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goldenkamuyhunting · 4 years ago

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1534 Nendoroid Hyakunosuke Ogata is finally available!

So, since Goodsmile finally made him available for preorder, let me ramble a bit about him (and how to preorder him).

Yeah, I know I already did it for the prototype but a little more can’t hurt.

Warning, I’m gonna use the images that are on the Goodsmile site page for him... but also the ones on Kahotan’s Japanese blog because they capture him better.

So let’s start by seeing him in full colour.

The colouring is not bad, we were already familiar with this pose as it was used for the prototype as well so I won’t really comment much on it. I’m not sure why they’ve chosen the ‘standard expression’ instead than the grinning one for this photo as he actually was grinning in the image that inspired this but whatever, the grinning expression is included and that’s all that matters.

We can see an improvement in the definitive version, which is that his eyebrows are drawn in manga style (we can see many lines form them) and not in anime style (were they’re made with a single, large stroke).

This was something I know many fans has requested so I’m glad Goodsmile listened them... even though they declare that their official inspiration is his anime version.

They also added lines below his eyes so I’ll say they’ve tried their best in reproducing his expression.

Kahotan’s blog allows us to see him from behind as well.

I love how they had drawn some rebellious strands of hair and hadn’t made them all slicked up, and his little hood is very cute.

It’s a pity it can’t be pulled up though but this would require three more additional pieces and it’s kind of clear Goodsmile wasn’t that invested in his cape as we can see in the images only one version of it.

Why this is relevant?

Because the right side of it is pulled up to allow Ogata to move his arm while the other is kept lowered. In hindsight probably it was better to include a cloth cape instead than a plastic one as I think this could limit Ogata’s mobility.

I’m not sure if he’ll be able to shoot with his cape on and the difference between the two sides might be too marked if he’ll keep his right arm down.

Oh well, this is something we will be able to judge only when we’ll have him and I understand this was a BIG problem for Goodsmile as they clearly couldn’t give him a dozen of plastic capes and pieces in cloth or in other materials that aren’t plastic are included only in rare occurrences.

The plastic cape is still VERY CUTE.

Okay, going on.

As Nendo’s arms are simply too short it was impossible to reproduce Ogata’s iconic gesture of hair grooming so I think, according to Goodsmile, this is the compromise they could reach... whcih shows also the grinning face we could see in the prototype.

It’s nowhere near the hair grooming but, as I said, that one was IMPOSSIBLE TO GET so I really apprecciate their attempt to find something that could work as equivalent.

I think this image might give an even better idea of hair grooming (it reminds me of when he did it after Asirpa told him not to shoot the woodcocks), but maybe it’s just me.

This image shows us they also gave him a left hand which can hold the rifle, which is nice.

We continue with something that left me a little perplex, Ogata’s shooting position.

I don’t know if whoever placed him and Kahotan also made a mistake in positioning him... but it seems his right hand is not holding the rifle at all... when Ogata normally does.

It wasn’t something problematic as Nendoroid Tanya Degurechaff can do it just fine.

Even Nendoroid Springfield seems to hold the rifle with her right hand more than him.

Still, it’s possible they just wanted to show that hand. In the initial image there’s a right hand that can hold the rifle, so maybe that’s the trick.

He still looks really cool when shooting.

Goodsmile gave Ogata a butterfly to try to reach. I’ll say even if they said they were taking inspiration from the anime, they definitely have considered the manga as the butterfly scene isn’t in the anime, just in the manga.

LOL, here they would have needed the standard expression and not the grinning one but whatever, Ogata reaching for the butterly is ADOURABLE.

Yes, the butterfly is not very detailed, but keep in mind it will be really, really tiny. You won’t see all the details and it’s a complete new butterfly as the ones included in the “after parts part 2″ set were different

The last image Goodsmile shows us is a very special one as THEY INCLUDED PARTS TO MAKE THE CITATAP SCENE!

I’ve sent requests and pictures for this one so I’m delighted they had included it... which was not an easy feat as it means this Ogata will come with an additional sitting body (in addition to the little wooden stump and knifes) which is really not so common.

I wish I could see his expression better but I still love him.

Overall I think they paid more attention to him than to my poor Nendoroid Asirpa (I made a full review here).

Asirpa came with two more expressions, but despite all her pose being based on her being seated, she didn’t have any sitting part and she came with very few accessories (the hand with the chopsticks, the bown and the spoon with the otter head), she couldn’t hold her knives to make citatap and there was not a single possibility to have her use her bow and arrows, with not even her walking stick being included, although, credits when it’s due, due to the intricate Ainu patterns, she was probably hell to make for Goodsmile as there’s the chance that one had to be handpainted.

Also, her bent arm was a single piece, meaning you couldn’t rotate it, while both Ogata’s arms are two pieces. this makes for a lot more poses.

What worries even more though, is how she’s not being re-released with Nendoroid Ogata. Asirpa was released in 2018/09. Now, when Goodsmile release a new Nendo of a series for which they had already released Nendo, they often re-release them. It’s the case of how Tamaki Iroha gets a new release because they are releasing Nanami Yachiyo.

No re-release might mean my poor Asirpa didn’t really sell well, so Goodsmile either has still some of her old copies or doesn’t feel like investing in her again.

This means we got Nendoroid Ogata merely due to the HUGE amount of requests... and we might not get any other Golden Kamuy Nendoroid unless he sells really well.

Due to this I encourage you all to preorder him, to show Goodsmile an interest in GK Nendo. This not only because the Ogata Nendo is beyond cute but also because only in this way we can hope to get new GK Nendo as well.

How can you do it?

There’s of course, the Goodsmile on line shop. You register and place your oder. You will have to pay additional fees such as import taxes if you’re not residing in Japan.

However preordering in a shop near your home might be important in this period due to the Coronavirus affecting mail services so what can you do?

You can also order at Goodsmile online shop USA if you’re in Canada or in the United States as they don’t ship him out of them.

So what if you don’t live in Japan, USA or Canada?

Many of Goodsmile partner shops allow for pre-order.

You can search for one in your country or close by.

I use and can wholeheartedly recommend the Neko no Koe shop as they always offered me a great service. You can pay after your Nendo reaches their shop and they can send it to you when you’re ready to receive it (which for me is an imperative as there are periods in which I’m not at home and they just hold my Nendo for me without any additional cost and wait to send them until I’m back). They offer their services also to who’s not Italian so you can mail them to ask for info ([email protected]).

BE VERY WARY if you try to pre-order him from a shop that’s not one of the Goodsmile parters one. I never heard of someone managing to get an Asirpa bootleg and it’s possible they didn’t make them as she wasn’t popular but they’ll know Ogata was ugely requested so yes, chances to find him as a bootleg are higher.

Bootlegs often have a horrible quality (they rage from them being very ugly to their parts not staying together or being missing) but, what’s more, harm the original producer (Goodsmile) and the copyright holders (Geno studio and Noda himself).

I wholeheartedly recommend to stay away form them.

#Golden Kamuy #Golden Kamuy Nendoroids #Ogata Hyakunosuke #Asirpa #Nendoroid

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joealwyndaily · 5 years ago

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Sometimes the best Christmas presents are the ones we don’t think we need; a new Christmas Carol, for instance. Indeed it may be indicative of a certain unappreciated vacancy around the Christmas tree that in discussing the BBC’s new version of the Dickens classic both its director and leading man refer back to The Muppet Christmas Carol made way back in 1992.

“I was sent the script,” admits Nick Murphy, best known for directing the Rebecca Hall ghost movie The Awakening, “and my first thought was, ‘For God’s sake! The Muppets! They nailed it. What’s the point?’ ”

Joe Alwyn, who plays Scrooge’s clerk Bob Cratchit in the BBC three-parter, has meanwhile posted a trailer on Instagram with the caption: “Hard to fill the shoes once worn by Kermit. But I tried.” The self-deprecation was quickly “hearted” by the singer Taylor Swift, who is the actor’s girlfriend and who will be watching the mini-series with Alwyn and his family in London in the final days before Christmas.

There is nothing wrong, of course, with The Muppet Christmas Carol. It is probably in most people’s top three adaptations of Dickens’s masterpiece (alongside, I would say, Alastair Sim’s 1951 version and Scrooged). Its endurance does suggest, however, that it may be time someone did something a bit more serious, a little darker and a touch more grown-up with a tale that excoriated Victorian neglect and associated Christmas with the relief of poverty for ever more.

And this is exactly what Nick Murphy has achieved with a bracingly fresh script by the Peaky Blinders creator Steven Knight. Guy Pearce’s Ebenezer Scrooge is still a “squeezing, wrenching, grasping, scraping, clutching, covetous old sinner”, but since Pearce is only 52, there is rather less of the old. At the end of the novel, Dickens wrote that “ever afterwards” — that is after Scrooge’s Very Bad Night — “it was always said of him that he knew how to keep Christmas well”. That is rather more of an achievement when, as in this version, you may have 40 Christmases, rather than a couple, left to you.

Equally remade is Cratchit, who in Alwyn’s incarnation is far from the bashfully gulping frog thanking his master for granting him Christmas Day off before scampering back to Miss Piggy’s fleshy arms. Although Alwyn grew a rough beard for the part, his is also the best-looking Bob Cratchit you have seen. As the actor and I talk at the Picturehouse Central cinema in London, I find him as mesmerising off screen as on.

“Bob is trapped by Scrooge,” Alwyn says. “He’s abused by him. He’s not treated fairly. He’s there only because he has to be. He’s treated like shit.”

I’d say there’s a definite feeling in their shared scenes that Bob might just snap and hit Ebenezer over the head with a poker. “That was the intention. He’s at breaking point. He’s pushed right to his limits and Scrooge, I think, relishes winding him up. All Bob can do is hold his ground and fight back as much as he can — but he isn’t such a sap in this version.”

Scrooge and Cratchit’s relationship so much resembles an unhappy marriage that the niggling, bitter exchanges invented by Knight, with very little reference to Dickens’s dialogue, resemble Steptoe and Son rewritten by Strindberg. The easy contrast would have been with the Cratchits’ poor but happy marriage, but this too comes under scrutiny. There is an acknowledgment of the challenges a disabled child can bring to a household, and it is somehow emphasised by Tiny Tim being played by Lenny Rush, an extraordinary young actor, aged ten, who has a rare form of dwarfism called spondyloepiphyseal dysplasia congenita, the same condition as Warwick Davis.

“It really mattered to me that nobody was photo-fit,” Murphy says from a studio where he is dubbing the last episode. “Bob Cratchit is always a winsome, put-upon nice guy and the Cratchits themselves represent this idea of an ideal, working-class, lovely family. So we looked into their relationship on the page and there seems a genuine tension between Bob and his wife. Things are hard. It isn’t easy to have no money and a disabled child, and they lean on each other and they’re not straight with each other and there is a genuine antagonism between them.”

Knight has written into the narrative a family secret that connects the Cratchits to Scrooge. The secret belongs to Mrs Cratchit, played by Vinette Robinson, whose part is greatly expanded; indeed, the novella does not even grant her a first name, although the Muppets, and other adaptors, opted for Emily.

“Inevitably the secret begins to surface and cracks appear in the family,” Alwyn says. “Something has to happen. I think what Steven has done is take the story and drill deeper. He hasn’t taken too much liberty. It’s not bending the truth too much from what Dickens would have wanted. Or I hope not.”

Murphy insists that worthwhile adaptations of classic texts should be “edgy” and have “a good bite to them”. “If you absolutely don’t want any variation from the book then I strongly suggest you sit in a corner at Christmas and read it again. But if you want to see it used as a prism through which we can see a broader and slightly different subject explored, then this one’s for you.”

