#LATEST DEVELOPMENTS ( dash commentary )

[darkmaga-returns]

In this episode of Our Big Dumb Mouth (OBDM), the crew kicks things off with casual banter, transitioning into a discussion of conspiracy theories and paranormal oddities. From bizarre public outbursts at local government meetings to Alex Jones' latest antics, the team dissects various clips, offering their unique blend of humor and skepticism. The crew also dives into theories about UFO recoveries, discussing alleged alien egg-shaped crafts and the mixed credibility of recent disclosures. All this is topped with a dash of political satire and cultural critique.

The second segment dives deep into current events, particularly the whirlwind of executive orders signed during Trump's hypothetical first few days back in office. Topics range from immigration reform and birthright citizenship to the U.S.'s withdrawal from international agreements like the Paris Climate Accord and the World Health Organization. The hosts also discuss technological developments, including a $500 billion AI infrastructure project dubbed "Stargate," while humorously noting the political landscape's absurdities.

Finally, the episode wraps up with listener calls and strange news. Stories include a company installing cameras in bathrooms to shame employees, the bizarre debate over pineapple on pizza, and the economics behind The Wizard of Oz. The episode rounds out with absurd commentary on everything from toilet surveillance to the cultural impact of classic rock bands. As always, the hosts deliver a mix of comedy, cynicism, and commentary on the weird world we live in.

[starlight-time-machine]

Week in Review

11/10/2024 – 11/16/2024

Sunday

Week 40 of missing Cipher Academy

Love Live Superstar Episode 6 MADE ME CRY AGAINNNNNNNN KEKE MY BABYYYYYY YOU’RE WORKING SO HARD FOR YOUR DREAMS AND I’M GLAD YOU DECIDED TO PURSUE IT WHOLEHEARTEDLY I LOVE YOUUUUUU AND THE NEW SONG IS SO GOOOOOOOOOOD IT’S LIKE IT WAS MADE JUST FOR ME Now I just need them to give me at least a clean version of the 30 seconds of acoustic Hoshizuku Cruising on the season 3 OST CD and I’ll be satisfied and set for life. Please Bushiroad. (Also the parallels between Keke’s story and Liyuu’s real life journey to become a seiyuu and idol in Japan makes me emotional to think about…)

Monday

Undead Unluck good!!!!! UNDEAD UNJUSTICE… What an amazing parallel. Tozuka’s always been good at parallels and foils and call backs, but this is just so peak.

Tuesday

Landed back home and had to sleep for like forty hours to recover

Wednesday

Oshi no Ko finally ended and man…it feels so far from the manga I initially read and felt excited for. All I can really say at this point is LMAOOOOOO I was taken in by its seemingly down to earth take on the ins and outs of the Japanese entertainment industry with a dash of social commentary about parasociality, but the finale just devolved into unbelievable melodrama and I had to check out at that point. I don’t know, for a story supposedly about the “dark side of the industry,” it never felt like it was really examining and interrogating any systemic issues; instead it all boiled down to a few bad actors (with baffling motivations), and a final thesis you could find in any basic idol show. It hurts because I was really really into this story at the beginning, but with this flop of an ending I’m going to have to give it a 3/10.

Hung out with a friend and caught up on some Dropout shows. First we watched the Make Some Noise episode with Jess, Ross, and Geoff and it was decently funny. Then we started watching Gastronauts, and I honestly love this show so much… I love cooking competition shows already, and seeing Dropout put their own spin on it is so much fun. I love that the challenges are purposely ridiculous and out of the box – I like to imagine that the chefs had a good time flexing their creativity rather than just exhibiting their skills in a straightforward head to head. And then all the food looked sooooooooooooooooooo good it was honestly driving me a little insane. I’m really going to look forward to new episodes of this on a regular basis.

Thursday

Read the latest chapter of Ascendance of a Bookworm Part 2 and man this series is so much more fun when I can binge the whole thing…when will I learn… But this was a cute chapter regardless, just doing a bunch of testing and inventing.

Read the entirety of I Want to be a Wall in one sitting and it’s cute! As with most Yen Press queer manga pick-up’s, it’s kind of baby’s first introduction to its central topics of asexuality and marriage inequality, but it was nice to see it explored from the perspective of these adults with their various familial and social pressures (the stuff about the stigma of not having kids really got to me). It got a tad melodramatic for me towards the end, but it was sweet enough that I’ll let it slide. 7/10.

Caught up on One Piece because I heard that bangs Robin was back AND SHE DID NOT DISAPPOINT!!!!!!! I MISSED HER BANGS SOOOO MUCH and it’s kind of a relief to finally start a brand new arc, I’m going to do my best to pay attention and remember things this time as things develop lol I love the Norse mythology theming and whatever Loki’s got going on, but I hope this giant tree with its various levels isn’t just a retread of Impel Down.

I read Itou-san on a random Twitter recommendation for dark yaoi and just felt underwhelmed lol Maybe it was a pioneer in its time, but to me it just felt like the most generic edgy romance story in the world. It was like a teenager’s conception of what a whirlwind romance with an assassin would be like (coupled with a teenager’s conception of what a super duper evil assassin organization would be run like), and it just didn’t compel me. Unfortunately I’ll be giving it a 2/10.

Friday

Oops

Saturday

Whoops

[techvivek07]

Techwinks

In the rapidly evolving landscape of technology, innovation is the driving force propelling humanity towards a future filled with possibilities. Every day, new advancements emerge, reshaping the way we live, work, and interact with the world around us. Among the plethora of tech platforms and publications, Techwinks stands out as a beacon of insight, offering a unique perspective on the latest trends, breakthroughs, and developments in the tech realm.

Techwinks isn't just another tech blog; it's a vibrant community where enthusiasts, professionals, and curious minds converge to explore the frontier of technological marvels. With a commitment to delivering accurate, timely, and engaging content, Techwinks has become a trusted source for those seeking to stay ahead in the fast-paced world of tech.

From artificial intelligence and machine learning to blockchain and quantum computing, Techwinks covers a broad spectrum of topics, catering to a diverse audience with varied interests and expertise levels. Whether you're a seasoned tech veteran or a novice exploring the possibilities of emerging technologies, there's something for everyone at Techwinks.

One of the defining features of Techwinks is its dedication to providing in-depth analysis and thought-provoking commentary on the most pressing issues shaping the tech industry. Through insightful articles, expert interviews, and comprehensive guides, Techwinks delves beyond the surface to uncover the underlying implications of technological advancements on society, economy, and beyond.

But Techwinks isn't just about serious analysis; it's also about celebrating the lighter side of tech. With a dash of humor and a sprinkle of wit, Techwinks injects fun into the often daunting world of technology. Whether it's poking fun at the quirks of AI algorithms or sharing amusing anecdotes from the world of tech startups, Techwinks never fails to bring a smile to its readers' faces.

In addition to its editorial content, Techwinks serves as a platform for fostering dialogue and collaboration within the tech community. Through forums, discussion boards, and networking events, Techwinks facilitates connections between like-minded individuals, fostering innovation and creativity in the process.

But perhaps what truly sets Techwinks apart is its unwavering commitment to accessibility and inclusivity. Recognizing the importance of making tech education and information available to all, Techwinks strives to break down barriers and make complex concepts understandable for everyone. Whether you're a student exploring career options in tech or a senior citizen looking to embrace the digital age, Techwinks welcomes you with open arms.

As technology continues to evolve at an unprecedented pace, the need for reliable, trustworthy sources of information becomes increasingly critical. In a sea of clickbait headlines and misinformation, Techwinks shines as a beacon of integrity and reliability, delivering content that readers can trust.

In conclusion, Techwinks is more than just a tech publication; it's a community, a resource, and a source of inspiration for all those who dare to dream of a better, brighter future powered by technology. With its commitment to excellence, innovation, and inclusivity, Techwinks is poised to remain at the forefront of the tech industry for years to come, guiding and inspiring generations of tech enthusiasts along the way.

[ningyotsu]

What gacha character are you?

Aozaki Touko is a: ★★★★★ Star character! Their design is pretty lewd and looks simple When it comes to popularity, Aozaki Touko is not a very popular character... and has a lot of art about them but it's all made by the same 3 guys!

       “W-Wah....t-this is so true.....”

[kindahoping4forever]

A note for my followers

I'm sure by now you've already seen the posts going around about Tumblr's latest content restrictions concerning how posts are tagged. There is a lot of information to sift through so I just wanted to make a short post to ensure a few key notes were highlighted for my followers:

These changes are only affecting the iOS app. Apple device users who'd like to access the site as normal can still log in to Tumblr via mobile browser for an uninterrupted experience. Desktop users and Android app users are unaffected at this time.

These guidelines are coming from Apple, not Tumblr. Your complaints and anger should be directed at them. This is what is currently required to keep Tumblr available in the iOS App Store. No, Tumblr is not entirely blameless in this situation but holding their feet to the fire will not change anything.

Other sites have found ways to work around Apple's demands and Tumblr claims they are working on a way to as well. This post promises "meaningful developments" are underway to address the issues concerning the availability of "sensitive content" and that in the "near future" they hope to introduce "additional features" for iOS users to better control their experience.

More specific information about what has been affected and what you can do to regulate your experience can be found in these helpful posts.

What does this mean for this blog specifically? I'm not quite sure tbh. I'm an Android user so I don't have a way to see firsthand how much of my content is affected but seeing as the list of restricted terms ranges from the thirsty to the organizational (two of my favorite things 🥲), I'm guessing it's a lot of it. 😂

I want to try and avoid my update content being blocked so my tag for original posts will be switching from "my post" (yes, that's on the list for some reason) to "kh4f post" - but even then, it's not a guarantee that any commentary tags I add won't cause the post to be filtered. As I understand it, use of restricted tags (either by OP or in a reblog) prevents posts from showing up on dash but they may still be accessible by visiting blogs directly or via a post notification. (And again, as previously mentioned, this is only on the iOS app.) So if it seems like I've disappeared or you're missing out on content from me, I suggest you try checking my blog via one of these other avenues (or stop using the iOS app entirely - the browser experience is surprisingly functional!)

