DaveSumm

20 hours ago, sifth said:

I mean just watch the 90's show. It's easily one of the best American animated shows ever made. It's right up there with Batman the Animated series.

Eh, right now the concept of ‘this show you’re not digging but worse animation’ isn’t really doing it for me. I think in the scheme of how comic book-y stuff can be, this is just a bit too comic book-y for me. Each to their own, I just thought they might split the difference in tone to bring it more in line with the MCU. 

Gotta say, as a huge MCU fan but one who never watched the X-Men cartoon, I have no fucking clue what’s going on with 97. I watched a recap of the original series, and wasn’t gonna bother with 97 but then constantly see people tripping over each other on reddit to praise it. It’s … alright? I’m sure it’d be exciting to see a sequel to something you knew and loved, but with better animation and writing. But for a new watcher, it’s just all over the place. I had to look up what this was Part II of, cos I assumed it was an old episode … but nah, it’s two episodes ago. But it’s in space now, and who the fuck are these people. 

I’ll probably stick it out seeing as I’ve made it this far, and I could see them tying this into What If? or maybe throwing some references into Deadpool and Wolverine. But this feels squarely aimed at old fans and nothing more, I’m getting very little out of it.

8 hours ago, Heartofice said:

I don't agree it wouldn't have stood out. I think if Quantumania was in phase 1  or 2, we might not be looking at an MCU.

Well Phase 2 had Thor: The Dark World which I think is way worse than Quantumania. Probably the worst villain we’ve seen vs probably the best. Neither the ‘warriors three’ nor the Darcy-Selvig-Foster combos have an ounce of chemistry in sight. Thor and Loki are the best things in it and it’s neither of their best films. 

Maybe I’ll be more down on QM when I rewatch it, I’ve only seen it once. And to be fair you’re right, the shrinking stuff was fun in the first 2 which is absent here.

I really don’t get the disdain Quantumania gets. I swear if you put it in Phase 3 everyone would’ve given it a pass. It’s not great, but I think it’s better than AMatW, at least. It feels more coherent than The Marvels to me, it broadly executed the idea it set out to do. 

14 hours ago, Werthead said:

The Fermi paradox has never been updated to account for some of these things, like the hot Jupiter problem, and if it was it would drop the number of civilisations you'd expect to develop in any average-sized galaxy to a tiny fraction of the current number (20,000 IIRC).

Intelligent civilisations? And is the 20,000 the current number or the tiny fraction of the current number?

Either way, at a number that small I don’t find it remotely difficult to imagine that none of them end up covering the galaxy in probes. There’s so many hurdles to clear; would other species want to do that, would they have that same curiosity and drive to do something they’d never witness the fruits of? Would they know how? Is it even possible? Would they be sure enough to know it’s a good idea? I mean what if it’s successful, and every solar system has their very own probe parked up waiting for a civilisation to evolve to the point they could examine it? Is that a good thing? What does it do to their culture? 

33 minutes ago, Derfel Cadarn said:

I’ve no idea what my insurance is… I passed my test 4 years ago (the Monday before Lockdown 1). My wife added me to hers, and checks the comparison sites every year

I added my wife to mine, she doesn’t even drive and the rate plummeted. Now I just get joined insurance every year purely for the discount.

3 hours ago, polishgenius said:

Anyway yeah I am still of the opinion that the 'paradox' part of Fermi Paradox annoys me because it isn't one. There's no logical breakdown in life having not found us yet- we just don't have all the information we need to know why it hasn't.  

Whole heartedly agree with the first part, I’ve never grasped what’s paradoxical about all this. But not sure I agree with the second; we know quite a lot about why we wouldn’t have heard from aliens. The light speed limit is very likely the hard speed limit for the universe. We know it’d take an immense amount of energy to transmit any signal loudly enough for anyone to reasonable hear, even assuming you pointed it in the right direction.

It is fundamentally not surprising that we have not detected signs of alien life, and it’s bizarre that people suggest otherwise given that we don’t even have a workable theory of how they would do that. My depressing conclusion is that aliens pretty much definitely exist, and we will pretty much definitely never find out.