Alwyn’s performance is part of the iconoclasm. “Joe’s instinct as an actor is always to push away from the obvious and into ambiguity,” Murphy says. “He’s very quietly spoken. He’s not brash at all. He’s a gentle, intelligent guy, but he just simply wasn’t interested in fitting a Dickensian cliché.”

“I’ll take that,” Alwyn says when I pass on the compliment, having not considered his technique in such terms. He is 28 and would probably accept that he is best known for two facts: the first is that he is Taylor Swift’s boyfriend; the second that, aged 25 and with no professional acting experience, he won the title role in an Ang Lee movie.

He is from north London, the middle of three sons. Their father is the television documentary-maker Richard Alwyn, renowned for making The Shrine about the public reaction to Princess Diana’s death.

“He was away a bit,” Alwyn says. “He made quite a lot of films in Africa when I was growing up. He was often in Uganda, Rwanda at one point, South Sudan. So he’d come back with stories and artefacts from all over the place. He made a great documentary in Liverpool during the World Cup about two kids on an estate growing up there.”

His mother, Elizabeth, is a psychotherapist. So, I say, although his family were comfortably off and he was sent to the fee-paying City of London School, he knew something of other people’s lives?

“All different kinds of people, all different kinds of stories,” he says. “Obviously, she couldn’t share them with me in the same way that Dad could, but both their jobs take an interest in other people and are about how to empathise, understand, and listen to stories and tell stories. I suppose it’s not a million miles away from an actor’s job; listening to other people, understanding them, trying to tell stories.”

I ask about the contemporary political resonances of A Christmas Carol. I cite the wealth of certain members of his profession and of Swift’s. Only the other day I have read that she has a private jet so she can visit Alwyn on a whim. He promises me that 99.9 per cent of what the press write about them is false, and this is an example.

I ask if he finds it embarrassing.

“Find what embarrassing?”

The disparity between the amount some people earn and the wages of workers in, say, Amazon fulfilment centres.

“I saw something in The Guardian the other day, I think, saying that the top six richest people in the UK accumulate the same amount of wealth as the poorest 13 million. I think that was the figure,” he says.

And politics today?

“It’s bigger than Scrooge, but it’s the same thing amplified; not being able to see beyond yourself, building walls, cutting yourself off from other countries. If there was ever a story to counter that, featuring someone who epitomises that and then who remembers who he is as a human being, it is A Christmas Carol.”

Unlike the young Dickens, Alwyn was not a boy to stand on a table and sing and dance. As a child he auditioned to play Liam Neeson’s son in the Richard Curtis film Love Actually, but didn’t get it. He harboured ambitions to act, but pursued them only later at the University of Bristol, where he took plays up to the Edinburgh Fringe. One night he acted before an audience of one: the writer’s mother. Undeterred, he went on to the Royal Central School of Speech and Drama, joining the scramble at the end to find an agent. Weeks later, his new agent rang to say that Ang Lee was working on a new film, Billy Lynn’s Long Halftime Walk, and wanted to see an audition tape.

“I got some mates to film me in a lunch break and then my dad filmed another scene, and we got a call that night saying, ‘He wants to meet you this weekend. He’s saying, we’re going to put you on a plane and take you out of school. Come for the weekend. Learn these scenes.’ ”

As Billy, a young US Marine fêted for killing an enemy assailant in Iraq, Alwyn was painfully believable; a virgin solider returning home to be exploited for an act that had devastated him. The film did not do well, mainly because it was shot at a hyper-reality frame rate that few cinemas had the technology to show, but Alwyn was on his way.

“Things only evolve by change and people taking risks,” he says. “And Ang Lee is someone who I admire for that. None of his films are the same. Maybe thematically they draw on the same things, but he’s always pushing the boundaries.”

The same can be said for A Christmas Carol and, even more, about Yorgos Lanthimos’s The Favourite, in which Alwyn appeared alongside Emma Stone and Olivia Colman. It applies less so to his other recent films, Mary Queen of Scots, Boy Erased and now Harriet, a faithful biopic about the slave liberator Harriet Tubman in which he played a slave owner’s son. What he has managed to do consistently is work and learn from some seriously good actresses — Colman, Stone, Saoirse Ronan and Cynthia Erivo. “I know. I am targeting them,” he jokes.

I tell him my daughters have insisted I ask if he minds Swift writing songs about him (whole albums, actually, but check out London Boy if you are in search of a little cringe). “No, not at all. No. It’s flattering.”

Does it matter to him that the press — it’s a bit metatextual this, I admit, for I’m probably doing the same thing — make it obvious that they are as interested in his girlfriend as they are in him? “I just don’t pay attention to what I don’t want to pay attention to,” he explains tolerantly. “I turn everything else down on a dial. I don’t have any interest in tabloids. I know what I want to do, and that’s this, and that’s what I am doing.”

The boyf, described only the other day as “mysterious” in one of those tabloids, is no mystery at all. He knows what he wants for Christmas, and it is the career he is already forging.

A Christmas Carol begins on BBC One at 9pm on Sunday

#joe alwyn #the times #taylor swift #interview #a christmas carol

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popculturebuffet · 4 years ago

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Ducktales 87 Reviews: A Drain On the Economy (CACC Part 1) (Commission)

Commissioned by @weirdkev27. The start of a whopping four episode commission as I review the original Ducktales Four-Part Serial, Cash as Catch Can! The Kishke of Macaroon decides the best way to market his once in a life time find of glowing, power producing fruit is to have the two richest men in the world weigh their money to see whose richer. Seems Legit. Glomgold of course can’t play fair but since this is the 87 version he simply hires and outfits the Beagle Boys to steal scrooge’s money instead of leaving a shark filled with c4 on the doorstep of the bin as a distraction while he tries to saw it in half with a giant buzzsaw. Tanks, childen nearly drowning and outbidding yuppies ensue. Full reviewcap with spoilers under the cut. Sadly no Sea Monsters eating Ice Cream Yet.

Huzzah! Another day another commission! And it’s a massive one too as i’m covering not one, not two, not three, but FOUR episodes of the original ducktales for 15 bucks! Thank you once again WeirdKev27 for the commission. Not saving this for the end this time, if you’d like to commission your own review, just pm me, it’s 5 dollars for one episodes, and now you get 5 dollars off for each episode you commission after 2. So for instance this multiparter was 4 episodes, so Kevin payed for only three, for a total of 15 bucks! Whatabargin! But enough shilling let’s get down to bidness. As usual for first episodes a quick rundown of my history with the show: Being a fan of the Life and Times of Scrooge McDuck, which I fully intend to cover here at some point and yes you can commission duck comics too if you were curious, I did want to watch Ducktales for a while but didn’t really try to until the Reboot came out. As a result I got the first season dvd for Christmas, bought the second, and while I haven’t watched all the series, what I’ve seen is pretty good. It’s a fun, fluid adventure show that captures the spirit of the Carl Barks comics while doing it’s own thing with them. Sure some aspects of the time or even of the original comics that this adapted wholesale haven’t aged well, and we’ll get to some of them, but for the most part the series has a timeless quality to it that really makes it work. I may prefer the reboot.. but I still enjoy this series and i’m glad to revisit it.

So with that, we come to one of the series handful of multiparters. For the most part Ducktales was just one off adventures, episodes that could easily be aired at any time with little regards to a strong continuity.

But unlike most shows including the rest of the Disney afternoon that at most had one pilot movie and one or two two-parters, Ducktales had 4 multi-episode story arcs. The episodes were still written with about the same episode of the week format, it’s just instead of being all wrapped up there was an ongoing storyline that tied each episode into the next and drove the action. It’s honestly not a bad format and not all that dissimilar to the Sardonyx, Out of This World, Heart of the Crystal Gems, and Diamond Days arcs Steven Universe would have.. and if your wondering yes I would cover those for the same fees, but that’s not what we’re here about.

However even among this format this four parter was unique.. and not just for the “A Sea Monster Ate My Ice Cream!” bit we’ll get to next time. The other 3 mini’s were 5-part Season Premires that either set up the show period (Treasure of the Golden Suns) or introduced a major new character for the rest of the series (Fenton/Gizmoduck for Super Ducktales, and Bubba and Tootsie for Time is Money). Though weirdly in the case of season 2 these 5 parters were also the ONLY episodes, but one oddity at a time I suppose. My point is Catch as Cash Can is not only the only one not to start a season, instead coming in mid-way through season one, but dosen’t change the show and is only 4 episodes instead of 5. It’s still from what I can remember, which only came back when watching part 1 as I got it confused with treasure of the golden suns, pretty good.. apart from the third episode but we’ll get to that, it’s just worth noting is all. So with that out of the way is this four parter any good? How do the episodes hold up from a few years ago? Well I was paid good money to find out so let’s do it to it shall we? We open in Macarooon which.. I THINK is a play on Moroco, but still dosen’t make a whole lot of sense given it’s a cookie, this episode about fruit and Hamilton’s accent as the Grand Kishke, the country’s ruler, is a vauge indian stereotype with a touch of middle eastern sterotype. Sing it with me now....

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Still not great having a white guy do a vaugely foreign accent that’s played for laughs, and yes again acceptable at the time, I don’t hold it against Hamilton camp, still dosen’t make it at all comfortable. Though it’s still, and this is VERY faint praise, better than Carbomya, an ACTUAL CANON LOCATION in the 80′s transformers cartoon that’s as offensive and dumb as it sounds and, no joke, caused Casey Kasem, who I was reminded by the article linked above quit over this.. and found out from said article is Middle Eastern himself. Huh the more you know. And SOMEHOW this isn’t the most offensive thing the franchise has ever done, as japan had mexican stereotype transformers and kiss players.. just kiss players you do not want to know, and Micheal Bay later gave us skids and mudflap and I die a little on the inside remembering that happened. Back on point there’s been worse, dosen’t make this okay, but it’s not so offensive it ruins the entire episode. Just makes the Kiskhe’s seens wince inducing.

Scrooge and Glomgold are having a poker-esque dick measuring contest over whose wealthier but for once i’ts not just because it’s tuesday in duckberg but because the Grand Kishke has called both here. As he explains, and as they know but we don’t, while going down the stairs he fell down and found a vast cavern beneath his pallace with tons of glowing fruit that could soon replace lightbulbs if marketed correctly as they never spoil and never run out, thus putting his country ont he map. While the vauge “wacky foreigner” stereotype thing is unfortunate, the Kiske is likeable and does have good reason for not doing the marketing of his biggest export himself: He’s not a businessman and has a country to run. So he felt going to the richest man in the world was the right call, but Glommy and Scroogie are tied in assets so the Kiske decides to tie break things by having the two weigh their fortunes instead as the two you know.. have large piles of stealable money around for sentimental reasons.. and because they don’t trust banks. So yeah with the contest set Glomgold sets out to do what he does best... set himself on fire with a hairbrained scheme.. no wait that’s the other glomgold. Cheat.. which this one can actually do without ending up in a bear trap, so we cut to the Duckburg jail.. which is at least in this episode just one giant cell surrounding the Beagle Boys, though given their responsible for 80% of Duckberg’s crime, and a good chunk of this series as a whole, it probably IS just that. But Glomgold using ... a .. giant floating cow balloon.. wait..

I mean I love this because .. just what the hell is this, why a cow balloon.. was it the only one he could rent? Who rents those? Did he buy this thing? How’s he going to get rid of it? How’s he not getting caught for buying this thing? Did he make this? Did he spend a good few hours building a giant cow balloon fortress/ did he dump it in the river?