If you're a regular here, you know tagging has been a big part of my experience from the beginning so it's a shame that it specifically may cause my content to become inaccessible to a large portion of the userbase. There doesn't appear to be any hard rules as to which terms used just as a tag by themselves cause a post to go missing and which terms used at all within a tag cause it to be filtered - so while I can try to adapt my sensibility for the sake of these guidelines (cursing less, thirsting less specifically), it's nearly impossible to predict what content will be affected and how, especially since I won't be able to see it firsthand for myself.

This site and this blog have meant more to me than I could ever say and I hope you'll find a way to stick with me through these unfortunate circumstances so we can enjoy this new era we've been looking forward to together but if this is the final straw for you and this site, I don't blame you and it's been an absolute pleasure having you here. 💙

Leaving this untagged in hopes everyone will be able to see it lol 🧍🏻‍♀️

[schraubd]

Should I PlagueWatch It?: Series Finale!

In March 2020, I inaugurated on this blog what I said "may but hopefully won't(?) become an ongoing series": Should I PlagueWatch It? Basically, it took the thing Jill and I do best -- watch TV -- and offered our recommendations for what you should watch to get you through the pandemic.

Over a year later, Should I PlagueWatch It? did, indeed, become a series. In addition to the first entry -- HBO's Avenue 5 -- I also did entries on Gentleman Jack, Marvel's Runaways, Alpha House, Never Have I Ever, Jelle's Marble Runs, Making the Cut, and a "roundup" post that covered Billions, Insecure, Marvel's Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D., Ultimate Tag, Titan Games, and Holey Moley.

But now, it feels we're finally closing the chapter on the pandemic. Jill and I are vaccinated, my parents came to visit this past weekend, we're seeing friends, the CDC says we can go unmasked. It seems, alas, that all good things must come to an end. And while the pandemic itself is certainly not a good thing, some of us may be feeling a bit bittersweet at the prospect of being expected to interact with other humans rather than sit around and watch Netflix all day.

So to wrap up the series, one more omnibus "quick hits" review of all the shows we PlagueWatched that haven't yet gotten their own entry.

* * * Mild spoilers * * *

Blown Away

Reality TV can be wonderful in its formulaicness. Take a random hobby, find ten people who are pretty good at it, dangle $50,000 in front of them, and bang, you've got a competition show. This one's about glass blowing. I know nothing about glass blowing, but the competitors seem pretty talented to me?

I was impressed at how versatile a medium glass is. I worried when I started the show that the challenges would end up being pretty one note (how many vases can one make?). But the competitors actually made a lot of really cool material!

There's a lot of running and swinging and flailing given that they're handling molten-hot material.  It stressed me out. Also, apparently "glory holes" are an essential part of glass blowing, and nobody made a joke about it.

This show is definitely more in the "everyone likes and supports one another" mold of reality TV compared to the "constant cat fights and 'I'm not here to make friends'" mold. No judgment, just letting you know what to expect.

Sexify

A Netflix series about a young college student with no sexual experience who decides she needs to develop an app to optimize the female orgasm. It's not the most innovative concept, but it works well enough.

Of the core trio, my favorite character is Paulina -- the religious Catholic best-friend who is having (bad) sex with her fiancé and feels guilty about even that sin. She does a lot of great expressive work and has some superb character beats (her popcorn addiction -- just casually munching away while watching porn). 

Speaking of Paulina, at the outset I told Jill she looked like someone and Jill's first guess was "a plainer Emily Blunt" (that's not an insult -- who isn't plainer than Emily Blunt?). It wasn't who I was thinking of, and soon I realized the answer was like six women I've known over the years. So maybe "plainer Emily Blunt" is a more common face than I realized?

The show is in Polish (with subtitles), and I'm very proud that I managed to identify the language as Polish right away (I do not speak a word of Polish).

The musical motif for the show combines one of the catchiest guitar riffs I've ever heard with a sample loop of a woman's sex moans. It fits the show perfectly, but it's a bit awkward to listen to on its own.

Wandavision

You shouldn't need me to tell you about this show. It's good, but my hottest take -- and I stand by it -- is that as an exploration of grief Never Have I Ever does it better and it's not close.

Can we concede that Wanda is the unambiguous villain of the show? With only the barest shift in perspective, Wanda could be the nemesis with an admittedly sympathetic motive. To some extent, I think the show was far too forgiving of her. Motives aside, how different is she from Kilgrave on Jessica Jones?

Poor Emma Caulfield. So much build-up for her character, and it's only a head-fake.

Space Force

I liked it. It's not in the most elite of the elite comedies, and maybe that's the standard when Steve Carrell is the lead, but it was quite funny. That said, I keep on almost forgetting that I watched it, and have no substantive commentary to offer. So take from that what you will.

AOC lookalike alert (the character even gets the nickname AYC -- "Angry Young Congresswoman")!

Mythic Quest

I love that Ubisoft is actually involved in the show (which is set at a game studio producing a popular massively multiplayer online RPG).

Surprisingly, given my love affair with Community, Danny Pudi is one of the least interesting characters on the show.

The actress who plays Poppy isn't the very strongest (though she's improving), but Poppy herself may be my favorite character. Of course, everyone knows I'm a sucker for an Australian accent.

The show has some great characters in side parts who don't get enough attention, like Sue the community manager and Carol the HR director. Also, Aparna Nancherla has a small recurring role in the first season and apparently doesn't come back for season two? I don't get why she keeps getting sidelined like this -- she's funnier than the rest of the cast put together.

Ted Lasso

Good, sweet, endearing, fun. British soccer comedies with heart are a winner for me (Bend It Like Beckham, anyone?).

Ted's estranged wife is played by the same actress who plays Linda in Better Off Ted. This was very strange, though admittedly I'm probably the only person who cared enough about Better Off Ted to notice or care.

Lupin

Dashing gentleman thief who's always a step ahead of his adversaries, except maybe the one nemesis who actually can match him step for step in a constant cat-and-mouse game? Look, it's a cliché for a reason. I'm not going to say Lupin breaks the mold, but it certainly is a well-crafted entry into the mold.

If there is anything innovative, it's how Lupin particularly leverages stereotypes about race and class to maneuver more freely in certain spaces (e.g., he can smuggle himself into prison because the guards can't tell him apart from another inmate -- sad commentary, but useful for Lupin!).

It did do something I hate, which is release "half a season" and just leave the audience hanging at the end. Maybe it was the pandemic's fault, but one could really feel its incompleteness.

Kim's Convenience

Of the Canadian shows I've been watching, I'd say Working Moms (not in this post because it is pre-pandemic) is the stronger of the two. But this is fun as well.

It just got cancelled, unfortunately depriving it of the chance to wrap up its single greatest storyline (that's been ongoing since season one). That's a real, real shame.

Simu Liu as Jung is the latest iteration of the Jason Mendoza trend of "dumb male Asian hottie leads". I guess it's a blow against stereotypes?

Pastor Nina also could be an AOC lookalike. I think the show struggled a bit to draw a bead on her character.

Legomasters

I actually mentioned this show in my post about Jelle's Marble Runs, but it is such a joy to watch. I can't wait for season two, which is dropping very soon. For pure, simple, uncomplicated happiness, Legomasters beats out everything on this list.

via The Debate Link https://ift.tt/3yamzYb

[vantablade]

I don’t know who this will be helpful for, but in the interest of amplifying some black voices re: the content I consume, and anybody who might be interested in that sort of thing. Specifically I’m very interested in astrology, spirituality, tarot, as well as commentary, and I did some research into some black commentary YouTube channels if that’s your thing. Also I’m a sucker for Twitter so there’s some of my favourite Twitter personalities to spice up your feed not only with some educational content but also just... good content. 

There’s also a dash of other subjects like writers (three Tumblr writeblrs/writers, a Black-owned publishing house to keep an eye on with some new independent releases, and my current favourite author whose trilogy made me fall in love with fantasy all over again). 

Obviously it is severely reflective of my character that I did have to research certain creators because of my lack of exposure, and that does come from a white perspective in that I’ve never felt the pressure to engage with Black content the way I should haveーbut the only way to move forward from that is to actively seek them out, make adaptions, and introduce new content creators into my life. And hopefully, to my white mutuals (since I’m in no place to preach to anyone else), introduce some stuff to you guys too.

Because Black lives do not only matter when we’re mourning the lives lost, but Black lives matter when they are actively creating content we can support, across all platforms and genres. Whether it’s Black film, Black writing, Black art, Black YouTubers, etceteraー and while we should absolutely introduce more critical reading into our lives in order to develop a much more intelligent, nuanced perspective on the subject of race, we shouldn’t only view Black people as politics suppliers, but people who create content all across the board, especially when we consider that Black culture and Black creators are often the biggest influence on social media and modern culture. This is just a small, very niche list of what I have foundー and I would love recommendations! Your favourite designers, your favourite artists to follow, your favourite gaming channels (especially those who focus on thorough lets plays!), your favourite Black creator in any sort of environment. Under a read more just because this post is already long. 

Black Spiritualists/Astrologers/Tarot Readers who I really love:

Shonnetta’s Divine Tarot ~ A YouTube channel which does really long, in depth tarot readings for the signs and pick a cards if that’s your thing, she’s super bubbly and energetic and has great energy

 Itsbabyj1 ~ She does really fun but also well-researched videos, she’s super playful and knowledgeable about the subject. She has some really fun, laid back videos like how to tell if your crush likes you based on your sign, which if anything is just fun to indulge

Similarly, astrokit does really fun but also educational videos! Some based on crushes, or pet peeves, etc, but likeー she can even help you figure out your own chart bit by bit like her latest video on Moon in the houses. She’s sooo cute and has such an airy energy, I’ve spent many an hour relistening to her crush or pet peeve etc videos in the background because she has a really nice voice

If you want to learn some more advanced techniques, this interview with Darren King is really educational! He hasn’t made a lot of content yet but he’s a great speaker and his vid is so good, and you can even book a reading with him through the website

Sunshine Tarot ~ all of her readings are super accurate imo, she has such a homely vibe, she’s so charismatic that her videos feel like she’s really there with you. 

