Chindie

Oh you'd never stop laughing at Starmer getting into an anti-Semitism row, would you? Teehee.

How's them face eating leopards you clearing in the woods? Best hope the complaints team is up to snuff.

On 05/02/2024 at 15:15, Chindie said:

The annoying thing with the Amazon ads for me is less the ads themselves and more the principle of making a service worse that people already were using. Companies shouldn't do that. They shouldn't remove or degrade their offering, if they need to raise more revenue (which Amazon absolutely doesn't and any argument they do is a lie - they're the biggest retailer in earth by an obscene distance) they should raise the price or offer improved services for a premium, not roll back services for the same money.

They've also rolling back Dolby Vision and Atmos support for anyone not paying the additional fee.

Really shifty practice.

Russia has already invaded Georgia. 2008. Abkhazia and South Ossetia. Technically still ongoing but essentially the same playbook as Ukraine.

12 minutes ago, theboyangel said:

What hope is there for Kraven The Hunter? 

admittedly the trailer looks ok so I kind of hold a little hope it’s not going to be as bad as Snorbius, Venom Carnage etc etc 

Kraven it's one of the few ideas they've had that could be ok. Helped by it casting pretty well. But it's going to be rubbish as well because they've changed a load of stuff for... reasons? Which will inevitably knacker it. It's probably not helped by bits of Kraven's story being quite stupid. 

Kraven it's a really underrated villain but there's no... great story in his origin, and there's no real need for there to be. 

The trailer didn't fill me with much hope. Especially when you had the villain 'mutate' into Rhino. Just... No no no. No.

Has that 'Where are the bodies Joe?!' look.

Some people just like getting off on the bad guys kids getting splattered by high explosives in extremely high numbers, and what's wrong with that, eh?

Madame Web reviews out.

In a simply shocking turn of events, it's a stinker.

Just stop Sony. Venom was ok and the animated Spider-Man films excellent, but everything else is absolutely terrible, and the ideas are appalling. Give it up.

2 hours ago, mjmooney said:

Agreed. Although I probably wouldn't have been able to pick her out of that glamourpuss celebs identity parade, either. 

I'd have done better if it had included (say) Christine Lagarde, Hilary Clinton, Angela Merkel, Helen Mirren, Priti Patel, Greta Thunberg, Tracy Chapman, Chrissie Hynde, Judi Dench, Ellie Simmons, Reeta Chakrabati, Kelly Holmes, Aung San Suu Kyi, etc. 

Not necessarily people I like, and admittedly not 'Vogue' types, but my point is that people (either sex) with 'normal' faces are more easily recognisable than those deemed 'beautiful' by the media. At least they are to me (perhaps because I find fashion/Hollywood/TV/pop of little interest). 

I've seen that argument before.

I collect action figures, like very high detail action men, usually based on movie characters, the kind of thing that a photo of one might actually fool you for a moment that it's the real person sometimes. And I follow a few places that review them. One of the things you'll often see is people criticising a figure based on it not looking like the actor or being slightly off, and it's particularly true for a lot of female characters. A few reviewers claim that the reason these female figures are often thought to have bad likenesses is because all 'beautiful' people have similar features which means getting a likeness is much more difficult because the differences are so small and the effect of a small inaccuracy is amplified.

I'm not sure I buy that, per se, I'm fairly good at recognising faces and can see that most people don't have similar features really. What I would say is that that glamour trends do tend to homogenate people and that counteracts the unique features of many faces. It also homogenates colours - if you took that Vogue cover and blurred the detail out, you'd end up with a very limited palette of hair and complexion colours with only a couple of outliers - outside of those outliers everyone is to some degree a shade of honeyed brown and all the hair is on the same brown palette. The reality is without the makeup and hair products that spread of famous faces is much more pointedly diverse.

Nice to see the face eating leopards having a nibble at Starmer's mug.

If you get more than liberal airhead on that test you're a psychopath who should be on a watchlist.

Let's not hold our thoughts back.

Outright disaster.

We are bad without him or when he's off it, and there's no-one in the squad that does the same job.

Nightmare.

