Fizzzzle

I do like Jude Law as Dumbledore, but I'm baffled as to why they changed his accent for the third movie. I think they changed it to sound more like Michael Gambon, but Richard Harris is the only Dumbledore that counts in my opinion.

Japan has made it out of group stage in 4 of the last 6 world cups. I told you, people sleep on them.

I'm probably going to start watching it tonight or tomorrow. Last week I watched Inside Man instead and, uh.... Not great. It's an acting tour de force, but Jesus does the plot get stupid as hell. Definitely worth it if you're a fan of the actors, as 99% of the show is comprised of scenes of two brilliant actors playing off each other, but it ends up feeling like a waste of time by the end

Japan almost always punches way above their weight class in the World Cup. I don't know why it keeps surprising people.

I just watched all three of them after doing a re-read of the Harry Potter books over the last week or so. I had seen the first two, but only on airplanes when I was half asleep. The first one is honestly really good. Crimes of Grindelwald and Secrets of Dumbledore are both kind of train wrecks that leave more questions open than answered. Now that it looks like the series is dead in the water, what do you think? Even while I recognized that the second and third movies were kind of shit, I couldn't help but still have fun watching them. The world of Harry Potter is simply a blast to live in while you're watching. I think the studios fall into the same trap as Star Wars, and they feel the need to make the story bigger than it has to be. Every story has to be about the life and death of the soul of the planet. The reason the first movie works so well is that it kind of detaches itself from any kind of grand narrative, for the most part. The next two movies basically fall victim to feature creep because EVERY plotline has to somehow tie into every other plotline from the entire franchise. It can't just be its own thing. It makes me wonder about the Jon Snow spin off series for Game of Thrones, honestly. If they can just make the series its own entity, like it's just Jon Snow traveling the world and getting into hijinks, it could be really good. My instinct tells me it's going to fall into the same trap. Another struggle for the survival of humanity ends up feeling redundant and forced.

Probably because if they don't, the nebulous nature of their organisation would immediately lead to infighting. They have to be publicly clear about who the leader is to maintain any semblance of structure. That makes you wonder why anyone would WANT to be the leader, as it's basically a death sentence. I know these wackos actually believe the shit they say, but you would think self preservation would kick in at some point.

I've never really used any social media since MySpace. I've never used LinkedIn, Instagram, Twitter (at least I've never posted on it, but ever since they made it so you had to be logged in to even read things I haven't even read it), and I only used Facebook for about 6 months before I managed to destroy a couple relationships and decided it was a bad idea. The only social media I use is this, Reddit, and YouTube. All of which are rather anonymous Something about the whole idea of "sharing" your life has never sat well with me. I don't want to know everything about you and I don't want anyone to know everything about me. I also have no interest in portraying myself as a character. The fact that people have an expectation that everyone needs to live their life entirely in the public eye is something that I'm not sure I'll ever square with. Probably to my own detriment. Unfortunately, We've reached a point where people are suspicious of you if you don't have publicly available social media of any kind.

I still want to get into Disco Elysium. I don't know why I haven't.

In no particular order Morrowind Ocarina of Time Chrono Trigger Final Fantasy VI Super Mario Odyssey Stardew Valley The Sims 3 The Witcher 3 Grand Theft Auto V Tony Hawk's Pro Skater 3 I tried to not have more than one game from a single franchise, otherwise there would be a shitload more Mario/Zelda games. The only reason The Sims 3 is in there is because it's my favorite Sims game to play and no one else makes anything else like it. To be honest, I find it shocking. The Sims has routinely been ridiculously successful for over 20 years now, and no developer has even really tried doing anything similar. I wish someone would. The Sims has been a complete buggy mess for the last 15 years.

Roasting a turkey in an oven CAN be really good. Once I leaned about spatchcocking the bird so that it cooks much more evenly, I haven't looked back. (My dad absolutely refuses to do it and wonders why the breast meat is always overcooked to shit)

I guess I just don't really eat that much. I got $30 worth of pizza on Sunday and I'm still eating it.

I've found that if I'm buying food for myself, I honestly don't save much money buying groceries vs. eating out. When bulk buying ingredients isn't an option, the price difference becomes negligible compared to time spent. Sure, I would save a ton of money if I meal prepped and ate chicken and rice every day, but at that point I feel like I would just rather have meal replacement shakes.

I personally think if they tried to do a "faithful" adaptation, it would have been boring as fuck. The only way I could see them doing that would be to basically make each season essentially its own mini series, with the only consistent characters being the Elves, but that would be a hard sell, I think. I still say my favorite parts of the show are the made up characters.