Gaialect ~ does occasional Tarot readings for the signs, she’s super kind and direct, originally quite a presence on Twitter and I feel like she really has a great camera presence and a good friendliness.

AstroDeeStars ~ again, just super good charisma & really informative videos. Not super active but you can watch her old content and be informed on the subjects!

ijaadee ~ A very advanced yet really personable astrologer who specialises in offering horary charts, and works with really detailed methodsーshe’s really interesting if you’re into that sort of thing!

Jalen Astrology ~ a black, nonbinary (and potentially gay) astrologer whose personality is stunning, and they’ve done some great threads iirc!

RetroJ ~ similar to ijaadee in subject matter and advanced subjects, but he does have some great introductory threads that you can look through. Also does a wide array of consultations if you vibe with that!

BlackWomenCry ~ A sex astrologer! They do really fun yet in depth analyses of signs and qualities, especially regarding sex and unpacking trauma. Worth a follow for sure

Misc (ASMR, Book Youtube, Publishing Houses/Writeblrs, Influencers):

LatreceASMR ~ A black woman ASMRtist for if you’re trying to relax, her stuff is super chill & she has a really comforting voice! I really like her earlier low fi stuff

Sung Mook ~ another ASMRtist! I love her character work and her roleplays so much, she has the gentlest voice you will ever here. Big sleepy I really recommend

Mina Reads ~ A booktuber! I’m still getting into the booktube scene so I’d also love recs if you’re into it as well, they’re really funny! (I believe their pronouns might be she/her but I can’t remember completely so I’d rather stay on the safe side). Also, they often review or read books focused on and/or written by Black people, which can be a great introduction to fiction by Black authors!

Yah Yah Scholfield ~ Horror writing, fantastic short stories, also publishing a lesbian horror novel this year 

Sandra T. ~ Yah Yah’s publisher/editor and a writer herself, that’s her main blog but she also posts her work here and she runs her own publishing company which currently has a poetry book, a compilation of short surrealist short stories, and Yah Yah’s novel): Oni House Press

Lydia ~ Another black writer! She posts excerpts of her writing work and I’m a huge fan of her stuff. Her writing is so... emotive, rich and inspiring.

My favourite book trilogy that I reference often is N. K. Jemisin’s The Broken Earth trilogy which is an incredible fantasy series, and I really recommend it as an introduction to fantasy, right now I’m also starting her other series. TBE is notable not only for its incredible world-building and character work (I cried... several times lol) but also for its subtle, natural integration of LGBT peopleーand I mean LGBT people, not just a token gay character but also trans characters, with even minor reference to nonbinary people. She has some other series that I can’t advocate for yet, because I haven’t read them, but of course when one series is so good, of course I have faith in her other work. 

Warsan Shire’s poetry is also groundbreakingー you’ve probably already seen it everywhere, whether in snippets or in huge excerpts, and she even contributed the poetry to Beyonce’s Lemonade. I read Teaching My Mother How to Give Birth which is a super short but very rich poetry book, which is also a great entry into it. 

Rashida Renee ~ you’ve probably used one of her scans in a moodboard, or seen someone use it. A Black trans woman with a huge knowledge on fashion and fashion culture, and highly influentialー I love having her on the TL. Also was a huge Tumblr presence, I’m not sure if that’s still a thing, but I believe she was scorpioenergies and she was fuckrashida.

Silver Summer ~ also known on Tumblr as trapcard I believe (also used to be blastortoise, a huge “comedy” Tumblr acc), another Black trans woman who is just ... naturally funny, very quick-witted and livens up the TL. Also a fan of KPOP if you’re into that thing.

jaboukie ~ you’ve definitely seen his tweets screenshotted. Funny as hell but not afraid to use his account to amplify things, lost his blue tick (rip) for the cause of mocking fools. 

D4Darious ~ a film YouTuber! but not just film, the act of making film, for any aspiring filmmakers out there.

The commentary channels I found through research but have not fully immersed myself in their content yetー Kat Blaque, For Harriet, Angie Speaks, T1J, D’Angelo Wallace, Joulzey. This is obviously not a comprehensive list whatsoever so I’m always taking more recommendations <3

[pixelgrotto]

A look at D&D’s Curse of Strahd

From about October 2018 to August 2019, I led a group of four friends through Curse of Strahd, the latest campaign book featuring a dive into the realm of Dungeon & Dragon’s most famous vampire, Strahd von Zarovich. It went well, and it was an interesting experience for me as a Dungeon Master, since this was my first time using one of Wizards of the Coast’s official modules. In the past I’ve always come up with my own homebrew adventures, and I still homebrewed a good chunk of Curse of Strahd, remixing characters and formulating story twists on the fly once I learned the ebb and flow of my group.

One of the things I love most about D&D, however, is that such behavior is encouraged, and pretty much all of the major 5th Edition releases outright tell DMs that they shouldn’t hesitate to make a campaign “their own” by only following the book when necessary. Thus, the version of Curse of Strahd that my players ran through was an experience specifically tailored to them - one where a motley crew known as the “Well-Doners” (like a well done steak...or a stake to the heart of a vampire!) were sucked into Strahd’s strange valley of Barovia and forced to ally together for the sake of survival...aided by a few key comrades, including a funny gnome mage who’d lost his magical mojo, the reincarnation of Strahd’s lost love, a grumpy monster hunter and a massive ranger and his dwarf wife. If I ever run Curse of Strahd again for another group, it’s very likely that many of these key comrades - as well as the general crux of the adventure - will turn out completely different.

To all enterprising DMs who might wish to run Curse of Strahd for their own groups, it’s worth first noting that this is very much a Ravenloft campaign. Ravenloft is the setting that sprouted from the 1983 module of the same name, originally devised by Tracy and Laura Hickman and then expanded upon during the heyday of D&D 2nd Edition. In a nutshell, it’s D&D’s horror setting, and the horror is very much steeped in the gothic tradition, with a heavy dollop of foes inspired by the Universal Monster Movies of the 1920s to 50s, sprinkles of Eastern European creepiness and a dash or two of dark romance to complete the mix. I quite like this combination because it reminds me of the melancholy yet deeply beautiful world of Mordavia in Quest for Glory IV: Shadows of Darkness, one of the formative experiences of my youth and a game that has a great soundtrack for the backdrop of any Ravenloft campaign. (Interestingly, Quest for Glory creators Lori and Corey Cole were D&D players before they went on to design computer games, which means that the gothic realm of Mordavia surely is a clear descendant of Ravenloft.)

But horror of any variety isn’t necessarily everyone’s cup of tea, and certain parts of Curse of Strahd - if run straight from the book - can veer quite sinister, because Barovia is ultimately a crappy place presided over by a crappy undead warlord. The introductory adventure of the module, dubbed “Death House,” actually deals with ghostly children who’ve died of starvation in a haunted manor due to the cultist ways of their mad parents. It’s entirely possible to make these kids untrustworthy antagonists in order to emphasize that the Ravenloft setting simply does not mess around, but since I was running this campaign for a group of four new players whose prior experience with D&D ran the gamut from limited to absolutely zero, I decided to make them into a spooky but still likable duo who could “possess” the players’ characters and offer sassy running commentary on the monsters infiltrating the manor. Like Casper but with a tad more snark, in other words - and the endearing nature of the children made the moment where my players had to lay their corpses to rest and confront their sad origins all the more compelling.

This act of balance - between ensuring that players recognize this as a dark adventure but also making sure that just enough light and humor alleviates the depression - is one that I tried to perform during every session of our game, and I’d encourage future Curse of Strahd DMs to do the same. I’d also encourage enterprising Dungeon Masters to perform a similar balancing act on the monsters and scenarios that permeate the adventure - specifically on the ones in the Death House opener as well as Strahd himself.

Death House, more specifically, is described in the book as a means to help the party quickly progress from levels 1 to 3, but played as is, it’s quite possible for players to get absolutely curb-stomped by everything within the manor - particularly a “final boss” that they’re technically not supposed to engage with, at least in a fair manner. Veteran RPG fans might relish the challenge, which is more reminiscent of Call of Cthulhu than D&D, but newbies might not like having to re-roll a character because their first one got wrecked by a Shambling Mound after only a few hours of play. So, retool Death House to suit the needs of your party - in my case, I limited the encounters somewhat to prevent a steady drip of HP and also gave my players a few tips on how to beat tricky baddies via those aforementioned ghost kids.

The opposite strategy goes for Strahd von Zarovich himself, who might be the big bad of Barovia but is surprisingly squishy when confronted by a hardy group of level 8 or 9 players, especially if they’ve found all the fancy sunlight-shooting artifacts of the adventure that can limit his powers. I can’t count the number of posts I’ve seen on the D&D Reddit or a Curse of Strahd Facebook group I’m in where frustrated DMs have written something like “Strahd was killed by my players within two rounds, where did I go wrong” - and in order to circumvent this from happening in the last session of a shared storytelling experience that had nearly spanned a year, I took a heavy pair of tweezers to Strahd’s stats and gave him three forms, each with their own HP. The first was his regular vampiric self, the second was him riding on his Misty Steed-summoned horse Bucephalus, and the third was basically Strahd going into berserker mode with black angel wings bursting from his back. (I stole the concept art of Satan from Castlevania: Lords of Shadow 2 for that. Worked perfectly!)

Speaking of Castlevania, I drew inspiration from the recent Netflix series - which I’ve written about here and here - when it came to developing Strahd’s actual personality, because even though the book updated his original Bela Lugosi-esque appearance into something more regal and fantasy-inspired, his essence is still something of a two dimensional bad guy, and the fact that one of his eternal missions in undeath is to make the reincarnation of his original lover fall for him is a problematic pill to swallow in 2019, even if it is meant as an ode to Dracula’s obsession with Mina Harker in Bram Stoker’s original novel. And so I decided to make my version of Strahd similar to the depressed, weary-of-life Dracula in Netflix Castlevania, turning him into a vampire of complexities - a guy who’s been immortal for so long that he almost wants the players to kill him, a man who believes he’s entitled to the love of a woman yet somewhere deep down realizes the inherent selfishness of that belief, and a lord who’s grown bored with his kingdom yet can’t quite relinquish the power he’s held over it for centuries. My Strahd, in other words, was still a bad dude, but at least a somewhat deeper bad dude that the cardboard cutout as presented in the book, and one of my players even described him as “a little like Kylo Ren,” which I took as a compliment.

