ConstableJelly @ ConstableJelly @midwest.social

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Joined

2 yr. ago

Marvel Midnight Suns. Disregarded it on announcement and launch because I wasn’t interested in the core card-based system. Played a little bit of Slay the Spire, which didn’t catch with me but did suggest I might actually be able to enjoy a card-based system with enough narrative context to keep me interested.

So far, so good. I just completed Act 1 (which prompted me to exclaim “that was only act 1??”) and I’m a little worried that I’m going to tire of the side missions soon and lose steam overall, but it hasn’t happened yet. The characters are fine enough, although they definitely give off MCU fanfic vibes (it’s jarring to me having a Peter Parker voiced by Yuri Lowenthal who is such a little remora sidekick in his characterization). The loop is pretty satisfying, if not a little clunky, and I wish the balance between doing battles and running around the abbey grounds leaned a little less on the abbey stuff.

But it’s a lot of fun and very addictive. I’m saddened that it performed poorly but I bear my part of the responsibility willingly.

I'm not convinced that cameras and Nextdoor are having a material impact on the vague idea of "trust between neighbors," but I admit it's hard to gauge because I only have my own experience, which exists on a potentially wide spectrum.

I'm barely on Nextdoor and was surprised to hear there's apparently a pretty common use of it for public shaming. The potential for petty community conflict does seem heightened by some of these technologies.

Home entertainment is such a closed system that all these companies are just beta testing shitty ideas for each other. Eventually they all do the same thing as long as any backlash was neither too destructive to revenue nor sustained. See endless streaming services price hikes, account sharing lockdowns, or the fact that you just can't buy dumb TVs anymore.

The childishness on display is surreal. This is a whole-ass nation acting like an unimaginatively smug 10 year old.

He has a pretty versatile body of work, and I think one of the biggest throughlines is that he's very intuitive about how to approach a given story or idea. I'm not a huge Daredevil comics fan, but his take on the character for the Netflix show (at least the first season when he was involved) is about as near perfect an adaptation as I could possibly imagine (due in no small part also to Charlie Cox's masterclass performance).

Buffy the Vampire Slayer spoilers.

The opening scene of The Body. It's not the first time the show intentionally subverts its own identity, but it's certainly the most powerful.

For a show that has by this point in season 5 shown it's fair share of dead bodies, even just the unglamorous, undramatic image of Joyce's body spilled across the couch is off-putting. Then the brief fantasy of Buffy imagining that she saves her mom's life, and the stark transition of fantasy Joyce expressing relief at being saved snapping back to to a shot of her llifeless, expressionless face. The overstaurated color in the cinematography, the unnatural emphasis of atmospheric sound as Buffy's senses short circuit under the mental strain of processing the moment. The childlike fear and uncertainty when she accidentally breaks Joyce's rib administering CPR under the 911 operator's instruction. It's brutal reality manifested in a world that has trained it's viewers to expect (quality) melodrama even at its most sincere.

It's important to note that the episode follows one of the silliest episodes of the entire show (though not without its own gross implications), wherein a lifelike sex robot tears through Sunnydale looking for her creator. The first few seconds of The Body overlap with the last few seconds of the previous episode, intentionally creating a major tonal whiplash.

I think Drew Goddard once described The Body as 45 minutes of the best TV ever filmed and I still think that stands.

Edit: found a short clip on YouTube. Can't believe I forgot about "Mom?...mom?........mommy?"

The common thread with any definition of voter suppression is that it reduces voting. Being encouraged to vote and in such a way as to increase its power is as close to the opposite of voter suppression as you can get.

Call it something else if you like, but it ain't voter suppression.

Braxton assumed office by default in 2020 when he filed for office and no one else, including the incumbent, did the same.

The defendants, listed as former mayor Haywood “Woody” Stokes III and his town council, held a secret, special election, preventing Braxton from appointing his town council. During their special election, the previous town council re-elected themselves, and ultimately reappointed the previous town mayor.

[Rechecks the year] ...WTF??

Some of us buy printers because we have abuse and humiliation fetishes. My OfficeJet is the kinkiest product I own.

For too long have Americans been a victim of its political parties putting party loyalty over governance. Together let’s send the message to Washington and say, ‘You will represent or be replaced.’

"I'm suspicious of any plan to fix unfairness that starts wtih 'step one, dismantle the entire system and replace it with a better one,' especially if you can't do anything else until step one is done. Of all the ways that people kid themselves into doing nothing, that one is the most self-serving." --Walkaway (by Cory Doctorow)

I think I'll be saying this a lot in the near future, but please don't throw away your vote. As revolutions go, "not voting" is the 0 value on a scale of impotent to effective. If you care about change, do it at the local level. There are candidates in your city and county with radical ideas and plans for your communities. You can make a massive impact all on your own in those elections. You can change things. You have real power there.

And that power grows when it joins with other communities across the country. That's when your voice is loud enough to catch the ear of establishment power.

It's idealistic I know, but no less so than trying to catch the ear of power through abstainment. "Do nothing" does not stoke the fires of discontent to organize collective power. Please do something, and start with voting. Please.