TwinIon

A lot of the ending certainly feels like what GRRM would get to, but the overall feeling I have is that it was a bit rushed. I think the idea of the power of a great story is a reasonable meta-narrative, and putting Bran in charge feels fine from that perspective. However, it does seem like maybe everyone should have needed to see him make any kind of decision before making him king. Like, maybe we see him offer up what to do with the Dothraki and Unsullied. I think the only active choice we saw him make since he got back to Winterfell was making Tyrion his hand. I think there's a version of this story where it makes sense to make Bran king, but they didn't quite get there. I also think they needed just one more line about the Night's Watch continued existence. I think they could easily say that they know that evil magic is real, that Night King is dead, but they don't know what else might still be out there, justifying the Watch continues its mission. Without that mission, you're basically congregating all your rapists and murderers, arming and training them to no particular end. It also seems odd that Jon would need to go anyway, once Grey Worm is gone. They're not going to come back and start a war because Jon goes to live in Winterfell instead of Castle Black. Still, it seems fitting that Jon would end up there, even if it doesn't all quite make sense. Overall, I guess that's the theme of my personal reaction to this finale: the overall story justified each ending, but the rush to finish meant that many of those endings didn't quite land as well as they could have. I wasn't thrilled or emotional, but I wasn't angry or upset. It was a fine finale, and if this is exactly what GRRM is building towards, I'd be excited to read how he gets there (if I expected him to ever finish).

What I love about this part of the story is that even though he made $67M over three years by gaming wall street with his celebrity by pretending to buy companies, he almost immediately lost it all by actually trying. He lost $35M in one year on short term trades and $55M trying to gain control of a department store's real estate. He's only able to find success when he can con people out of money. When he actually tries to play the market or run a business, he fails.

Also, all four Avatar films have been pushed back. Avatar 2 will open Dec 17 2021, with sequels coming out every other year until 2027. So Disney is going to alternate Star Wars and Avatar.

I stand corrected.

I don't think it's surprising that it's happening, but the relatively recent increase in the scale is what is most shocking.

It seems like this is as "contained" as any solo film in the MCU, at least from what we've seen. The only non-Spider-man character we see in the trailers is Fury.

I try not to get bogged down in these kinds of things, but for some reason Ant-man's physics bother me more than anything else in the MCU. There's something about the inconsistency of mass and momentum that makes everything about him feel off. As much as I try not to nit-pick something like the physics of Marvel, when it just feels wrong in the moment, it's harder to enjoy the movie.

At this point I'd guess that Endgame doesn't beat out TFA domestically, but it does beat Avatar globally. I'm less sure about the former as compared to the latter.

I'm guessing that Mysterio is a complete fake out. He's the baddie, there's no multiverse, or if there is, he's not actually from it. With this level of tie in, does this get a big bump at the box office from Endgame?

I think this episode might be the most successful the show has ever been at creating drama between two characters that shouldn't be antagonistic. The discussion with Jon and Dany played out just like it should have. Jon isn't being coy, he's honoring his vows, he's trying to do the right thing, but almost everyone else around him recognizes that it probably doesn't matter. Jon Snow remains the honorable idiot. I also think this episode did a pretty good job of making the case that Dany shouldn't sit on the Iron Throne. The show has only ever hinted at this (burning the Tarleys), but I didn't feel like it was a whiplash moment, when it easily could have been. We're so close to the end, and I think the show has really set it up to go in any number of directions. This episode is by far the closest the show has gotten to convincing me that Jon Snow should win. He's still too easily manipulated to ever be any good at ruling, but he might be the vehicle for Tyrion to rule in the same way his father did. I kind of assume that Euron will pick up on the whole baby thing, but I'm not certain he cares. He's kinda all over the place and not exactly a traditionalist. I can imagine him deciding he doesn't care who the dad is as long as Jamie dies and he gets to be king. Far from a perfect episode (Ghost...), but overall a mostly effective one well cemented in character.