Before I wrap this up, I’d like to return to the concept of the balancing act with regards to the structure and scope of Curse of Strahd, which is a true sandbox adventure. Players are not required to visit half of the locations outlined in the book, and the replayability factor is high, because the various artifacts that you need to defeat Strahd, as well as the specific non-player characters likely to assist you along the way, are dependent on a tarot card reading that occurs near the start of the adventure. The locations that I found the most important for my players were the towns of Barovia and Vallaki, the Wizard of Wines Winery, Yester Hill, Van Richten’s Tower, the Ruins of Berez, and Castle Ravenloft itself. Other groups online swear by Krezk, a third town that my players never bothered to visit (though I would have urged them to go there if we’d had any clerics or paladins in the party, since Krezk is a town with a giant church), and the Amber Temple, the lair where Strahd obtained his undead powers (a place I feel is best suited for players of neutral or evil-leaning alignments). Your mileage may vary, but if you’re going to DM this module, one of the best bits of advice I can give would be to see which locations your players are naturally inquisitive about, and then focus on those. Exploring every nook and cranny of Barovia can quickly turn into a slog otherwise.

With all this in mind, I think it’s time for the so-called “Well-Doners” to leave the world of gothic horror behind for a bit. They’ve somehow managed to find their way back to their home plane and the city of Waterdeep, and only one of the party was infected with a seemingly fatal curse after their stay in Ravenloft. What further quests await, I wonder, and what new campaign book will I hack apart to suit my players’ tastes? That’s for me to know, for them to find out, and for another long blog post examination...sometime in 2020, hopefully!

All photographs taken by me.

[monkey-network]

WarioWare: The Series Season 3 Episodes

52 Episodes. Season 4 Coming 20XX Season 2, Season 1 * = Episode Submitted by @tmantookie

The End of the Show: WarioWare Inc. want to make games again… except Wario, who has grown tired of the idea and the gang somehow taking advantage of him (even when he steals from them), so he goes back to treasure hunting. This begs the question: can a company run smoothly without an (arrogant and maniacal) entrepreneur to lead it?

The Prince and the Bopper: An elegant prince gets transported to Diamond City and feels out of touch with this new reality, so JT helps him see a side that’s been locked away. His kingdom’s chancellor arrives to take him back, but he’s conflicted between becoming king of the castle or staying as king of the ball.

Wario Side Story: The Possums and the Squirrels, rival gangs of DC’s Crystal Park, have fought for territory for generations. However, the daughters of the gang’s leaders start to bond and wish to put an end to the war. With Wario and Mona spectating from afar, can there be enough resolve in putting an end to the conflict?

Hurry Up!: The WarioWare gang are making a mad dash to a concert, but when they try using a shortcut through the DC mall, they’re forced to confront persistent kiosk owners who will stop at nothing to make them pay.

Words Hurt: In the show’s quietest episode ever, 9 and 18 Volt study at a library when higher grade kids start getting them in unintentional trouble, so the duo set up prank traps that’ll surely get back at them. All without making a sound.

Greed Pluribus Unum: A master thief is taking money from Wario, the richest fatcats of DC, banks, schools, hospitals, everything from the town. Why and where to is anyone’s game, but Wario-Man’s on the case to track down, take back, and force himself to give back to those who’ve been wronged.

Robot Humble: Doris 1 short circuits and plots to lead a robot uprising, but fails at getting an army due to Crygor’s bots not being the most vicious (or stable). So she turns to Mike, who develops feelings for her but gets annoyed by her constant pleading and moping.

Star Tolls: Orbulon takes over Dribble and Spitz’s shift for the day and is somehow better than the duo at getting the job done. But when he accidentally scratches a car and is challenged to a race across the galaxy, he may have to break some codes of his to win.

Nightmare on W Street: Halloween has arrived and Ashley is still the one person who’s afraid of nothing (beyond that one time). She and Wario takes this as an opportunity for easy money from the city, but when a stranger shaman casts a spell on her, the scam might falter when she starts to finally recognize fear.

Man of the Woods: Former minions of Wario’s past are stalking him, and everyone’s trying to figure out how to sooth their haunting tension toward him.

Cater Joe’s: Manager Joe opens a diner on the edge of town to have some time away from the city life. Some of the WarioWare gang stop by to share an adventure they had over the week.

Penny Machine: A snooty scientist is dazzled by Penny’s science fair project, but Penny refuses to give it up as it’s her most delicate creation. So the judge does all they can to get it, but you can’t put a price on love.

The Hero’s Might: After her first ever sugar rush, a hungover Lulu is stranded in the middle of nowhere with nothing but a lute, a water bottle, a mule, and Wario’s clothes on her back. Nothing left to do but try to make it back. And it begs the question: who’s the stubborn one in this story?

The Rhythm Hath Fallen* (Half Hour Crossover Special): A cosmic earthquake causes Heaven World to fall and collide with Diamond City, with HW’s citizens treating DC’s citizens to a week long block party. But the week starts to overstay its welcome, so Rhythm Heaven’s Tibby, his friends, and the WW gang try to fix things with Mamarin’s bizarre guidance.

The Opposable Opponent: Young Cricket starts training under a master that only uses his left thumb to fight, but struggles to keep up with the regime... until he starts to figure out how the master came to be.

Spell “Mi cup”: 9-Volt, 18-Volt, and 13-Amp enter and win a special edition movie branded mug and split up their days of possessing it. However, sharing germs is the one thing the three unfortunately overlook.

Tree Top Tango: Jimmy T is enjoying a jazzy walk in the woods, but gets in a pickle when creatures of nature’s variety start to surface. What’s a disco fool to beside show them a natural groove to ease their carnivorous minds.

Love at First Strike: Ana starts to develop a crush on 9-Volt, and is stuck between practicing and hanging out with him. 9-Volt would feel the same way, if she wasn’t pummeling him as a means to hide him from Kat.

The Typical Beach Episode: It’s an average beach day for WarioWare Inc... until a hurricane lands smack dab in the middle of the fun. So now the gang is caught between staying within the eye of the storm and dodging the chaos circling around them.

Ashociates: Ashley finally made some friends, dawg! Except not really, she’s only using them to get a mystical artifact and if you see her so called “friends”, her front is kinda justified.

Good Golf: Mona and Dr. Crygor are enjoying a nice day of mini-golf when a egotistical pro golfer butts in their game and begins ruining people’s fun. The two team up to beat him just in time for lunch, but things get difficult when he put up traps on the course.

Chili Dog Millionaire: Lulu finds out she’s a great cook, so she gets a job at a gourmet restaurant where the head chef demands for nothing but perfection. Nervous at first, the head chef treats her better than the rest, which prompts jealousy and potential sabotage her way.

King of the Dill: 18-Volt is selling hot pickles at school but sells out quick and ran out of his special ingredients. While going to the store, his classmates spot him and suddenly transform into sore throat, teary eyed zombies by the sight of his green jacket.

Becoming Human (For Dummies): Orbulon gets tired of people picking on him because he’s an extraterrestrial. So he invents a human suit that helps him appear like one. But, the intricacies of the suit start to send Orbulon dark thoughts that yet don’t stray from typical human ideologies.

Dueldreaming: Kat is suffering from nightmares to the point of not sleeping at all, so with the help of Penny, Ana goes into her dreams to slay the horrors but starts to cower before what she finds.

Way of the Birthday: It’s Young Cricket’s birthday, so Mantis has the perfect gift for him for all he’s done: a Battle Royale where it’s him against Mantis’s old friends.

Jump the Rope: We got ourselves a flash forward episode, where we see the kids grown up, the adults living out their days, and Wario.... ummm, in another place.

A New L.O.W.: Wario creates the League of Wario, a team of sinister pranksters, to get back at a viral video celeb that wedgied him great enough to put him in a wheelchair. 

Wario Party: It’s the anniversary of WarioWare Inc, and the gang wants to celebrate the occasion... by dining at the perfect restaurant. But they’ve dined at every place in DC, so they set out to go to the best place with the best palette, atmosphere, and prices.

Musclecats HO!: Mona joins a gym and enters herself into a bodybuilding competition. With the help of a supportive and swoll group of regulars, she’s aiming for the top.

Grey JT: A grey hair sprouts from Jimmy’s head and this makes him worry about how his routine may be the cause of aging faster.

That’s Enough, Buddy: Due to increase danger risk in DC, a young yet no nonsense sheriff is enforcing old rules on the public which interferes with Wario’s latest scam.

A Mother’s Metal: 9-Volt wants to give 5-Volt the best Mother’s Day gift ever, and eventually digs up an old relic of her past that’s both a blessing and a curse to 5.

The Best Worst Case Scenario: Television has gotten boring, even Wario thinks it’s a waste of his time, so everyone trashes their TV and goes outside to more productive means. Everything is swell, except for the people up top who soon rely on Wario to save them.

Oh Snow: Layers of snow has hit DC and while Wario becomes a life-sized snowman, Ashley learns about the multifaceted fun of snow.

WarioWaRPG: A digital virus manifests from Penny’s laptop and turns Diamond City into a card based RPG world. She kidnaps Penny and it’s up to the gang to save her. Unfortunately, they skipped the tutorial and don’t have the best decks on hand.

Let’s Be Lazy For Once: Due to a budget setback thanks to last episode, the WW gang decide to look back on previous episodes and provide as clever and nice a commentary as possible.

You’re Clowning Me: Dribble and Spitz pick a group of clowns that are on their way to rehearsal. What the two fail to realize is that they’re clown mafia with police, and rival clown cars, not far behind.

Chivalry is Dumb: A famous detective, and his maid sidekick, arrives at Diamond City to investigate an elaborate crime, only to be taken aback by Wario and all that he stands for, while his sidekick grows to enjoy the big guy’s rebellious and burly personality.

