This is turning into a big spring for concerts, the girlfriend is off to hear the orchestra >insert snide comment about their rating here> play MCU music. Meanwhile, when we saw the Dollyrots last week, one of the opening bands included a guy I knew from way back in the day. No, not the guy from the Suicide Machines (originally Jack Kevorkian and the Suicide Machines), the other guy!
The girlfriend and I have continued watching Daredevil Born Again, mainly to warn people away from it. It started strong, showed some signs of… issues (reshoots and edits will do that), and just went dumb. Let’s start with the fact that Disney dropped two episodes this week. The first episode they dropped? A St. Patrick’s Day themed bottle episode (episode mainly set in one location) featuring everyone’s favorite character: Ms. Marvel’s dad! I can bitch about more in the comments if you’d like.
This bodes well, considering how buggy the first one was. Honestly, no idea why the even claim this is a sequel to a game that has some fond memories for those who could even get it to run.
For those non-gamers out there who want to know what a Steam or Valve is, a decent run down on their business and history. Personally, I think GOG has the best chance to rise up and stand along side Steam.
Looks like Ubisoft is about to get gutted.
I’ll leave the snark to you fine commenters for this story.
I’m not a big fan of this, especially if it was just for saying anti-Trump shite.
From the “Don’t Bite the Hand that Feeds You” department.
This is working out well in New York, isn’t it?
They really did make things better back in the day.
We’re just better than the rest of you.
Further proof that Gen X is the best.
For the drink today, we’ll finish off with another drink that everyone’s heard of, but few people know the ingredients (which happens to have been the loose theme I ran with this month):
The Harvey Wallbanger
- 5 parts (1.25 oz) vodka
- 2 parts (0.5 oz) Galliano
- 12 parts (3 oz) orange juice
Yes, it’s a screwdriver with Galliano on top. That’s the drink, that’s the one that no one knows the ingredients to. The real joke of it is that the drink was invented specifically to introduce Galliano to the US. To make it, fill a tall glass with the OJ, add the vodka, stir, and float the Galliano on top. That’s it, that’s the drink. I mean, you could garnish it with an orange slice and a maraschino, but you probably won’t.
Let’s let you head out for the weekend with an upbeat song.
“ . I mean, you could garnish it with an orange slice and a maraschino, but you probably won’t.”
I need a stack of fruit 5 inches high coming off my drink. It must require a building permit.
As long as you start with a solid foundation.
Speaking of….
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=d-i523Gie9Q
#metoo
Any drink I have needs to be either cider, or so fruity that I can’t taste the alcohol.
Between everything that’s come out — and the cluster fark that looms as Doomsday… I’ve never been happier with a decision overall like I’ve been happy to stop caring about the MCU after Endgame. Best of luck to you and your girlfriend trying to persevere with Daredevil. Your blind trust inspires us.
Matt’s new girlfriend is surprised to find him praying in a scene. You know, the guy who’s the epitome of superhero Catholic guilt? Of course, they haven’t showed him going to Church or sitting in a confessional. From what I’ve read, the St. Patrick’s Day bank robbery episode is the only one that is basically from the show before the reshoots. Which explains why it doesn’t fit into the pacing, story arcs, theme, or mood of the show.
The fight choreography has been decent for the most part.
WTF?
It wasn’t always this way. And this toxic rightward drift has been deliberately manipulated. Let’s please stop playing into it.
Yes, let’s move left into rainbows and unicorns in our entertainment viewing.
How about the toxic shift to shit for movies?
Now I will be the first to say, I just won’t go see the crap. Not even for a lark. I just don’t have enough years left to waste them on commie films. I would rather hang out with Lloyd Kaufman and his wife and watch old Troma films. That’s a much better use of time. Eventually, as people cease to feed the bear which is the Hollywood commie machine, this type of crap will stop. It has nothing to do with left or right. It has everything to do with blowing the equivalent of the GNP of Germany on a pile of steaming shit a fourth grader wouldn’t green light.