Very much so. I agree. At the end of Endgame, even with their success, Loki is still dead, Asgard is still gone, and he's abdicated rule of new Asgard (though he effectively did so a while back). They don't really bring it up, but they could also play around with the idea that Captain Marvel's presence means he's not really even the strongest avenger. I'm hoping he really is in Guardians 3 and that the Thor 4 rumors are true. He's become both the most interesting avenger, the funniest one, and with Cap and Iron Man gone, the one with the longest arc. If they do a Thor 4, it could really go in any direction. Maybe a buddy cop movie with Captain Marvel or re-team with Hulk/banner. Heck, I think it would be fun to see him and Black Panther hang out, sure seems like they'd have a lot to discuss. Whatever they do with him, I think it might be the part of the MCU I'm looking forward to the most. Something else that I think is worth taking from Thor's arc is how much it could be used as an argument against over planning things like the MCU. Thor changed so much as a character because Taika Waititi thought that Hemsworth was funnier than the movies had allowed him to be. Having some of the wider arcs planned out certainly helped the MCU at a really broad level, but allowing someone like Waititi to come in and change things up is the kind of flexibility that will allow the MCU to keep having success.

It does. There is a lot of overlap in the beginning, but they go in rather different directions by the end. I think people say that the second run (Brotherhood) is better, but both are worthwhile.

Some others that nailed it: Cowboy Bebop Fullmetal Alchemist Futurama (original run, don't really remember the ending of the extended run) The Last Airbender Another that didn't: Neon Genesis Evangelion

So your only evidence that they're pursuing some kind of predatory or "insidious" behavior is that they have a profit motive and only sell keys through one additional retailer right now? Their road map has "shopping cart" as a long term goal. It's pretty far from a complete service at this point. Judging a platform that doesn't have a wishlist for being feature incomplete seems a bit premature. Honestly, I think it's rather notable that they allow keys to be sold through 3rd parties at all, much less this early in the platform's development. It's not something we see on platforms like the iOS app store or many others. And, as far as I can tell, Humble subscribers do get a discount on some games, so they're already allowing some mild price flexibility. I can understand the annoyance of a game being sold solely through a platform in such an early stage of development. There's no question as to how far the EGS needs to go to match Steam's feature set, and I personally see no reason to buy a game there that is available anywhere else. What I don't understand is the extreme vilification of a platform that is looking to bring competition to a sector with very little.

This is the kind of argument against Epic that I find so puzzling. How is it that Epic is making "massive pushes for nasty ass shit" like microtransactions and loot boxes? Is it just the Support-A-Creator program, which is essentially just affiliate links? Epic is paying for exclusivity, as far as I can tell, there's no evidence they're pushing developers to build more predatory games. In the world of predatory PC gaming, Valve might actually be the worst offender, given how long they turned a blind eye towards children gambling. When it comes to curation, why does it even matter if a specific game was rejected? In the old days of Steam, when it was basically the only distribution platform around, it was a make or break difference. As long as competition (read: Steam) exists, that's not the case for a game rejected by the EGS. We can question their curation criteria, but I don't see how it's particularly "insidious." As I've said before, I don't think that the lower cut is in any way charitable of them, and I'm not arguing that the EGS is a great platform or anything, but I feel like all the arguments boil down to reverse engineering absurd positions born from a mild inconvenience or pre-existing loyalties. I don't think the EGS is currently a worthy competitor to Steam, but I'd sure like it, or any other store, to become one. Valve has been too lazy for too long, and while their near monopoly position was initially earned, I think some healthy competition would only be beneficial to everyone. We've seen a lot of game stores from big companies fail to compete with Steam on any meaningful level. Amazon hasn't really gained traction, Microsoft's was a flop, Blizzard and EA are staying in their own little sandboxes. Epic is competing with a platform that has built up a feature and customer base over a more than a decade, so it makes sense to me that they're a bit behind. They need to bring money in to justify further investment, and their methods for doing so have been pretty standard. When you see a "Netflix Original" there are pretty good odds that Netflix didn't pay to produce it or do anything but buy up the rights to a finished product, be that from indie movie makers or the BBC, but I've never heard anyone complain about "anti-competitive" behavior for doing so. Exclusives were briefly a point of competition for music services, but that didn't work out well for the artists, so it basically stopped (although we're seeing it again with podcasts). Games are already more like video, where you have to pay different providers for different content, and I don't see that changing anytime soon. Of course they're trying to build a business for themselves, but so is everyone else. If Epic puts Steam out of business without ever building a competitive product, I will weep for the terrible state of the world, but I don't see that being the case. Either they'll evolve their product into something worthwhile, something that makes you want to buy non-exclusive games from them, and they'll eventually prove a worthy competitor to Steam, or they won't and no one will use it for anything other than exclusives. Either outcome seems fine with me.

