Durckad

Saw it, loved it, though I largely agree with Wert. The mixing of the music was annoyingly loud at points. Chalamet, in particular, mumbles most of his lines and is regularly overpowered by the score. That said it's visually sumptuous, well acted, and captures the spirit of the book well. Definitely worth seeing on the big screen if you can manage it. Even with the sound issues. That said, I might watch it on HBO Max just so I can turn on subtitles.

Trump can run on whatever agenda or platform he wants and his cult would eat it up regardless of what it stood for. And his detractors would likely see it for the snake oil that it is.

No because the Founding Fathers (tm) created the most perfect governmental system ever and changing/fixing it would be blasphemy on a level far beyond that of choosing not to recite the Pledge of Allegiance.

Sounds like he kinda got a message in a battle with that one.

I rewatched Caretaker a few years back (intending on a full watchthru of Voyager that never materialized) and... while it wasn't as good as Emissary, it was certainly better than Farpoint and Broken Bow at least. I think my response at the time was that it was just kinda dull and boring. Nothing egregiously stupid or bad like the aforementioned other two pilot episodes.

Why the fuck is it always the job of liberals and "the left" to moderate themselves in an effort to not offend the delicate sensibilities of conservatives? Like suddenly it's our fault that the hooting morons of conservatism are now a bunch of anti-vax cultists that have tied all of their personality to a failed, silver spoon, fascist real estate tycoon? Fuck that. What happened to the vaunted conservative "personal responsibility?" At some point these shit-heads' churlish behavior ceases to be our problem, our responsibility. At some point they need to make a step out of their caves of fear and ignorance themselves. No amount of coddling and moderated tones from "the left" is going to force them out of their little safe spaces of darkness and fear and inchoate anger. They are happy there, their views and beliefs are validated there. They are RIGHT and correct and rational there. Why would they leave? How often have conservatives offered to step across the aisle, to make amends after decades of demonizing anyone to the left of Ronnie Raygun as a communist who hates America? The very, very few that have are almost immediately excommunicated from conservative media as traitors, RINOs, or not real conservatives. When are THEY going to moderate their tone to stop alienating liberals and th I guess my rambling point here is that liberals have spent the last 5 years excoriating themselves about how their snobbish, elitist, and arrogant attitudes caused Donald Trump's election in 2016. Since then, it has been their responsibility to coddle and mollify the conservatives no matter how noxious they are acting. But at some point, they need to stop beating themselves up for some perceived slight of buying an expensive coffee, for saying Happy Holidays, or for not treating all Muslims as secret terrorists. And let's be honest here, liberals did not cause Qanon by being dicks. Liberals did not cause the Jan 6th insurrection. Conservatives with their insular, childish beliefs did and it's important they acknowledge and own that, even if it alienates some and pushes them further into their comfy little cave. Maybe it's short-sighted, but we need to stop trying to understand and empathize with these people. Maybe some can be reached, maybe some will come out of their caves with a little coercion, but if they believe in Qanon or if they support the Jan 6th insurrection, they're fucking gone and lost in the dark. The only option is to make them irrelevant electorally. TLDR rant over

I'm sorry, but no science can adequately explain Ted Cruz. Only a divinity of... questionable quality can.

So you'd rate it about a 3.6 roentgen then?

It's kinda strange, back in the day, the Bas-Lag books were critically lauded and Mieville was continually heralded as the next big thing. Now? It seems like they're barely talked about anymore, which is too bad because there's still nothing quite like them out there. Eh, really depends upon what it is. I've reread Tolkien (the first fantasy series I ever read), Martin (read the first 3 in high school), and Gaiman's Neverwhere (the first urban fantasy I ever read. Hell, even the cheapo BBC version was quite enjoyable) and all have held up rather well. That said, I doubt the spate of D&D novels I read around the same time would be all that enjoyable nowadays and even Wheel of Time did not hold up well at all to modern me so I think there's a shot some of my old favorites might still end up being enjoyable nowadays. Only one way to find out. This will also be a good way to figure out which ones I can safely purge from my library and make space for other books I don't really need.

Finally, FINALLY managed to finish Dune after two previous, aborted attempts to do so. Honestly, it was quite good. Herbert's imagination and creativity is the clear standout here, but his writing is also quite good as well... once you get used to it. I know that that was my primary hang-up on my prior reads, but going in this time, aware of it and ready for it, it wasn't so bad. Overall, a good read, I'm glad I got it done before the movie came out and I'm even kinda tempted to dig into the sequels... eventually maybe. I have a bunch of stuff I want to read first so maybe not for a while. That said, I've had an urge to reread a bunch of stuff that I read when I was much, much younger so I'm planning on doing a reread of the China Mieville Bad-Lag books, the Assassin trilogy by Robin Hobb, the first couple of Malazan books culminating in a full read through (I quite on Bonehunters some years ago so I definitely need a refresh), and possibly, if I have time, a reread of Tad William's Otherland and CS Friedman's The Coldfire Trilogy. I'm really interested in seeing how well some of these hold up in the ten years or so since I first read them. Speaking of being old, holy fuck, Perdido Street Station was released in 2000? Fuck me. This one's first up on the reread pile and I'm pretty confident this one will hold up well if not get better with age.

Somewhere a room of film school grads is spontaneously bursting into flames.

Yep, totally agree.

That's disappointing. I was waiting for the LE to go on sale a bit more before I bought it, but if so little work was put into modernizing it and fixing issues, then maybe I'll just stick with the super discounted copies I already own on Steam. On soundtracks: I think the only game soundtrack that I've ever liked enough to even consider buying on it's own was FF6 (FF3 for us uncouth Americans). The actual soundtrack was difficult to get ahold of back in the 90's but I managed to borrow a friend's collection and copy it over on to cassette tapes. Yes, I am officially an old man. Oh also, playing through Chrono Trigger recently reminded me how legitimately good the soundtrack is for that game. Man those 90's JRPG's had some killer music.

FemShep is Best Shep. I feel this is most uncontroversial thing ever.

JFC... I swear, you can lead a conservative to water, but 90% of the time, it seems they'll just end up drowning in their own piss.