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Whew! does the NYT ever hate Biden. The way they take every opportunity in word choice and slant is disgusting, if it wasn't so disparing for me. The way they framed just the debate story, lordessa. https://www.nytimes.com/2024/05/15/us/politics/trump-biden-debate-june.html It's all about the dreadful state of Biden, his polling etc. Not a word about any chances the stinkin' heap might be taking to go on national tv live and pull the incoherent word spasms everywhere he 'talks' these day. So, what has his campaign got up to here -- I can't believe they are going to let him go be him. Of course there are the teleprompters. Or maybe he'll have surrogates like they've toted in for trial here this week. The judge is very POed about that, btw -- his way of getting around the gag orders against trashing in ugly ways the judge and the prosecution and the witnesses.

Yucky day -- one in an ongoing string of rain, maybe, rain of-on, rain spitting, rain it doesn't know. Neither warm nor chilly. Humid. And o so grey and dreary. So this might be a bit of cheer: shrimp, chili flakes, coconut rice; an orange, walnut, kale salad. Not a lot of effort either. That I don't care for shrimp is neither here nor there - Partner does. And I do like coconut rice. And the salad.

I think it looks good but this trailer shows a lot. I guess no-one who is interested in this is going in thinking omg spoilers though

Amad has as many G/A today as Antony does this season.

So does any of the clubs with the biggest fanbases, including Arsenal and Liverpool.

Theron is a pro and Hardy is a queen. Bet there was some amazing drama between those too. --- Watched the three episodes released thus far of Dark Matter last night [I haven't read the book] The premise is interesting though hardly novel, but the science... I almost wish they wouldn't bother with it if the best they got is this Quantum bullshit. Unsure how it's portrayed in the book but it's bad [almost laughably] as presented in show. Edgerton is great as the lead and his other self, I'm interested to see how the two Jasons diverge character wise. Braga and Connelly I could watch all day for various reasons, but Okeniyi feels horribly miscast as Leighton. Dude is carved from wood. Looks like it's going to open up come E04, so I'll continue and see if it goes anywhere [totes fine with me if this is more a character driven series]

Just for starters, what is covered by that blanket term, "Mexican Food," if speaking of authentic Mexican food, is a host of kinds of cooking and foods. Though the world eats tacos, tacos are a teeny fraction of what is, when speaking of foods from Mexico, a world class cuisine. There are so many variations too, of what most of the world knows as 'Mexican', right here in the USA. Each part of the Southwest from TX, to NM, AZ, CA, etc. has their own forms of "Mexican" too. These too are authentic, but quite different generally from menus in Mexico -- which has many states and cultural variations. I've eaten at what we were told were really good authentic Mexican restaurants in London -- NOPE! Not even, um, near. Of course the last time I ate in London, tbh, was 2018, I think. Yes. Mexican is my favorite cuisine. Spanish food is not world class. But, Mexican is, like French, Italian, Chinese.

I believe the rights also revert to the Tolkien Estate if they don't make something. So it's not just about tax write-offs.

Excellent. I think more people are going to give it a try now, knowing the story will continue. And if Bridgerton this week is anything to go by, everyone will do a re-watch in the week or two before season 2 starts.

Today renewal for second second season announced by Netflix. https://m.imdb.com/news/ni64589289/?ref_=nws_nwr_li

United do have a reputation for having a not insignificant number of fans who've never lived in Manchester.

Trust me, honey: fanfic does not get the sort of payday or time that ROP gets. Or got. Who knows what the future holds, with such hatred and accompanying campaigns to make people not watch and hate it. If it really was that unwatched, there is no reason for them to put up season 2, no matter how much they may have spent. That's why so many movies and shows -- that judging by the responses here and there -- never went up on the screens, whether films, tv or streaming. There's a GREAT tax write off for cancelation that is very profitable to the studios. https://news.bloombergtax.com/tax-insights-and-commentary/movie-tax-write-downs-help-studios-profit-at-publics-expense Between covid and the writers strike there was every reason to write off productions rather than release.

Presumably MAX=Warner provided a lot of funding to the Denis Villeneuve films -- so they are happy to fund this MAX prequel too? Anyway, Villeneuve Dune2 streams on MAX next Tuesday. So a goodly Dune repast through the prequel in the fall.

VAR controversy on cue. I know it’s Gordon so you just assume he’s dived but Amrabat has pretty clearly clipped his heels there no?