Break Out the Rainy Day Fun: Kat, Ana, Penny, 9 & 18 Volt join Ashley and Red at their manor while the rain’s heavy outside. And while Ashley is busy with a certain brew she’s craving, she summons skeletons to go play with, and not chomp, the others.

The Suit: Legends says there is a mystical 3 piece suit that can turn any normal being into a charming yet sadistically unruly reality bending version of themselves. Now this would be the part where I mention who stumbles upon such clothing, but I’ll let that be a mystery.

Consider the Fruit n’ Nuts: Dr. Crygor, with assistance from Wario, Mona, Cricket, and Penny, teaches us the good and bad of dieting.

House of Mike: After Mike stumbles upon a group of pugs who’re seeking a sense of purpose and bonding, he shows them a fantasy game he recently bought that could help them out.

The Hero’s “Happiness”: Lulu is comfortable with the life she now has in DC, but doesn’t feel happy, whatever that means. Only when a familiar villager of Luxeville enters the picture does she question whether it’s right to stay or leave for better purposes, and she turns to the least favorable person for help.

You Agree With Me?: In a shocking turn of events, a man who’s never able to decide on any choice was able to thanks to Jimmy’s advice. Now our more decisive denizen is indebted to his afro hero, to the point of imitating him to a bizarrely fleek degree.

Master Blaster: A few million years ago, jerk aliens decided to blast the earth with a laser beam that’s destructive yet really slow. A few million years later, it’s set to touchdown in 24 hours. Orbulon and Dr.Crygor team up to figure out how to beat the laser, but our alien is more worried with time than the doctor.

A Series of Unbelievable Events: At Joe’s Diner, Young Cricket and Master Mantis share their awful day and Manager Joe doesn’t find everything to be true, so they begrudgingly trace their steps and recount their day to Joe exactly how it happened.

Amp Unleashed: 13-Amp must face her fears when she has to rap battle against a duo that inspired her career. While she is alone on this mission, the memories of 18-Volt and Mike’s help give her new found strength.

Fronk Sonata’s Moonlight: Penny’s terrible singing practice makes her voice soul leave her body for 9V’s fronk, Snag, who becomes a hit nightclub singer.

Unininja: Kat and Ana fuse into one ultimate dual wielding ninja, but unfuses for good when they go too far with their newly acquired fun. But when a Tengu Shogun is coming with an armada toward Diamond City, it’s the perfect time to unite once again.

My Witch Ashedemia: Ashley is enrolled in a prep school for witches, but feels bored with the mediocre lessons. But she uncovers a secret about the school and uses this to blackmail the teachers for more advanced schooling, which inadvertently puts a target on her from an anti witch group.

LessTalkMoreTanks (Half Hour Season Finale): The WW gang finds a giant battle tank and take it for a spin, but it turns that they stole it from its cantankerous, anarchy driven owner. So... tank fight in the sand dunes, the gang vs the owner’s friends? Who’s on board?

[posterclever974]

X Mplayer2 Download

Freeware

Feb 13, 2014  mplayer2 is a command-line video player that was developed from the initial MPlayer, providing you with the original functions and more, along with various improvements of. Hi, what a long absence, I'm still alive, MPlayerX too. Now I'm planning some, relatively, big feature into MPlayerX for the next major release. It may cost some time. Before doing it, I thought I'd better release once. So actually 1.0.1 isn't a exciting release, just a little step forward. MPlayerX is armed by FFmpeg and MPlayer, which means it could handle any media format in the world without extra plug-ins or codec packages. Dance on your fingers. Pinch, tap or swipe, MPlayerX provides you the easiest way to control the playback. Click to download the Control Script for Sofa. Dec 13, 2018  Download MPlayer. MPlayer is a movie player which runs on many systems. Login Social Sharing. Tech news in your inbox. Get TechSpot's weekly newsletter Facebook.

Windows

46.0 MB

57,533

Aug 28, 2019  Bandwidth Analyzer Pack analyzes hop-by-hop performance on-premise, in hybrid networks, and in the cloud, and can help identify excessive bandwidth utilization or unexpected application traffic. Download a free trial for real-time bandwidth monitoring, alerting, and more. NOTE: The MPlayer App is optimised for iOS 7 or later.Download the MPlayer App free of charge before your next Monarch flight to enjoy our exciting.

It plays most MPEG/VOB, AVI, Ogg/OGM, VIVO, ASF/WMA/WMV, QT/MOV/MP4, RealMedia, Matroska, NUT, NuppelVideo, FLI, YUV4MPEG, FILM, RoQ, PVA files, supported by many native, XAnim, and Win32 DLL codecs. You can watch VideoCD, SVCD, DVD, 3ivx, DivX 3/4/5, WMV and even H.264 movies.

Another great feature of MPlayer is the wide range of supported output drivers. It works with X11, Xv, DGA, OpenGL, SVGAlib, fbdev, AAlib, DirectFB, but you can use GGI, SDL (and this way all their drivers), VESA (on every VESA compatible card, even without X11!) and some low level card-specific drivers (for Matrox, 3Dfx and ATI), too! Most of them support software or hardware scaling, so you can enjoy movies in fullscreen. MPlayer supports displaying through some hardware MPEG decoder boards, such as the Siemens DVB, DXR2 and DXR3/Hollywood+.

MPlayer has an onscreen display (OSD) for status information, nice big antialiased shaded subtitles and visual feedback for keyboard controls. European/ISO 8859-1,2 (Hungarian, English, Czech, etc), Cyrillic and Korean fonts are supported along with 12 subtitle formats (MicroDVD, SubRip, OGM, SubViewer, Sami, VPlayer, RT, SSA, AQTitle, JACOsub, PJS and our own: MPsub). DVD subtitles (SPU streams, VOBsub and Closed Captions) are supported as well.

What's New:

After a long pause, we decided that it might be a good idea to make a new release. While we had our fun with the naming scheme with lots of 'pre' and 'rc' it seemed time to move on and with everyone incrementing major versions between weekly and monthly we hope to be forgiven for jumping ahead to 1.1.

This release is intended to be compatible with the recent FFmpeg 0.11 release. We hope it will be useful to distros and other users relying on FFmpeg 0.11. Everyone else is encouraged to follow Subversion HEAD to always get the latest features and bug fixes. You might still want to read the release announcement to get a short summary of any bigger changes and improvements.

Mplayer For Windows 7

Among the bigger news is that we found a maintainer for the X11 gmplayer GUI, so those holding out on it against our earlier recommendations will get a lot of bug fixes.

There is also support for more subtitle types (Bluray, DVB, DVB closed-caption for example), many improvements to -vo gl including output of 10 bit video, very basic but usable OpenGL ES support and much better SDL support which makes it a usable choice on OSX (particularly on older PowerPC variants much faster than corevideo or quartz). MPlayer will now also try much harder to handle intermittent network failures, for example trying to reconnect.

As part of the code cleanup efforts, the internal libfaad2 copy has been removed since the FFmpeg decoder is working well. Also the internal mp3lib copy is no longer used by default since the many alternatives (FFmpeg, libmpg123, libmad) avoid its recurring issues like incorrect decoding with newer compilers. However it can still be forced at runtime for easier tracking of regressions. Please do not rely on this since it will be removed in the future. If you do not actually need it consider disabling it at compile time with --disable-mp3lib.

As a first for this release, the tarballs are available in two variants: compressed with xz and compressed with gzip. Please get the xz variant if you can to save bandwidth, the gzip version is for everyone that cannot use it. Should you never have encountered xz compressed files, newer versions of tar can uncompress it via 'tar xJf MPlayer-1.1.tar.xz'.

What's New:

Upgraded gcc to 7.3, enabled lto in FFMpeg

Enabled dash demuxer in FFMpeg

Enabled libopenmpt in FFMpeg

Updated gnutls to 3.5.18

Updated libvpx (git)

Updated openh264 (git)

Updated kvazaar (git)

Updated x265 (hg)

Apps similar to MPlayer 6

8914 votes

iTunes is a free application for Mac and PC. It plays all your digital music and video. It syncs content to your iPod, iPhone, and Apple TV.

Freeware

Windows

182 votes

A highly portable and popular multimedia player for multiple audio and video formats.

Freeware

Windows/macOS/Linux

67 votes

Freeware media player that supports many features for advanced users who desire to watch video files at the best quality.

Freeware

Windows

Application/x-mplayer2 Chrome Download

thx

I needed a simple command-ling media player, and this was perfect! Extremely lightweight and very versatile. I use it for some custom clip management and window capture for streamers to use when broadcasting using the OBS Studio streaming/broadcasting software on Twitch. I take chat commands that create a text semaphore/trigger file, and when the script sees the trigger, it uses this Mplayer utility to play. I am just doing this for fun, and to help streamers offer a little something extra. if a streamer wants to rotate 8 different 'Hug' clips when a viewer runs the '!hug @somename' command in chat, there should be a utility that can launch the clips when the commands are run, then rotate the clips so if 4 or 5 people use the 'Hug' command to hug each other, it doesn't just play the same clip over and over. The fact that you can title the player window allows a streamer to have a few different windows captures set up. Maybe 1 for fullscreen clips with a chromakey filter, a regular fullscreen clip fo speciual event clips, and maybe ones for subscriber 'intro clips' they use when they join chat to announce their presence in style. Maybe another for 'accent clips/memes', so users can add commentary by launching clips at proper moments, like a '!rip' command that plays a rotation of funny 'I'm dead' clips when the streamer dies playing a game. The streamer just ads these 3 or 4 window capture sources to each scene they want clips to be available, then the script/utility launches each clip with the appropriate window title to have it play at the right size and location. I'd love to see someone actualy do this properly. I have it all working. I just needed a 'lighter' player that was flexible enough to support all the different clip types. I was using VLC Media Player, but it did noy play smoothly, often hitching/lagging for a split second when launching clips, making it seems rough and 'unfinished'. This gives a smooth and polished feel when playing the clips.