You know, maybe it was schemes like this that made Frank decide to make Reboot!Glomgold into the loveable incompetent maniac he is today. I mean this sounds like one of his schemes: If your going to do something right do it in the most insane, over the top, nonseical, costly, overcomplicated way possible. As it stands though the rest of 87 Glomgold’s plan actually makes sense: he throws down gas masks and gasses the guards, though the boys think it’s ma at first. However they quickly are fine with it being their dad as Glomgold has a job for them.. though they nearly nope out when they find out it’s scrooge. This is a neat contrast to the comics where, under both barks and rosa while the Beagle Boys would get discouraged or bemoan their defeats they still kept coming. While it’s likely only for this episode it’s nice to see them have some hestiation.. at least about going after the bin directly. Which given the bin is the most heavily guarded location in duckburg no matter the contniuty and while it’s been attacked and broken into millions of times at this point, no trick works twice because Scrooge adapts. It’s what makes the continual nature of the beagle boys assualts on it here and in the comics work and why their still a threat despite always getting beaten down: sure they get in once in a while, but scrooge outwits them and then presumibly offscreen makes adjustments for next time while at the saame time their too stupid and stubborn to ever fully give up and to stop coming up with new ways to get scrooge’s fortune for themselves.

It’s a good dynamic but I like some hesitation since even the dumbest crooks get wise eventually and their being hired by someone whose utterly ruthless and might kill them or worse if they fail. But Glomgold actually has a resonable counter, that since he’s rich he can suply them with everything they could need instead of whatever they can steal he just needs the manpower and the plausible deniability. They shake on it and the die is cast. At the bin Scrooge is annoyed at having to put up with the beagle boys again ow of all times, and we soon get the second best scene of the episode as the beagle boys, and cousins storm the bin, basically doing a zap branigan and trying to throw wave after wave of their own boys at them till Scrooge’s defenses falter. It’s a great and tense action scene as the boys send beagle after beagle with some great names I sadly forgot and should’ve written down. It’s a fun sequence, though it does show why the series updated burger as he gets distracted with food... because...

That’s literally the joke and I can see why Matt and Frank retired it entirely. But other than that it’s a joy to watch. The finale is notable as Bigtime uses some armor to tank things.. until scrooge actually brings up a tank.. with just one caliber larger shells than what his armor can take, a nice little gag. But yeah scrooge pointing a tank at someone is badass and one of the only two times this episode he really gets to be. More on that in a sec. But while the boys celebrate Scrooge’s victory Scrooge dosen’t, knowing they’ll just be back in in greater numbers and thus has gone to the ludicrous extreme of setting up an automatic cannon in his money bin that fires at anyone entering.. and then forgot his cane. You can probably guess what happens next.

Yup Scrooge is thrown back, because apparently he’s immortal in this reality too, and the bin starts to break down, while the Beagles storm in and seconds up. This scene just.. annoys me. I get Scrooge isn’t unstoppable, if he was the show, and the comics and the reboot of the show wouldn’t be as fun if he wasn’t challenged at all. Scrooge himself would be disappointed if his life had no stakes. My issue here is the beagles go from evenly matched with scrooge, if both using weapons to.. casually brushing past him and the boys. And they HAVE beaten them plenty in the comics, but usually it’s through surprise or threatening the boys.. who they have right there. Instead they just.. easily beat scrooge for no real reason. It just smacks of laziness: they need the boys to get in so like scrooge and his own boys they can see the money go down a crack and thus into the sewers, but instead of having a fight or them just you know hold the triplets hostage or use a ray gun or something since it’s plausible in this setting, their backed by a billionaire for this ep and it’s an acceptable substitute. This just makes no sense to me and really baffling bit in an otherwise great episode. But as noted the money went down the tubes, so the beagles retreat.. if only because they now can just go fish it out of the sewers like that’s somehow legal. But given how the Calisota supreme court seems to never change the various terrible loopholes that nearly loose scrooge his money all the time, it’s not surprising. Seriously it was used by Carl Barks more than once: Some asshole using a bet, wager or old timey agreement to try and take something from one of our heroes usually scrooge, and other writers followed suite naturally given he set the pace for them on everything else why stop now? Though really “Slimy assholes use loopholes to run roughshod over innocent people” is such a common thing nowadays and presumably was even more so then, I commend barks for not only picking up on it but using it frequently in a CHILDREN’S COMIC. God damn man that’s some balls. Anyways Scrooge can’t quite literally slip through the cracks, but the boys can and given they are as one, they all go down follow that dough while Scrooge tries to figure out where it is from above. Scrooge goes to city planning or something like that and gets the maps to the water works, and I like the fox clerk here, but the beagles also have them. And while Scrooge chases them above the boys continue their trek bellow eventually finding the cash stash with good detective work and call scrooge , who happens to have tracked the cash and is in the general area, over from above.. but get swept out because the beagle boys open the floodgates and into the city’s reservoir. ON the bright side I now get where “Open the floodgates comes from” Scrooge heads to the pumping plant to pump them out, but finds the beagle boys and a fight ensues to see who can accidently kill some children the fastest as the triplets are buffeted back and forth over, and over, and over and over and over...

And over again till the valves break and shove the Trips into a swanky condo just as a real estate lady, who according to the Disney wiki also showed up in “Magica’s Shadow War”, good for her with the yuppies naturally wanting the condo, though the boys stop them from buying it, trick them into the elevator and then use the override to shut it down so they can’t get back up. So the Trips hold onto the loot, while Scrooge arrives.. and again since Duckburg legal policy is chosen by spinning a giant wheel and going with whatever it lands on, Scrooge can’t just you know have someone come and get his property. His solution however is clever as after a bidding war over the condo he just decides to buy the whole blasted building. And at first I wondered why their wasn’t a bit of him grumbling over the price.. but then I realized his fortune, and doubling it is at stake. While Scrooge will spend as little as ducking possible, when the chips are down he will throw his money around. And I like that it’s a nice subtle character moment showing that he knows when not to throw a big tantrum about spending money and that he has more important things going on right now, such as keeping his hands on most of it. But naturally this wins though the real estate lady wonders how he did that. Lady he owns a good chunk of the city, is in the news frequently even in this series, and owns the largest building in town which towers over every other on a massive hill and is frequently broken into or attacked, how the hell do you NOT know who he is?

Regardless Scrooge regroups with the boys but the beagles are close and are even bright enough to cut the power. I LIKE these versions better than the reboots. With the exception of a lack of character actress Margo Martendale and you know the fat shaming and all that, these beagles, while having less personality are more compient, mor eof a threat and more enjoyable to watch instead of just petty crooks who only get involved when the opportunity strikes. IT’s one of the few changes i’m just. eh on. Most of the changes, making Glomgold more insane, making Gladstone just less obnoxious enough to be tolerable, making donald less of a scallywag and more of a responsible father, not having Daisy leave donald at the drop of his hat but be an actual supportive partner.. all good. This one’s just lukewarm though ma herself is awesome, the boys are just incompitent and I forgot when watching the series that while stupid and stopped constantly the beagles just aren’t. It’s something I can give this series more than the original easily. Scrooge is about to give up and is fading out on them, tired and exausted. This DOES feel in character as scrooge, like anyone can feel worn down and he’s tried damn near everything only to be ready to loose. The boys snap him out of it.. or rather Dewey does by hucking a wad of bills at him as seen at the top of the article and it’s easily the best gag of the episode. Though it’s also the ONLY time i’ve been able to refer to the boys actions by name as while one may do something.. their the same character. Now what they are varies as the show bounces between the classic HDL characterizations: They can be like they are in the barks comics and this episode, upstanding young woodchucks who are clever, loyal to a fault, and bring scrooge down to earth when he needs it as well as an utter asset to him, mischievous young boys screwing up as children often do but learning from their mistakes or short sided goal like they are in the other half of barks comics or the later theatrical shorts.. or hyperactive , sexist little shitheads who are selfish and lazy like in the early shorts minus the sexisim or quack pack. Though I now realize just from writing that that while Huey is based on barks and ESPECIALLY Don Rosa’s version of the boys, just taken to a logical extreme as well as being autism-coded, the other boys are based on other aspects of them with their sometimes scheming nature being given to Louie and their more energetic spells and overly 80′s attitude from this cartoon given to Dewey, with again both amped up considerably. It was a neat way to give them actual personalities instead of being one person sharing the bodies of three characters.

Yeah as you can tell while I WILL say upfront I love Russi Taylor and none of this is her fault.. i’m not a big fan of the classic versions of the boys. They aren’t BAD It just baffles me why Disney, and i’m blaming theme more as some foreign comics apparently did try as did Quack Pack, never let people differentiate them or thought to really try hard at that until the reboot and it smacks of their stubborn refusal to really change their iconic characters in a significant way. I’m honestly surprised the reboot got away with it and hope the 2017 personalities are the default. I also apologize for that rant but it was going to come about at some point might as well nip it in the bud now. But that smack to the head got Scrooge back in gear and it gave him an idea.. give them the money.. specifically pile money on the elevator, breaking it, after all he’ll need to fix it anyway might as well go all in, and sending the beagles crashing down.. to the waiting police. Who called them.. probably condo lady to make sure Scrooge wasn’t lying and to report strange men breaking in. Point is Scrooge is exhausted, but triumphant.. for now. TO BE CONTINUED.

Final Thoughts: This is a solid 87 Ducktales episode: it’s fun, fast paced, has a simple but enjoyable concept, and feels like a Carl Barks comic come to life without directly adapting his stories. It’s good stuff. I had my problems as mentioned but their outweighed by the great jokes, pacing and action in this one. A great note to start out on. In the Next Part: A SEA MONSTER ATE MY ICE CREAM! A SEA MONSTER ATE MY ICE CREAM! A SEA MONSTER ATE MY ICE CREAM! A SEA MONSTER ATE MY ICE CREAM! A SEA MONSTER ATE MY ICE CREAM! A SEA MONSTER ATE MY ICE CREAM! A SEA MONSTER ATE MY ICE CREAM! A SEA MONSTER ATE MY ICE CREAM! A SEA MONSTER ATE MY ICE CREAM! A SEA MONSTER ATE MY ICE CREAM! A SEA MONSTER ATE MY ICE CREAM! A SEA MONSTER ATE MY ICE CREAM! A SEA MONSTER ATE MY ICE CREAM! A SEA MONSTER ATE MY ICE CREAM! A SEA MONSTER ATE MY ICE CREAM! A SEA MONSTER ATE MY ICE CREAM!

Until then, you can follow this blog for more ducktales every monday, check my various sub pages for more ducktales reviews of the reboot, i’ve done every episode of season 3 so far and one season 2 episode as well as a recent review of the first darkwing ep, and as noted before you can comission your own review of any animated series, ones i’ve covered and otherwise. Reblog this to spread it around if you liked it, like it if you don’t want to do that, and until next time stay safe, check your house for gary busey, and hopefully we’ll meet again.

