Replies

Christian wrote:

Heh. Well, it’s a good PR gag for that agency. But this isn’t feasable yet.

Here’s the main issue. It should be noted all the video is AI, not just pretty starlet Tilly but the fat guy and old guy and they are very convincing. It’s technically very impressive but it is also deathly boring and unfunny.

I wanted to show my wife and kids the massive technological advances the video showed and reveal at the end it was all fake but it needed me to ask them to be patient with frankly tedious content to get the end reveal.

This will be the biggest hurdle because AI by its nature cannot innovate, it collates and reassembles existing content. If you inserted this tech into 1964 you’d have 200,000 jangly guitar Buddy Holly/Beatles things but no reprobates in Birmingham would have invented heavy metal or German nerds created electronic sounds.

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Christian, lorcan_nagle

I made a switch last month from Spotify to Tidal.

This may vary by geography but here it is now cheaper, has better sound quality, pays artists more and has a better suggestion algorithm. I have found great new music with their feeds, far better than Spotify.

It’s not perfect as it tends with any artist to just replay the biggest hits, picking The Smiths as one of my ‘followed’ bands has meant replays of ‘How Soon is Now’ and ‘There is a Light’ and not much else from their catalogue but you can tweak that with some extra effort or as I pay just choose the albums or greatest hits.

More importantly the ‘daily discovery’ is pretty spot on.

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Andrew, lorcan_nagle, Uncle Retrospective, Todd, njerry

Yeah apart from a couple of oddities I think 95% or more are in other collections. Looks a nice package though.

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Dave

There’s always a bit of shenanigans like that. When they moved to downloads the price of games didn’t really drop despite the cost savings (or cinema ticket prices when they stopped shipping heavy $5000 cans around the globe). I think in both examples they are, as any business does, looking at what the customer perceives as value. The packaging and distribution are very low down the list compared to how much fun the game is and how many hours you’ll get out of it.

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Todd, Martin Smith

Dave wrote:

And given that I was paying £40-£50 for a new game back in the ’90s, they’ve bucked the inflationary trend pretty impressively, especially given how much more complex and costly to develop they are these days.

Yup, a point I was making recently, a PS1 game was often £50. Using an inflation calculator that’s £103 today.

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Dave

https://neonichiban.com/

The Comixology replacement has now made the beta available to all, without invite.

The ‘marketplace’ section seems to be course correcting with prices around $2.50-4 instead of the silly $400 ones.

Martin Smith wrote:

lorcan_nagle wrote:

And because there’s a two term-limit, the current president, Yoda Michael D Higgins can’t run again.

What was Higgins’s deal before he was President?

Martin Smith wrote:

What was Higgins’s deal before he was President?

Jedi master in the Dagobah district.

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Arjan Dirkse, Martin Smith, Ben, lorcan_nagle

Todd wrote:

We’re reaching the limits of human vision and biology to actually perceive the difference.

I think that’s been there with TV tech for a while. I stand in the electrical shop and the basic HD TV is a fraction of the price of the highest definition OLED and I’m squinting to spot the difference in the picture.

Similarly with digital camera definition everything was about megapixels 5 or so years back, the marketing has shifted because there’s a realisation that just increasing that number has reached a point where it makes no real difference.

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Todd, Ben

[garjones]

It’s interesting looking at what my kids and their friends play.

Tech jumps are smaller than they were in our day. A move from 16 to 32 to 64 bit transformed what could be done in a few years. It’s not true now, Breath of the Wild was made for the WiiU but fits perfectly well into Switch games.

They do play a lot of indie games and are not badgering me for a Switch 2 because there’s no evidence right now it will offer much more than they have. For teenagers Hollow Knight has always been a bigger deal than Red Dead 2 or other AAA games.

• This reply was modified 1 week, 6 days ago by garjones.

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Dave, Ben

Arjan Dirkse wrote:

Still I don’t like it if people just say the country is entirely bad like he seems to do. The US has lots of great people and has done great things, as well as bad people and bad things. This attitude is not helpful.

It’s not hugely related to what’s written though, which is a lamentation of a decline under Trump. You can’t really have a decline without a previous upside.

I do get part of what you say, it can be easy to launch at the USA as they have had a dominant economic and cultural position, often very positive but sometimes not, since the end of WW2. I just think you take it too far to a position that nobody can have anything negative to say that isn’t borne of jealousy or hypocrisy. He’s allowed not to be happy and think things are getting much worse.

Native or not I don’t think saying ‘Netherlands is a shithole’ is any more useful. It surely does have shitty parts but also very good ones.

lorcan_nagle wrote:

Newsome will lose just as bad as Harris, because all he has is fuckwit memes

They aren’t even his really, they are Camille Zapata who is very sharp, although I guess he should get some credit for employing her and letting her go rip.

He has the same problem as a lot of the party though that, that recent move aside, he’s been very bland and centrist and lacking in ideas. California has a terrible homelessness problem, which isn’t his fault necessarily, a chunk of it is climate because if I had to sleep rough I would do it there and not freezing myself to death in other states. He’s not really proposed any solutions though, moving homeless camps on obviously does nothing to address the core problem, just kicks it down the road to another week and location. Doing it for a photo op is deeply cynical.

The exasperation so often is a failure to get to grips with an issue and fix it or make it better.

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Al-x, Ben, lorcan_nagle

Arjan Dirkse wrote:

UKians seething about the US is always funny. You lost, get over it.

