horangi

Totally! I know the show is going for the rogues fighting against 'the man' vibe sorta like the A-Team, so I wouldn't expect them to be working within the bounds of the law. But he comes off as more of an anarchist that disdains the rule of law in favor of might makes right. On how he survived the military- hard to believe he'd have lasted a week: Overall, he comes across as wish fulfillment for a high school bully who thinks they are truly the victim in life. He'd make a good libertarian for sure.

Speaking from my SO's exerience in science, ChatGPT has allowed experimental scientists to also be computational scientists. While its not going to going to replace the best computational folks, its already at the state that it creates better scripts than your mediocre folks at virtually no cost in money or time. I suspect its going to be the same for a lot of mediums from art to literature to clerical work. I suspect that AI could actually do a better job than the 'average' TV show produced by humans today.

Binged the Boche/Boche:Legacy series over the last couple months. Overall, better than most detective series if not on the same level as The Wire or The Shield (despite having so many of the same actors.) First couple seasons seemed to be overly used crime stories but fun. Middle seasons really hit their stride, though at least binging, seemed to have to too much tragedy surrounding the central characters. I'd like more stories that didn't involve the protagonists constantly battling their inner demons or character flaws- the interpersonal drama and exploring feelings gets in the way of the crime solving! The two Legacy seasons I think have been my least favorite: One thing that was interesting was the level of real-world products/commercial buildings/names filmed in the series. I know some of it is product placement (Fat Tire, In-N-Out) but there are a lot of other shots that I am not so sure (e.g. there is an ad for Andor very briefly shown in the latest season, lots of large banks and corporations, and Feinstein is name dropped in an unflattering way). Which made me ask the question- is there anything actually dicey for a movie/show to have real world products/names or is it just the desire to collect additional ad revenue that leads to generations of films having people drinking from generic-'beer' bottles and eating 'chips' brand potato chips instead of using what they can get off the shelf for a buck? After wrapping that up, I started up on Reacher Season 2, and while Boche often had some creative license, good lord does this season stretch the suspension of belief! In the first three episodes we've had:

What do you want to bet that on reconstitution a number of oligarchs will have perfect tax payment history and due major refunds while the government will 'discover' that many Kremlin critics haven't paid taxes in decades.

I was glad it was called since my main competitor in Fantasy has Kelce, but I would have liked to have seen how they scored it in fantasy. I guess receiving yards for Kelce and then rushing yards and TD for Toney? I cant remember if a backward pass past the scrimmage line counts as a pass or a rush.

What got me was that I've thought the league had been doing a 'better' job this year with throwing late flags when something egregious was missed or conferencing and picking up flags when there really wasn't a foul. I really wish they'd just allow for a booth review on all PI and personal fouls. In most cases it wouldn't add any time since they are flagrant. For those times where its close, whats wrong with an extra 10 seconds to get it right?

...And the nightmare CFP scenario is activated!

The Vinho Verde embargo is starting to hit the Kremlin hard.

*This*- I haven't been paying much attention to college ball in years because my teams haven't been competitive. However, with UW in the running, I've watched a lot more games of late, and its been ridiculous how many TV time outs there have been. Maybe because the NFL is much more predictable (turn overs, injuries, quarters, two minute warnings), that the timeout seemed just egregious in college ball. It also seems the actual commercial breaks are longer in college ball.

I do feel these articles tend to use the luxury yachts and private airplanes as a bit of a red herring when they are lumped in with the investments and as a result shield the users of the companies' products. The article notes about halfway in that the CO2 produced by all that flashy stuff is dwarfed by the companies that they own. I use Amazon Prime delivery nearly every day, how convenient would it be to credit Bezos for all the CO2 produced by his company's cargo airplanes and delivery vans.

I'd suggest caution on this one and have someone who can understand Hebrew to check the translation. Those lyrics seem over the top even for someone that had the intent to commit the crimes mentioned in the sub titles.

Indeed, nor is it a war that can be truly lost or truly won. Short of bioengineering our species, we are always going to be fighting our demons that favor authoritarianism and tribalism. I'm more optimistic about the future, it appears, then most on this board, but even if there are darker days to come, it means more battles to be fought.

