Ran

Let me know if the 431 issue is fixed too.

All thanks to Sparks, she did some voodoo.

I'll try and tackle the 431 issue in the next day.

Apologies, folks. We're are trying to pinpoint an issue with high load on a server and are using Cloudflate's DDoS protection to try and filter traffic. We'll be taking it off tonight after I am home and can check a couple of things

Great timing by the new server. I know it is presently throwing a fit but I'm in an airport waiting to get on a flight and only have a phone. Trying to get some help from a third party to see if they can sort it for me.

I saw an interesting proposal that the only thing that really needs regulation is what share of energy AIs are allowed to consume in relation to all other non-AI use.

Written, directed by, and starring Viggo Mortensen, with Vicky Krieps (Phantom Thread) as co-lead: Seems pretty interesting.

Will try and look at that today. In the us for the next week, so limited access atm.

Maybe. I agree on Swayze, in roles like Dalton, Johnny Castle, and especially Bhodi he just exuded something ... hard to quantify. That said, Gyllenhaal doesn't even try. He gives an odd-ball performance, of a piece with the general oddness and off-kilter nature of the film. Where Swayze's Dalton was a warrior-philosopher, Gylenhaal's Dalton is something very different, a version of Dalton seen in a fun house mirror, the zen turned into weird cheerfulness, the warrior turned into equal parts comic and brutal.

The bright green one is obviously Moondancer, rather older and larger than intended, but then Baela is older as well, so that fits. I think that's Syrax we're seeing flying towards Harrenhal and past the Isle of Faces.

Sean Fennessey of The Ringer mentioned this film awhile back discussing noteworthy films he'd seen at festivals. He compared it to sort of watching a player in an MMO wander through a forest and just kill everything in sight, but obviously it's very much a work of horror:

Not seen the Point Break remake, but lets be honest, Bigelow's Point Break is a much better film than the original Road House. The latter is a cult classic, for good reasons, but it certainly could be remade in a way that could yield a better film (but one that will have to lose some of its essence in the process; see below). But the thing that makes the "cult" part of it -- the sheer over-the-top 80s-ness, the "I-don't-give-a-fuck"-ness of it, the Swayze-ness of it -- that stuff can't really be replicated. I sound like a broken record mentioning Sean T. Collins (he of the 365 essays on Road House), but he saw the film early and remarked that you can't really purposefully make a film as stupid as the OG Road House was at times these days, but you could quite purposefully make an odd one, and I think that holds. There's a real weirdness at the core of the film's depiction of Dalton, of the villains, of the whole conflict, everything, and that has to be deliberate. But I don't think it makes a better movie. The fight choreography, especially the way they blended VFX into the fights to get what looked like some truly real punches to the face in, was pretty good, but otherwise...

Just a note for folks using this thread to talk about the show, remember it is not marked spoilers, so all spoilers related to the shows should be hidden in spoiler tags. Feel free to make a spoilers-marked thread if you wish.

I knew they used the Volume for the causeway scenes, but honestly I thought that was a good use of it, and it worked for me. And of course I think it was an excellent thing to use for dragon flight scenes.

Watched the new Road House, directed by Doug Liman and starring Jake Gylenhaal as a very different take on the character of Dalton. I'd describe him as a slacker sociopath more than a philosophical bouncer, and in fact his performance kind of reminds me a little bit of Swayze's character in Point Break moreso than the original Road House Dalton, with a smattering of Gylenhaal's Lou Boom from Nightcrawler. Connor McGregor (who hit the "supplements" hard) is almost certainly getting a Razzie for his performance, but I admit there's one scene where you realize that he really means to be playing a complete nut and it's just so hilarious. I don't think this one is going to be a cult classic, but the fights were pretty interesting and Gyllenhaal was kind of charming in a goofy way. And, going back to Liman, Casey Neistat is a long-time friend of his and ended up doing a pretty interesting video leading up to the SXSW premiere. Lets just say that Liman and Amazon butted heads over the movie, and he's not afraid to be very voluble and explicit about the beef (and, ultimately, its resolution):

A Fire on the Deep and A Deepness in the Sky were mind-blowing works of science fiction. RIP, Vernor.