This is awesome. No more need to fire-up some heavy graphical user interface just to listen to audio streams! (Sorry I couldn't do this, due to a complete lack of free time here!) The only thing lacking, instructions how to install mplayer.exe and instructions concerning how to use with Cygwin. Basically, the mplayer.exe goes within your $PATH. I'm not sure where the other sub-folders should reside, but I simply created a symbolic link using Cygwin for my usage here. (ie. See below Cygwin Instructions) Initial execution of mplayer.exe seemed to search all of Windows fonts. Successive exections of mplayer.exe appeared to forgo the font searching, resulting in the usual quick start of the program. For cygwin users: 1) Unpackage the mplayer package to a folder. 2) Start cygwin and make sure you have a local bin folder (ie. /home/user/bin) within your path. If not, create the folder and modify your local $PATH to include your /home/user/bin folder, replacing the 'user' with your user name. 3) Type 'ln -s /place/where/you/unpackaged/mplayer/mplayer.exe /home/user/bin/' 4) If you prefer using .exe' command suffixes or are required to, and you have 'mplayer' aliases within you Linux bashrc and are copying the Linux bashrc over to Windows' Cygwin, then open the bashrc file within vim and type ':%s/mplayer /mplayer.exe /gc' without quotes. The command will aide in replacing the 'mplayer ' with 'mplayer.exe '. Most Cygwin users can skip this as Cygwin seems to recognize commands without the '.exe' suffix!

Nice work ! Version 37051 has not any more WMV bug. Really nice Job ! Don't stop working on mplayer, i use it everyday for a project i'll publish soon... Thanks again ;)

Application X-mplayer2 Downloads

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[macunan]

Ultimate Vim Configuration for Developer

Install latest version of nodejs (For ubuntu like distro)

curl -sL https://deb.nodesource.com/setup_14.x -o nodesource_setup.sh   sudo bash nodesource_setup.sh   sudo apt-get install -y nodejs

Download plug.vim and put it in the "autoload" directory.

usually found in the echo $VIMRUNTIME directory

in my case it was :/usr/local/share/vim/vim82

since I compiled from source in most installations you can do the following:

Vim

Unix

curl -fLo ~/.vim/autoload/plug.vim --create-dirs \    https://raw.githubusercontent.com/junegunn/vim-plug/master/plug.vim

You can automate the process by putting the command in your Vim configuration file as suggested here.

Windows (PowerShell)

iwr -useb https://raw.githubusercontent.com/junegunn/vim-plug/master/plug.vim |`    ni $HOME/vimfiles/autoload/plug.vim -Force

Neovim

Unix, Linux

sh -c 'curl -fLo "${XDG_DATA_HOME:-$HOME/.local/share}"/nvim/site/autoload/plug.vim --create-dirs \       https://raw.githubusercontent.com/junegunn/vim-plug/master/plug.vim'

edit and  add the following to your .vimrc:

set number set clipboard=unnamedplus colorscheme peaksea set backspace=indent,eol,start call plug#begin('~/.vim/plugged') Plug 'neoclide/coc.nvim', {'branch': 'release'} Plug 'ctrlpvim/ctrlp.vim' Plug 'ctrlpvim/ctrlp.vim' Plug 'preservim/nerdtree' Plug 'chrisbra/vim-commentary' Plug 'jlanzarotta/bufexplorer' Plug 'itchyny/lightline.vim' Plug 'preservim/tagbar' call plug#end() set laststatus=2 let mapleader = "," nmap <leader>w :w!<cr> map <leader>tn :tabnew<cr> map <leader>to :tabonly<cr> map <leader>tc :tabclose<cr> map <leader>tm :tabmove " Opens a new tab with the current buffer's path " Super useful when editing files in the same directory map <leader>te :tabedit <C-r>=expand("%:p:h")<cr>/ " Close current buffer map <leader>bd :Bclose<cr> map <leader>tt :term<cr> " Close all buffers map <leader>ba :1,1000 bd!<cr> vnoremap <silent> <leader>r :call VisualSelection('replace')<CR> map <leader>o :BufExplorer<cr> " Quickly find and open a file in the CWD let g:ctrlp_map = '<C-f>' " Quickly find and open a recently opened file map <leader>f :CtrlPMRU<CR> " Quickly find and open a buffer map <leader>b :CtrlPBuffer<cr> map <leader>nn :NERDTreeToggle<cr> map <leader>nb :NERDTreeFromBookmark map <leader>nf :NERDTreeFind<cr> map <leader>ss :setlocal spell!<cr> map <leader>sn ]s map <leader>sp [s map <leader>sa zg map <leader>s? z= nmap <F8> :TagbarToggle<CR>

restart vim and type

:PlugInstall

Restart vim  and enjoy.

In vim install the plugins you need for your development 

For example:

:CocInstall coc-json coc-css

That was css

 Few of the available plugins are:

You can find available coc extensions by searching coc.nvim on npm, or use coc-marketplace, which can search and install extensions in coc.nvim directly.

coc-angular for angular.

coc-blade-formatter for blade, Integrates the blade-formatter (Laravel Blade formatter).

coc-blade-linter for blade, Integrates the Laravel Blade Linter.

coc-browser for browser words completion

coc-calc expression calculation extension

coc-cfn-lint for CloudFormation Linter, cfn-python-lint

coc-clangd for C/C++/Objective-C, use clangd

coc-clang-format-style-options coc.nvim extension, helps you write .clang-format more easily.

coc-cmake for cmake code completion

coc-css for css, scss and less.

coc-cssmodules css modules intellisense.

coc-deno for deno.

coc-denoland for deno, fork of vscode_deno.

coc-diagnostic for All filetypes, use diagnostic-languageserver.

coc-discord discord rich presence for coc.nvim

coc-discord-rpc fully customizable discord rpc integration with support for over 130+ of the most popular languages

coc-dash-complete Press - to trigger buffer source completion.

coc-dot-complete Press . to trigger buffer source completion.

coc-ecdict ECDICT extension

coc-elixir for elixir, based on elixir-ls.

coc-ember for ember projects.

coc-emmet provides emmet suggestions in completion list.

coc-erlang_ls for erlang, based on erlang_ls

coc-esbonio for rst (reStructuredText), esbonio ([Sphinx] Python Documentation Generator) language server extension.

coc-eslint Eslint extension for coc.nvim

coc-explorer file explorer extension

coc-floaterm for vim-floaterm integration

coc-flow for flow

coc-flutter for flutter

coc-fsharp for fsharp.

coc-fzf-preview provide powerful fzf integration.

coc-gist gist management

coc-git provides git integration.

coc-glslx for glsl, use glslx.

coc-go for go, use gopls.

coc-graphql for graphql.

coc-highlight provides default document symbol highlighting and color support.

coc-html for html, handlebars and razor.

coc-htmldjango for htmldjango, django templates (htmldjango) extension. Provides "formatter", "snippets completion" and more...

coc-htmlhint for html, Integrates the HTMLHint static analysis tool.

coc-html-css-support for HTML id and class attribute completion.

coc-intelephense for php, fork of vscode-intelephense. (scoped packages: @yaegassy/coc-intelephense)

coc-java for java, use eclipse.jdt.ls.

coc-jedi for python, use jedi-language-server.

coc-json for json.

coc-julia for julia.

coc-just-complete Press _ to trigger buffer source completion.

coc-lists provides some basic lists like fzf.vim.

coc-lsp-wl for wolfram mathematica, fork of vscode-lsp-wl.

coc-markdownlint for markdown linting

coc-metals for Scala using Metals

coc-omnisharp for csharp and visualbasic.

coc-perl for perl.

coc-php-cs-fixer for php, Integrates the php-cs-fixer (PHP Coding Standards Fixer).

coc-phpactor for php, using phpactor

coc-phpls for php, use intelephense-docs.

coc-psalm for php, use psalm.

coc-powershell for PowerShellEditorService integration.

coc-prettier a fork of prettier-vscode.

coc-prisma for Prisma schema integration.

coc-pyright Pyright extension

coc-python for python, extension forked from vscode-python. (Not maintained anymore)

coc-pydocstring for python, using doq (python docstring generator) extension.

coc-r-lsp for r, use R languageserver.

coc-reason for reasonml

coc-rls for rust, use Rust Language Server

coc-rome for javascript, typescript, json and more, use Rome

coc-rust-analyzer for rust, use rust-analyzer

coc-sh for bash using bash-language-server.

coc-stylelintplus for linting CSS and CSS preprocessed formats

coc-stylelint for linting CSS and CSS preprocessed formats

coc-snippets provides snippets solution.

coc-solargraph for ruby, use solargraph.

coc-sourcekit for Swift

coc-spell-checker A basic spell checker that works well with camelCase code

coc-sql for sql.

coc-sqlfluff for sql, SQLFluff (A SQL linter and auto-formatter for Humans) extension

coc-svelte for svelte.

coc-svg for svg.

coc-swagger for improved Swagger/OpenAPI spec authoring experience.

coc-tabnine for tabnine.

coc-tailwindcss for tailwindcss.

coc-tasks for asynctasks.vim integration

coc-texlab for LaTeX using TexLab.

coc-toml for toml using taplo.

coc-translator language transaction extension

coc-tsserver for javascript and typescript.

coc-vetur for vue, use vetur.

coc-vimlsp for viml.

coc-xml for xml, use lsp4xml.

coc-yaml for yaml

coc-yank provides yank highlights & history.

coc-thrift-syntax-support for thrift.

 in case it the vim version is an issue then you will need to install and compile version:

sudo apt-get install lua50 liblua50-dev liblualib50-dev sudo apt-get install libncurses5-dev libgnome2-dev libgnomeui-dev libgtk2.0-dev libatk1.0-dev libbonoboui2-dev libcairo2-dev libx11-dev libxpm-dev libxt-dev python-dev ruby-dev mercurial  sudo make install  sudo apt-get install python3-dev   sudo apt-get install python-dev

git clone https://github.com/vim/vim.git

cd vim

./configure --with-features=huge --enable-rubyinterp --enable-python3interp --with-python-config-dir=/usr/bin/python3.6-config --enable-perlinterp --enable-gui=gtk2 --enable-cscope --prefix=/usr --enable-luainterp --with-lua-prefix=/usr/local

make 

make install

You can get the config here:

https://github.com/macunan/vimconfig/blob/main/.vimrc

[perfectirishgifts]

Risk Horsemen Back In Saddle To Start Week Amid Rise In Virus Cases, Shutdown Fears

New Post has been published on https://perfectirishgifts.com/risk-horsemen-back-in-saddle-to-start-week-amid-rise-in-virus-cases-shutdown-fears/

Risk Horsemen Back In Saddle To Start Week Amid Rise In Virus Cases, Shutdown Fears

Getty Images

Key Takeaways:

Early pressure in place after a rough weekend of rising virus caseloads

Washington, London in focus with Brexit, shutdown deadlines approaching

Signs of “risk-off” to start week with volatility, bonds moving higher

For the first time in five weeks, investors face a Monday lacking any fresh vaccine developments.