Is there a particular issue that has you fed up? Biden was my third from last choice in 2020 (ahead of Harris and Sanders), but I think he's done a fairly good job given the cards dealt. Yes, I wish we had someone younger, but frankly 'we' voted him in as the candidate, he wasn't foisted on us. I ask myself the questions: Does the person surround themselves with good advisors and do they listen to them? Generally in Biden's case, it seems to be true. Essentially, vote for the positions and competence of the administration, not for the man. Yes, the inflation of the last couple years was no fun, but was even less fun just about everywhere else in the world. Yes the collapse of Afghanistan was hugely disappointing, but the speed of the collapse suggests that the choice was either that or maintaining a forever war. Sure, the Ukraine invasion sucks, but the administration has done a good job supporting a country everyone expected to collapse in a week's time and inflicted probably the largest strategic defeat of a hostile major power since WWII all without kicking off WWIII. The Gaza situation is terrible, but it appears the only moderation there has been has been a result of the Biden administration's efforts. I know its unrealistic to expect the public to vote based on policy rather then from their hearts, as DMC would no doubt point out were he here. However, it would be nice if people could point of the politically viable alternative choices that would have prevented or further mitigated these issues. The House is a dysfunctional mess, so any fixes requiring legislation are not going to happen and even in the first two years, the Senate was on a razor and was not going to take bold steps. I am actually amazed at just how much was accomplished- the infrastructure bill can be pointed to as a reason why the US economy is in such 'not terrible' shape. Essentially, the world is a mess, and while there are choices to nit-pick with hindsight, I suspect that this is what 'good' looks like, as disheartening as it feels.

So does UW finally jump over Florida State in the rankings with 4 (currently) ranked wins vs 1 or does FSU get a freebie out of pity for losing their QB and then beating a mid-major?

You know what's even worse then smoking? That scene from Lord of the Rings when Denethor lights up a blunt during that extra hour caused by the day light's savings switch.

I wouldn't write them off yet. Browning looked pretty good to me coming in cold and with his first 'start' in the NFL. He scampered well and several of the missed passes were dropped or the DB did a good job defending them. He also didnt seem to deflate when the score was getting out of hand, unlike the defense.

I shall remember to shed a tear for Disney's pitiful situation.

Batman comes to mind with the Tim Burton movies followed by oodles of absolute dreck and then the Dark Knight series (and the latest Batman wasn't bad).

Really? I think I must be missing something, because it seems the caves I've seen are tiny two level ~doughnut shaped areas of one of four themes (standard dark boring, crystal latices, glowing fungus, or xenomorph themed) and contain a few resources and corpses of local planetary fauna and a single tiny box with credits. I've been expecting to find pirate bases, ancient alien ruins, actual xenomorphs or just something that takes longer then 15 seconds to scoop up resources and head out. Some are a bit prettier than the old Skyrim caves, but there just isnt anything to do in them. Are they procedurally generated unlike the human structures which I assume were hand crafted but then randomly distributed across the planets? [These are minor complaints for a game that overall is quite good, more ambitious, and certainly less bug filled at release]

Yeah, I hear you. I've been lucky enough to have players that have also been DMs, so when some person suggests going off on a truly tough to reconcile tangent, they pull them back into the scope of the campaign.

OK yeah, that is quite a short section, you should be fine.

Are you playing in person or online? One thing I found is that it actually takes a lot longer to run through campaign sections then I expect when creating it, especially if you are doing a lot of improv as characters explore their environment. On the plus side it means your content goes farther. Battles particularly can take an hour+ depending on how much the players consider their options. That has led to me dropping a lot of the scrub battles out (which the official adventures seem to love) and go for one or two more curated thematic battles a session.

Quite impressive looking. I like that they didn't edit out the glitches (or at least not all of them) such as the people walking through the raging fire or janky physics. The age old question is, will the real game be able to pull it off like that and how generic does the procedural generation end up being. NMS in all of its innovation still gets to be pretty repetitive once you've seen the same monolith over and over. Similarly, I'm only on level 20 in Starfield but have already cleared out like 4 abandoned UC Comms stations with identical layouts.

Matt Mercer's "you can certainly try!" is a good approach. This just sounds like a DM with poor improv skills. In the games I've run, I try and reward creative solutions even when it can sometimes spoil some of the pre-planning (though rarely in such a way that you can't get back on track.) Sure, if a level one monk says he is going to levitate to the top of a tower using his willpower alone, I'm going to respond back that he has collected some curious glances from nearby strangers who are witnessing a monk standing in the street, eyes closed, and veins bulging on their forehead. Most of the scenarios you mentioned though should have been 'run with it' opportunities.

I've been enjoying Starfield overall and agree with others its more about the variety of options even if if the fast travel does break up the immersion a bit. I have had a few laughs how the romance scenarios have played out with my paramour generally deciding to flirt at the worst time. I finally got a prompt to get married after killing off 3 waves of Spacers, wading through sprayed blood and corpses only to be told I am the truest of loves... Oh and by the way, what are the ethics involved in using the precog power when going through the romance dialogues?