One more thing: Hollywood is commies playing with other people’s money. When you are an independent, you do not have the luxury of blowing other people’s money. Your film better make scratch or you cease to be a filmmaker. That is why so many independent films (usually written and directed by the same person) end up much better than any Hollywood film.
I just kanked my Netflix subscription, for this exact reason. There’s just nothing worth watching, and I have better things to do with my time.
I only had one streaming subscription, Discovery+, but they changed the layout so that my list of saved series was pretty much gone and I couldn’t find anything, they they raised the prices. I dropped it because I hadn’t watched anything in long enough that it wasn’t worth paying.
Watch old Hammer Studios movies.
That is all.
New York City mayoral candidate Zohran Mamdani has proposed opening government-owned grocery stores as a solution to ever-increasing food costs and food deserts. Other cities have already done this.
Some people never fucking learn.
It worked great in the USSR, why not here?
Will there be circuses to go along with the bread?
There will be circuses, but there will be no bread.
We had those in the army, they were call commissaries. They were OK, though I don’t remember the fresh foods. OTOH they were heavily subsidized by the tax payer and didn’t have to make a profit. Also on gov land so maybe way less overhead.
The main issue is that they always lead to price controls. The government should stay out of the food business and just about every other business, but a public grocery store is in itself a harmless waste of money. It becomes dangerous when it leads to other policies. Which it inevitably will.
From the “Don’t Bite the Hand that Feeds You” department.
Been there done that. Also an underrated film.
Barcelona (film)
Barcelona the city is overrated.
Great movie
My favorite of his is still Metropolitan.
It’s not as polished as his later works, but it perfectly captures the era in NYC.
I vaguely remember Metropolitan
I love Barcelona. I was just thinking of it the other day & had to dig up the exact dialog re: burgers:
That is Whit Stillman and his dialogue.
Reacher has churned to its inevitable slaughterhouse conclusion. So I’ve got that going for me.
The girlfriend and I are planning on getting caught up on that.
I can’t get over the nerd from all the 80s movies playing the bad-ish guy.
He grew up big and played a heavy in several shows as an adult as I recall.
I haven’t see the finale yet. No Spoilers.
Better than season 2, thankfully, not as good as season 1. So says I.
He was extremely murder-y in this season. Lots of killing out of hand.
Ether the writing regressed or Ritchson’s acting ability did, since he seemed much more wooden this season.
Read it and weep
Chrysler discontinued the 300 last year and Dodge ditched the four-door Charger, leaving Mopar sedan-less in 2024, which is the first time in history. Chevrolet is mothballing the Malibu after the 2024 model year, so they too won’t have a sedan in their lineup. Ford, which has an SUV-heavy fleet, stopped making sedans several years ago with the discontinuation of the Taurus and Fusion, because they were losing billions on them. The reality is, people simply aren’t buying sedans anymore, and that’s the biggest factor in their continued production.
There are, however, a literal handful of American sedans left for 2025, but they’re anything but traditional family rides. With hyper-performance turbos and electrified four-doors, the sedan is in a transitional period, trying to redefine the class, or, maybe it’s the last gasp of a stubborn car segment that can’t realize that the times have passed them by. Hopefully, it’s the first thing, because a world with endless crossovers that all look basically the same is both boring and spirit-crushing. Here are the five American sedans that hope to rescue the four-door in 2025.
Nobody wants to own a “car”. That’s why BMW and Mercedes and Honda went out of business.
*There’s nothing on that list I’d trade my 34 year old Civic wagon for, straight up.
Well technically nobody wants a “sedan”. The sweet spot is a mid size CUV. It makes me weep.
OTH a 2025 BMW M5 weighs in at a featherweight 5,390 lbs. So fuck it why not just drive an SUV.
The 2009 Forrester that we used to have and the 2019 Rogue that we now have are really excellent general-purpose vehicles. Comfortable on road trips. Easy to load groceries and other packages into. So, I do think the midsized CUVs are better than an equivalent size sedan.