Without that—at least not yet—the market may have to find other reasons to justify rallying. So far it hasn’t. Stocks are in the red thanks in part to another rough weekend of rising virus caseloads across much of the country. Risk aversion appears to be back for the moment as bonds and volatility climb (see more below).

Aside from the sad news about Covid-19 and growing fears of shutdowns hurting the economy, it feels kind of like old home week. China trade was recently back in the news, and now Brexit and a possible U.S. government shutdown are potentially on the agenda. If you didn’t know any better, you might think it was 2019 all over again.

Brexit talks are apparently making some progress, Bloomberg reported Sunday. The U.K. will leave the European Union on Dec. 31—with or without an agreement. The latest debate is over fishing rights, of all things. Both the European and U.K. parliaments need to ratify any accord, and a “no-agreement” Brexit wouldn’t necessarily be the most bullish way to start the new year.

Neither would a U.S. government shutdown. Congress has until Dec. 11 to try and avert that, so just four days. That’s getting wrapped together now with stimulus talks, which are likely to be a big focus this week.

With so much on edge, volatility began a comeback overnight. The Cboe Volatility Index (VIX) popped above 22 after flirting with 20 last week. Risk-off also looked evident in the bond market where the 10-year yield edged down a couple of basis points.

Late-Season Earnings

You might assume mid-December is a slow time for earnings, but that doesn’t mean there’s nothing worth checking this week.

Companies reporting include homebuilder Toll Brothers TOL (TOL) expected later today, and Adobe ADBE (ADBE), Broadcom AVGO (AVGO), Costco (COST), lululemon (LULU), and Oracle ORCL (ORCL) over the next few days. That’s actually a pretty decent list, though things get really slow the last two weeks of the year.

ORCL, in particular, may be worth a close look. It’s not a sexy company, just reliable. How they perform can provide clues into cloud business demand, even if ORCL’s business isn’t quite up there with some of the more high-flying companies they compete against. The other thing to remember about ORCL is that they’re one of those well-established multinational companies that can give a great indication not just about what’s going on in the U.S. but worldwide. So consider listening to their call.

Dollar, 10-Year Yield Flirting with Lows and Highs

Two other things to monitor this week are closely related: The U.S. dollar and interest rates. The dollar index is at its lowest point since the spring of 2018, while the 10-year yield approached 1% on Friday.

Both tell the story of economies gaining steam. The soft dollar (see chart below) partly reflects hope for strength in overseas economies (the euro is now at 31-month highs vs. the dollar), while higher rates suggest that hope is growing for Congress to provide stimulus. Of course, the dollar softness also could reflect stimulus hopes, too, because if Congress acts it means more currency being thrown at the economy.

The question is whether that psychological 1% level for the 10-year yield spooks anyone trading stocks. It might for a day or two, but that’s not necessarily something to worry about. Remember, the 10-year yield was trading near 2% when everything went haywire last winter, and the economy had been rolling along pretty nicely.

As longer-term rates rise, the spread between the longer end and shorter end of the yield curve continues to stretch. By the end of the day Friday, the 2-year/10-year spread hit a 2020 high of 83 basis points. You might expect Financials to get a nice lift out of that news, and they did rise more than 1% Friday. That put them near the top of the sector leaderboard, but way behind Energy’s 5% gains.

Another tracker to follow is VIX, which keeps nearing 20 but also keeps having trouble dipping below it. Maybe this is finally going to be the week when it finds a way to get down below 20 and stay there for a while, something that hasn’t happened in 10 months. We’ve come a long way from those 80 readings back in March, so the market feels like a much less turbulent place.

CHART OF THE DAY: SHADES OF 2018. The U.S. Dollar Index ($DXY) continues to weaken to levels last … [] seen in April 2018. It’s trading below its 10-day simple moving average (blue line) which is trending lower. If you look back to 2018, $DXY went as low as 89, which could potentially be the next support level. Data source: ICE Data Services. Chart source: The thinkorswim® platform from TD Ameritrade. For illustrative purposes only. Past performance does not guarantee future results.

A Stocking Full of Fresh IPOs: All the focus on stimulus and vaccines has overshadowed what an amazing year we’ve had for initial public offerings (IPOs). The number of U.S. IPOs spiked from last year despite Covid-19, Barron’s said. The total may approach 200, which would even top the tally from 2018—an incredibly strong IPO year. This year has seen the most money raised for U.S. IPOs since 2014.

Potentially adding to that list as soon as later this week are anticipated IPOs of DoorDash (DASH) and Airbnb (ABNB). Airbnb plans to target a range of around $39 billion to $42 billion, while DoorDash will seek a valuation of around $25 billion to $28 billion, The Wall Street Journal reported recently.

It also looks like 2021 could shape up as a big year for new offerings, so stay on your toes and remember that it helps to keep a cautious outlook on IPOs in general. Their stock prices don’t always live up to the pre-IPO hype, so know what you’re getting into, and don’t buy a stock just because you love the company’s product.

Jobs Report Redux: Taking a look back at Friday’s jobs report, there’s no escaping that disappointing headline number of 245,000, down from a revised 610,000 the previous month. However, a closer check reveals it wasn’t necessarily as bad as it seemed, in part because a chunk of the lost jobs came from the U.S. government as the 2020 Census count wrapped up.

One piece of good news that got a bit lost in the shuffle was the Labor Department reporting hourly wages up 0.3% in November and 4.4% year-over-year. That’s solid growth and could imply that the people still working aren’t all doing it for less pay. Even in normal times, a 4.4% annual pay raise would look pretty darn good for most people.

Why did stocks get a lift from disappointing job creation? It goes back to the same thing we used to see when the Fed didn’t have rates at zero. If we were in a normal rate situation and jobs data dipped, the market would tend to jump on hopes the Fed would be more dovish. Now the Fed is already as dovish as it can get, so the market jumped Friday on hopes that the bad jobs number would light a fire under Congress on fiscal stimulus. A package before the holidays looks a bit more in the realm of possibility today than it did before the jobs report.

Next Steps for Tech Darlings: Even if Tech doesn’t dominate the way it’s been, there’s little doubt that some of the habits people picked up during the pandemic aren’t going away. That’s arguably good news for some of the smaller Tech companies whose stocks really shot the moon this year like Zoom (ZM) and Docusign DOCU (DOCU). A lot of companies no one had heard of a year ago are part of everyone’s daily life. This doesn’t mean you’ll never take a flight again, or get a home loan. But people are much more comfortable working remotely, so it’s not like ZM will lose all its users once we reopen the economy.

The question could end up being how do companies like ZM monetize and create efficiencies and leverage multiple platforms into one offering? A lot of these small companies thought they had a few years to get that done, but they’ve had everything pulled forward due to the pandemic and now investors don’t seem happy just to hear about more monthly users. The ones who have trouble monetizing might be the ones who get swept up in future consolidation, as we just saw with Salesforce CRM (CRM) scooping up Slack (WORK). Look out for more of that, possibly, in 2021.

TD Ameritrade® commentary for educational purposes only. Member SIPC.

More from Markets in Perfectirishgifts

[darklingichor]

Once bitten, twice shy. **SPOILERS FOR CHECK, PLEASE!**

So, I discovered the comic Check, Please! after commentary on the latest episode popped up on my dash, I think it was classified as "In your orbit". I just saw the dialogue between the main character and his father: I want you to tell me I'm not messed up! Please. Before I even knew what the comic was about, that line hit me in the gut. I needed to read the rest.

So naturally, I binge read the whole thing the next day. It's really good! Great art, great character development, and the kind romance I love.

See, it has taken me a while to figure out that my hesitation with romance came less from my aromantic orientation and more from the seeming *spate* of "romantic comedies" that didn't end happily, I saw when I was younger. Started with My Best Friend's Wedding. Yeah, yeah, Julia Roberts was an ass in that movie, but as a teenager, I didn't want realistic from something advertised as a rom com. Reality rarely has montages and soundtracks. It seemed like after MBFW every rom com I saw just had to be "real" and not have the love interests get together. Annoyed me to no end. I mean, sometimes people get together, damn it! *stamps foot and pouts* Hell, my grandparents met at 19 and stayed together for the rest of their lives!

So, I started to avoid romance fiction, or approach it with caution. My unconscious matto became: Give me fluff or give me death! As in if they don't get together, one of them better have a heartbreaking death scene! (Notable exceptions: Gone with the Wind and Casablanca, but those were not comedies... I have more flexibility with drama... And if some one has a heartbreaking death scene it usually isn't a comedy... Look, I never said I made sense!).

Anyway, lately I have found more stuff that has the kind of romance I like. Check, Please! Is one of them. The main character and his love interest are adorable and have interactions that are a joy to read. Their relationship is a main element, but it isn't everything, so, I have no real reason to think that it won't end with Bitty and Jack skating off into the sunset but... *sniff* I've been hurt before!

So yeah, I like it, and I just hope it ends as fluffily as it started!

[ningyotsu]

@waikyoku​  instead of bending, fujino’s main ability is just being a batting ram :’DDD

[xyloading16]

Dash It For Mac

This guide describes how to download, install and encrypt the Dash Corewallet for macOS. The guide is written for macOS Sierra, but the stepsshould be similar for other versions.

