Was surprised to see sone of the games on here, Starglider 2 was always compelling to me but it was sheer chaos most of the times I tried to play it.

Oh and just re-read your comment and sure back in the 70s and 80s when the US was looking to stitch up as much of our resources and industry as they felt like we were likely important to secure, these days… I’d bet you it takes three wranglers to get Trump to mispronounce Anthony Albanese’s name. We are boring and if it wasn’t for the fact that we have so much American ownership and a bunch of US military bases we wouldn’t be important enough to even consider. You know our position on the tariff list is primarily based on our previous dumbarse Prime Minister getting preferential rates in the past then allowing other countries to siphon their products through our ports otherwise we might have been given the same rate as the penguins got.

Well aware. Seeing the US crash out the way it is make me hope that as a tiny consolation we might start to extricate ourselves even a little.

I did tell some friends once that I thought the best idea if the US goes ahead with tariffs on us, is we should start reconsidering the rent on Pine Gap. Would be hilarious if we looked at how much damage the tariffs did to our markets and then passed it on that way… What are they going to do, relocate the number 1 “definitely not a spy base” in this part of the world somewhere else… And where… Indonesia… But guess why that would never happen?

Hey, I take offense at that phrasing, Vassal implies that we occasionally merit a thought on the part of our overlords… I seriously doubt we warrant that much consideration. Reckon we could be termed sycophantic rubes instead?

I was going to ask how he knew it was Arch, but I feel like that is just setting up the next comment.

Exactly what I meant, knowing how loathe people are to do routine maintenance let’s be honest, most Dysons operate within their marketing specifications for a few months and after that they are on a downwards trajectory.

Miele is one of the brands I respect, mostly because of the way their products are tested. I remember a video from back in the day that showed a testing rig that essentially threw their test subject down a flight of stairs multiple times. Turns out there is a statistical average number of times a vacuum will fall down a flight of stairs and they test that their vacuums still function after exceeding that average.

Having sold them in a previous life, marketing and hype.

We got a lot of people who would “upgrade” from a Miele vacuum because they wanted to stop buying bags, then see them a few months later buying bags for their Mieles.

Sorry to all the people who like them, but bagless vacuums leak sooner or later and say what you will about upright vacuums, you just can’t reach as many spots as a low profile head on a pole.

Because they don’t give a shit about driving? They care a lot more about their family members that own car dealerships, or are involved with the petrochemical industry.

Or they saw that American rightwing grifters talk like this so they are cargo culting the fuck out?

You know I never considered that, I guess I just saw the Asian influences and never considered the parallels to Christian allegory. Makes sense.

Its funny because the overlap of people who are in to Star Wars and Evangelical Christianity really took me by surprise. How are those two things so closely aligned? And let’s face it, remove the people who fundamentally believe it is their obligation to proscribe how and what people think and you get a whole bunch of people who realise that peoples gender identity is none of their damned business.

Used to work in mobile phone sales at a 100% telco owned store, so when things went tits up for customers the licensed stores in our area would tell customers to come to our store as we had employee access that exceeded partner access. I had SO many variations of the apologetic conversation with an elderly person whose family assured them that the iPhone is the easiest thing ever to use. They were happy with a feature phone but had an iDevice shoved down their throat by family members because “they are so easy”. Oh and arranging a change of mind return on an iPhone is a fucking nightmare in Australian Telco land.

They are not the easiest most straightforward choice, unless you use your devices in the constrained manner Apple has decided you will use them. The multiple times I have been forced to use a Mac or an iPhone or IPad, I have found them slow, obtuse and they have an annoying habit of hiding information I want to see. Windows is not really any better, just different.

I kind of see it like any other preference, people assume that because they find something the best then everyone must agree with that take.

I guess I just see it differently. I keep on saying that I have to view this as a separate turning of the wheel, where everyone has been sniffing paint.

I don’t really feel that anyone encompasses the character they are portraying, maybe if we are really lucky they take the most obvious surface level characteristic and make that the entirety of the character. They are so busy cutting content out to make door stopper books fit in less than 8 hours of TV while cherry-picking the exciting scenes that there is an increasing amount of disconnection and disjointed story telling. Instead of deliberate action the characters are just stumbling around having things happen.

It feels to me like they are adapting from chapter summaries not the books. Which would maybe be acceptable back in the 1990s/2000s but these days we have stellar adaptations like the Expanse to show how it can be done correctly.

I really wish I had watched what you did. What I saw was not that. Glad you are enjoying it though.

