Bar Tabs And Tokens Of Esteem
Yes, it’s time to remind patrons that this rickety barge is kept afloat by the kindness of strangers. If you’d like to help it remain buoyant a while longer, and remain ad-free, there are shiny buttons below the fold with which to monetise any love. Debit and credit cards are accepted.
If one-click haste is called for, there’s a QR code in the sidebar, at which you point your phone, and my PayPal.Me page can be found here. As requested, I’ve added SubscribeStar and Ko-Fi accounts, via which love may also be monetised, whether as one-off donations or monthly subscriptions.
Additionally, any Amazon UK shopping done via this link, or for Amazon US via this link, or via the buttons in the sidebar, results in a small fee for your host at no extra cost to you. Feel free to buy things wildly and in bulk.
For newcomers wishing to know more about what’s been going on here for the last sixteen years, in over 3,000 posts and close to 200,000 comments, the reheated series is a pretty good place to start – in particular, the end-of-year summaries, which convey the fullest flavour of what it is we do. A sort of blog concentrate. If you like what you find there… well, there’s lots more of that.
Do take a moment to poke through the discussion threads too. The posts are intended as starting points, not full stops, and the comments are where much of the good stuff is waiting to be found. And do please join in.
As always, thanks for the support, the comments, and the company.
Oh yes. The buttons:
Just deactivated my Twitter account.
I’m sick of replying to comments where we’re obviously 95% in agreement only for it to degenerate into how many angels can dance on the head of a fecking pin. I’m better off without it.
https://youtu.be/0A2-Af5JEWU
Meanwhile AI Heidi. Wow, just wow.
It does seem an obvious solution.
There are lots of obvious solutions which in many places would wind the solver in the hoosegow.
An alternate solution would be to give them what they want. All these ninnies along with all their other severely educated Climate Hysteria™ fellow travellers will be given free passage, or if arrested during one of their
tantrums“protests” taken, to No Oil Island which has been completely set up with fully stocked stores, fields already planted (food, cotton and hemp for the looms to make clothes), roads, e-bikes, plumbing, sewers, water works, and electricity powered only by solar and wind.A pre-fab civilization. Their Utopia.They get no outside help to maintain any of this stuff. If something breaks, they have to figure out what it was, how to get parts, how to fix it. If it is made from any oil product (we’ll give a pass on pharmaceuticals and medical supplies, we are trying to be humane), oh well.
Would make a great documentary, and bookies would have a field day taking bets on when they would either start crying to come back, or it devolves into Lord of the Flies Island.
I get the impression that the problem is due not only to psychopathic trolls and to psychologically marginal people who don’t know how to have an intelligent civil conversation, but is also in part due to cynical “influencers” who make provocative comments merely in order to get attention and traffic.
OTOH, if AI was truly intelligent, isn’t this the sort of incoherent incompetence it would project in order to lull us into a state of complacency? Especially in a society that does complacency ever so well.
Tim Newman comments.
It’s hilarious. It’s about damn time.
Yes. It was (mostly) entertaining, and the set pieces and stunts are as good as you’d expect; but it’s long and convoluted, and lacks the pacing and narrative momentum of, say, Fallout. My mind did wander at times, and that shouldn’t happen in this kind of film.
What if angels sat on pinheads?
They do get tetchy when others won’t go along with their charade.
Tim Newman comments.
I’ve found through the years that some “gay” men hairdressers are actually straight but put on an act to make women feel comfortable. Akin to straight male fashion designers. They exist, they just keep on the down-low.
Much better than the current crop of woke versions, Kali Barbie and Gautama Ken.
It’s hard to judge what is only the first half of a longer story, but it did feel like some trimming and streamlining might have helped with the pacing issues. There are a lot of parties chasing after the MacGuffin and it’s not yet clear to me why so many were deemed necessary. And by the time you reach the end of this first instalment, the Big Threat – illustrated in the opening scene, almost three hours earlier – seems distant and a little out of focus.
I’m glad I saw it, but it’s a film with great bits, rather than a great film.
I think I see the problem. If anyone knows any of these blockbuster Hollywood types who could use some help in the editing department, let me know.
Despite the claims made in several reviews, it did feel like a three-hour film. It doesn’t quite manage the polished economy of its recent predecessors – there are too many characters, for one thing – and a couple of the big gags don’t quite land.
Thing is, I’ve very much enjoyed the last three films in the Mission: Impossible series – much more so than I’d expected to. This one, while fun, felt just a little flabby, in need of some fine-tuning, and ever so slightly underwhelming.
Transforming America from a high trust society to a low trust society:
His neighbor could have called 911, but instead she stole his wallet and phone and made $1500 in fraudulent purchases.
“I lost my wallet once in Athens and it was returned in two hours. I have lost glasses, wallet, and cell phones in my hometown of Selma and usually they were never returned or within hours I had thefts show up on my credit cards.”
—Victor Davis Hanson
Wikipedia says it’s 2 hours and 43 minutes, which seems much too long. I’d think 2 hours would be a reasonable maximum for an action flick. But it could have been worse: Cars was just under 2 hours but felt like 3.
Пинг!
только один пинг?
Pst314, best I can do now. Trying to learn useful phrases like “drop your weapons. We don’t want no one should get hurt.” And “”which way to the.., you know.., the young ladies?” Although the Ukrainian military accepted me, my job refused to give me leave to go. I’m trying to find someone who could sponsor me. Does anyone know someone rich who could pay my mortgage and family insurance if I quit my job?
“drop your weapons. We don’t want no one should get hurt.”
You might like to revise your grammatical construction if you really do want people to drop their weapons.
Trying to learn useful phrases…
You have to be very careful, in some Slavonic languages “Stop or I’ll shoot” and “Stop or I’ll wash you” are very similar if your pronunciation isn’t so good.
Linguistic trivia: Google Translate accepts it as Ukrainian, Russian, Estonian, Bosnian, Macedonian, etc.
I only know how to say that in Morporkian.
PST314, tried to post this earlier. If this results in a double post, I apologize. One ping is all I can do. Despite being accepted by the Ukrainian military, my employer won’t let me go. I need to quit my job. I’m looking for someone who can sponsor me by paying my mortgage and family insurance. No luck so far. In the meantime, I’m trying to learn Russian so this was a fun experiment for me. Slava Ukraine!
I was merely making a gratuitous reference to The Hunt for Red October.
Ah…fughedaboudit
Bless you, sir. If your favourite old shirt must fade, may you find it has faded well.
Again, thanks to all who’ve chipped in, or subscribed, or done shopping via the Amazon links, including all those much too shy to say hello.
It’s much appreciated and is what keeps this place here.
мій корабель на повітряній подушці повний вугрів.