#ducktales #review #reviews #a seamonster at my ice cream #catch as cash can #a drain on the economy #scrooge mcduck #huey duck #louie duck #dewey duck #flintheart glomgold #bigtime beagle #burger beagle #the beagle boys #macaroon #ducktales 87

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irvinenewshq · 2 years ago

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Star Trek Prodigy Trailer Teases Borg

Picture: Paramount Star Trek: Prodigy’s younger heroes ended the primary half of the season having realized methods to be a crew collectively, and now extra prepared than ever to make the leap to turning into Starfleet cadets. These plans have hit a little bit of a snag, nonetheless… and it appears like this season goes to proceed with Starfleet not being on one of the best of phrases with the united statesS. Protostar. As a part of as we speak’s Star Trek Universe panel at New York Comedian Con, Paramount revealed a trailer for the remaining half of Prodigy’s first season, set to begin airing later this month. Catching up with the twist of the first half’s climax, it appears like that is going to be a race towards time for Holo Janeway and her teenage crew… towards foes and buddies alike who’re fairly acquainted. Star Trek: Prodigy | Midseason Return Teaser Trailer (NYCC 2022) | Paramount+ The majority of the trailer teases the chase between the Protostar and Admiral Janeway, who finds herself fairly miffed that somebody’s stolen a prototype Starfleet ship that was captained by her former first officer, Chakotay—even when the individuals who have are literally fairly good. So good, that Dal and his buddies have determined that even when they will’t go to Starfleet as technical criminals, they’re going to do their greatest to convey Starfleet’s beliefs to the galaxy past its attain. And so they’re going to want that optimisim, judging by the truth that—as Janeway crews are wont to do, holo-Captain or in any other case—one in every of their greatest fights but goes to be towards the Borg. Additionally introduced on the panel? The Subsequent Era’s Ronny Cox would return to position as Captain—ahem, now Admiral—Jellico, in a daily visitor position. Cox infamously appeared because the belligerent short-term captain of the Enterprise within the iconic two parter “Chain of Command.” Try an image of his animated admiralty in all its glory under. G/O Media could get a fee Picture: Paramount Star Trek: Prodigy’s children will want all the assistance they will get when the sequence returns to Paramount+ October 27. Need extra io9 information? Try when to anticipate the most recent Marvel and Star Wars releases, what’s subsequent for the DC Universe on movie and TV, and the whole lot it’s worthwhile to find out about Home of the Dragon and Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Energy. Originally published at Irvine News HQ

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undergroundbandimagines · 4 years ago

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7 Lessons from Sun Tzu’s “The Art of War” That Will Get You Through a Divorce

7 Lessons from Sun Tzu’s “The Art of War” to Get You Through a Divorce

Recovering from a marriage to a narcissist adds an added layer of complexity

By dmitry_islentev for Shutterstock

Recovering from a divorce after a 20-year marriage is never an easy feat. Therapist Susan Pease Gadua in Psychology Today likens the undoing of a marriage to, “Trying to disentangle two trees that have grown next to each other for years. The more intertwined the root systems are, the longer it will take for the trees to go their separate ways.”

Recovering from a marriage to a narcissist adds an added layer of complexity and a few extra hurdles to get over before you can feel whole again. And divorcing a narcissist is not for the faint of heart. Yes, this too (like a gallstone) shall pass, but first, it’s going to hurt. And you’re going to need to strategize.

If you’re like me, you may not have unpacked this emotional baggage until after the marriage, and you may not have a full understanding that you are, in fact, married/separating from a narcissist. All you know is you’ve been lied to, lied about, and he is accusing you of his actual behavior, which is maddening.

According to Dr. Ramani Durvasula, someone who is an expert in the field of narcissism, “narcissistic” is an adjective, it’s not a diagnosis. It’s a descriptive term that usually signifies a personality pattern. It is characterized by patterns like inconsistent or superficial empathy, entitlement, grandiosity, arrogance, superficiality, chronic validation-seeking, hypersensitivity, a propensity towards rage, especially when the person is frustrated or disappointed, and then incapacity to deal with frustration and disappointment.

The first thing to understand, according to Dr. Ramani Durvasula, is that narcissists love to win. “It motivates everything they do. They actually believe you can win in relationships, so it’s a big thing to them. They really love the idea that their partner will get destroyed after the relationship ends, which is why narcissistic divorces can be very expensive.”

Now, you may be a kind and gentle, loving soul. The kind of person who scoops up spiders to let them live, just not in your house. (OK, I am not that person). The point is, it’s time to grow a pair. You don’t have to sink to their level — instead, you must rise above it.

You might be wondering what a Chinese general, military strategist and reputed author born in 544 BC could know about egomaniacal showrunners, forensic accounting, and family court, but I find that Sun Tzu’s profound wisdom of outsmarting your enemy, plotting several moves ahead, and getting inside the head of your opponent are time-tested winning strategies.

Even if you have to stomach an expensive divorce, you will be better prepared going in with Sun Tzu’s knowledge. And hopefully, with fewer surprises, it will be a shorter ordeal.

The Art of War lesson #1

“Move swift as the Wind and closely-formed as the Wood. Attack like the Fire and be still as the Mountain.”

Translation: you cannot mediate. You may have a loving friend or relative advise you to mediate because it is the kinder and gentler route, the route that saves money. The problem with this is that successful mediation requires complete disclosure, laying everything on the table and there can be no power imbalance. If you are married to someone who lies and cheats, what makes you think you will have fairness and transparency in mediation?

This is a waste of everyone’s time and money. I still receive polite bills from Geraldine, the kind woman who did her level best for two years to try to end this marriage before she pulled me aside at our fifth mediation and said, “You cannot mediate with this person.”

File for divorce. It’s the only way.

Lesson #2

“Know your enemy and know yourself and you can fight a hundred battles without disaster.”

If he is sneaky, guess what? He will try things in court that are dirty and sneaky. He will hire sleazy lawyers that specialize in high-end bullshit. Remember, you are that closely-formed wood. Know yourself, and don’t be rattled by his bullshit tactics.

Case in point: One of my husband’s strategies was to convince the court I was a dreadful parent who drove the family to financial ruin. But, like the Peanuts characters listening to an adult, what the state of California hears is, “wah, wah, wah, wah, wah, wah.” It still comes down to: what is your shit worth? How much does this guy make? I put my career on hold to raise our children and create a lovely home. Alimony, child support, bing, bang, boom.

In his arrogance, the ex and his lawyers announced that since I had driven the family to financial ruin he would be keeping the pension. The only problem with that is — the law! We didn’t really need to reinvent the wheel, yet here we were, reinventing the wheel, to the tune of a six-figure legal fee.

Lesson #3 (a two-parter)

“It is only the enlightened ruler and the wise general who will use the highest intelligence of the army for the purposes of spying, and thereby they achieve great results.”

“Foreknowledge cannot be gotten from ghosts and spirits, cannot be had by analogy, cannot be found out by calculation. It must be obtained from people, people who know the conditions of the enemy.”

Subpoena folks. Have your team seek records from reliable sources to get the actual factual documents you need. Subpoena people who have his documents and his contracts. Do a forensic accounting. Check out his girlfriend’s Instagram. It may be quite enlightening. Even better if she has a blog detailing the timeline with everything you need to know.

Lesson#4

“Conceal your dispositions, and your condition will remain secret, which leads to victory; show your dispositions, and your condition will become patent, which leads to defeat.”

If you’re feeling a little bamboozled and you’ve just gotten out of a marriage in which you were emotionally manipulated for years, you may not be used to standing your ground and remaining poker-faced.

What the narcissist desperately needs is attention and he/she needs to know that he matters in your life. When you resist those crazy calls, emails, and texts and simply don’t engage, it is maddening for them. Dr. Durvasula says, “You win when you don’t give them the fight because the fight is what they want.”

I say, not mattering is the biggest wound the narcissist can receive from the person who used to hold his hand in empathy and believe the crap he shoveled. It throws them off their center. It also enrages them, but your secret weapon is not giving a shit anymore. It helps unnerve them, and more importantly, it helps you lay the ground for getting back to yourself, remembering how strong you can be, and finding your way out so you can move on.

Lesson #5

“It is the unemotional, reserved, calm, detached warrior who wins, not the hothead seeking vengeance and not the ambitious seeker of fortune.”

You may want to seek revenge on your ex for any number of grievances, but consider whether going for the jugular in court is just something you could work out (much less expensively and without involving law enforcement) in therapy. Dragging things out will drain both of you, both emotionally and financially. It’s time to break free and leave emotion out of the proceedings.

Lesson #6

“Anger may in time change to gladness; vexation may be succeeded by content. But a kingdom that has once been destroyed can never come again into being; nor can the dead ever be brought back to life.”

No, we won’t be having Thanksgiving together, thanks.

My ex-husband is mortally offended when he is not invited to Thanksgiving. At my apartment. With my family, who hates him. And yet he engages my younger daughter in this fantasy that, gee, it would be so nice if we could all do things as a family if only Mom wasn’t so bitter!

A huge part of separating from this person is becoming grounded, once again, in your own reality. You are entitled to your feelings, and the idea of sucking it up because it’s good for the kids is bullshit. What’s good for the kids is living in reality. What’s good for the kids is knowing their mother is true to her feelings. That she matters. We can now have lovely, separate, but equal holiday events. You don’t get to sit down and have a slice of my bitchin’ pecan pie at my table that would put Martha Stewart to shame. No. Not this year, not any year. Boundaries.

Right now you’re swimming with sharks, and this may well be the hardest thing you’ve ever done, but you will get through it, one day at a time. You are fierce. Rely on your senses — no one can tell you that what you heard must have been a mistake, what you witnessed was distorted, and no one can deny your experience. Hold your center, no matter how much he tries to throw you off.

Lesson #7

“In the midst of chaos, there is also opportunity.”

When you are finally divorced, that is an accomplishment in itself. The going got tough, and you proved you could get going and get it done. You fought for yourself and you probably turned out to be much stronger than you realized.

The truth is, up is the only way to go now. Hold a vision of yourself in a happier place where you are in control of your life. It will be a lot to unpack — therapy is an excellent tool to help with this — but get through the fight and lean on your village for all the support you need.

It’s a beautiful thing to regain freedom, peace, and financial independence, and when you get there, it’s going to feel so good.

7 Lessons from Sun Tzu’s “The Art of War” That Will Get You Through a Divorce was originally published in P.S. I Love You on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

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the-desolated-quill · 7 years ago

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The Angels Take Manhattan - Doctor Who blog (The Statue Of Liberty is a WHAT?!?!)

(SPOILER WARNING: The following is an in-depth critical analysis. If you haven’t seen this episode yet, you may want to before reading this review)

Remember when the Weeping Angels used to be scary? Good times, right?

Blink was one of the few Moffat stories that I genuinely liked. It was a simple story with a simple gimmick. Statues that could only move when you weren’t looking at them. It was ostensibly a most lethal version of Grandmother’s Footsteps, and it was bloody terrifying. There was however one problem with the Angels. A problem that soon became apparent the more the Weeping Angels reappeared in the show. They’re really just one trick ponies. Once you’ve seen Blink, you’ve literally seen everything they have to offer. From that moment on, the Angels suffered from the law of diminishing returns. They just weren't scary anymore, and I believe even Moffat was semi-aware of this, hence why his timey wimey crap became more ridiculous and why he kept changing the established rules of the Angels in an effort to keep them fresh. Of course it didn’t work. All it did was mangle the Angels beyond repair and now they’re a shadow of their once scarier selves.

Which brings us to The Angels Take Manhattan. The complete polar opposite of Blink. Whereas Blink was simple, clever and scary, The Angels Take Manhattan is convoluted, stupid and about as scary as a basket full of kittens. As far as I’m concerned, The Angels Take Manhattan serves as a very harsh lesson on learning when enough is enough. Some monsters just don’t work as recurring villains, and the Weeping Angels are most definitely one of them. If Moffat had learnt to keep his massive ego under control, he wouldn’t have turned his greatest creations into the limp, nonsensical and utterly pathetic non-threats they are now.

Let’s stick with the Angels for a bit. Aside from their lack of scariness due to us knowing their MO off by heart now, Moffat also can’t help but change the rules again. Remember in Blink it was established they would turn to stone if anyone looked at them, including each other? Well we’re supposed to forget about that clearly as there are loads of moments where Angels are clearly looking at each other, but can still move. There’s also a really odd moment where a Cherub manages to blow Rory’s match out, but... the Cherub is frozen as a statue. How the fuck was it able to do that? Odder still, Amy and Rory get zapped by the Angels at the end, but on those occasions people were still looking at the Angel, so how did it manage to do it?

And then there’s by far the weirdest part:

The Statue Of Liberty is a Weeping Angel?!

This raises so many puzzling questions. Isn’t the Statue Of Liberty made of copper, not stone? How the fuck did it get from Liberty Island to Winter Quay without anyone noticing? And what is even the fucking point of that?! It’s not as if it actually does anything. It doesn’t even look like an angel. Nor do the statues of the woman and the boy who come chasing the guy who had the Angel chained up (and what was the deal with the guy who had the Angel chained up? We never find out what that was all about).

And we’ve only just scratched the surface here. There are loads of things that don’t make sense here. Take this ‘farm’ the Angels have made. So they send people back to a hotel in 1938 and send them back in time repeatedly to feed off of the time energy. But... why hang onto their victims afterward. Once they’re done feeding, they keep the victim locked in a room until they die of old age. What for? What’s the point? Why not just feed on them and let them go like they usually do?

Rory ends up becoming the latest victim and vows to escape, creating a paradox that will kill the Angels. But for some reason the Doctor doesn’t want to do that and I honestly don’t understand why. He says Rory’s death has been predetermined now, but that’s never stopped the Doctor before. It certainly didn't stop him in the previous series when he himself was destined to die. So why is saving Rory suddenly impossible? And I definitely don’t buy all that bullshit about how once you’ve read something, it’s destined to happen no matter what. That’s just bollocks and the show has contradicted that loads of times in the past. Moffat is once again just making shit up as he goes along and it’s not even consistent. Just look at the whole wrist breaking scene. The Doctor says River needs to break her wrist in order to escape (I don’t even understand that. The Angel has its hand wrapped around her wrist. The only way she could possibly escape is if she were to crush her entire hand down to a circumference smaller than her wrist) because the book says so. Except the book doesn’t say so at all. It just says the Doctor breaks something. Her wrist is never even mentioned and the Doctor doesn’t even break it in the end. (Also why would River lie about her wrist later on? I understand the metaphorical significance of hiding the damage, but it’s just plain daft).

Since I’ve brought up River Song, let’s talk about her. She reappears in this episode wearing a really stupid hat that’s pulled down over her eyes presumably in an attempt to make her look cool and mysterious, but in reality just makes her look like a tit. You’d think considering this is post Wedding Of River Song and we now know everything about her, she might behave a little bit more like an actual human being, but nope. She’s still just as smug and unlikeable as she was before. Actually The Angels Take Manhattan really highlights all the problems with her character, especially her relationship, or lack thereof, with the other characters. They keep insisting she, Amy and Rory are really close now, but I can’t see any evidence for that. It still feels just as strained and awkward as ever to me. As does her relationship with the Doctor. I just don’t buy the supposed ‘romance’ between the two whatsoever as their dialogue only seems to consist of bad sexual innuendo. There’s no genuine emotion or chemistry whatsoever.

Early on it soon becomes apparent how Moffat actually sees her:

Amy: “She’s got ice in her heart and a kiss on her lips and a vulnerable side she keeps well hidden.”

Yeah, turns out Moffat views her as being a noir dame. That’s something that never occurred to me, and that’s because ever since her first appearance in 2008, she had absolutely nothing in common with a noir dame. I mean come on! Ice in her heart? Since when? The Silence In The Library two parter alone contradicts that completely. It’s about as accurate a description as calling her a psychopath, which Moffat does again here by the way. He also describes her in the Melody Malone book as ‘packing cleavage that could fell an ox at 20 feet’. Okay, two things Moffat. One, no woman would EVER write something like that, and two, stop perving over Alex Kingston’s boobs, you colossal fucking creep.

But of course the big thing about The Angels Take Manhattan is that it’s Amy and Rory’s last ever episode. Is it a good farewell?

Credit where it’s due though, the scene on the roof was extremely good. It’s both tragic and emotional in equal measure, and both Karen Gillan and Arthur Darvill really go for it, giving truly incredible performances. It’s hard not to be moved by Amy’s decision to jump off the building with Rory and if Moffat and everyone had just left it at that, it would have been an extremely powerful ending. Instead they seem to go out of their way to ruin it. For one thing, rather than just have Amy and Rory jump off the building and have the performances of the actors be what drives the shock and tragedy of it all, they decide to over-egg the pudding by having Amy and Rory fall in slow motion whilst Murray Gold’s stupid choir performs a slushy melody, which just made the whole thing feel mawkish.

Also it’s hard to be emotionally invested in their sacrifice when it makes no sodding sense. I can understand the paradox killing the Angels, but un-making the hotel? How does that work? What’s Rory got to do with the construction of the hotel? How would his death affect it? And if the hotel never existed, it would mean Rory could never jump off the roof of it to create the paradox in the first place, so wouldn’t we just end up right back to where we started?

Then it just gets worse when we’re suddenly pinged back to the present day and a lone Angel zaps Amy and Rory. Hold on a fucking minute! I thought the paradox killed the Angels! Where the fuck did this one come from?!

The biggest problem with this is that it doesn’t have nearly the same impact the roof scene had because we’ve already done all this a few minutes ago. So why are we doing it again? As far as I’m concerned, it would have worked so much better if Amy and Rory had just plunged to their deaths and that was the end. This just doesn’t make sense. The Doctor says he can’t visit 1938 New York again or it’ll destroy the planet or some such bollocks, but then River says she has to visit Amy in order to write and publish the Melody Malone book. Why not just use her Vortex Manipulator to get them out? Or get them to drive to New Jersey or somewhere and the Doctor can pick them up. It doesn’t make any sense.

And then, as the final turd in the water pipe, we see on the gravestone that Amy has changed her last name to Williams, showing that at last she’s fully committed to her marriage in a way no woman who kept her own name could ever be.

The Angels Take Manhattan is fucking awful. The story makes no sense, the Weeping Angels have been completely and utterly defanged by this point and what could have been a really emotional farewell for Amy and Rory is utterly botched thanks to Moffat putting more emphasis on outsmarting the audience rather than writing a satisfying goodbye.

So let’s end with my final thoughts on Amy and Rory. I’m not going to lie. i wasn’t very impressed. Rory faired slightly better I feel. While his character arc is pretty much the same as Mickey Smith’s from the RTD era, at least Rory actually got to grow and evolve during his time in the TARDIS and Arthur Darvill did a good job overall. Amy on the other hand is definitely one of the weakest companions I’ve ever seen, not just in New Who, but in general. I’ve made it no secret over the course of these reviews how much I dislike her. She’s selfish and obnoxious, and she exhibits a lot of the problems present in all of Moffat’s female characters, namely her lack of agency and proper characterisation. Over two and a half series, she hasn’t actually grown or evolved in any meaningful way and we’ve learnt basically nothing about her outside of her relationship with the Doctor. This was most apparent in Series 6 where she gives birth to and loses her child and at no point does Moffat ever address how she feels about that, and the reason for that is because he doesn’t view her as a character. He views her as a plot device in a mini-skirt whose sole contribution to the story is her legs, her sass and her womb. That’s not to say I don’t like Karen Gillan. I think she’s a great actor and episodes like Amy’s Choice and The Girl Who Waited have demonstrated that when you actually give her some good material to work with, she can give a truly amazing performance. It’s just such a shame that Moffat never fully utilised her.

So goodbye Amy and Rory. You could have been so much more, but at the end of the day... you just weren’t.

#the angels take manhattan #steven moffat #doctor who #eleventh doctor #matt smith #amy pond #karen gillan #rory williams #arthur darvill #river song #alex kingston #weeping angels #bbc #review #spoilers

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wineanddinosaur · 5 years ago

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7 Virtual Happy Hour Activities and Drinking Game Ideas to Fight Isolation

If you live with roommates or family members, call yourself lucky to have a built-in social network during these times of social distancing — and in that case, you can play pretty much any drinking card game. But if you’re living alone, you may be feeling an urgent need to connect with friends and family, and to have some fun, while in-person visits are on hold.

Fortunately, staying entertained and connected while at home isn’t as difficult as it may seem. And there are many ways to connect in a meaningful way, beyond FaceTime chats. Here are seven virtual happy hour ideas, plus specific recommendations for each, to try while you’re socially distancing.

Classic Drinking Games to Play Online

Start, of course, with a drink in hand — for more see tips on how to have a virtual happy hour here. Sign onto Zoom, Skype, FaceTime, Google Hangouts, or your preferred video calling app with a small group of friends. Then, try playing one of the classic drinking games below.

Never Have I Ever

Never Have I Ever is an easy game to start with. The rules: Each person starts with five fingers held up (your other hand should be free to hold your drink). Taking turns, each person says something they have never done. Those who have done that thing have to put a finger down and take a drink.

Helpful tip: Have a moderator or host call on each person to take their turn, since not everyone appears in the same order on the grid on different video apps.

Some Never Have I Ever statement suggestions to start you off: Never have I ever lived through a pandemic (everyone drinks). Never have I ever bought an entire case of La Croix. Never have I ever argued with someone in the grocery store over toilet paper.

Power Hour

A Power Hour is another easy way to gather friends near and far while socially distanced. All you need is to find a previously prepared playlist of one-minute songs like this one, or prepare a playlist that one person will play and monitor over the hour, changing songs every 60 seconds. How to play: Take a drink every minute. It’s that simple.

As one Twitter user told us last week, “My friends and I did a virtual power hour last Friday, round 2 this weekend.” How did he do it? “One person in charge, dozen people from around the country synchronized over Slack.”

To get some face time into the mix, organize the game as a video call so you can see each other and chat in between — see if you can keep up!

Beer Pong

As Alyson Shontell, editor in chief of Business Insider, tweeted last week, “Virtual beer pong is possible, you just need four phones and FaceTime.” Each couple sets up two phones, one facing them and one facing the set of cups they’ll be shooting at on the opponents’ side. A little advanced, sure, but for those desperate enough to put in the effort, why not?

Possible roadblock: You’ll need to have at least 12 cups and ping pong balls on hand, which seems unlikely in an apocalypse. But maybe you’ve stocked up.

This weekend I did my first virtual hangouts and saw friends we rarely get to see for happy hours. I can also confirm that virtual beer pong is possible, you just need 4 phones and facetime – one on each couple, one on each set of cups. pic.twitter.com/Uhpz8cVP6l

— Alyson Shontell (@ajs) March 23, 2020

Virtual Trivia & Puzzle Games

People around the internet have been touting the Jackbox Party Pack, launched in 2014, as “the perfect excuse for rounding up friends, family and fellow gamers for a few hours of gaming delight.” This delightfully old millennial and generation X-era product’s resurgence is perfect for bringing trivia, drawing, and word games like You Don’t Know Jack (a trivia game like Jeopardy), Drawful (a drawing game like Pictionary), and Word Spud (a fill-in-the-blank word game like Mad Libs) into a virtual happy hour.

Although designed as “local multiplayer” games (as in, playing in the same room), they can be played virtually with remote players via a streaming service. The party pack costs a one-time fee of $24.99 for most platforms (Playstation 3, XBOX One, Nintendo Switch, Apple TV and iPad, and Amazon Fire TV), and at press time, $12.49 for a Steam Code or PlayStation 4.

Detailed directions for how to play Jackbox games remotely are available here.

If game platforms and signup fees seem like too much effort, consider using Zoom or your preferred video platform to play Charades, Pictionary, Trivia, Bingo, or Code Names. The virtual world is your oyster!

Video Game Drinking Games

Online Multiplayer Games

If you have a game system or even a really strong laptop, you might be surprised by how many video games can be turned into drinking games you can play with friends. Popular titles like Overwatch, Fortnite, and even Wii Sports have many drinking game iterations floating around the internet. All you have to do is start up Zoom, agree on your preferred game and rules, and you’re good to go.

VinePair’s director of marketing and resident low-key gamer, Jeff Licciardello, recently riffed on a Super Smash Bros. drinking game for a socially distanced version with two friends.

“While playing online with each other, we had Zoom up in front of us. We [VinePair] have a drinking game article on Super Smash Bros. on our site, so using those rules, I played with one friend on FaceTime and my roommate joined me on the couch for the drinking portion of the game. In terms of people, it’s up to you how many people you can wrangle. But basically … whenever you die you drink, when you’re waiting to fall off the platform after re-spawning, you drink, etc.”

Ideally, players will be fighting each other, but in a pinch (a.k.a. if you can’t get the private room to work), setting up Zoom in front of each player “at least provides a sense of camaraderie as you stream each other fighting random people on the internet while drinking wine,” Jeff says. “And my roommate, who doesn’t play video games but was stuck dealing with me hogging the TV, picked one of the opponents I was fighting and drank for them.”

Another pearl of Jeff’s drinking-while-gaming wisdom: “For the ultimate Mario Kart drinking game that doesn’t require a whole lot of thinking, simply drink every time you are hit by an item (shells, banana peels, lightning bolts, etc.) or every time you fall off the course.”

Online 1-2 Player Games

Although video game drinking games can be created for almost any game, try picking one you and your friends are playing right now (Animal Crossing: New Horizons, anyone?). You can set up FaceTime or Zoom on your phone, tablet, or laptop to see and hear each other while playing. And all you have to do is come up with five to 10 “rules” that will require taking a sip of your drink while playing.

To stay with the Animal Crossing example, players might take a drink every time you find a bug, donate to the museum, or acquire a new item for your house. Then, you can add a little more complexity to the rules: For finding your first bug, take three sips; for each subsequent bug, take one sip if it’s a bug you already have, three sips if it’s a new bug, and four sips for donating to the museum (it will make sense once you get going.).

This can also apply to social interactions in the game. When you receive a gift, take one sip; when you give a gift, take two sips; when you meet a new in-game friend like Bill (the duck) or Reneigh (the horse) or that crazy squirrel chick, Caroline (a personal favorite), take three sips; and when you visit an IRL friend’s island, finish your drink.

Have a Watch Party

Playing drinking games while watching movies or series is a popular choice, and an easy one to replicate in the virtual world. In March, Google Chrome launched an extension for Netflix Party, a new feature that synchronizes video playback, allowing you to stream and watch movies and shows simultaneously. It also adds a group chat so you can message each other throughout.

Choose a theme to make the experience easily repeatable. Oscar movies or zombie flicks, for example, are readily available. For groups of friends whose anxieties are assuaged by horror, now is a wonderful time to marathon appropriately themed works depicting hyperbolized disaster and trauma.

Try a topical double-feature of “Pandemic” and “Parasite”; a home invasion pairing like “The Strangers,” parts one and two; or a triple-feature of “Cube” or “Purge.” Or, make it a week-long marathon and stream every episode of the nation’s new Netflix obsession, “Tiger King” — it’s a seven-parter!

You can turn any watch party into a drinking game. For example, as VinePair’s Licciardello suggests for one of our staff’s favorite series, “Schitt’s Creek,” everyone has to drink any time Alexis says, “Ew, David!” If you’re not in virtual earshot, you can also use the group chat to direct when it’s time to drink. Along with text, the chatroom supports screenshots, emojis, and GIFs.

Another angle might be (and we’re biased here) taking turns choosing content about wine, beer, and spirits — such as the just-released “Uncorked,” which VinePair contributor Julia Coney describes as breaking new ground for black wine drinkers.

Have a Dance Party

Let off some steam and pent-up energy by hosting a virtual dance party. You can do this in any video conferencing app, or use a platform like Houseparty.

As in real life, a dance party can take many forms. Perhaps it’s a dance-off between you and one very energetic friend. For a group together, invite friends you used to go out dancing with every weekend, and recreate a playlist you would have been sloppily sipping and dancing to at a club or bar.

Crack some glow sticks (if you’re the type of person who has stocked for a dance-party emergency), sip on some easy-to-make cocktails, and dance like no one’s watching. Because chances are, even if your neighbors can see you, you likely won’t encounter them in person for a very long time.

The article 7 Virtual Happy Hour Activities and Drinking Game Ideas to Fight Isolation appeared first on VinePair.

source https://vinepair.com/articles/best-virtual-happy-hour-games-ideas-activities/

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johnboothus · 5 years ago

Text

7 Virtual Happy Hour Activities and Drinking Game Ideas to Fight Isolation

Classic Drinking Games to Play Online

Never Have I Ever

Helpful tip: Have a moderator or host call on each person to take their turn, since not everyone appears in the same order on the grid on different video apps.

Power Hour

To get some face time into the mix, organize the game as a video call so you can see each other and chat in between — see if you can keep up!

Beer Pong

Possible roadblock: You’ll need to have at least 12 cups and ping pong balls on hand, which seems unlikely in an apocalypse. But maybe you’ve stocked up.

— Alyson Shontell (@ajs) March 23, 2020

Virtual Trivia & Puzzle Games

Detailed directions for how to play Jackbox games remotely are available here.

If game platforms and signup fees seem like too much effort, consider using Zoom or your preferred video platform to play Charades, Pictionary, Trivia, or Bingo. The socially isolated world is your oyster!

Video Game Drinking Games

Online Multiplayer Games

VinePair’s director of marketing and resident low-key gamer, Jeff Licciardello, recently riffed on a Super Smash Bros. drinking game for a socially distanced version with two friends.

Online 1-2 Player Games

This can also apply to social interactions in the game. When you receive a gift, take one sip; when you give a gift, take two sips; when you meet a new in-game friend like Bill or that horse or that crazy tiger chick, take three sips; and when you visit an IRL friend’s island, finish your drink.

Have a Watch Party

Try a disease double-feature of “Pandemic” and “Parasite”; a home invasion pairing like “The Strangers,” parts one and two; or a triple-feature of “Cube” or “Purge.” Or, make it a week-long marathon and stream every episode of the nation’s new Netflix obsession, “Tiger King” — it’s a seven-parter!

Have a Dance Party

Let off some steam and pent-up energy by hosting a virtual dance party. You can do this in any video conferencing app, or use a platform like Houseparty.

The article 7 Virtual Happy Hour Activities and Drinking Game Ideas to Fight Isolation appeared first on VinePair.

Via https://vinepair.com/articles/best-virtual-happy-hour-games-ideas-activities/

source https://vinology1.weebly.com/blog/7-virtual-happy-hour-activities-and-drinking-game-ideas-to-fight-isolation

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onceandfuturekiki · 7 years ago

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Listen up, guys. This is important.

So often when young white women go missing or are killed, it's all over the news. It gets national coverage. You see it all over the national news. That happens far, far less when the victim is a young black woman.

That has been, sadly, the case with 19 year old Kenneka Jenkins. While there's been some coverage, there hasn't been nearly as much were this a missing white girl, and a lot of the coverage has focused on the more "dramatic" aspects of the story, like the problematic protests, rather than the case itself and the problems with the investigation.

Earlier this month, Jenkins went missing from a party she was attending with her friends in a room at the Crown Plaza Hotel in Rosemont, Illinois. More than a day later, her body was found in a freezer in a mostly-unused kitchen in the hotel. Her mother had apparently asked for them to check the security cameras in the hopes of finding out where she had gone well before the body was found, but the hotel failed to produce the footage. It took quite awhile for them to even get the footage to the police. Her mother went to the hotel at 5am to look for her daughter and talk to hotel staff (just an hour after she had been called by Jenkins' friends telling her that they couldn't find her daughter), but nobody looked at security camera footage until almost 12 hours later.

The footage from the security cameras shows Jenkins wandering around the hotel in a clearly severely intoxicated state. Her movements and body language suggest that perhaps what was happening to her was more than just drinking, that she had been drugged. Footage taken during the party and uploaded to social media suggest that there might not have been enough time between Jenkins being clearly sober in the hotel room and so intoxicated in the hallways for it to have been caused simply by alcohol. The videos taken during the party might also suggest some even more troubling things, but some of the audio and video is difficult to make out.

One of the few major parts of Jenkins' night that apparently wasn't caught on camera was how she got into the freezer.

There was apparently an initial autopsy done that was "inconclusive." There's been talk about more tests being done, but I haven't been able to find out if this is true. This means that, currently, the actual cause of death is unknown, and it's unknown if she actually was drugged. As I said, police have classified this as a non-criminal case, and they don't think there's any evidence that suggests there was foul play involved. Many feel they're dragging their feet on this case and that they're ignoring the video evidence from the party, as well as the movement of Jenkins in the hallways that might suggest intoxication beyond just being drunk. Some people are also suspicious of the way the hotel has conducted itself, considering the way they didn't review security footage when Jenkins' mother requested, before they found the body, the way they took so long to get the video to police, and the fact that it seems that one of the only places they seem to not have security cameras is around the freezer where the body was found.

Jenkins' mother, Theresa Martin, has been through hell. Not only has she lost her daughter, she's had to deal with a police force that seems not particularly interested in pursuing anything beyond their narrative of "she got drunk and locked herself in the freezer." Her requests to have the case handed over to a federal agency have been denied. She's also already been taken advantage of more than once by supposed activists. One activist, Andrew Holmes, presumed to speak for the family, saying that they called for a press conference where he spoke (they asked for no such thing) and where he said he'd seen video of Jenkins walking into the freezer by herself (no such video exists). Other activists have claimed to have been authorized to speak for the family when they were not. She also feels that protest organizers used her daughter's death as an excuse to profit, collecting money from protesters fro personal gain (protest organizers say that the money collected is used for food, transportation, and legal fees for those arrested during protests).

Martin believes that if the hotel and police hadn't dragged their feet when she was initially look for Jenkins that she might still be alive.

Kenneka Jenkins will have a public funeral service this Saturday in Chicago at the House of Hope.

There has been a startling amount of victim blaming in this case, and some people feel this is happening with the police, that they're placing the blame for the death on Jenkins because she was at a party drinking so she must have wandered off and did something stupid. There have been a lot of people saying that she shouldn't have been drinking, that she should have "chosen better friends". There's an attitude that exists in circles around the internet that her death was the inevitable result of drinking with friends who have been determined to be of low moral character.

So often cases involving black women are ignored, and if they're not completely ignored, they're forgotten after the initial burst of interest. Don't let Kenneka Jenkins be forgotten. Whether she wandered into that freezer by herself or she ended up there due to foul play, her death is a result of people not caring enough. The people at the party who didn't care about what was happening to her or where she went. The people in the hotel who might have seen her stumbling around. The hotel and police who didn't bother to check security footage until nearly 12 hours after Teresa Martin came looking for her missing daughter. If people had cared a little more, she might be alive today. Don't let her be forgotten. Don't let this go down in history as being "her fault".

Here are some links to stories about the case, the issues with activists, and Jenkins' funeral

https://chicago.suntimes.com/chicago-politics/family-lawyer-serious-questions-remain-in-kenneka-jenkins-death/

http://www.theroot.com/rosemont-ill-police-reject-calls-for-fbi-to-look-into-1818576908

https://newsone.com/3749591/kenneka-jenkins-money-scam-protesters-activists-profit/

https://patch.com/illinois/chicago/autopsy-chicago-teen-found-hotel-freezer-inconclusive

http://www.newsweek.com/kenneka-jenkins-chicago-funeral-670299

http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/local/breaking/ct-kenneka-jenkins-freezer-death-update-0915-20170914-story.html

http://www.statesman.com/news/national/things-know-about-kenneka-jenkins-whose-body-was-found-hotel-freezer/kfQEmZDbcSBauYRqkUOT4H/

True Crime Garage did a pretty good two-parter on the case this week:

https://www.truecrimegarage.com/listen

And they also have uploaded the videos of the party and the security footage to their page:

https://www.truecrimegarage.com/podcast/blog/kenneka-jenkins-party-footage

https://www.truecrimegarage.com/podcast/blog/kenneka-jenkins-144-145

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joshuajacksonlyblog · 6 years ago

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Bitcoin’s Tech Trends of 2018: What This Year Brought Us (Part 1)

Where 2017’s dizzying price highs embedded “hodl” into the public consciousness, 2018 was the year in which “buidl" became a trend in the crypto-industry — and Bitcoin was no exception.

Anticipated in Bitcoin Magazine’s first cover story of 2018, Bitcoin’s technological progress only accelerated this year. Improving Bitcoin from around the world, developers and entrepreneurs furthered Segregated Witness adoption, rolled out the Lightning Network, released privacy solutions, realized sidechains and made progress on a Schnorr signature solution — all of which were still around the corner only a year ago.

Following up on January’s cover story, 2018’s closing two-parter cover story explores how these five technologies progressed throughout the year.

In part one: Segregated Witness and the Lightning Network.

Segregated Witness

The Segregated Witness (SegWit) soft fork that activated in August 2017 was arguably Bitcoin’s biggest protocol upgrade to date. Fixing the long-standing malleability bug, it better enabled second-layer protocols while replacing Bitcoin’s block size limit with a block weight limit. Transactions that utilize SegWit are partly stored in a new part of Bitcoin blocks, allowing the network to process more than one megabyte of transaction data per 10 minutes.

Back in 2017, SegWit adoption was off to a somewhat slow start. By the end of the year, most wallets had not integrated the upgrade yet — and not many exchanges or other Bitcoin service providers had either. At the start of this year, less than 15 percent of transactions utilized the additional block space, and blocks barely exceeded 1.1 megabytes.

Throughout 2018, however, adoption increased quite a bit, as more wallets and services implemented SegWit. This perhaps most notably included the Bitcoin Core wallet, which enabled SegWit transactions with its 0.16.0 release in March. Other popular wallets, such as Coinomi (March), Bither (September) and BRD (November) followed suit, while Mycelium is expected to roll out the feature before the end of the year.

Some of the biggest Bitcoin service providers also implemented Segregated Witness in 2018, including Coinbase (February), Bitfinex (February) and Xapo (May).

As an overall result, SegWit usage statistics increased to well over 40 percent over the year. Still, while about a threefold increase, this is lower than some would have expected it to be by now.

“I'd say the main reason SegWit usage isn’t well over 50 percent by now is inertia,” Coinmetrics data analyst Antoine Le Calvez speculated when asked by Bitcoin Magazine. “If you didn't adopt it when fees exploded last year — either due to lack of time or other priorities — I don't think you'd support it until fees explode again, when SegWit transactions will have a clear cost advantage over non-SegWit transactions.”

On top of SegWit itself, the new bech32 address format also saw its first non-trivial adoption in 2018. These addresses, that start with “bc1” instead of a 1 or a 3, are a natural fit for SegWit. Transactions from such addresses require less data to be included in a block and are, therefore, even cheaper. Several wallets — like Coinomi, Electrum and Wasabi — moved straight to this new format.

The popular BRD wallet for iOS and Android did this too and, in September, even launched a campaign to further bech32 adoption: “When SegWit?”

“We've always taken the stance that bech32 stood the best chance of being the gold standard for SegWit implementation,” said BRD CSO Aaron Lasher, in explaining the idea behind the initiative to Bitcoin Magazine. “The backwards compatibility of using P2SH-enabled SegWit gave the industry a much-needed jump start, but to really drive adoption, raw SegWit is the way to go.”

He continued:

“As one of the larger wallets, we enjoy an element of influence over the state of the network, as a non-trivial percentage of bitcoin transactions are conducted through BRD wallets. Getting wallets and other service providers to upgrade their software to interact with bech32 addresses is the goal in general, and with this initiative we're targeting them in a respectful and persuasive manner.”

Perhaps thanks to the campaign, in part, and on top of SegWit adoption itself, bech32 use increased throughout 2018 as well.

"5.6 percent of the outputs created these days are bech32 outputs," Le Calvez said, “though bech32 outputs store only ~0.8 percent of all bitcoin, so it means that bech32 users are quite active. That could be because Coinbase and LocalBitcoins support it, and exchanges attract arbitrageurs that move money around faster. Another reason could be that, since bech32 is the cheapest way to transact, it attracts high-activity users.”

All in all, Bitcoin blocks have grown along with SegWit adoption over the past year. While average numbers aren’t quite as telling (because not all blocks fill up in the first place), the typical full block today is around 1.3 megabytes. The biggest Bitcoin block to date was also mined this year, in September by BTC.com, and was almost 2.3 megabytes.

The Lightning Network

Highly anticipated for years, 2018 was the year that the Lightning Network made its “official” debut. Although the risky nature of early stage tech was conveyed through the #reckless hashtag, regular users were invited to try out Bitcoin’s overlay network for fast and cheap transactions for the first time.

In conjunction, several Lightning wallets were made available, and even more of them are coming, including some from established Bitcoin wallet providers like Trezor and Electrum.

Probably at least as important, Lightning payments are increasingly accepted for real goods and services.

One of the very earliest adopters of the Lightning Network was a prepaid top-up service Bitrefill, in March of this year. CEO Sergej Kotliar has been keeping a close eye on Lightning Network usage since, telling Bitcoin Magazine:

“We’ve processed 2,170 regular Lightning orders at this point, receiving a total of 6.3 bitcoin. The share of Lightning payments is steadily growing and [is] currently at about 2.5 percent of our bitcoin orders. We’re generally waiting on two things for this to take off bigly: more wallets and exchange integration.”

Distribution of payments to Bitrefill per payment method. (Number of payments, not amounts.) Source: Bitrefill

While it was not very necessary this year, as Bitcoin fees have been negligible for most of 2018, Kotliar also tracked how many on-chain transactions were avoided by using the Lightning Network.

“I basically added up all channels, opened and closed, and how many payments and forwards have been made, as a sort of measure of scaling efficiency,” he explained. “This adds up to 2.75 payments per on-chain transaction, and 3.46 payments per on-chain transaction, if we include forwarded Lightning transactions. This number grew steadily over the past couple of months as channel reliability improves and the network grows.”

Besides Bitrefill, other pioneering adopters included the Blockstream store (since January) and Living Room of Satoshi (since April). Payment processor BTCPay integrated Lightning payments in July, offering it to all its users (like TorGuard VPN and Coincards). So did payment provider CoinGate in September, on-boarding the Lamassu Bitcoin ATM network, bullion store Bitgild, and hundreds more merchants. And the first exchange started to accept Lightning payments for deposits in 2018 as well: gold-to-bitcoin exchange Vaultoro (since May).

What may be even more impressive is the level of community involvement in such a new technology. Berlin-based Lightning startup Fulmo, for example, organized a series of popular “Hackdays”: three in the German capital and one in New York. Developers and anyone else with interest could come and learn about the technology and build on it on the spot. Also in New York, Bitcoin development company Chaincode Labs focused its third “Bitcoin Residency” program on the Lightning Network, too.

As an entirely new phenomenon, and partly the result of these events, a number of Lightning apps (“Lapps”) were introduced over the course of the year.

"Lightning has enabled people to build lots of cool things with bitcoin and it's unlocking a whole new potential. Things that we haven't even thought of today," Lightning Labs CEO Elizabeth Stark told Bitcoin Magazine. "Every day we wake up and someone has built something new."

Lightning Labs has tried to keep track of available Lapps in its Lightning App Directory. Examples include a jukebox, a tipping solution and a file-hosting solution, all powered by Blockstream’s micropayment processing system Lightning Charge, showcased during the company’s “Week of Lapps” in March. Another particularly useful Lapp that launched this year is Submarine Swaps, which allows users to pay Lightning invoices even without having a Lightning wallet.

Further, the hackdays produced photobooths, point of sale payment processors and games. And the Lightning Network even saw the emergence of what can arguably be considered its first “killer app”: The million-dollar, homepage-inspired, web graffiti platform satoshis.place went viral through Bitcoin social media last summer.

All this activity translated into data, too. Although publicly available Lightning Network statistics are not completely reliable — some aspects of the network are hard or impossible to measure — various Lightning Network explorers show that there are several thousand Lightning nodes online on any day. Between them, they have more than 10 thousand payment channels open, holding hundreds of bitcoins worth almost two million dollars, and all this is growing fast.

In the meantime, code supporting the Lightning Network is only improving, and more parts of the protocol are being fleshed out. In November, a group of Lightning developers from different implementations met for a second Lightning Summit in Adelaide, Australia — after the first one in Milan in 2016. Here, the “BOLT” Lightning Network specification made a leap forward, paving the way for dual-funded channels, splicing, atomic multi-path payments and more innovation for 2019 and beyond.

In part two of this article, to be published in two weeks: privacy, sidechains and Schnorr signatures.

This article originally appeared on Bitcoin Magazine.

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one-of-us-blog · 8 years ago

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The Audit (TGG, Season 3, Episode 10)

Today Eli is forced to watch and recap The Audit, Episode 10 of the third season of The Golden Girls. As an auditor by trade himself, will this episode be the grand tribute to a wrongfully despised profession for which he has often longed, or leave him with an intense sense of self-loathing? Keep reading to find out…

Jon, I really appreciated your take on The End of Time (both parts), and your criticisms were very justified. I’ve always wished that David Tennant had been given a better send-off than he got, although he still knocked it out of the park for his own part in the two-parter. I also loved your retrospective on the Tenth Doctor’s arc as a whole, and I can’t tell you how happy it makes me that DT won you over and made a lasting impression. There is always a transition period for viewers when a new Doctor hits the scene, and that’s part of what makes the show so exciting and eternal in my opinion, but I’m really looking forward to getting your initial thoughts on Matt Smith as the Eleventh Doctor! Now, it’s time for me to head to Miami for a tribute to a particularly noble, though maligned, profession…

Buttocks tight!

Written by Winifred Hervey Stallworth, directed by Terry Hughes

(Disclaimer: Proofreading this recap, I realized how obnoxious it sounds).

As the episode opens, Sophia is cooking some bangin’ spaghetti sauce, and Blanche is lamenting the fact that she hasn’t had a date in eight whole days. What’s wrong with the bachelors of Miami, anyway? Do they hate having a good time? Is this the beginning of the end of her sensual lifestyle? A couple of verbal jabs at Dorothy lift her spirits, and then Rose enters to present the B plot of the episode. In order to get a promotion that she really wants at work, she has to become bilingual. Blanche is taken aback, and tells her that nothing is worth dating women. Hmm, I know this is just a joke about Blanche not understanding words, but I guess we haven’t come super far from Isn’t It Romantic?, have we? Anyway, Rose will be taking Spanish class at night school. Blanche thinks this might be just the opportunity she needs to meet some smart, sexy, single men, and she wants to sign up along with Rose. I hope she’s ready, because Rose wants to go all Spanish, all the time in order to have the full experience. Meanwhile, Stan also shows up, so you know there’s trouble on the horizon. He eats some of Sophia’s spaghetti (which Dorothy is all too willing to share with him, for some reason), and then announces that the IRS is auditing him…and since they are digging back a number of years prior to the divorce, they are also by extension auditing Dorothy. Stan also tells her that there is going to be a problem; he totes pulled some shady shit with his taxes. The end result could be either a fee, or a prison term. So, no biggie, right?

In the next scene, Rose is preparing for night school by practicing her Spanish, while Blanche is preparing for night school by prepping her bosoms. Stan shows up with all his “tax receipts” (*eye roll*) in a garbage bag, because of course he does. Blanche and Rose take off, and Dorothy and Stan get down to business. Stan’s paperwork is both illuminating and troubling. He wrote off a bad investment in tie bibs, and generally screwed things up. He gives Dorothy an “I could have been a contender” speech straight out of On the Waterfront, and then she actually makes a pleasant discovery. A ring he bought for her was more expensive than she realized, costing $2,500. I’ll do my best to ignore the fact that he deducted this as a gift, which is more bullshit, because gifts aren’t even a thing you can deduct. But the feelings of goodwill are short-lived, as Dorothy also learns that Stan bought himself a much more expensive Corvette and kept it as a secret from her. Wait, how in the heck was he trying to write off a Corvette? Anyway, Dorothy is now piiissed and wants him out of her life for good (uh huh, sure). She doesn’t care if he goes to jail, but she is caught up in all of this with him and hates him for it.

Jumping ahead, Dorothy and Stan show up at a building somewhere to see the auditor, Wendell Murray (Side note: I guess the way they are going to depict this is with the two of them dropping off their paperwork and sitting in the same small room for hours while he pecks away at a calculator, which is not even remotely close to how any of this would work, but oh well). Stan tries to bond with the bald(ing) auditor by removing his toupee, but he basically just insults him. After some sweaty hours pass, the honorable Mr. Murray reveals that they owe a total of $5,000…he even splits it down the middle at $2,500 each since they are divorced, which is more nonse…you know what, nevermind. But if they can’t cough up Uncle Sam’s dough, they could face liens or even jail time.

In the next scene, Rose is up late studying for her Spanish test, but Blanche isn’t sweating it; she already has the test key. Rose wonders if she slept with the teacher, but that’s ridiculous. She only promised to sleep with the teacher until she gets what she needs. Duh! Rose doesn’t want any part of this, as she only got caught up in cheating once, when she fed BBs to her prize lamb for the county fair, and it didn’t turn out well. Dorothy can’t sleep because she’s so worried about the money she owes. She only has half of her portion and she can’t get a bank loan, so she’ll have to sell off some stuff at the pawn shop (Side note 2: Look, I know this was made a few decades back, but it’s hard for me to believe that she can’t come up with $1,250 dollars to avoid jail time; and honestly, if she pays what she does have, there’s no way she’s getting locked up over $1,250, seriously). Dorothy can’t believe where she has ended up in life, and Rose and Blanche have their own musings, which prompts Sophia to deliver her ‘3 Rules for Life’:

1) Hold fast to your friends; 2) There’s no such thing as security; and 3) Don’t go see Ishtar (topical!)

The girls arrive at the pawnshop the next day, and Rose’s attempts to practice her Spanish almost score the girls the cash for Dorothy in an attempted robbery. After things calm down, the owner offers $100 for everything Dorothy brought. This won’t fly, but he then notices her ring. You know, the one from Stan, which we were specifically and conveniently told cost $2,500? He eventually offers her $1,200 for it, and though she is reluctant to part with the ring because it represents something positive about her marriage with Stan (who she just said she wants out of her life forever), she gives in and sells it to cover her debt.

In the final scene, we learn that Rose and Blanche both dropped out of night school. Rose was bad at Spanish, and Blanche wasn’t finding any manflesh. Stan comes by, and Dorothy gives him the check for her half of the tax liability (Side note 3: I was screaming “What?” at this point in the episode…after the stress that this money caused, how are you just going to hand it over the Stan, the architect of all this misery, and trust that he’ll take care of things?). Anyway, he gives Dorothy back her ring. He learned that she pawned it after speaking to Sophia off-screen, and he bought it back for her. To do so, and cover the tax liability, he sold his Corvette. Now he’ll just be a middle-aged bald man driving a Toyota (Side note 4: WAIT JUST A MINUTE, NOW THIS IS JUST GETTING PERSONAL, WHAT IS WRONG WITH BALD MEN DRIVING TOYOTAS, MAY I ASK?). The two hug, and Blanche and Rose hit the town to prowl for men. Stan tries to take Dorothy to bed, and he pays for it.

The End.

Man, where do I start? I’m just too close to this one to judge it fairly. Look, I never dreamed of growing up to be an auditor, but here I am, and I know what the job entails. I feel like this episode is basically depicting what everyone I know assumes that I do for a living, even thought my job has nothing to do with taxes and everything to do with making sure that government agencies spend their funds properly. But I digress. The way that everything unfolded in the episode was pretty (or very) unrealistic, but hey, it’s a sitcom…and it was nice to see Mr. Murray in action. I always have such mixed feelings about Dorothy’s relationship with Stan. I mean, the guy is obviously a tool who has screwed her over in multiple ways, and she needs to just stick to her guns in keeping this cancer out of her life from now on instead of handing him a plate of spaghetti the next time he shows up to prove what a bag of dicks he has always been. But on the other hand, I guess they were married for a very long time, and it’s hard to just forget that such a significant portion of your life and all the associated feelings occurred. I guess the ring thing was sweet, but it was offset by the fact that Stan even let her sweat the $2,500 for the amount of time he did, given that the whole predicament was 100% his fault. Anyway, it’s a fine episode I suppose, but I feel compelled out of principle to give it a score of 2.5 poofy hairdos out of 5.

Be sure to check in tomorrow, when we will get Jon’s take on The Eleventh Hour, the Series 5 premiere of Doctor Who and the first outing of the Eleventh Doctor! And pop back in next Tuesday, when I will be discussing Three on a Couch, the next episode of The Golden Girls. Until then, as always, thank you for being a friend, and for being One of Us!

#golden girls #the golden girls #one of us

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isaiahrippinus · 5 years ago

Text

7 Virtual Happy Hour Activities and Drinking Game Ideas to Fight Isolation

Classic Drinking Games to Play Online

Never Have I Ever

Helpful tip: Have a moderator or host call on each person to take their turn, since not everyone appears in the same order on the grid on different video apps.

Power Hour

To get some face time into the mix, organize the game as a video call so you can see each other and chat in between — see if you can keep up!

Beer Pong

Possible roadblock: You’ll need to have at least 12 cups and ping pong balls on hand, which seems unlikely in an apocalypse. But maybe you’ve stocked up.

— Alyson Shontell (@ajs) March 23, 2020

Virtual Trivia & Puzzle Games

Detailed directions for how to play Jackbox games remotely are available here.

Video Game Drinking Games

Online Multiplayer Games

VinePair’s director of marketing and resident low-key gamer, Jeff Licciardello, recently riffed on a Super Smash Bros. drinking game for a socially distanced version with two friends.

Online 1-2 Player Games

Have a Watch Party

Have a Dance Party

Let off some steam and pent-up energy by hosting a virtual dance party. You can do this in any video conferencing app, or use a platform like Houseparty.

The article 7 Virtual Happy Hour Activities and Drinking Game Ideas to Fight Isolation appeared first on VinePair.

source https://vinepair.com/articles/best-virtual-happy-hour-games-ideas-activities/ source https://vinology1.tumblr.com/post/614019019779063808

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luxus4me · 6 years ago

Link

Bitcoin Magazine http://j.mp/2E6mECo

Where 2017’s dizzying price highs embedded “hodl” into the public consciousness, 2018 was the year that “buidl" became a trend in the crypto-industry — and Bitcoin was no exception.

Anticipated in Bitcoin Magazine’s first cover story of 2018, Bitcoin’s technological progress only accelerated in 2018. Improving Bitcoin from around the world, developers and entrepreneurs furthered Segregated Witness adoption, rolled out the Lightning Network, released privacy solutions, realized sidechains and made progress on a Schnorr signature solution — all of which were still around the corner only a year ago.

Following up on January’s cover story, 2018’s closing two-parter cover story explores how these five technologies progressed.

In part one: Segregated Witness and the Lightning Network.

Segregated Witness

As an overall result, SegWit usage statistics increased to well over 40 percent over the year. Still, while about a threefold increase, this is lower than some would have expected it to be by now.

The popular BRD wallet for iOS and Android did this too and, in September, even launched a campaign to further bech32 adoption: “When SegWit?”

He continued:

Perhaps thanks to the campaign, in part, and on top of SegWit adoption itself, bech32 use increased throughout 2018 as well.

All in all, Bitcoin blocks have grown along with SegWit adoption over the past year. While average numbers aren’t quite as telling (because not all blocks fill up in the first place), the typical full block today is around 1.3 megabytes. The biggest Bitcoin block to date was also mined this year, in October by ViaBTC, and was a little over 2.3 megabytes.

The Lightning Network

In March, Lightning Labs was the first to announce the beta release of Ind, the software implementation it’s spearheading, and collected a $2.5 million seed investment round to boot. This was followed by the beta release of ACINQ’s eclair later that same month and Blockstream’s c-lightning in June. Since September, Casa even lets you host a physical Lightning node in your home: the Casa Node. In conjunction, several Lightning wallets were made available, and even more of them are coming, including some from established Bitcoin wallet providers like Trezor and Electrum.

Probably at least as important, Lightning payments are increasingly accepted for real goods and services.

“We’ve processed 2,170 regular Lightning orders at this point, receiving a total of 6.3 bitcoin. The share of Lightning payments is steadily growing and is currently at about 2.5 percent of our bitcoin orders. We’re generally waiting on two things for this to take off bigly: more wallets and exchange integration.”

Distribution of payments to Bitrefill per payment method. (Number of payments, not amounts.) Source: Bitrefill

While it was not very necessary this year, as Bitcoin fees have been negligible for most of 2018, Kotliar also tracked how many on-chain transactions were avoided by using the Lightning Network.

Besides Bitrefill, other pioneering adopters included the Blockstream store (since January) and bill payment service Living Room of Satoshi (since April). Payment processor BTCPay integrated Lightning payments in July, offering it to all its users (like TorGuard VPN and Coincards). So did payment provider CoinGate in September, on-boarding the Lamassu Bitcoin ATM network, bullion store Bitgild, and hundreds more merchants. And the first exchange started to accept Lightning payments for deposits in 2018 as well: gold-to-bitcoin exchange Vaultoro (since May). [Edit: Payment processor GloBee also started accepting Lightning payments, in June.]

At least as impressive was the level of community involvement in such a new technology. Berlin-based Lightning startup Fulmo, for example, organized a series of popular “Hackdays”: three in the German capital and one in New York. Developers and anyone else with interest could come and learn about the technology and build on it on the spot. Also in New York, Bitcoin development company Chaincode Labs focused its third “Bitcoin Residency” program on the Lightning Network, too.

As an entirely new phenomenon, and partly the result of these events, a number of Lightning apps (“Lapps”) were introduced over the course of the year.

Stark's Lightning Labs has tried to keep track of available Lapps in its Lightning App Directory. Examples include a jukebox, a tipping solution and a file-hosting solution, all powered by Blockstream’s micropayment processing system Lightning Charge, showcased during the company’s “Week of Lapps” in March. Another particularly useful Lapp that launched this year is Submarine Swaps, which allows users to pay Lightning invoices even without having a Lightning wallet Further, the hackdays produced photobooths, point of sale payment processors and games. And the Lightning Network even saw the emergence of what can arguably be considered its first “killer app”: The million-dollar, homepage-inspired, web graffiti platform satoshis.place went viral through Bitcoin social media last summer.

“The second Lightning Summit reaffirmed that this is an open community interested in moving a common vision of an open network forward,” said Blockstream and c-lightning developer Christian Decker. “It puts all the things that we postponed in the first meeting back on the table and opens up a second exploratory phase for all the nice-to-have features. Splicing and multipath routing for example allow us to hide all the details about channel allocations of funds: the user just sees a single balance that is available both off- and on-chain.”

In part two of this article, to be published in two weeks: privacy, sidechains and Schnorr signatures.

This article was updated.

This article originally appeared on Bitcoin Magazine.

http://j.mp/2QH0Y6w via Bitcoin Magazine URL : http://j.mp/2DOhiZN

#News

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