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There's also the case of the (now former) chief of the German Navy who had to resign over some rather remarkable statements made on a trip to India. The gist of it is "screw Ukraine, we need Russia as an ally against China." The government denies that this is their position but the Ukrainians are not convinced.

So, Scholz has been elected, Merkel is out. No surprises there.

12 hours ago, A Horse Named Stranger said:

Well, Habeck will be vice-chancellor, if the reports are to be believed. So that'd heavily point towards a shift inside the party, too. Yes, Baerbock has good connections within the party, but the botched campaign had cost her quite a bit of political capital. And yes, botched campaign is the dominant (and imo correct) reading.

Well the Greens declared Baerbock candidate for Chancellor. That got her a lot of attention, but also put her under close scrutiny, which she couldn't stand up to. She simply wasn't up to the task. (Neither will she be as foreign minister.) On the other hand, 15% is the best result ever for the Greens, they just raised much higher expectations in their support base.

44 minutes ago, Luzifer's right hand said:

So is Lauterbach get the health ministry or have the "Pandemic is over" fuckwads won?

We don't know yet. They haven't announced a cabinet list yet. They'll probably wait till the parties have approved the coalition deal.

1 hour ago, Toth said:

Well, and we are only marginally better off, but on top of that have no functioning government. Söder accuses Scholz of not doing enough as the next chancellor while Scholz fires back that he is not yet chancellor and it's the CDU/CSU's job to do something (even though the SPD is still coalition partner), meanwhile Merkel carefully asks the presidents of the federal states to come together... maybe next week. It's ship without captain.

I think that's a rather feeble excuse. The federal government's term has expired but it's still fully functional. And all the executive power lies with the state governments anyway. Merkel never did more than chair the meetings.

If I recall correctly, FTL travel is a series of "jumps", which require some preparation. You assess your current position, then do some complicated math, perform the jump, which will (hopefully) get you close to the expected position. Then you repeat the whole thing. The distance you can cover with a single jump is limited by the precision of the math. Doing a very long jump runs the risk of ending up inside a star.

On the second foundation with its telepathic capabilities: If they could steer the Galaxy along the Seldon plan, shouldn't they have been able to take over and save the empire? The whole thing doesn't make much sense to me.

2 hours ago, Ran said:

Not yet watched the second and third episodes, but isn't what Foundation about fairly succinctly described, several times, by Seldon? An attempt to reduce a 10,000 years of a Dark Age to 1,000 years through the protection and development of knowledge, while doing so during whatever craziness comes out of the deaththroes of the empire.

Haven't seen any of the shows yet. In the books, the rules and what the Seldon plan really is about change with each instalment. First it's all about statistics and how it's possible to predict history with math because individuals don't matter. Later it's the opposite, with telepaths bending people to their will, which shouldn't make much difference if the original premise held, but totally does.

On 2/8/2021 at 5:45 PM, SpaceChampion said:

Boxleitner interview regarding B5 on HBO Max, and the death of Mira Furlan.

Mira Furlan has died? That leaves about half the cast dead. 

2 hours ago, maarsen said:

I kept expecting them to bump into Mulder and Scully. 

Crusade had an X-Files parody episode: https://babylon5.fandom.com/wiki/Visitors_from_Down_the_Street

35 minutes ago, dog-days said:

Interesting. Still, much too late for Alaphilippe now. Will be looking forward to seeing what he does next year. Hopefully it will involve signing with a team that can support him. 

Though based on Bernal's performance this year, the Sky/Ineos run looks set to continue. Indefinitely. 

Alaphilippe is quite successful with his current team. They just don't usually pursue the GC in a big multi-stage race. Most teams don't. Doesn't mean they aren't successful. Alaphilippe is No1 in the UCI world rankings. Not so bad.

39 minutes ago, Gianna Dorenberg said:

Reducing the Night King to a subplot is like killing off Sauron and the evil hordes of Mordor halfway through the Lord of the Rings and devoting the other half to district elections in the Shire.

Who said the story arc of the Others should be reduced to a subplot? It's about the order of events, not their importance. Ending the civil war first and then fighting the Others doesn't make much sense as a story. Now the show obviously has reduced the whole story arc with the White Walkers to a rather insignificant subplot (and nixed pretty much all of the buildup it had done over seven seasons) by its clumsy "resolution" of that plot line, but it's not the order of events that's the problem here. Having some big, climactic battle against the White Walkers first and then sort out the politics of Westeros makes perfect sense.

3 hours ago, Orleans said:

 WW's should have been the endgame and not Cersei.

Actually, it makes sense to sort out who gets to sit on that iron chair after the Others have been defeated. I fully expect GRRM to finish the books like that (if he ever does). It would be the ASOIAF version of the Scouring of the Shire. Whether it's Cersei who is in control of Kings Landing is another matter. But the writers have been a Lannister fan club from day one.

Babylon 5 ran on a rather limited budget and was broadcast in NTSC, which wasn't exactly high definition, so the special effects didn't have to be very good. There also was the threat of cancellation and the show lost its lead character after season one, which required major changes to the main story arc. Still, it was a great show.

5 hours ago, felice said:

Personally I don't find the first half to be that bad, but on the other hand, I don't find the second half to be that great. The finale is superb, though.

Has been a couple of years since I last watched the series, but if I recall correctly, the finale of season 5 was shot at the end of season 4 when Straczynski expected that season to be the final one. Isn't Ivanova in it?