Since GRRM is well acquainted with Tolkien, I think we could mention it as a possible (but not definite) inspiration or homage.

I've just played Arkham Asylum again and am working my way through Arkham City. I've played these games before and every time I'm struck by how meticulously crafted they are. The attention to detail, the gameplay, the portrayal of the Batman world, the voice acting etc it all comes together to create what is, IMO, a perfect 10/10 game.

I met up with a friend and her family on May 4th. They were a bit late arriving because their 7 year old had to stop and get a photo with Chewbacca and a couple of R2s outside the Lego store, he was apparently thrilled by this. They said he knows Star Wars from playing the Lego Star Wars games. They were debating which film to show him first, my friend's husband thought he might be the right age to appreciate The Phantom Menace and he would probably think Jar Jar Binks was funny whereas my friend was very against that and thought it should be A New Hope. I can see both points of view.

Hmm... Marry Osha, she seems quite resourceful and ultimately caring or at least loyal. Bang Val, she's quite the beauty and... I don't know who else to choose. Kill Ygritte, because to tell the truth, I didn't really like her that much. Jealousy? Who said anything about that? Next, some interesting (I think) minor characters: Anguy the Archer, Alleras the Sphinx, Darkstar (Gerold Dayne) (There are so many more of these minor characters though. How does GRRM keep track of all of them and the story? It's incredible and crazily impressive.)

Teachers seem to generally be more alarmed at the idea of banning sex education for under 9s than the other connotations (since they note they don't exactly go around handing out "how to change your gender" leaflets in the first place). Puberty can kick in at around 9. A girl in my class at primary school - a Catholic primary school in the 1980s so ha ha ha on us knowing anything - started her puberty at 9 and it freaked the hell out of her because she didn't know what was going on. I didn't have any sex education of any kind until the first year of secondary school, although my parents had a fumbling go at explaining the birds and the bees a bit before then. Now working in Safeguarding, there's a common pattern of children suffering abuse not being able to recognise that abuse until they get into sex education and the parts of it about the age to be exploring that stuff and consent, and they abruptly realise something horrible has been happening to them and they can then report it. Pulling the age at which sex education can start upwards could actively stop some of that early abuse coming to light. I don't even think they expect any of this stuff to stick, it's just a last-minute thing they can do so Labour can reverse it and they can then paint them as weird sickos (despite the Tories having 14 years themselves to do something about it and they didn't, because they were actually listening to the experts up until recently).

Yeah, nowadays the Zelda canon is considerably less stable than, say, Doctor Who. Three timelines lmao But back then it was a pretty clear attempt to tell the legend in the backstory of LttP.

That was Gollum Beta. They totally redesigned and redid him for The Two Towers (Gollum Prime). In fact, they redid him again for Return of the King, to have something like twice as much detail and articulation, not to mention being able to shoot Serkis in-camera and replace him dynamically with the CG version, which was not possible on the original shoot. They were only able to do that for the pickups though.

I typed "Zelda canon" and "Zelda timeline" into Google and just got back a massive laughing face emoji. Still better than the time I typed in "Kingdom Hearts canon" and it was just a picture of the last admin of the Kingdom Hearts wiki with a gun to his head.

He was very briefly in thr first one; Frodo spied him in Moria

After Argillac cut the hands off that envoy there was no way this could end peacefully. Killing envoys is almost the same thing as guest right - there is a reason we let diplomats have immunity after all. And Aegon's counteroffer was decent too. It would basically give Stormlands "Dorne status", with Argillac more or less being the second or third most important lord in Westeros. I also very much question that Argella was his intended hier due to how fast the guards give her up. My gut tells me that she was not intended to inherit but to be married away. As for Argella herself, she should be happy that she got to keep her head after her rebellion. While I very much doubt the writing about Orys gentle treatment with her (it feels like propaganda) even the offer that she most likely got (ie "marry Orys or die") is too generous. She does, most certainly, not deserve Aegon's hand. If it had been me, I would have executed Argella and forced the Stormlords to swear fealty to me both as their king and as their Lord Paramount, and keep Storm's End and the Stormlands for myself, who de facto would stop existing, becoming part of the Crownlands. That would have solved many Targaryen problems down the line. Then I would have made Orys of House Baratheon Lord of Harrenhal and the new Lord Paramount of the Riverlands.

Yes, he’s meant to be Thufir Hawat. He became as useless as Tyrion.