A really fun one to ponder, if you're into alternate history: The year is 701 BC. King Sennacherib of the Assyrian Empire decides to expand his empire into the Levant. He runs a brutal campaign of subjugation, easily conquering every city to the coast. The Kingdom of Israel falls, the Philistine cities fall, any Phoenician cities that were still independent fall, and Sennacherib starts a rampage through the Kingdom of Judah. He conquers every city, one by one. Only one city remains unconquered. That city is Jerusalem. Sources differ on what happened, but Sennacherib definitely put the city under siege. Sources differ in how the siege ended, but most likely the King of Judah paid off the Assyrians to leave the city alone. Jerusalem became a semi-autonomous protectorate of the Assyrian Empire until the empire fell nearly 100 years later. Why is this important? Because the Assyrians captured and enslaved most people they conquered. They also banned the Jewish faith. It was only in Jerusalem that Judaism was allowed to be practiced openly. The Assyrians were brutal conquerors. Had they succeeded in conquering the city, it's entirely possible that the Jewish faith would have died out. The ripple effects of that on society are so massive that we can't even begin to speculate how the world would be different. If the Jewish faith died out, that means no Christianity, that means no unifying faith in Europe, that means no Islam, that means the Arab conquests (if they happen at all) look entirely different, etc. Hell, that even means that Japan wouldn't have isolated itself. Not to mention, "spreading the faith" was absolutely an important part of European expansion. It may have been a smokescreen to hide the true intentions of most to get rich, but it was absolutely a necessary smokescreen to legitimize what they were doing in places like the Americas.

I mean, as long as the animals consent isn't being violated, your kink is your kink. If having sex while your cat is staring at you from the foot of the bed is your kink, you do you. As long as you don't touch the cat. The cat can move if it wants to.

Honestly, your insecurities about how many people someone has boinked says more about yourself than the person you're trying to judge. Just because someone has fucked a lot of people doesn't necessarily mean anything in terms of whether they're worthy of your virtue. If you assume that because they have a high number, that means they're a cheater again says more about your insecurities than it says about them. I honestly could not tell you how many people I've had sex with. My best educated guess is no lower than 30 and no greater than 50. I've also never cheated on anyone (at least since high school, I did cheat once when I was 15 or 16) If you're insecure about being able to please your partner if they have been with a lot more people than you, remember this: 1) good sex with anyone takes practice. the first time you have sex with anyone, it almost always kind of sucks. Don't feel like you have to be Jonny Sins the first time you fuck, no one is. 2) the best sex is more about intimacy and connection. Missionary for 15 minutes can feel better than an hour split into 10 different positions if you're actually connecting with the other person. Also go down on your partner if they're okay with it.

Fuck I hate how flippant we get about mass shootings... This shouldn't be normal. Fuck everything.

I have been to Idaho many times and one of my exes is from Sand Point, which now that I think about it is kind of a sus name for a town in northern Idaho. I have half a mind to call shenanigans. Maybe I should ask her what part of the deep state she works for.

No, but I am almost always the one with the higher body count, so I don't have room to speak.

Honestly, the entertainment industry generally encourages bad behaviour and covering things up. All of these people have managers, agents, etc who only get paid if their client gets paid, so a whole cycle of negative behaviour gets reinforced. I was thinking about this when Lil Peep died. He even wanted to take a break from touring to sober up, then when that wasn't an option, he wanted to hire a tour manager that would basically babysit the tour bus so they could manage all the drugs coming through. His manager was basically like "no" and the tour manager ended up being a massive enabler. He OD'd and died a couple weeks into the tour. Like... These are people with problems that need treatment, but as long as they're surrounded by enablers who see them as ATMs, they won't change.

Make no mistake, there are a LOT of voters who are socially liberal (abortion rights, etc) but are still very economically conservative (bootstraps, bitch) who would absolutely vote Republican if someone like Mittens ran again. The more Republicans push into the Christian morality vote, the more they are alienating whatever was left of the "middle," who don't really get down with the culture war bullshit but also don't like most Democrat policies.

This video is fantastic. She does an excellent job of articulating the problem of strict zoning very briefly. She even goes into how exclusive zoning restrictions end up creating the problems they're trying to avoid (mixed-use zones ensure a constant flow of activity, keeping the streets safter. You're almost never walking alone)

I don't really mind bugs for the most part. I especially try to leave spiders alone unless they're directly in my way. Fuck those roaches that are total dipshits and fly right into your face, though.

That could be interesting. Dracula is the first thing that comes to mind, though no one at the time thought there was anything supernatural about him. However, there WAS a Romanian countess who killed virgin peasant girls and allegedly bathed in/drank their blood. Or maybe she was Hungarian, I don't remember. It doesn't have anything to do with war, though. There's also the conversion of Constantine, which in my opinion was Constantine basically pulling a Trump and whipping up a fanatical base to support him in a way that mirrors Hitler, Mussolini, Trump, and lots of other strong men. He saw the Christians of Rome as a fanatical base that he could rile up to do anything he wanted as long as they thought it appeased God. He manipulated people into thinking God chose him, so anything he wanted was automatically God's will. He weaponized Christianity. It all started from a single battle, allegedly. It's been a long time since I read about Constantine, I can't remember how much of the story is a myth. You know what? I think that sounds pretty fun. I know I said Roman history bores me, but drawing a parallel to modern times and making Constantine sound like a massive dick makes it palatable. And I can't think of anything else in European history about supernatural armies or anything like that.

Any, really. Asian history is pretty hard because 90% of historical records have never been translated or is a translation of a third-hand account of a translation of something that maybe happened. My favorites are colonial-American history, wild west history, or honestly any European history that doesn't have anything to do with the Roman Empire. The Roman Empire kind of bores me for some reason. I think I had to study it too much in school.