When he's off form or unavailable we're a far, far worse team. If he's out long term, that's a disaster.

We aren't going to finish in the CL spots. We'll scrape the European spots.

The squad was thin anyway but it's increasingly threadbare with extremely important players increasingly missing through injury or form taking a dive. Chuck in the European nights starting up again and the chasing pack having nothing to worry about midweek... We're going to see a catastrophic fall in PPG and we're going to limp across the line.

It's not done. It won't be for a very long time unless Ukraine gives up.

That was always the problem with viewing it as a war Ukraine could 'win'. Ukraine's win strategy has always been to essentially keep fighting and making gains where it could and to keep pushing until Russia's will to keep the conflict going gave in - that's a **** long game. For all that Russia was burning through kit and men and had a fair few embarrassments, it's got a **** ton of more stuff to chuck at Ukraine and it doesn't really matter if that kit isn't cutting edge or even particularly modern. The allies have supported Ukraine with cash and equipment to keep going, and tried to squeeze Russia with trade measures to pressure them into giving up, but it's not really worked, Putin's too powerful in all respects and Russia too big and too able to survive being squeezed in various ways for it to really make much difference. The kit and cash supply line isn't infinite either, and the will to keep going from the allies is starting to weigh more than the cost appears worth, sadly for Kiev.

The end game is probably some form of stalemate ala Korea and Ukraine never entering NATO proper, but with a possible EU membership as a consolation.

Things are pushing me today.

Log in this morning.

Primary system we use won't accept my password. Spend 10 minutes thinking ive finally gone mad, putting in every password I can think it might be, but certain I got it right the first time, end up calling the IT helpline to discover an issue with the software when it prompts for a password update has affected me.

Start picking up work. Each one I allocate someone else then allocates themselves. The ones they don't do this to are all shit.

Then work stops coming into the workflow. So there's no no stuff to work on.

Then I notice my music is pissing me off. I use Amazon Music, they got me when they started offering a limited service included in Prime, I liked it, I started to pay for it. I have a habit of adding songs to a liked playlist and then maybe I'll go off them. Today I find out that the app Amazon has made is rubbish. You can't remove songs from the 'My likes' playlist on the app. Which is dreadful. So I've spent the last half hour, on my lunch, on the desktop app, removing songs from it. Except they only get removed when it feels like it. I'm not kidding. I'm clicking the menu option that says 'Remove from playlist' and then the song will disappear for about 4 seconds, when it helpfully reappears back in the playlist. So you have to remove them repeatedly and hope it decides to let you. This is so nightmarish I'm considering cancelling the subscription and hopping onto something else, despite my reservations about other apps.

If this day doesn't improve much I fear for the furniture I'm going to destroy in rage.

That's not Doctor Doom sadly.

Tons of Daredevil: Born Again set photos have leaked recently as well. Mostly showing a Daredevil v Bullseye fight. Bullseye has a new costume that's closer to classic but sticks to being generic and Daredevil has a new suit that is basically the old one with the 'tacticool' shit toned back, made more slimline and much more red. Still no logo though. I get it but that's one of the defining things about Daredevil's look and without it it always feels a bit unfinished without it.

As predictable as night following day.

Things are bad at the moment so thought I'd go back to one of my favourite games, FFIX.

Playing that with the 'boosts' the digital rereleases offers is a revelation. Wonderful game.

I really need to paint the Vivi figure I printed last year.

6 minutes ago, imavillan said:

 

jeez, i'd love to have you pair in the trenches with me.

That's a fickle as it gets. Never give up on your club/team.

It's in the blood, the highs and the lows and this season is a fantastic high.

I'm hopeful you will both miss out on a great win for the Villa.

I've got so much else going on in my life that makes me want to jab a knife into my throat at the moment that I don't need the pain of watching us lose to a team I absolutely despise.

I sincerely hope I'm wrong and I see a wonderful winning result later. I just don't believe I will and I don't need that disappointment to pile on top of everything else.

First game in a while I'm not bothering to follow. It's going to be a horrible match and no joy will come from it, so best to just ignore it.

As ever, **** Israel.