I started rewatching the MCU recently, I’d taken a long break and figured it was time. It’s really weird how people say it’s too much work to keep up with Phase 4 and 5, when actually the opposite is true; continuity was much more of a thing back in the beginning. It’s what it’s missing now IMO, some bonafide consequences and shake ups for the whole universe. Moments that, both in and out universe, make people think “OK this changes things”.

Phase 1 is full of tie ins to other stuff, and it goes out of its way to flex that it’s part of a universe. Then Avengers basically reveals to the world that aliens are a thing, which is pretty huge. Phase 2 presses home this change, with every film referencing that the world is a different place after NY. Then Winter Soldier casually wipes out S.H.I.E.L.D, up to now the glue that’s been holding everything else together. Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D obviously had to pivot hard after that, then Ultron basically ruins Stark’s whole vision of how he wanted to protect the Earth. Then with Thanos rumbling in the background, oh SHIT the Avengers just broke up… oh and now Asgard just blew up. Fuck. Then the snap speaks for itself obviously. Pretty shocking that they did it, but nothing compared to the fact that they had to live with it for five years. 

Each phase has a distinctly different status quo that informs the films in it. And there’s where the multiverse saga falls down; Loki was pretty good, but it takes place in a weird pocket of time. How much does it affect Earth 616, on the ground in the present? It doesn’t. Neither do any of the Disney+ shows. Black Widow? Nope, set in the past. Eternals leaves a corpse they famously don’t reference, which again, doesn’t actually change much. Even Kang’s existence and the existence of a multiverse isn’t actually a pivotal thing; the audience learns of them, but they were always there. F4? Different universe. X-Men? Probably a different universe. Nothing consequential seems to happen anymore. 

Which is all a long winded way of saying the multiverse works for some stories, but as a way of moving the entire franchise along I don’t think it works. It’s all too abstract, and they really need to remind audiences what’s actually going on in the universe they built - like, telling us who the Avengers are or if there even is a team right now or have someone mention this as a problem would be nice. It’d lay the ground for Thunderbolts and Young Avengers much better if this was in response to a lack of actual Avengers.

1 hour ago, Spockydog said:

So Kate has cancer.

Why the fuck didn't they just say so. Prats.

Apparently it was timed so that her kids could break up from school before the announcement. Which makes sense.

It seems obvious now in hindsight of course, she had an operation and then wasn’t paraded around so we can all gawp at her and decide for ourselves if she’s OK. There was no answer to ‘what’s going on’ that wouldn’t make all the conspiracies look insensitive. I feel bad for her, she can’t even get cancer without the whole fucking country getting involved.

Wouldn’t there be a ton of phone footage / pictures if “W&K” (as Kevin Pietersen calls them) just randomly popped down the farm shop? 

Also, anyone else struggle to read W&K as anything other than ‘wank’…

14 hours ago, Heartofice said:

I’ve tried watching the movie 3 times, and I switched it off. I just don’t get the joke, the vampire thing doesn’t work for me.

Plus, Thor Ragnarok is one of my favourite Marvel movies, I used to be obsessed by Flight of the Conchords so NZ humour should appeal to me. Eagle vs Shark is something I used to force people to watch. By rights Shadows should be right up my alley, but I just don’t find the central concept funny, it feels all rather limited. The only part I found interesting was the concept of an Energy Vampire. 

This is all exactly me; find Waititi funny, like his other films, normally love this sort of comedy. I was mildly entertained by the film, not enough to bother with the series.

As far as comedy goes (and I guess it’s a sitcom? Even though it’s animated?) still The Simpsons; just blows my mind how strong their first 8 years were. Season 3 onwards they churned out nothing but classics for 6 years. I don’t know of any other show that’s sustained that level for that many episodes.

Also I think it was mentioned a while back but I rewatched Malcolm in the Middle recently, the first few seasons are outstanding. It gradually tails off into averageness after a while, but like Friends I don’t think it ever got really painful (like The Simpsons obviously did … twenty five seasons ago).