The 2017 Versa that we bought last fall is a great little sedan. But I wouldn’t put anyone but small children in the back seat. It’s a perfectly fine commuter vehicle. Though I would always treat it as a second car backing up a midsized CUV as the primary driver.
kinnath – I get it. Our primary hauler is my wife’s Acura MDX. I’m the guy that drives the Model 3 sedan as a second car. The Model Y is just marginally more money and much more practical and outsells it by a wide margin.
Sensei — I’m the guy that now has four vehicles. The wife drives the Rogue almost exclusively. I drive the Versa in the winter and a 350Z in the summer. And we have a Titan to haul shit around.
I have different sizes of hammers and saws around the house too.
A tool is a tool.
I don’t think you’re a tool, Kinnath.
If my ankle does not improve to the point where I can comfortably commute with my manual Mazda, I may end with an Accord Hybrid.
I have no desire for an SUV, and while a pickup would be nice, not really practical for the distance I commute.
It’s a really good car and peppy. But sadly an appliance. But if I had the need I’d cheerfully drive one over the Toyota Prius. The only thing the Prius has going for it is AWD, but you don’t need that anymore.
I believe the new Accord Hybrid is AWD as well, it uses the same drive-train as the CR-V.
Bobarian – my understanding is “no” on the AWD.
The Accord Hybrid is front wheel drive. No need for AWD in SC.
Car and Driver had something that said they were going to do it for this past new model year, but apparently they only did it in Japan.
The hybrid CR-V isn’t really a normal AWD, it’s the same front wheel drive system as the Accord Hybrid, with separate electric motors driving the rear on demand.
Easily could be done to the accord.
I have been eyeing a CT4 V Blackwing hard for the past year.
Given I’ve been driving my Cobalt SS for almost 15 years, it would likely be the last car I’ll ever buy (unless/until I wreck it). By the time I’m done with that one, they’ll be ready to take my license.
Cobalt SS, I don’t see many of those on road very often anymore. I drove a 2006 supercharged Cobalt SS for 11 years. Bought it new, told the salesman the only way I would buy it is if they swapped out the goofy looking boy racer spoiler with the smaller blade spoiler on the base model. Which they did. One of the most reliable cars I’ve owned, it had 130K trouble free miles on it when I traded it in. The only thing I disliked about that car was the ridiculously short 1st gear, practically useless unless you enjoy hitting the rev limiter.
I see you can get it in manual, too. I, too, would be interested in one of those.
Porsche Panameras keep popping up on Bring A Trailer’s ‘station wagon’ category.
They’re going for surprisingly reasonable prices (given their list) – e.g., https://bringatrailer.com/listing/2013-porsche-panamera-gts-27/
Sadly, it won’t quite do as the sole replacement for our aging Honda (and I’m guessing cost of ownership is quite high) but I have to think it’s just a fantastic highway cruiser.
Low-income residents of food deserts are more likely to suffer from diet-related diseases like diabetes and cardiovascular disease.
I.e., diseases of caloric excess.
Food deserts absolutely do exist.
There’s a reason for this.
Counterpoint, I am enjoying the new Daredevil. The fight scenes at the end of the last episode were particularly good. Multiple interwoven story lines, also good.
Episodes 3 and 4 were slower, but that’s been typical of the original seasons. A few slow episodes to build up to a big finish.
That St. Paddy’s Day episode makes sense now that I know it wasn’t part of the reshoots. There was one glaring problem with that episode, they broke into a bank to get to a safe deposit box …for which they had the key. They couldn’t just walk in like any other customer?
Matt continuing to get engaged in fights without bothering to hide his identity really bothers me. Especially when it’s characters who know him as Matthew Murdock – Blind Attorney.
That should raise some red flags. However, the Mayor is going to crack down on vigilantes, and those fights might fit into that story line.
In this case Cumo unintentionally did everybody a favor, but it highlights what a grandma killing asshole he well and truly is.
Cuomo held up Citi Field mass vaccine site amid beef with de Blasio
Welcome to the POS who will be NYC’s next mayor.
