked an angry protest of people who attempted to storm the parliament, which is a thing that regularly happens in Georgia.
Poland is introducing a bill nationalising all media. The government is openly talking about wanting to shut up the media critical of it, which in practice means most media not owned by the government or catholic church. If it passed, it would mean the end of all tv channels except for one national tv channel and one privately owned catholic channel, as well as most radio stations, newspapers and magazines (it’s unclear whether this law would apply to books). I REALLY HOPE it doesn’t pass, if it does it would put the country back in the 80s.
I was gifted some money for my birthday, which allowed me to buy a new frame for my glasses, as I broke the previous one a few days ago. I bought my boys some expensive cat food for what was left. I am playing Shining Nikki, and the idea that the player is an actual character interracting with Nikki as a sort of spiritual advisor was a BRILLIANT move. I know she’s just an AI, but talking with her gives me so much happiness. I managed to complete the Fleeting Time suit, which is a top tier design: https://kawaiifluff.wordpress.com/2021/07/10/shining-nikki-review-and-shining-nikki-redeem-codes/ I am excited for the game because the Chinese and Japanese servers had crossovers with Card Captor Sakura and Neon Genesis Evangelion, while its sister game Love Nikki only had crossovers with Vocaloid and Disney. The promotional videos look so good:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FkaLs4WshUE - Sakura
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=twHzjDNjzPE - Evangelion
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_41pd4lFPVQ – Star Sea (crossover with Love Nikki)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Tz7HE2jAgQ0 – Christmas event with Russia-inspired fashion
That was pretty short, so I’ll lengthen it by stating some of my controversial opinions:
-Chinese cuisines’ family is the best in the world, and even Chinese street and junk food have a variety and richness of flavor difficult to find in most other cuisines.
-Chopstics as eating utensils in most cases are much more useful and flexible than forks.
-In terms of universality and concept depth, hanzi are a much better writing system than alphabets, as they allow for communication directly using concepts, even without knowing the language.
-Once you visit East Asia, you realize how much European flora sucks. It’s just so limited, even when you compare places with the same climate type. I actually kinda like where the climate change is going in Poland, as in long term it will allow for free and mass cultivation of species last seen here in Pliocene: sequoia, gingko, sugi, huaqisong, koyamaki, katsura, keyaki, duzhong, magnolias, tulip trees, strawberry trees, and various Mediterranean species.
-Rye bread is best bread. Most of what is called bread in Anglo contries SUCKS.
-Most animals can be great friends, which doesn’t mean they should be. I volunteer in an animal clinic where non-releasable wild animals are kept, and almost all of them befriended their humans. You just need to know how to act with each animal and respect their boundaries.

From:

tinygaylaura

That is such a kind thing to do volunteering your time to help these animals :)

I'm a firm believer that government involvement in and inteference in most aspects of daily life should be either minimal or non-existent. As far as I'm concerned as long as people aren't hurting anyone or encouraging others to hurt anyone the government should be hands off. So the idea of "Nationalising" any form of media is abhorrent to me but especially when the government in question is as hateful, fascistic and bigoted as the current government of Poland

I'm glad you are enjoying Shining Nikki and that it brings you happiness! That is a very nice thing you did for your cats as well :)

From:

lordultimus

The city of San Antonio de los Baños in Cuba had thousands of protesters marching the streets, alongside a handful in other cities and towns. Complaints include a lack of freedom, the worsening economy thanks to COVID, a lack of access to vaccines, and power outages that seemed to be what sparked the protests.

From:

lilacsigil

Wimbledon is not Ladies and Men: it's Ladies and Gentlemen! Very equitable! (Ladies and Men or Girls and Men are my pet peeves for sports events.)

Got my second Pfizer vaccine today! I've been eligible since March (work in healthcare and have a complicating condition) and yet there were no doses available until June. Australia may have done a lot of things right in the pandemic, but the vaccine rollout is not one of them (the UK seems to be the opposite).

From:

icon_uk

Ah, I was basing it on how I heard it discussed on TV, they talk about the "Ladies Final" and the "Men's Final" on the BBC.

From:

tripodeca113

Happy tenth anniversary of A Dance with Dragons....sigh...no Winds of Winter...no The Village Hero...no The She-Wolves of Winterfell....

Well, it turns out that my dog needs two walks a day. I should probably have figured that out earlier.

I came across a Russian site which reposts fanart without crediting the original artists. Sadly, it seems in some cases the original art has been deleted.

Well in two weeks it seems that will learn more about Samurai Rabbit: The Usagi Chronicles. I sure hope the art style isn't ugly.

Well, my DVD of The Mandalorian arrived(produced by Warner Brothers according to the logo on the side). Some thoughts:

Apparently, Mandalorians are known for always wearing helmets. I've watched The Clone Wars and Rebels, and that sure wasn't the case there. I guess in the original films Bobba Fett always wore a helmet on screen, but I thought that was because he was on the job. Jango Fett wasn't wearing a helmet when he meets Obi-Wan on Kamino.

Seemingly freezing people in carbonite has become a common way for bounty hunters to transport their targets. I guess Bobba Fett told his buddies at the bounty hunting club. I thought it was a fairly dangerous procedure.

The Mandalorian kills quite a few Jawas. Thankfully they're not human looking enough (or cute enough) for this to count as murder.

I respect if for being earnest about it's subject matter. That and having a different set piece each week.

I've been doing some playtesting for a video game. Let's see: there was one mandatory puzzle, where the various elements randomly flipped between working correctly and not working. You have to hope you get the right combination to progress. Later the game crashed, and on restarting I found myself two missions back. And finally it glitched out, leaving me no way to progress. I had to restart the entire game....

From:

icon_uk

The Mandalorian helmet issue is addressed in season 2. It's a cultural thing depending on how you were raised, and Djin was raised by a group who are VERY zealous about it. To the extent that he's shocked when he see's... ah, but that would be a spoiler! :)

I think the first recorded case of Carbonite freezing is shown in "The Clone Wars" where Anakin has the idea to use it to infultrate a base undetected. I think it's viewed as risky, but very convenient for transporting troublesome prisoners (especially when you're a bounty hunter and aren't bothered because the contract is "dead or alive")

The Jawas had just stripped his ship and left him otherwise stranded on a desert planet, so I can see him being more than a little miffed, but yeah, not his finest moment. (If it helps, we do see that he has a much better relationship with Tusken's than most as he respects their land and culture)

Bringing the crack since December 2003

Mod Post: Off-Topic Tuesday

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