It was a flippant point, I know it’s not good comparing authors in such a way. I was just staggered how much an author could cram in while another works on the same novel for 13 years. 

I also usually defend Sanderson at these junctures, purely because I held off on reading him for years because of comments like the previous ones and assumed he churned out any old garbage. But he really doesn’t, no he hasn’t written anything as good as aSoIaF at its best, far from it. But he’s written some excellent books, many far more focused and better paced than Feast and Dance. And he’s built a hell of a shared universe in the Cosmere.

Ice and Fire is better, but it’s not “oh I reckon he takes 13 times longer to write one of these” better.

I think it’d be up there as far as ‘sitcoms with a studio audience’ goes. That’s kind of broad by definition, I can’t think of any higher brow comedies filmed with a laugh track that way.

It seems there’s a Secret Project 5… because why not I guess.

Someone in the comments has listed all the books Sanderson has written since GRRM put out A Dance With Dragons and there’s THIRTY THREE BOOKS on that list. More words than GRRMs entire career apparently.

1 hour ago, Mladen said:

The pinnacle of the series was Chandler v Phoebe and the famous "They don't know we know they know." That one was hilarious. 

It was an impressive piece of writing that that actually made sense within the episode, I think it got as far as “they don’t know we know they know we know”.

I agree with someone a few pages back, Friends deserved to be as popular as it was. Yea it dipped in the later seasons, but even then I don’t think it had any really embarrassing “oh god why are they still making this” episodes.

This has nothing to do with anything really, but it’s so weird hearing people talk about them not being clear whether Rachel is Jewish. Is there a reason they should be? Should she be Jewish? Are they clear about Chandler not being Jewish? It reminds me of Bob Mortimer’s tweets from a while back;

Quote

I wonder if Matt Damon likes orange Calippos… you just can’t tell from his acting, very frustrating 

Genuinely not trying to weigh in to any side of an argument, I think it’s just the UK / US thing again. It just doesn’t occur to people in the UK to ask these questions.

What’s the lottery accusation exactly? I’ve seen those later ones less than the others, but aren’t all 6 friends caught up in the fervour of a big lottery win? Does Ross act especially cheaply there compared to the other 5?

8 hours ago, DMC said:

Yeah that episode was about Monica/Chandler/Ross making more money than Rachel/Phoebe/Joey.  If you don't get Ross is cheap, you haven't been watching the series.  Hell, after he breaks up with Mona he breaks into her apartment and when she asks if she can keep his shirt he says no.

I honestly did not mean to start political shit.  Frankly, I assumed it'd be obvious to all across the political spectrum.  Unfortunately, we still have people that can't recognize antisemitism when it's put right in front of their faces.  Or deny as such for political purposes.

So, whatever man.  It's a sad person that can't at least acknowledge the stereotypes depicted in Friends.  It's not an indictment on the show -- and people (including myself) can and did identify it at the time.  The only part of this that's "woke" is you whining about it.

I don’t really want to go off on such a weird tangent, but I’m not sure why you’ve gone so over the top on the defensive here…? Was I denying for political purposes? Did I accuse anyone or anything of wokeness? Did I whine about it? I think you invented a post somewhere after my actual one.

As it stands I think the multiple examples that have been posted of Ross spending money (a symptom of the FAR more prevalent and FAR better documented issue that they all have crazy amounts of money for people who live in comfortable Manhattan apartments) against your “he kept a shirt that one time” speaks for itself. 

1 hour ago, BigFatCoward said:

Google only finds me one example of ross being depicted as cheap in the show, when he 'steals' loads of freebies from a hotel, its quite the leap to get from that to being depicted as miserly as a sterotype, we all steal hotel shit right?

Yea I found the same one. The only other thing I can think of is where he doesn’t want to chip in for the gift for the departing janitor of his new apartment block.

I think Ross being ‘cheap’ is a stretch (in fact, he was one of the three who was not cheap in that single episode where their finances were relevant). He likes the thought of a low yield bond because he’s a dork, same way he likes to kick back with a puzzle and gets excited that his daughter‘s first word might mean she’s a scientist. He also bought Joey a ceramic dog for no particularly good reason.