Fuck you fucking normie fucking tourists for fucking up every fucking thing that I like.
A novel solution to give Americans better access to fresh food is picking up steam across the country: government-owned, government-operated grocery stores. Such stores are touted by proponents as a way to provide groceries to so-called food deserts: communities that have been abandoned by for-profit stores that decided they weren’t worth the investment. But to succeed, public stores have to find ways to compete with the big chains that dominate the industry, keeping costs and prices low.
Wait, are you operating where the big chains won’t, or are you competing with them for customers?
And perhaps customers could pay for groceries at such stores with some sort of stamp or ration card.
It would be important manage the chocolate ration carefully.
We have to stop the po’ folks who somehow keep finding a way to get to evil Walmart where the food costs less!
Interesting way to tart up rampant theft and vandalism…
“novel solution”. Yeah, that’s never been tried.
Welcome to the POS who will be NYC’s next mayor.
Seems like quite a demotion, but an attention whore of that stature takes what he can get, I suppose.
Still that’s a lot of people to fuck over compared to many state governors.
Actually, they did in terms of durability for incandescent light bulbs. But they figured out that they could make a brighter, thinner filament that was cheaper, and would eventually fail, producing more profits overall while not pissing off the customers too much.
Also, with the firehouse, you’ll note that the bulb never gets turned off. The failure point for incandescents at the filament is the transition from off to on when the current first hits. Staying on or staying off doesn’t lead to wear. Metal fatigue from heating and cooling does the damage, and the shock from the initial voltage does the killing. A bulb that is never turned off gets less wear.
Leftist ideology is about the destruction of western culture. That is the end goal. They attack individuals and institutions that promote individual character. They attack wholesome cultural values. They attack prosperity.
They are Machiavellian as hell. True/False, right/wrong, good/evil, moral/immoral – they have no use for those distinctions. There is no line they will not cross, crime they will commit, lie they will not tell. Their sole metric is does it give me more money and power or not?
Wokism is aimed at destroying rational thinking for forcing compliance to lunatic dictates.
““Political correctness is communist propaganda writ small. In my study of communist societies, I came to the conclusion that the purpose of communist propaganda was not to persuade or convince, not to inform, but to humiliate; and therefore, the less it corresponded to reality the better. When people are forced to remain silent when they are being told the most obvious lies, or even worse when they are forced to repeat the lies themselves, they lose once and for all their sense of probity. To assent to obvious lies is in some small way to become evil oneself. One’s standing to resist anything is thus eroded, and even destroyed. A society of emasculated liars is easy to control. I think if you examine political correctness, it has the same effect and is intended to.”
― Theodore Dalrymple
Disney can go fuck themselves. They are evil. That is the naked truth and their attempt to shame us is laughable.
Just starting to read the article — and tend to agree with the “Steam mostly just works” (which is a big, big deal when you’ve got a built up library to keep you uninterested in leaving).
That said — stumbled on this… and that seriously needs to be worked on by Valve or it will kill them as a platform. If you can’t trust friend recommendations because they might be hacked by malware and turned into AI bot spew… and they direct you to more malware… no one’s going to be doing the “social” aspects or installing new games.
They have been stomping down on those as they find them, and I believe I saw that they were making some changes to their publication rules to help prevent it as well.
But then again, I don’t do much on the social side of Steam.
The confirmation of a Disney remake taking a bite of a rotten apple is certainly newsworthy, if perhaps expected since many of Disney’s remakes of pre-1989 animated films have struggled unless featuring a substantive angle to their reimagining (think Angelina Jolie as a heroic Maleficent or Emma Stone as punk rock Cruella de Vil). And generally, as based on audience polling on CinemaScore and our own critical analysis, this take has left folks wanting. Yet just a quick perusal of any social media app—TikTok, Facebook, X—adds a weird if wholly unsurprising wrinkle to the story: Loads of men, many of them middle-aged, and plenty more apparently without children, are taking a noxious, almost demonic glee in the box office failure of a princess movie primarily aimed at little girls.
