polishgenius

I can only imagine he was trying too hard to be impartial and that's why he left Martinez and McTominay out.

Clarke didn't spend pages describing the scientific details of the alien technology in 2001 though. Possibly he did in Childhood's end, I haven't read that book for decades (I think I've read it?), but generally in my experience when Clarke gets into the nitty gritty detail it's either real things or pure description (as in Rama, where he spends loads of time describing Rama but basically none speculating on the science beyond where it was relevant and understandable to the human crew).

I never liked Asimov anyway (not because of that, I just don't like his prose), but Clarke? Not really. Sure, not everything in his books was nailed-down scientific fact and some of it turned out to be bunkum, but if he ever got into the weeds it was via a progression that made sense (at least to me), and didn't contradict stuff we know to be true. Or (as in 2001) he did just go 'hey it's basically magic' and not go into it much. The parts that bothered me in TBP were detailed explanations of things that not just weren't realistic but my brain was yelling were wrong. The pages of explanation for the solar reflection was the big one I still remember, but there were others, they just didn't stick in my brain, I'd have to reread it. That's to a large extent a personal issue- a lot of readers are either gonna not notice when TBP is making stuff up or, because it's definitely been enjoyed by people with far more physics knowledge than me, notice but not care. Apparently some people find it the reverse- by mixing in the made-up stuff with real stuff in the same way it makes it more plausible. I might also just be wrong. If scientists ever discover that you can amplify signals by bouncing them off the sun I'm gonna feel very silly aren't I.

But those weren't the only two options. They were just the only options on the table once Paul made the knowing decision to manipulate the Fremen. The jihad isn't the inevitable result of Fremen freedom - it's the inevitable result of achieving that freedom via Paul's manipulation of their beliefs.

Didn't realise this was a court of law. In any case I could possibly have used 'silly' rather than 'dumb' to indicate that in this instance, at least broadly, I don't necessarily mean in as a negative (I have genuine negative issues with TBP of course, but the big ones aren't related to this). It has its serious aspects but the sciency parts of the story are goofy as hell. That's fine, I like lots of goofy things. Anyway what I'm basically saying is that the book spends ages setting up certain moments with jargony explanations. Some of those did irritate me because they were such obvious nonsense being presented in the same manner that a hard SF writer would present real theories etc, but even setting that aside, the show won't need to do that because it's way easier to set things like that up visually. It won't be a betrayal of the book if the show has a lot of time for those set-pieces, which the book loves.

I don't think you realise how badly we lack depth. Having someone who's apparently a high-prem-level-at-least player in four positions at once would be a fucking lifesaver.

The book is a big, dumb, set-piece heavy SF epic, isn't it a bit weird to be pre-emptively slating the Netflix version on the suspicion that it might be... well, loyal to the book in that sense?

I'm not even sure what position we'd play him in primarily but if we don't sign Mo Kudus off West Ham in summer I will be very cross.

Fuck me The Crow looks absolutely terrible. I'm not against re-adaptations, even if the original version was good- you can get some really interesting things out of a second take on the same vision. But that? They might as well have gotten JJ Abrams to direct it. Absolute hackery.

Yeah I think BFC is conflating that instance (they didn't get relegated for another few years, after Southgate took over and oversaw a long slow decline that they still haven't recovered from), with Boro reaching the League and FA Cup final and getting relegated in '97. Did Leicester also go down that year despite the league cup final? Can't remember. Just remember that Muzzy Izzet was a don. In other news: fuck you, FIFA

This is a couple weeks old, but I remember there were a few people here who were interested in the how of Gareth Edwards filmed Creator. Turns out it was way closer to the guerilla way he filmed Monsters than I could have suspected. The fact that not a single mo-cap suit was involved is mental. There's also a follow-up ep about his other projects, not watched that yet though.

Yeah, what Consigliere says. It's true that he often doesn't track back but that's because he's being told not to. It's a big reason ETH was pushing Antony for so long. He does track back (usually, unless his head melts which does happen) and generally gets involved in the middle third so we'd play a lopsided formation where Antony covers more on the right so the midfield can focus on covering the left side. With Garnacho it's a little more traditional. I mean it's possible. But Cole Palmer has walked in and been excellent- it's not impossible. More to the point, there are some things that are attributable to the managerial situation but not being able to trap the ball isn't one of them.