From the impressions I've read, it seems the films biggest strength is in its portrayal of a world full of real life pokemon, and that scans with my expectations. Not sure when I'll get around to this one, but I'll probably catch it in theaters.

I tried to find a link and couldn't, but I recall reading an article a few years back about how Subway was incredibly aggressive about opening new stores, but didn't really care much about their survival. They have a sales structure where people get paid for how many stores they open and almost nothing else. One of the results of that was Subway got more FTC(?) complaints than every other food franchise combined. When I was trying to find that article I found a bunch of different ones all reiterating the same thing that the OPs articles did, but they were from almost every year since 2010. Over time the articles went from "Subway is terrible to its franchisees, but it's still growing so fast!" to "Subway is terrible to its franchisees, and now they're shrinking."

SPACE FORCE!

I'm conflicted about how big I expect this movie to be. I think it looks pretty decent, and obviously pokemon is a pretty big deal. Still, there just aren't many live action PG movies to compare this to. Most of the highest grossing PG films are animated, and there isn't a clear touchstone from those that are left. Looking at the all time list, we have: Beauty and the Beast Star Wars ET Jungle Book (2016) Alice in Wonderland Harry Potter Home Alone The Grinch On the one hand it seems like it should be able to out-gross The Grinch (which I did not realize made so much), but it also doesn't seem like it's going to be bigger than the Harry Potter movies. So I don't know. Somewhere between $200M and $400M?

I'm sure it's good, but I don't know if I'm prepared.

One thing even the summary of the report points out is the potential rise of game streaming services. I wonder what category those fit under?

Last week fishermen in Norway observed a Beluga whale actively seeking out their boats. They noticed that the whale had a harness on and notified authorities. The harness was removed and examined and found to contain an inscription reading "Equipment of St. Petersburg" as well as what appeared to be a GoPro mount. It's expected that the whale is part of a Russian program to use various sea mammals to guard entrances to naval bases, assist deepwater divers, or kill strangers in their territory. The Guardian notes that Dolphins and seals have far better memories and seem to be better suited to the work, and that the Beluga whales "did not have the same “high professionalism.”" Over the last week, it seems that the whale has decided to stay in Norway. It has only moved 25 miles and seems to be enjoying its proximity to humans, an unusual behavior for the species. The Norwegians, who do not have the same experience the US Navy has with training sea mammals for military purposes, are unsure what to do with their new defector. One option is to transport the animal to a sanctuary in Iceland in an effort to increase the whale's survival chances.

That's very impressive. I could see my high school self spending tons of hours building something hopelessly unplayable. I'm less convinced that it's going to be something that I want to put lots of hours into playing, but I'd be happy to see this catch on and become something big.

I continue to find the Epic hate puzzling and silly. I also don't see how this is a particularly valuable acquisition. I feel like Rocket League is an evergreen niche title. It doesn't really need a sequel as much as it just needs to keep adding little things to keep the existing audience. After so many years I doubt it's growing much. I assume a sequel is inevitable, or Psyonix just has another game coming, otherwise it doesn't seem like Epic is buying much here.