*bangs space-alien-to-pidgin-English translator on desk*
*clears throat*
“Shut up!”, they explained.
I promise that my glee is entirely prompted by the idea of Disney collapsing so that a competent entertainment company might take it’s place. I could give one fuck less about Snow White.
I keep hoping this is the year Nelson Pelz finally takes over their board.
Oh great.. f’ing Tencent. I don’t think I played many (if any) Ubisoft titles, thank goodness. I do not trust those weasels even when they have “minority” share. (Part of the reason I don’t do Epic Games… though Epic’s obvious attempts to buy the market with freebies/exclusives put me off as well).
Agreed. When Tencent is around, I’m not.
I’ve got the Epic Game Store installed because when I bought my last video card, it came with a free copy of Outer Worlds, but only on the EGS. I’ve never spent a dime, nor entered any payment information in. I have abused them giving away copies of games by adding them to my library, and they’ve given away some big ones.
A novel solution to give Americans better access to fresh food is picking up steam across the country: government-owned, government-operated grocery stores. Such stores are touted by proponents as a way to provide groceries to so-called food deserts: communities that have been abandoned by for-profit stores that decided they weren’t worth the investment.
Delusional fabulists make the best business decisions.
Yeah, that is just…Wow.
“I know the math doesnt work but what we want to do is too important to let that hold us back.”
– whispy bearded 20something college kid protesting during Obumbles campaign
I put a 9 acre piece of property on the market a week ago. Wasn’t a super piece, had an acre of swamp but is on a little river. Sold today to the only person that looked at it for the asking price, 110K. I was concerned that it may have been over priced, I’m a happy camper.
There will be a heavy capital gains tax next year. I’m way less concerned about the little cabin selling, spring is here and folks will be out looking.
Very interesting
The real wage growth over the last four years, in which Congress passed a massive stimulus package at the beginning of the decade, has actually been -5%! There wasn’t a single four-year period since at least the 1960s prior to Covid where there was anywhere near such a drop in income taking into account inflation.
It’s no wonder that Americans are so pessimistic about the economy. Only once in CNN polling since the coronavirus pandemic began have a majority of Americans said the economy is good.
That’s weird. I could swear they spent the last two years telling us real wages were skyrocketing because Bidenomix.
That’s a big part of why they lost. The real story was always that prices went up 30% and wages went up 3%. People might not have know those exact numbers, but going to the store or buying gas, they saw it every day.
Yup
Grocery stores story: I just left Walmart earlier today. I rarely go there but I needed BB’s. Almost everything in the store is locked in a case. Hair mousse? The BB’s? Cosmetics? All of it. WTF? I asked the guy who got the BB’s for me.
“Everything in this store grows legs if you take your eyes off of it. You would be amazed.”
“No, I wouldn’t. I dont get out much anymore and every time I do it reminds me why I dont get out much anymore.” was my reply.
“I know what you mean brother.”
State grocery stores. I am shocked that Bryce Covert could stop eating his boogers long enough to excrete that abortion. Oh, wait….was it parody?
Fleet and Farm has all the ammo out and available to shoppers. I can’t think of anything locked up but they aren’t much into cosmetics, watches, etc. Guns and optics are behind the counter and need an employee’s assistance.
It’s the Men’s Mall
Maybe if people like you wouldn’t shoplift they wouldn’t need to lock everything behind Plexiglas. :-p
“I’m old. I was confused.”
“Was that wrong? Should I not have done that?”
I promise that my glee is entirely prompted by the idea of Disney collapsing so that a competent entertainment company might take it’s place. I could give one fuck less about Snow White.
I’m a far cry from a Disney scholar, but my dim recollection of most of the Disney movies I watched as a kid involved traditionalist triumph-over-adversity and good-guys-win-in-the-end story lines. I have no idea what they do now. Profit-is-theft, and who knows what similar drivel, I suppose.
The traditional themes taken from centuries of story telling have been replaced with ideas of oppression, girl bosses, etc. that you see in the news every day.
