JJ Abrams, but yes. I will give TPM credit for production design and world building and for a few of the veteran actors’ performances.

TFA gave us a cast of characters you could do something with, and apart from sounding a bit too much like a Joss Whedon movie, performances that were at least not delivered by cardboard cutouts. I didn’t completely mind the plot being a rehash, but the contortions they went through to make the state of the galaxy exactly fit a rehash doomed the entire trilogy.

Waited in a three-hour-ish line for The Phantom Menace. 100 minutes of “I’m sure it will get better” followed by the Naboo duel tricking my fanboy brain into thinking it was a good movie.

This is definitely the right community, LOL. I am absolutely a dogs>cats person, but this junior-high school-paper article has me questioning 20 years of a catless house.

Mechanical keyboards, though about forty percent of them at this point are ones I feel comfortable saying I “made,” which is to say I did something significantly more involved than assembling a barebones kit. Still, they’re accumulating a bit and sometimes I build one just to try some small layout tweak or technique I haven’t done before.

I also have a fountain pen collection, but I haven’t added much to it recently. It’s not a bad gift vector for loved ones though, and it turns out that my Montblanc really is nice, though not by such a margin that I was ever going to pay for it myself.

So many rainbow explosions…

Shows what you know! In most parts of the US, there is no train!

I agree, but ol’ Don is, if nothing else, a curator of interesting writing prompts.

In general, the production design here is on-point, but I have a weird feeling that about 80% of the movie will be on Earth. Maybe I’m just jaded by being a little kid when the Lundgren movie came out, but given that history I’m surprised they went with a concept involving Earth at all.

ND Stevenson’s She-Ra is by far the best stuff done in this broader franchise, but the Kevin Smith He-Man wasn’t bad either. Neither of them spends a moment on Earth.

I could even get behind the one game per team per year. It would even mean an easy return to 8H/8A every year while in the US. Selfishly, as a Jags fan it would also mean no more god-damn road-shows spending multiple weeks in England and fucking up the rhythms of the season.

Beyond that, the NFL needs to understand that it will never displace soccer in most of the world and at best it will be playing on the edges, and that it’s important to be seen as a product that is premium (to its potential audience) because of its rarity and American-ness. You start thinking that there’s enough fan interest in every place every week, and then you hurt the quality of play and become less of an event. THAT’S when you have a real problem. American football is an odd beast that is just not set up for truly global mass appeal.

“we’ll burn that bridge when we get to it”

When used in a fitting situation, that’s one I’ve always really liked.

Smart. It’s a lot easier with the entire internet and plenty of time.

And hey, the venomous ones are just doin’ their thing too.

I mean, don’t fuck with any snakes, and a lot is dependent on when and where you encounter it, but if you’re in the US I think that’s more likely a Milksnake. Of course, if it is then that makes this post even just a touch more dull. 🤣

The DeBeers-ish sentimental marketing is also a bit of a scam, which ends up working nicely with the cost being a scam. I am very happy with my 25 year old English Lit degree; it was was what I was able to get through with where I was discipline-wise, and I did learn all those critical thinking and life skills, and it even opened adequate doors, career-wise. I reckon my grades were inflated somewhat by my professors’ sheer relief that I was engaging with the material and, for all their flaws, my papers were obviously my own work. Still, I think my memories would be very different if I had graduated with $180k of student loan debt from a bucolic college somewhere in the New England hills instead of a $2k balance on a Discover Card, incurred over 4.25 years of nonsense at local state U.

I’m all for college, and not just STEM and business. Frankly some our current generation of tech leaders could use to have taken a few more philosophy classes (except for Peter Thiel… oh my) or at least smoked a few more bowls with the liberal arts kids. Still, people need to be clear-eyed about what a degree will and won’t do, and they need to understand that you absolutely can and should put a price-tag on the experiences.

Now I want to know which of Two Princes or Little Miss Can’t Be Wrong you haven’t heard yet. The two-hit-wonder disrespect here is staggering, I say. Staggering!

Bloemfontein, I think.

I don’t know if they still do, but for a long while IKEA was selling tabletops and shelves that were a honeycomb of cardboard with a very thin frame of some softwood or manufactured wood product, and then a synthetic woodgrain veneer. Super light, and pretty strong… for their weight.

If they do not have a a trio of synchronized crocodiles (alligators may be acceptable depending on setting), I will burn the theater down. I do not care what premise they claim to be doing.

LOL, fair enough.