Ran

Rest in peace, Jackie Mason. He was a fixture on TV and in films when I was a kid. I gather form obits I've seen now that he went from staunch Republican to Trumpist, but it doesn't change how funny he was. He won an Emmy for voicing Krusty's father, Rabbi Hyman Krustofski:

Mary Renault's wonderful first entry in her Theseus duology is on sale on Kindle at the US Amazon, priced at about $1. Works internationally, as I got it with VAT to supplement our paperback. The book is The King Must Die, and it is very, very, very good. Renault's prose is terrific, and her ability to present a remote and sometimes alien mindset is really remarkable -- Theseus sees things through a lens of superstition and tradition that leads to interesting choices. I'd recommend pretty much every other historical novel of hers, truth be told, but particularly her "trilogy" concerning Alexander the Great: Fire from Heaven, The Persian Boy, and Funeral Games.

I think Bantam only did 50k or so of AGoT as well. But their faith paid off, to say the least.

Hmm, this is a familiar tidbit... That was his UK advance that Ansible reported on. John Jarrold was on the losing side of the bidding there, but on the winning side for the US rights with Random House. At bare minimum RH paid at least as much as HarperCollins, and probably rather more since their rights would cover all territories outside of the UK and the Commonwealth.

That's how it looks in the show. There were leaked photos that match this thing exactly. Maybe they'll go with the idea that they look different in different places, or maybe the idea is that they CG in the gate barrier with all the vines and such which then vanishes when activated.

Yes, the 70s thing... aka drugs. Like Clapton, Bowie in his Thin White Duke phase was a cocaine fiend, and like Clapton later cited the heavy drug use at the time as a part of why he went off the deep end and said some of the things he did.

I'll try and look into this tomorrow or Friday. Not sure what the cause could be.

I recoiled at the idea of trying to tell countries whether they were allowed to bid or not. No one forces them to do so, after all, it all develops from an internal process of deciding to go for it or not. But the corruption issue is certainly something to consider... and as it happens, there are various metrics one could use not to say "No, your bid is not welcome", but rather to say, "Your bid will certainly be welcome, but you need to meet these metrics." Saying that countries need to score 50 or higher on the Corruption Perception Index, for example... though of course, China doesn't fit that at all, and they would have a crazy fit. Neither do Mexico or Turkey, to pick a couple other examples. Whereas Saudi, Qatar, the UAE and so on do. I doubt something like that would be adopted. What the IOC has done is it has changed the process to some degree, and has put a particular emphasis on sustainability -- of the Games itself, but also of wise use of resources by the hosts to make sure they will have long-lasting use. It may be a sop, but they have responded in recent years. Only time will tell how things will fall out.

More datamining gives hints to the new DLC: Beyond that, the alleged dataminer claims to have found information about the first paid expansion:

Pretty sure that the answer is no.

I wouldn't be surprised by a $13 million per episode budget. That said, given that the news story is from Alberta, Canada and quotes Canadian folks, I wonder if it might not be $13 million CAD, not USD. In USD, that'd be just over $10 million USD.

As dramatized in Frans Bengtsson's famous The Long Ships. An adventurous historical novel about a young Viking named Orm, it was adapted into a not-very-faithful film featuring Richard Widmark and Sidney Poitier that features the Andalusian setting.

GGK has noted that he has been informed by his publishers that all US e-book retailers should be carrying Under Heaven today for $1.99. Great deal for a great book, one of the best fantasy novels published in 2010.

GGK has noted that he has been informed by his publishers that all US e-book retailers should be carrying Under Heaven today for $1.99. Great deal for a great book, one of the best fantasy novels published in 2010.

I like wall-running and other mobility choices as options just because of the extra dimension and options they give. But it definitely puts design limitations, and you basically have to shape all designs towards it. Apex Legends ditched the wall-running that Titanfall had in part because it would compromise the design of buildings and areas in their battle royale. And in CP2077 news, CDPR's community manager responding to a question regarding the next version of CP2077: