Exactly this. The new game cycle these days is:

• Game is announced with shiny video showing all sorts of cool stuff.
• Release date is announced.
• Game is delayed.
• Reviewers/early access people get it, turns out it has none of the cool stuff form the announcement video.
• Game is delayed again.
• Game finally comes out, with 3 different tiers that are like $80, $100 and $120 CAD depending on if you want the version of the game that’s 30%, 40% or 50% complete.
• Game doesn’t work.
• After about two years and 10 DLC packs you have about 80% of the functional game, the other 20% being stuff they were supposed to add but just never bothered, what are you gonna do about it? By this point you no longer care about the game anyway.
• Sequel is announced with shiny video showing all sorts of cool stuff, devs promise they’ve fixed all the broken stuff this time for real.
• Company gets bought by EA or Epic, all devs are replaced.
• Game is delayed.

Like genuinely who wants to bother with that nonsense anymore TBH.

Yeah I live in Canada so -9C is no big deal at all lol. and +9C is basically summer so

I’m currently playing:

• Star Citizen (I know I know. I paid like $40 into the Kickstarter years ago and I dip in about once a year or so.)
• Last of Us 2 (again)
• Schedule I on Steam Deck is pretty fun.

I’m also currently gearing up to get horrendously addicted to Rimworld again since there’s apparently a new DLC on the way.

I still maintain that Kill The Moon isn’t necessarily a bad episode, it’s just not especially deep. It seems like the whole idea was for everyone to take an already bonkers premise and just run as far as they could with it, and IMO it feel like everyone’s having a blast with it. If you accept it as just that I think it’s fine.

Also I’m sort of glad the Disney deal is probably over, I think Doctor Who functions best when it’s a bit scrappy and under-funded. It’s a show that lends itself to big ideas and it can pretty much be anything, but I think when it’s given a huge budget it tends to get quite over-indulgent and messy.

I’d like there to just be a normal regeneration again TBH. The last time the Doctor just regenerated in a normal way (ie. no stunt casting or bi-generating) was Capaldi > Whittaker, which was Christmas 2017 so nearly a decade ago!

Actually by the time they get around to making more episodes and doing another regeneration it will probably be over a decade ago.

Same here, but I also want to try and figure out how to get one anonymously. I’m not up to anything, I just want to play around with it, but I also don’t want to end up on some list if and when they do get banned.

I had a phone that did that! The feature was called ‘IR Blaster’ IIRC, and there was an app that had all the frequencies for different brands of TV on it. I don’t think they put those in smart phones anymore lol

Yeah it’s pretty much the same whenever the Money People get involved in anything. It inevitably stops being about making something really cool, or even just making a living from making something, and becomes all about shipping the absolute minimum viable product and then strip-mining as much cash as you can out of it at all costs, and then dumping it when people stop buying it.

And the thing that gets me is that this makes nobody happy. The creators hate it because they’re making trash, consumers hate it because they’re being ripped off, and the Money People aren’t even happy because they never are. They always want more.

One time I was out walking and as I turned a corner a pug was running at me full speed, which is a sight to behold - every part of their face and body seems to be moving in a different direction at once. I was still doubled over laughing when the owner walked past me and she gave me a dirty look lol.

Yeah anything I put in /home has always stayed there, and things like customizations to KDE and whatnot always persist. I’m sure it changes a bunch of system files being an immutable OS, but I really don’t think it’d be anything a layperson coming fresh from Windows would ever really notice.

I wonder if consent ends with the sale of the house? And if so, could you banish an already-invited vampire by selling the house to someone else for like $1 and then immediately buying it back off them?

Also if a vampire owns an apartment building, can they go into tenant’s suites without permission? Would buzzing a vampire in at the lobby allow them to go where they want, or only a specific suite?

This season is making me increasingly nervous because the first 4 episodes have all been pretty good. It’s an established fact that at least one episode per RTD season has to make you cringe so hard your skeleton leaves your body, so we all know it’s coming. And if it’s not next week’s one or the Interstellar Song Contest one then it’s gonna be the finale. My money’s on the song contest though lol.

I would say:

The Force Awakens: Not bad, basically a knock-off of A New Hope story-wise but it feels like Star Wars and is pretty harmless fun.

Rogue One: Probably the best of the Disney Star Wars movies IMO, although it does have a couple of dodgy “bringing back an old actor as CGI” scenes.

The Last Jedi: Lots of people hate this one, I’m slightly more forgiving. I think it tried to do something a bit weird and different, and it didn’t really work. But I do appreciate the effort of not just playing it safe.

Solo: A Star Wars Story: Another one that seems to get a lot of heat, but I thought it was pretty inoffensive. Although my brain did kind of delete most of it as soon as it was over lol.

The Rise of Skywalker: Legitimately one of the worst movies I have ever seen. I can’t even call it a bad movie, because it’s essentially just a random series of Star Wars-themed sounds and images that batter you for what feels to be about a year and a half before it mercifully ends, taking with it any good will towards the franchise you might have had left.

Yeah I used to be super addicted to Overwatch 1, but I bailed as soon as 2 came out. I can honestly say I’ve never played it since.

I liked it! For a season opener I think you want a big, fun, bombastic kind of thing that doesn’t get super heavy, so I think it worked very well in that regard. I also liked Belinda, especially her calling the Doctor out at the end.

It wasn’t a perfect episode by any means, but the previous watermark for a season opener is Space Babies, so for me this represents an almost infinite degree of improvement.

For what it’s worth, RTD was also saying the same thing 20-odd years ago when he was on about season 2-3 of his first run lol.

Same here, I bought Strawberries for 50% off at H-Mart, they didn’t even last the night lol.

My first thought was to set up a bunch of long-term investments, since you can reasonably assume that you’ll live a long life. But then also, being rich might increase the odds of you being kidnapped or killed, so it might just tank whatever you choose to invest in.

Maybe you could somehow get a job testing roller coasters. Once you’re in there you have no power to decide anything, so perhaps the universe will make the builders construct the safest possible roller coaster. OR, you could be a food taster for someone rich and powerful. The universe wouldn’t let you eat anything that’s poisoned, or it would just ensure that no food gets poisoned in the first place!

Here in Canada, the general sentiment among people I’ve talked to is definitely that the US has fucked up it’s relationship with us in a very long-term way, if not permanently. Even if the tariffs went away tomorrow, there’s still the issue that Trump threatened Canada’s sovereignty, which people here are not taking lightly at all.

I’ve heard people say that even if Trump went away, there’s no guarantee some other dickhead won’t take over and start the same nonsense, or we’ll just be back here again in 4 years. Even the new Prime Minister said that the relationship we used to have with the US is over now.

I remember an old interview with RTD from his first run where he said that by now the Doctor has become part of the national folklore like Robin Hood or Sherlock Holmes so it’ll never truly go away which I think is true. Even if the TV show goes away again for a while, Big Finish will keep going, people will keep writing books, there’ll be fan fiction etc.

And presumably it’ll have to enter the Public Domain eventually too, although that’s probably still a long way off.