Morbid curiousity in part. Also let’s face it genre tv is dying, if it doesn’t get at least some views then it will get worse. I just wish they would outright state, we are making a series inspired by the plot and setting of insert ip here. Instead of mangling the story of the books.

Without meaning to start another round of complaints, do you not feel that an element of innocence and wonder from the two rivers crowd is missing in this adaptation? I feel like Queen Tylin will look more the fool than the cougar if she ends up even in the story? The Aes Sedai are emotional messes, not the image of serenity and cunning I always viewed them as through the book. I know the budget likely wouldn’t stretch to it but I feel that the Aes Sedai agelessness could be well depicted with current de-aging processes and would have allowed for a visceral demonstration of the effects of stilling… Although looks like that won’t be a plot point anyway.

I could go on. But this whole thing reminds me of the Altered Carbon series, first season digressed from the books, but I could find a lot to appreciate in Kinnamans performance, by season 2 the digressions were becoming silly. If they got season 3 that would have been wacky. I feel like if you can’t do the source, don’t try to do the source and make that clear, that way your writers get to write their own thing in universe as opposed to constantly grabbing the interesting bits and trying to stick them together like a skin suit to wear over their own creativity.

Anyway there’s a coinflip that Amazon will shut it down rather than greenlight another series and I doubt Sony would be able to sell it to anyone else at this stage, so I might not have anything more to complain about going forward. Guess we will see.

I reiterate my statement from last week, this is a distinct turning of the wheel where everyone has been sniffing paint. So many frustrating events as a book reader. I gritted my teeth through this whole season. I don’t imagine this will run for too much longer, but if it does I wonder how they will manage the huge divergance from the source material to what this thing is.

I could almost forgive this in a world where the Lord of the Rings didn’t exist, or the Expanse. But this just seems to me like the writers and showrunners were so excited about getting the rights that they didn’t realise they just weren’t up to delivering on an adaptation that was true to the narrative and spirit of the books. Put simply they are not capable of creating a series that makes sense, let alone one that could be considered a good faith adaptation of the source.

My favourite part of this show is explaining to my wife all the things they excised/changed/ stuffed up at the end of each episode / series, I think I almost have her convinced to give the books a go.

Yeah, just wait until the Australian electorate has a brain fart and let’s Sky News convince them to vote in spud head. He will get right on to climate change by “nuclear-ifying”* our power grid.

^ * “nuclear-ifying” is a term of art that should not be interpreted to mean any actual progress will be made towards nuclear power generation. Expect to see increased demand placed on coal and gas power plant, all hail Gina. Spoken and authorised by the Liberuhal Party… Oh and /s so it’s not elecgion interference ^

Oh it’s tragic. The kid is headed for a life of middle management, like I said he may or may not have been being honest. But he goes to the expensive private school that I couldn’t afford to send one of my kids to, let alone both. He will make the right connections and be part of the right social circles that details like not understanding his achievements won’t really matter.

I’ve worked for that sort of guy across industries and business, they do fine.

Or if he absolutely has to have a 1 hour response time sounds like a hiring someone to do admin might be the best way to stay competitive.

Had a chat with my kids friends while dropping them at home, they were talking about a kid who got busted using ChatGPT for some schoolwork. When I jokingly asked one of them how he avoids getting caught he admitted he uses it for “first drafts” then rewrites the whole thing in “his own words”. A bit of drilling down and he admitted it takes him longer to write a short paper with ChatGPT but it’s easier because he doesn’t have to think of what to say, just how to change the words.

If he was being honest the irony of the dumb kid rewriting the idiot boxes responses so he doesn’t get caught is just… Getting the article off Wikipedia and doing the same thing would have a similar result… Only with less faffing around and environmental impact.

Oh but if he read my comment he would no doubt say that he doesn’t have a problem with trans people **BUT… ** they just shouldn’t be allowed to use bathrooms, you know, to protect the women.

And you just know that if he is willing to engage with and parrot that stupid culture war talking point in public then his private views are worse.

I find increasingly that sci-fi and fantasy authors often have takes on the real world that are diametrically opposed to their writings and the writings of the people they credit as inspirations. I got the ick from Neal Asher a couple of years back and while I like his fiction I am appalled by his takes on the world we live in.

My go to example has been Richard K Morgans shitty takes on trans subjects despite writing a series of books that explicitly view bodies and mentalities as entirely distinct. How someone could write about a male conciousness in a female body and not get that there can be an intrinsic gender identity which doesn’t match external presentation boggles my mind. It would be like finding out Iain Banks was a hardcore fascist (thankfully all I have ever heard about him says his personal ideals were pretty closely aligned with the tone and content of his writings.)