Chindie

For 3 series Game of Thrones is in the running for best TV show ever made. Crazy high production quality, lots of excellent characters and acting (ironically not including most of the main characters), and it's exceptionally well written with multiple extremely well plotted arcs and narratives that genuinely create intriguing and smart storylines. After that it wobbles and starts to decline but is still very good for a session, then begins to nosedive until the final 2 series where it completely abandons the smart character stuff and becomes a single minded spectacle generating machine trying to finish it's central plot at double quick pace even if doing so makes no sense, requires characters to do things that are completely inexplicable but necessary to create dramatic moments and push the plot, and puts character 'development' in the bin in favour of 'they're doing this now' level writing. It's become clear in the aftermath that the showrunners didn't want to do it anymore now they had other projects come knocking and agreed to finish it for the studio on an accelerated timescale to get out and done asap, showing they had no respect for the audience and didn't care that they were the reason they had Disney begging them to do a Star Wars show and other studios ringing them with blank cheques.

Brain rot has spread fast in this country.

It's the perfect storm of bad government, especially at national level, and absurd income inequality.

In fairness what B&W did with GoT was so heinous you'd be foolish to engage with much else they ever did. Not just the fall off in standards when they got past the books, but the final couple of series, and particularly the final series itself, absolutely reeked of them wanting to ditch the entire thing as fast as possible without any care for how it was done and whether it made any sense or held a candle to what came before it, or has any respect for the time investment of the people that watched it. You could damn near hear the tyres screeching outside the editing room as they escaped it watching the final series. Never watching a thing they touch again.

Apple is in a weird situation that we've not really seen before. Whilst they don't have a 'traditional' monopoly (other smartphones are available etc) they have created a sort of monopoly by their practice of creating homogenous marketplaces that they have sole dominion over which obviously destroys competition practices within it. So you have things like Apple refusing to allow third party hardware to work with their devices (either to their fullest extent or not at all), or their pushing back against any app that threatens their own stranglehold over something like contactless payments. That's dodgy as **** and obviously needs to end. And it's good to see that the US has gone further than the prior moves against Apple by the likes of Unreal over their marketplace practices, which was a start but by no means the full extent of their wrongdoing.

****, man. You know it's going to be shit.

Got revealed today finally. Hennig's next thing. Graphics!

It seems it's been **** over by Sony's desperation to have their own juggernaut franchise. I can't say I'm shocked though as from the first trailer it looked like something they'd smeared the Ghostbusters 'skin' over, and Sony are dreadful for trying to make everything they have blockbuster wise into the next MCU. It is a shame though as I agree, Afterlife was good fun and managed to walk the line between fan service and cynicism very well.

Ghostbusters: Frozen Empire, unsurprisingly, has reviewed like a ghost turd.

I believe they are. But it also stands for Behind The Scenes in this context.

This week's Corridor Digital VFX breakdown picked up on a surprising trend, hiding CGI in BTS footage. The BTS footage of Barbie has been doctored to hide how much CGI was used in making it. It seems that the perception of using VFX in a movie is so damaging that they'd actually bothered to make the BTS footage they issued have somewhat finished CG in it to hide that so much of it was filmed on blue screen. They actually covered Barbie in an earlier episode where they showed that the filmmakers in one scene created a real set with real props and scaled environments and items, which was then only used as reference for the CG shots in the finished film, meaning in the film you watched none of the physical set and props they made was actually on screen at any point.

Like for the Watchmen reference.

It's Starship Troopers with a dash of 40k, imagined as a small squad co-op PvE shooter.

That could be worse. But the Crow is so perfectly of its time and so pointedly connected to that time with it's style and sound, that any attempt to redo it with new window dressing for a new time feels off, no matter what you do with it and no matter how well (or not) you do it.

It was alleged that White left the last England camp he was called up for after a falling out with Steve Holland, of some sort, and he's not featured since. Southgate is now telling us that White has asked not to be considered, but that there's nothing in the rumours about a falling out with Holland. If you believe that, I've got a bridge to sell you. White might have said he doesn't want to be picked, but it's obvious the reason why is because he doesn't want to work with someone in the camp, and the story was it was something to do with Holland, so...

Attacked a UNRWA facility again. This time one of the few food distribution centres thats still operating. **** Israel, utterly despicable.