Mudryk is not tactically clever and he's got a terrible first touch. You can coach around the former (and he's still got time to learn it to some extent, though you'd have hoped to see some game awareness by now) and you can play to avoid situations where he has to stop the ball dead, but both those factors limit him and probably always will. As he is now he wouldn't start for Burnley, and I say that in the literal sense that Wilson Odobert is much better than he is. The only real bright spot in terms of his usefulness for Chelsea is that he's one of their few players who isn't soft. Buying Rashford for 80mil would obviously be madness from PSG but at the same time even this season (well, especially this season) he's been a lot more useful than his goal count shows and I wouldn't want to sell him. He scares the living shit out of defences, even if it's not going in for him. Which is new, because before this season if it wasn't going in for him nothing was happening for him at all. In any case if we had other players who do that it would be one thing but we don't (Garnacho kind of does, but he doesn't drag everyone out of position the way Rashford does, they don't respond to him the same way). Plus him and Hojlund look to be building a good partnership.

I've never seen a more cowardly man. He's absolutely pathetic. Just an absolute wetwipe of a person.

This is preposterous, yet at the same time the Mail printing a denial that William missing a memorial service for had nothing to do with Kingston's death, when as far as I can tell nobody had thought that it did, is perfect grist for the rumour mill.

Obviously if you don't like the graphics you don't like them- although I don't think it's true that liking old graphics has to be just a nostalgia thing. But in terms of the clunky interfaces etc, I would say this is generally less of an issue with JRPGs than other genres. Also a lot of old JRPGs are getting full graphical remakes and updates that aren't 3-part complete reworkings of the story. Star Ocean 2 got one recently that I wanna play, although it's gonna be a while since I have several JRPGs already in the backlog, including 3 I've started. Should really take advantage of my current holiday to dig into one of them properly. Sea of Stars, Live A Live (a remake as well) and Chained Echoes, one of them. But I'm not because Haiku the Robot- a little metroidvania that looks like an obvious Hollow Knight tribute act in its sword-bouncing action and 'ruined world' premise but actually has equally much in common with Metroid once the movement options start getting unlocked- was on sale. It's neat. eta: also, I'm fully expecting Chrono Trigger to get a 2DHD remake within the year- to launch alongside Switch 2.

Chef's kiss stuff this

To be fair, they let Prince Andrew do the interview.

The Sandman TV show rocks. As good an adaptation as GoTs early seasons. Definitely a harder story to jump mediums with but it did it with aplomb

I think Ukraine should just send a battalion or two to take Moscow, hold the city hostage. With the capital in their grasp Russia will have no choice but to withdraw from Ukraine. Simple.

This is obviously true, but it's also fair to say that when you're releasing a photo as a PR exercise, in part to prove that the person in it is okay, it turning out like this is a colossal fuckup.

Yes. Because in the last season especially they were completely open about deliberately rushing it to get it out the way. A bungle with full effort and enthusiasm is one thing, but they bungled it because they wanted to wrap up and go onto the next thing. It was just disrespectful to the fans, to the work, to the actors... bad look. I don't think that's gonna come up here though. Certainly not in the first season. Maybe if they decide later that they're bored and wanna do something else, but I think Netflix will likely learn the lessons of HBO and either hold them to making the full season or swapping them out for someone else. They did also bungle a lot before that because they were flying bookless, admittedly, but that also won't be an issue here because the series is complete. They did a good job adapting asoiaf while they were adapting, improving on the books in some ways even. They won't be running out of ski-slope here, so they won't need to be off-piste. I think they'll be fine. On the other hand adapting a book that's already really good is different than adapting one that's kind of not. So we'll see how they handle tightening up the things that need tightening etc. It might also depend on who's in the writer's room and how they handle it, because iirc there was some emptying of the writer's room on GoT as it went along? We already know they're not gonna remove my biggest issue with the first book, but then that would be hard because it's the driving force of the plot for much of it. Can't really blame them for not cutting that.

If this was the impression Villeneuve was trying to give there's no way he'd have ended on a shot of her. He gave Chani leaving more prominence than the start of the Jihad ffs.

Yeah that's more what we were expecting from a novice boxer fighting one of the best in the world. Also Zhang totally ran out of gas and Rey Vargas went from looking handy early to being manhandled and bullied by a man at least eight inches shorter than him. A draw is probably not totally unfair but Nick Ball can feel hard done-by. Israil Madrimov is really cool.