I haven’t really heard of Monica’s compulsiveness being a Jewish thing, but then as we’re noticing here, Jewish people exist in a very different cultural space when comparing UK to US.

42 minutes ago, IlyaP said:

Chandler Bing was something of an avatar of familiarity for me and my brother in high school. His awkwardness, emotional uncertainty, insecurities - man, it all spoke to us something fierce. Can still do a pretty decent impression of him if asked.

It’s difficult to overstate how influential Matthew Perry was as a comic actor, Chandler’s sarcasm bled into everything in the 90s and beyond.

It seems popular on Reddit these days to dunk on Friends and say it was terrible, but man that thing was a juggernaut in its day. It was huge. Like most people my age I’ve seen them all about 50 times and could probably write out the sheet music for the theme from memory (in fact the actual song sounds weirdly slowed down and un-processed now). 

It was weird how this caught fire in the UK but stuff like Seinfeld and Everybody Loves Raymond never made a dent, they rarely got a better slot than Saturday mornings before most people were out of bed.

I remember my sister had some of the VHS’s that had four episodes each so I’ve seen the Eddie episodes a ton, but they’re good episodes. 

“Eddie likes to keep it over there”.

7 hours ago, Spockydog said:

*almost chokes to death on coffee*

Dude. I'm LMFAO over here. You have no idea how badly you are wrong.

In case you haven't been paying attention to my posts over the years (and don't try and claim you've not been borderline stalking me), I have deep, deep knowledge on most of the arguments put forward by the likes of you, JRM, 30p Lee, Liz Sunak, and all the rest of those absurd fucking balloon-animals.

I visit my dear old mum every other day, to bring her meals and whatnot. What do you think I do when she starts banging on about whatever is Murdoch's issue de jour? Do I scream and shout and tell her to shut up? Do I tell her she is an evil old cow? Do I tell her it's no fucking wonder she doesn't share her true views with her friends?

No, like a good son, I sit there and take it, listening patiently to her distorted, fucked up worldview. And as she's spouting whatever the machine is currently programming her to spout, I sit there wondering what on earth happened to my mum. How did she stop being this wonderfully caring human being, a union activist who, more than once, campaigned unsuccessfully for office on a decidedly left wing platform.

So, take it from someone who knows. It's all bollocks. You should hear her. Some of the stuff she comes out in private with is just fucking mental (yeah, and I'd love to be a fly on the wall at your dinner table). It breaks my heart because she doesn't understand that she is a pawn, willingly lapping up the poison designed to sow division and wreck our society. She's got Murdoch-Brain.

And, guess what, there's a danger you're going to end up just like that. It's inevitable, mate. I mean, you're basically on the same page as my mum on almost every issue.

I mean, I'm sure you don't care. But I care. I care about my mum. Because I know that she was a better human being when she didn't hold views like this. Put me in a shipping container with Rupert Murdoch AND his witless fucking sons, and it'd be like that scene in The Shield. 

Anyway, I would love to see some scientific data on the damage done to families by FoxBrain. 

And let's drop the ridiculous notion that everyone on the left is extreme, stupid, or living in some ridiculous non-information bubble. The first two news sites in my internet favourites are AP and Reuters.

 

That’s an awful lot of words for “I don’t know what steelmanning is”.

30 minutes ago, Spockydog said:

You mean bias towards the truth?

This is pretty much the most basic logical fallacy there is; you’re pre-supposing you’re right. It’s the truth to you because you already think it’s the truth. 

Anyone use Ground News at all? I like the concept but I’ve been trialing it for a month now, and for some reason I just don’t gel with it. I want to want to use it but I tend not to. Not all that impressed with Apple News either, which frustratingly skews whichever way I happen to have been clicking recently. I still generally stick with the BBC website for a roughly centrist, quick top 5 news stories of the day and then don’t delve any further. The Today program on the way to work is still my chief source of news.

59 minutes ago, Underfoot said:

Definitely try Silo

Indeed, see the aforementioned 7/10s.