Deadlines? What Deadlines?

Hobor Mallow literally wears a teleportation device on his wrist ffs. I don’t know why we’re getting so excited about this. 

8 minutes ago, Luzifer's right hand said:

I'm from Austria. It's local stuff.

Austria was one country that went kind of stupid for a while in relation to Covid iirc. Anti mask, low vaccination rates I think. 

3 hours ago, Luzifer's right hand said:

An open letter by a group of doctors has asked for masking in the health care sector again recently and it mentioned that a lot of doctors that support it prefer to stay anonymous.

Completely understandable as a prominent pro-vaccine/madking doctor commited suicide after constant death threats. Most prefer to remain silent nowadays as the police openly said in that case that she should just shut if she did not want death threats.

Jesus. I hadn’t heard this. Is there a link?

39 minutes ago, Ser Scot A Ellison said:

But what the fuck is it?

It’s a fucking tesseract. 

The vault totally vaporized Holt McCallany in episode 2 without him actually entering it. And Seldon has appeared a few times without the vault actually opening. Not to mention the null field. The capacity for the vault to affect the world outside it is established. 

I’m sorry. Are we doing spoiler tags or what are we doing?

At no point during Empire’s fisticuffs with General Riose did either Lee Pace or Ben Daniels strip down to a sleek, sweaty, rippling mass. 

0/10. All my thumbs: down. 

1 hour ago, Ran said:

The quite-literal deus ex machina of the Terminus story was less successful. Basically, the Vault can do anything as the plot requires, and that's sort of boring.

I was thinking, “deus ex machina” as well, but it really isn’t. It’s already been established that the vault is powerful, that people can enter the vault and survive, and that the interior of the vault can be manipulated to whatever it needs to be. It’s kind of a clever reveal. 

Gaal’s illusion; that kind of came out of nowhere. 

The most significant development is the Spacer liberation. That screws Empire big time. 

2 hours ago, Zorral said:

Women who are get pregnant may not agree with that.  A lot of women who are pregnant should not be, because of serious damage to the fetus, which damages the woman, even kills her.  So they have no choice about living on the planet since they are dead.

I get it. What they've done to reproductive rights in the US is shocking; and that was long before Dobbs. I still remember a story that was published in Slate years ago about a woman with a late term placental abruption. This was a baby that she intended on taking to term and she had to choose to terminate the pregnancy. She nearly died because there were no doctors on duty who were willing to perform the procedure. Not "able". "Willing". 

I'm not excusing this stuff as being benign or trivial. I'm just saying it could be much, much worse. 

On 9/13/2023 at 10:45 AM, Zorral said:

There is no need at all to be competent to be the above, and to break everything beyond repair, while committing endless, indescribable atrocities and cruelties.  They prove it, do it, every day.

Incompetent evil bastards overturn Roe v Wade and are then left poleaxed when they can't get an abortion ban passed in Kansas. Incompetent evil bastards fail at flipping razor thin margins in both houses of congress despite an administration with a mid-40's approval rating and gas north of $3.00/gallon.

Competent evil bastards figure out a way to nuke Tehran and then get their title changed from "Mr. President" to "Dictator for Life".

Still pretty terrible, but not "I don't want to live on this planet anymore" terrible. 

1 hour ago, Zorral said:

Color us not surprised.

Families of Sandy Hook victims have yet to see a dime from Alex Jones
Although documents show that Jones has a net worth of $14m, he's yet to make good on his court-ordered payments

https://www.salon.com/2023/09/14/families-of-sandy-hook-victims-have-yet-to-see-a-dime-from-alex-jones/

Put his ass in a supermax until he pays up. He can watch Brandon on his little Tee Vee until he get out. 

3 hours ago, Ran said:

He meant 50% higher than it currently was. In Australia (where he's from and the labor market he's discussing), it's at 3.7%, so he was suggesting 5.2-5.5% unemployment (and ~250k additional unemployed Australians).

My mistake.

Only 250k more unemployed? Oh, that's not so bad. 'Shouldn't result in too many deaths or too much extremist politics. 

The same proles who will be paying for the rest of their lives for bailing guys like this out back in 2009, they need to feel the pain so they can properly genuflect for the titans of capital that are generous enough to let them "not starve". 

I'm paraphrasing but that's the gist. I think Greenspan once said something similar. 

9 hours ago, Varysblackfyre321 said:

 

Holy fuck. He said this out loud? In front of the peoples?

If unemployment were to hit 50%, labor market dynamics would be the least of this guys grievances. His biggest problem would be his diminishing fuel gauge; as he's tearing across the wasteland; with General Humungus and his marauders in pursuit.

I don't care how he shot it; the epilogue of RotS is beautiful. One of the parts of the prequel trilogy that's unambiguously perfect. 