I threw it in as a grenade It isn't paid for, the guy is way too small and insignificant, and it's not actually particularly anti-EV per se (he actually rates the Taycan as a very good EV, though has issues with EVs generally). He comes at it from the perspective of someone who was a car trader (he ran a small business buying and selling VAG Group cars for about 20 years), and his concern is basically the second hand market for EVs is ****.

I recently was put on fluoxetine. And propranolol. I've not noticed them do anything. I was previously on sertraline at a party high dose for a number of years. Again didn't notice anything, until I stopped taking it then I got bad brain pops for a month or so.

Theres a big market for retro figures at the moment. Lots of companies are producing various types of retro figures - be that literal reissues of old figures from the 70s/80s, reimaginings of those figures (where the general design is kept the same but articulation is improved or details are enhanced), full on reimaginings (taking the fundamental elements of the design but updating them to modern standards), outright reboot designs, and various types of premium versions. It's best seen with things like the Masters of the Universe franchise, or TMNT. Masters of the Universe has so many lines from the last few years it's daft - especially considering thats fundamentally a series you'd need to be around 40 minimum to even remember first time round. Here's just a few of the different lines they've done recently - Masters of the Universe Classics - modern reimagining marketed at collectors (weren't available in shops even IIRC, only sold direct off their website) Masters of the Universe Origins - more pointedly retro style with some updates to articulation Masters of the Universe Super7 vintage - full on reissues of vintage figures Masters of the Universe ReAction - reimaging of MOTU figures as 60s/70s 5 point articulation figures in smaller scales Masters of the Universe - Mondo - 12inch premium figures that are absurdly expensive (even more so than other premium figures) Masters of the Universe Masterverse - fully rebooted 6inch scale figures, modernised takes on the classic designs inspired by a new series ...which doesn't include things like spin-off lines (I believe Classics did a run of figures that were inspired by other versions of the figure designs, things like filmation or movie versions) and crossover things - theres currently some clamour about a crossover line with TMNT. Companies like Super7 arguably only exist to market to this retro audience - their bread and butter is remakes of old toys but better. One of their biggest sellers is the Ultimates line, where they take things like early 90s TMNT toys, replicate the fundamental design, and then make it as good as they could were they released now (better articulation, paint, more accesories, more detail). And they sell for nearly £60 each. Theres loads of these. Recently there was a push for 60s Batman figures, Hot Toys did expensive 12 inch verions (which were so popular unlicensed versions of other characters started coming out recently), which then lead to Mcfarlane doing a whole line of them (even characters which weren't even in the show), then there was a push for Batman Animated series stuff - DC Direct did a line, then Mcfarlane did a line, now Mezco are doing a line in their One:12 Collective cloth outfit line as well as in their retro styled 5 Points line.

Toriyama was also influential in the gaming world, being a character designer for the massive Dragon Quest series, and working on a number of other RPG series. His art has an extremely distinctive simple clean cute style and became a big part of the reason that Dragon Quest was Japan's favourite gaming series (which probably underplays how popular it is, the Japanese government asked the publisher to move the release day of the games because so many people queued to buy the latest edition it was causing problems). Massive loss.

That was appalling. As ever when we try to win games in first gear, we're terrible. So many wayward passes, no movement, no pace. Really bad. And a clown in charge. First half made decisions based on the crowd reaction and second half just started handing out cards at random. First half Ajax could have shot one of ours and the ref would play on, second half he starts booking players for nothing. Awful match.

They decided to play it on Hoth.

There will most likely be a big sale in the summer. Luiz probably the best bet, Ramsey, perhaps Konsa, Watkins if an absolutely outrageous bid comes in

I've been tested for various bowel diseases, I've had a few colonoscopies and blood tests and MRIs, none show anything, so the diagnosis just becomes 'IBS' which one discovered is essentially doctor speak for 'there's something wrong with his guts but **** if we know'. I've done the FODMAP diet (aka the best way to lose weight in the world) and other exclusion diets, nothing really helps. I know there's things I can eat that make it worse, so I do have some actual bowel issue(s), but realistically the issue now seems to be largely mental - the problem being it gets worse the more you struggle with it. You have the bad experience that makes the next experience a bigger deal which makes that worse which makes the next a bigger deal etc etc. I've looked into it and there is a mental health condition that seems to fit, and it seems it's treated like many other mental health concerns. Speaking of which I am now officially back on the happy pills. I'm now taking 7 pills a day for various conditions. Mental. I'm sorry to hear about your own issues, I can understand the position you're in and how debilitating and maddening it can be.