Downloading the Dash Core wallet¶

Visit https://www.dash.org/get-dash to download the latest DashCore wallet. In most cases, the website will properly detect whichversion you need. Click the blue Dash Core button to downloadthe installer directly.

Dash is an API Documentation Browser and Code Snippet Manager. Dash instantly searches offline documentation sets for 200+ APIs, 100+ cheat sheets and more. You can even generate your own docsets or request docsets to be included. Beginning with an inspiring poem by Linda Ellis titled The Dash, renowned author Mac Anderson then applies his own signature commentary on how the poem motivates us to make certain choices in our lives-choices to ignore the calls of selfishness and instead reach out to others, using our God-given abilities to brighten their days and lighten their loads. May 22, 2020 The latest version of Diner Dash is 2.4 on Mac Informer. It is a perfect match for Action in the Games category. The app is developed by PlayFirst, Inc. And its user rating is 5 out of 5.

Dash Sleeve For Macbook

The website properly detects the wallet appropriate for your system

If detection does not work, you will need to manually choose youroperating system. Go to https://www.dash.org/wallets and select theOSX tab, then click Download DMG.

Save the file you downloaded to your Downloads folder.

Verifying Dash Core¶

This step is optional, but recommended to verify the integrity of thefile you downloaded. This is done by checking its SHA256 hash againstthe hash published by the Dash Core development team. To view thepublished hash, click the Hash file button on the wallet downloadpage.

Once both the Dash Core file and the hash file have downloaded,double-click the hash file or view it in your browser and find the hashvalue for the Dash Core file you downloaded.

Viewing the Dash Core hash file

This hash value should correspond with the hash value of the file youhave downloaded to ensure it is authentic and was not corrupted duringtransit. To do this, open Terminal, browse to the location where yousaved the file, and run the following command, replacing the versionwith the specific version of the file you downloaded:

Generating an SHA256 hash for the downloaded file

If the hashes match, then you have an authentic copy of Dash Core formacOS.

Installing Dash Core¶

Open Finder and browse to your Downloads folder. Then double-click onthe .dmg file you downloaded to decompress it. A window appears showingthe contents of the file.

Drag the Dash Core application file into your Applications folder toinstall Dash Core.

Installing Dash Core

Running Dash Core for the first time¶

To run Dash Core for the first time, either open Launchpad or browse toyour Applications folder in Finder. Double-click Dash Core orDash-Qt to start the application. You may see a warning aboutopening an app from an unidentified developer. To resolve this problem,simply Control-click the app icon and choose Open from the shortcutmenu, then click Open again in the dialog box. The app is saved asan exception to your security settings, and you can open it in thefuture by double-clicking it just as you can any registered app.

The first time the program is launched, you will be offered a choice ofwhere you want to store your blockchain and wallet data. Choose alocation with enough free space, as the blockchain can reach 10GB+ insize. It is recommended to use the default data folder if possible.

Choosing the Dash Core data folder

Dash Core will then start up. This will take a little longer than usualthe first time you run it, since Dash Core needs to generatecryptographic data to secure your wallet.

Synchronizing Dash Core to the Dash network¶

Once Dash Core is successfully installed and started, you will see thewallet overview screen. You will notice that the wallet is “out ofsync”, and the status bar at the bottom of the window will show thesynchronization progress.

Dash Core begins synchronizing with the Dash network

During this process, Dash Core will download a full copy of the Dashblockchain from other nodes to your device. Depending on your internetconnection, this may take a long time. If you see the message “No blocksource available”, check your internet connection. When synchronizationis complete, you will see a small blue tick in the lower right corner.

You can now begin to use your wallet to send and receive funds.

Encrypting your Dash wallet¶

Dash For Machine Learning

After your wallet has synchronized with the Dash network, it is stronglyadvised to encrypt the wallet with a password or passphrase to preventunauthorized access. You should use a strong, new password that you havenever used somewhere else. Take note of your password and store itsomewhere safe or you will be locked out of your wallet and lose accessto your funds.

To encrypt your wallet, click Settings > Encrypt Wallet.

Dash It For Mac Os

You will be asked to enter and verify a password.

Enter a password

When the encryption process is complete, you will see a warning thatpast backups of your wallet will no longer be usable, and be asked toshut down Dash Core. When you restart Dash Core, you will see a smallblue lock in the lower right corner.

Fully encrypted and synchronized Dash Core wallet

Dash Mac App

You can now begin to use your wallet to safely send and receive funds.

[ladystylestores]

Your Thursday Briefing – The New York Times

U.S. awards $2 billion contract for vaccine doses

As nations around the world race to lock up coronavirus vaccines even before they are ready, the Trump administration announced a nearly $2 billion contract with Pfizer and a German biotechnology company for 100 million doses.

No vaccine has yet been developed, and it is not clear whether the Pfizer version will work. But if the vaccine being produced by Pfizer and BioNTech proves to be safe and effective in clinical trials, the companies say they could manufacture those first 100 million doses by the end of the year.

The contract is part of the White House’s effort to drastically shorten the time to manufacture and distribute a working vaccine. Europe has a parallel effort underway.

Another mission to Mars

It’s the summer of the Red Planet: China is preparing to launch an orbiter, a lander and a rover to Mars, perhaps as soon as today.

Beijing is eager to show that it can manage complex interplanetary missions. Landing on Mars is a feat that only the U.S. and the Soviet Union have achieved before.

The Chinese attempt would follow the successful launch of a spacecraft built by the United Arab Emirates, which took off on Monday from Japan. A third mission — NASA’s Perseverance rover — is scheduled to launch next week.

The three are taking advantage of the brief window every 26 months or so when Earth and Mars are closer than usual. If all take off successfully, they should arrive at Mars in February.

If you have 9 minutes, this is worth it

A global fashion name, caught in the virus vortex

Diane von Furstenberg’s glamorous personal brand has masked the fact that her fashion line had been losing money for years.

Snapshot: Above, demolition work at the Bui Chu Cathedral in Vietnam. The 135-year-old church, considered by many an architectural gem, is being destroyed to make room for a bigger cathedral despite last-ditch efforts to save it.

Back to work, briefly: Prince Philip, the 99-year-old husband of Queen Elizabeth II of Britain who retired from public life in 2017, briefly stepped back into his life of royal duty to hand over a role he has held for nearly seven decades. Philip bestowed on Camilla, Duchess of Cornwall, the post of Colonel-in-Chief of The Rifles, the British Army’s largest infantry regiment.

Liverpool celebrates: Fans were not allowed inside to watch Liverpool’s players lift the Premier League trophy, but the show that took place was still joyful.

In memoriam: Tony Elliott, who started the Time Out global publishing empire in his mother’s London kitchen in 1968, died on July 16 in London at age 73. “His thing was, ‘I had one idea, but it was a good one,’” his widow said.

What we’re reading: This commentary in MEL on the lip-biting selfies of Lin-Manuel Miranda, creator of “Hamilton.” Taylor Lorenz, a Styles reporter, calls it “an astute critique of the lip bite as a selfie pose and a great explanation of a meme that’s become inescapable on TikTok this week. And yes, there’s already a Lin-Manuel Miranda lip-bite face mask.”

Now, a break from the news

Cook: This sheet-pan fish with chard and spicy red pepper relish combines a piquant, fiery relish with a tender white fish and leafy greens for an easy meal.

Watch: A soundstage production from Erykah Badu and a Norah Jones “mini-concert” are on our list of the best virtual concerts online.

Read: The latest crop of horror fiction includes “Malorie” — Josh Malerman’s sequel to “Bird Box” — as well as “Mexican Gothic,” “Wonderland” and more.

We may be venturing outside, but we’re still spending lots of time indoors. At Home has our full collection of ideas on what to read, cook, watch and do to make it fun.

And now for the Back Story on …

Playtime, when the virus is the bad guy

For adults, the pandemic upended life. But children are adaptable. Our Parenting site took a look at how kids are making the coronavirus part of playtime. Here’s an edited excerpt:

Nicole Campoy Jackson said her 4-year-old son, Finn, was planning what he calls a “Goodbye Germs” party, an all-out celebration of when the pandemic has passed. “We have our menu. He wants to have pizza. And anytime I get something new that’s really good,” said Ms. Jackson, who lives in Santa Monica, Calif., “if it’s something delicious, he’ll say ‘Oh, we gotta save this for the ‘Goodbye Germs’ party.’”

Finn and his mother also pass the time — and these days, there’s a lot of it — by doing what we all want to do from time to time: closing the windows and screaming at the top of their lungs. “We get really loud and angry and we point to a window and yell, ‘Germs, you get outta here!’” Ms. Jackson said.

Taking out frustrations about the virus by incorporating it into a make-believe world is something Jacob Krantz, 3, and his mother, Jessica, have also embraced. The two recently joined forces as The Incredibles — mother as Elastigirl, son as Dash — attacking a supervillain known as the coronavirus.

“That day, just out of the blue, he was like, ‘Let’s go save the world, we’re going to kill coronavirus,’” Ms. Krantz said. Jacob announced his plans by saying, “First we kill the virus, then we kill the germs, then we kill the colds.”

Sandra Russ, a professor and psychologist, said studies had shown children in pediatric hospitals who incorporate their experience into play — by performing “surgery” on their stuffed animals, for example — experience less anxiety than those who do not.

“For most kids, this is a healthy and normal way for them to deal with scary things that are going on in their world,” she said. “This is the new monster.”

That’s it for this briefing. Need a good book? Zadie Smith’s latest is a slim collections of essays. See you next time.

— Victoria

Thank you To Theodore Kim and Jahaan Singh for the break from the news. You can reach the team at briefing@nytimes.com.

P.S. • We’re listening to “The Daily.” Our latest episode is about the plans to reopen schools in the U.S. • Here’s today’s Mini Crossword puzzle, and a clue: Blow smoke (four letters). You can find all our puzzles here. • The New York Times named Meredith Kopit Levien, chief operating officer, as its next chief executive, succeeding Mark Thompson.

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