3 hours ago, Maithanet said:

Mitt Romney not seeking reelection for Senate.  I can't believe the Republican party is so dysfunctional that I'm actually sad about this.

There are some Democrats who should follow his lead, frankly. 

24 minutes ago, Werthead said:

Apparently (unaired episode "leak" so definitely a spoiler and also possibly bullshit:

  Reveal hidden contents

Chatham is a badass warrior who is Thrawn's right-hand man and bodyguard. Unclear if he was on the Chimera when it jumped or is native to the new galaxy.

I like my idea better.

Quote

Hayden has always been a decent actor. The other films he was in around Ep 2-3, he put in perfectly decent performances.

He was great in Shattered Glass. Jumper wasn't a particularly interesting film but he was pretty good in that too. 

8 hours ago, IlyaP said:

Two words, courtesy of Clerks 2: Manakin Skywalker.

That's a bit harsh. Hayden was fine. 

5 hours ago, Werthead said:

Ta-two-oine, Tatooine Two (2).

It wasn't a very good pun, to be fair.

Ah. You're more clever than I am today. 

-

Episode 5:

I'll start with the bad:

The pacing of some of those scenes is just excruciating. I don't know if they're stretching out the scenes to meet a runtime requirement or not, but the editing could be snappier.

Mary Elizabeth Winstead. I'm a fan. Unapologetically. I've liked her in everything I've seen her in. I even liked her in Birds of Prey, which isn't a movie that made much of an impression on me otherwise. But I don't like her in this.

Whatever she's going for with Sindula, I'm not feeling it. And it isn't just her. The performances in this show thus far have been somewhat lackluster; which is probably contributing to the pacing issues.

The good:

Regarding Winstead, when she said "the line" at the end of the episode, I got some chills. That's the stuff, man!

Production values: Yeah. Definitely. Live action Ghost? Yes. Purrgil? Yes. Yes. I'm assuming this was all soundstage or volume filming and I gotta say, that seaside cliff looked damn good. Some really impressive visuals. 

I loved the flashback sequences. I could be cynical and dismiss it as nostalgia bait, but there are ways of doing nostalgia that can't just be reduced to callbacks and easter eggs, and I think this is it. This is nostalgia done right. This is something I could watch without having any awareness of Clone Wars or Rebels and I'd be drawn to it. 

-

On balance, I liked this episode. The series itself is OK. Not great; not terrible. 

According to IMDB, Wes Chatham will appear in upcoming episodes. Great. Hopefully he'll be crewing the Rocinante... 

1 hour ago, LongRider said:

Now that this photo is on X he's most likely to be doxed and harassed.  Don't disagree with his sentiments though. 

They have to. Trump can be many things to his supporters; but he can't be the guy it's OK to flip him off to his face.

And... omygod... he's a corn fed white guy from Iowa? Is he wearing a ballcap? Jesus Christ does he drive an F-150?!?

And that's how the MAGA movement ends. The wave has crested my friends. If this goes unanswered, they're screwed. If they answer (the only way they know how), they screwed. This guy's a hero. An American hero.

And would you want to dox that guy? Look at the size of him!

11 minutes ago, Zorral said:

As others have observed:

 

Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY) summed up the day: “So let me get this straight: Republicans are threatening to remove their own Speaker, impeach the President, and shut down the government on September 30th—disrupting everyday people’s paychecks and general public operations. For what? I don’t think even they know.”

The center-right think tank American Action Forum’s vice president for economic policy, Gordon Gray, had an answer. Ever since the debt ceiling fight was resolved, he told Joan E. Greve of The Guardian, “there’s a big chunk of House Republicans who just want to break something. That’s just how some of these folks define governing. It’s how their constituents define success.”

Yup.

What Chomsky summed up years ago as an, "appeal to generalized rage". Also the appeal of "anti-government" propaganda. Also being intellectually bankrupt. 

Agree with them or not, there was a time when these people were actually serious. Some of them were pure fucking evil, but still capable of being sensible.

The current crowd would be biblically terrifying if they were actually competent. 

Wow.

2 hours ago, Werthead said:

Tatwooine?

What?

How much you wanna bet that they get to the neighboring galaxy and it looks just like Tatooine?

13 minutes ago, A Horse Named Stranger said:

You think MTG is crazy?!

I'll show you crazy.

 

Don't you ever again say Maggie is crazy.

See what I mean? 

Rush Limbaugh was a fucking god compared to these current idiots. Do you think 20 years from now there'll be a website dedicated to Obama's cocaine fuelled gay bender with Larry Sinclair in Gurnee, IL? 

Dinesh DeSouza interviewed this fucking idiot and it barely made a ripple. Their game is weak. 

9 hours ago, Veltigar said:

Well, Sisu rips off Wonder Woman and Tarantino's aesthetic...

The prologue of s2e9 sheds some new light on this scene in particular:

She should never have been able to do that. Did she do it just to see if she could?