I have a new NSF pitch idea I haven’t written up yet: make artificial versions of the electric eel and suchlike organs for use as batteries. This avoids the costs of using various metals.
The organs of freshwater and saltwater electric fish have different volt and current advantage because saltwater is much better conductor.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electric_fish#Strongly_electric_fish
Damn, it’s been done. Oh well, great minds think alike:
https://www.futurity.org/electric-eel-soft-cell-1632242-2/
a pic of the eel-inspired battery:
https://www.snexplores.org/article/power-source-mimics-electric-eel-zap
If electric eel equivalents for resistors, capacitors, etc. could be found, it’d be possible to make a metal-free radio among other things.
Yes, it’s a screwdriver with Galliano on top
My understanding was the ‘wallbanger’ part was because the Galliano bottle is always against the wall because it’s so tall (apocryphal?)
Kind of. The Harvey Wallbanger was named that based on a mascot. The (rarely, as in I’ve never heard it) modifier I was told to use for the addition of Galliano to a cocktail was up against the wall. From memory, the longest name we could get for a drink that referenced the ingredients was:
A slow comfortable screw up against the wall in the dark, Mexican style.
slow = Sloe Gin
comfortable = Southern Comfort
screw = Screwdriver/OJ
up = chilled and served up [edited to add this one]
against the wall = Galliano
in the dark = dark rum
Mexican style = tequila
Ah, yes, I may be conflating “up against the wall” with “wallbanger”
Did someone say Up Against The Wall ?
With my schedule, and me being me, I always seem to dedthread everything. Today with Stoicism.
Thanks, Ron, for writing those up. I’m glad you had good-time spent last week. (And hopefully this, in some manner of speaking (I just want to say..)
Why is it every time one of my kids gets into a scrape, I feel my sphincter clench like I just got called to the principal’s office?
Nothing serious, I hope.
He locked his keys in his car with the motor running.
It wouldn’t be as big a deal if he hadn’t already had to call AAA 5 times this year, and they sent The Letter.
https://pjmedia.com/scott-pinsker/2025/03/28/the-hillary-clinton-political-comeback-begins-today-n4938365
O M G
Noooooooope
🙄
So, 81/82 if she runs in 2026?
Seems unlikely
Oh, please. Please please please. Make another run at it, Hilary.
This. Watching her refuted yet again would be so satisfying.
This morning I saw where she touted her diplomatic and security bonfides because she was Secretary of State and so much better at security than these amateurs texting the other day.
If I was not already 100% convinced of her 100% Machiavellian nature I would have been shocked at the brazen hypocrisy. Instead I thought “Of course she did.”
Seriously, Ms I had a server in the bathroom?
Didnt you hear Kathryn Maher? Truth is distracting. They feel the same way about integrity, the lot of them.
Just pass a little time reading Kant, Hegel and Marx. It is all spelled out right there.
The prospect of power and money is a powerful elixir. [Too long in the tooth for the sexy part.]
[Too long in the tooth for the sexy part.]
*hears the faint sound of velcro tearing*
I was thinking of going to test drive a Tesla tomorrow. Not because I plan to buy one, but as a pretext to see the idiots on parade who are planning to protest at the dealerships.
I was thinking of going to test drive a Tesla tomorrow. Not because I plan to buy one, but as a pretext to see the idiots on parade who are planning to protest at the dealerships.
Toss pennies at them as you drive by.
Neph, in your honor I made a cocktail instead of just pouring bourbon in a glass.
Granted, a boulevardier is barely more complicated than just pouring bourbon in a glass. But still…
Cocktails don’t need to be complicated to be good.
Enjoy!
Bite the hand?
Don’t bite the D…
*NSFW
/back in the (937)
Monsters under the bed
Now see, I was going to joke along the lines “Yeah we all laugh but have. you ever actually looked under there? How sure are you…” then I clicked on the story.
JFC, that’s a wild story.
STEVE SMITH NOT HIDE UNDER BED. HIM TOO TALL. HIM FEET STICK OUT.
THAT NOT HIM FEET