I was actually thinking about that aspect of the show. And about Exo-Squad, too, funnily enough. Yeah, the serialized nature of the stories (and of Gargoyles, although to a lesser extent as I recall) was the thing that set them apart from what came before.

Landslides loom large for Linda because this happened in her place of birth very shortly after her and her parents moved away. And that was a baby compared to the Shogun landslide. Biggest earthquake I've been present for was the 1989 Loma Prieta earthquake, which was a 6.9. I was just a kid, lying in bed watchin the start of Game 3 of the World Series (which by some coincidence was between San Francisco and Oakland, neighboring cities). The bed starting shaking a bit, and then more violently. I thought at first it was my brother playing a trick on me by hiding under the bed, because I had tried it on him relatively recently, but then I noticed everything else was shaking and things were falling off cabinets. I can't believe I ran down the stairs while it was happening, it was shaking so much. Power went out for at least a day or two, and my mother had me and my siblings (plus some neighbors' kids) sleep under a huge, heavy work table my dad (who was on deployment to Korea at the time -- IIRC, I was even recording the baseball game for him so he could watch it when he got back) had in the garage under the theory that it'd protect us if a bigger earthquake brought houses down. Not fun, but not as scary as it probably was for some of the adults -- it quickly turned into some strange sleepover for us kids. (The A's went on to sweep the Giants, the only World Series championship the 'Bash Brothers'-era A's would get.)

Google says that 14 of the 15 fighter groups had P-51s by the end of 1944, so they certainly weren't last. That said, within their group, they seem to have gotten them later than some, at least. One of the things I learned from the video above, though, is that there really weren't all that many Mustangs to go around to begin with. The March 6 raid had slightly over 100 of them, total.

Finally watched Ferrari on Amazon Prime. It's mid-tier Michael Mann, but that means there's still some really excellent stuff. Penélope Cruz is particularly really good as Enzo Ferrari's long-suffering wife, rendered bitter by losses she's suffered and humiliations she's enduring. Adam Driver is not very much like Enzo Ferrari, but he has real presence on the screen and conveys the ruthless single-mindedness of Enzo really well. Shailene Woodley as his mistress (that's who @Relic mentioned awhile ago) was definitely not the best casting choice, she felt pretty weightless, but otherwise it's a good cast. The only downside is that they really pushed the budget on shooting on location and recreating some of the races, so the VFX is sometimes quite poor, which is a shame when Mann's such a meticulous craftsman.

Ten in total. This past episode was the 5th. I suppose it is bingable but I'm liking it at this pace.

*Shakes Magic 8-Ball* YOU MAY RELY ON IT

I can't find any evidence that they were flying escorts to Berlin on March 6. In fact, an amateur enthusiast who volunteers at his local aviation museum with a focus on WW2 Bombers posted a historical document listing all the fighter groups involved in the operation in the course of a video he made pointing out historical inaccuracies: No 332nd involved. In comments, people make the assumption that budgetary constraints led then to just use their Red Tail model for that close-up sweep because it was the most detailed model they had since they were featuring in the next episode. ETA: Ooooh. Came across an interesting detail when digging further: So they wouldn't even be flying P-51s for the March 6 bombing raid. Obviously, they're so famously associated with it (alas, P-38 Lightning never gets any love) that I'm not surprised if the show went a bit ahistorical. A lot of people feel the VFX budget was stretched to the limit, so I suppose they cut corners where they could.

(Basically, no, though there are points where they start getting everything together more smoothly and things are not quite as tense. But they still shout to make sure everyone hears.)

Rewatched in 4k that moment to get more detail, and you're right, that looks like they reused a Red Tails model even though the next episode establishes they've been operating in Italy. The only thing that gave me pause was a small dark blob of color on the forward part of the tail... but then I looked quickly at some material from the next episode (at the 37 mark, I'm linking a couple of seconds earlier) and you can actually see that the flight leader's plane has that very square of black on it. So either they mistakingly used that model, because the VFX people thought the 332nd was there, or they just decided not to bother dressing another model and just reused what they had made for the 332nd.