This is an example of why we shouldn’t just buy the framing of internet memes. A quick Google shows the author is from Wisconsin, his Substack contains this line:

I am American, yes—but I no longer see myself as merely just “American.” Not in the narrow way nationalism demands.

To the other point. I don’t think the ‘you lost’ thing really resonates 250 years on. It probably weighs as heavily on the average UK citizen as the Netherlands not owning Indonesia, Turks pining for the Ottoman Empire or the USA wanting the Philippines back. Not at all really.

I think it is fair to point out hypocrisy at times from Brits and other Europeans criticising the USA (an example is on immigration where they always been far more draconian than the US). Trump is awful though, gun deaths are high, too many people go bankrupt from health issues and I don’t think it serves anyone well to pretend they don’t exist or they can’t comment.

It reminds me a bit of a BBC Hardtalk show I saw maybe 20 years back when I first arrived in Malaysia and the foreign minister basically defended every tough question with ‘you are foreign so don’t understand’ and when that failed with ‘the British did terrible things in 1857’. While true was hardly relevant to the questions being asked or the responsibility of the 35 year old British woman of Indian heritage asking them.

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Todd, Ben, lorcan_nagle

Ben wrote:

I will eventually get to XC2 and 3.

That MonolithSoft can get the Switch to do what it does is technical magic. Combined with world design you will never see in any other game, the XC games are amazing.

I had a great time with the first game on the Wii. XCX is good too.

Having played a few Switch (or Wii originally) games now after being a PC only gamer for a few years I think they are very clever. The more cartoony but often beautiful renderings from the likes of Zelda and Xenoblade are less processor hungry but work just as well if not better. There’s less risk of ‘uncanny valley’ stuff going on.

In a  weird way it reminds me a bit of a long time ago with Spectrum v C64. The latter had the jump on memory and processing power but there was something aesthetically pleasing about how the Spectrum generated more rounded graphics and I think the programmers worked a bit harder to get the best out of the system.

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Dave, Ben

I’ve been playing Xenoblade Chronicles 2. I’m a big JRPG fan but never played these as they never got a PC port but my son got a Switch last Christmas. The first Xenoblade was decent enough, good story but there’s a lot of walking around rather empty massive maps and the fighting is rather passive, it’s mainly about trying to position yourself behind baddies.

XC2 is a big improvement for me, the maps are far more interesting as is the combat which adds a lot of different combinations to try.

The biggest winner though is the script and voice acting. I have never played a game that made me laugh out loud so many times. The cast are excellent. The original Japanese plot goes some very ethically dodgy places, your main characters are ‘drivers’ that basically control the ‘blades’ assigned to them (most of which are sexy women who may fall in love with you even though it isn’t clear they are human).

The ick is saved by how they make them take the piss out of the bosses half the time and I think it’s helped by how an obviously British translation team doing it made some changes to the norm. None of the leads really have an RP accent, the only one is Zeke who is basically the posh idiot character Jack Whitehall played in Fresh Meat a few years back and always had me chuckling.

 

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Ben, Martin Smith

 

 

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Uncle Retrospective, Todd, lorcan_nagle

Arjan Dirkse wrote:

Dolan’s Claim, “Kirk Is a Modern Saint Paul” Refuted by NCR: “He Was a Racist”

 

A cardinal claims Charlie Kirk is a modern Saint Paul…however he also says he never heard of him before the shooting…

I think it would be truly embarrassing really if the actual numbers of ‘never heard of Kirk before the shooting’ were discussed a bit more. I am very online and check news/politics every day and I was at best vaguely aware of him as a right wing podcaster.

There was a Reform councillor in south Wales last week who stormed out of a meeting because there was no minute’s silence or similar tribute to Kirk. I can say with a lot of confidence that 99% of the constituents in Torfaen had no fucking idea who he was before he made the news for being shot and would take a decent wager said councillor was among that group.

For all its other ills in recent years under Musk it hasn’t been really acknowledged enough how Twitter, which has always had one of the smallest social media platforms, way smaller than Facebook, Instagram, Tik-Tok etc, has been held up as the crucible of public opinion because it makes life easy for lazy journalists who can submit stories using just cut and paste.

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Todd, Uncle Retrospective, Ben, lorcan_nagle

1970s Marvel before Shooter and the late 80s/early 90s are great examples of why the editorial and writing duties need to be separate.

The 1970s era lacked any discipline so you get nonsense like Martin spells out above of half finished issue and no direction. The later period has assistant editors taking over writing duties who otherwise wouldn’t have enough talent to get the job. Terry Kavanaugh and Michael Higgins’ awful Excalibur issues especially but there are many more.

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Todd

Al-x wrote:

It makes me wonder… which company if they bought WB, would be able to do the DC movies justice?

https://collider.com/netflix-wants-to-buy-warner-bros-discovery-theatrical-experience-impact/

Maybe. I think the current WB bosses are pretty shit and Netflix could do better.

The consolidation though is really bad and it has driven down standards. The fewer companies that own anything the more they can get away with passing off shit. The best example for me is US television in the 1980s, which didn’t have public service requirements, before a large cable challenge could start making any challenge commercially.

We like the nostalgia but there’s an entire decade of a lot of money ploughed in and thousands of shows but it was all crap because that’s all they needed to do.

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Todd, lorcan_nagle

Comics do love these gimmicks (video games too), we had high numbers 8 years or so back with geek boxes or whatever they were called at the time.

Saying that I think the doomsayers never quite realise how massive these numbers are compared to other genres or media. EPL football games in the most popular league sport in the world will get less than 500,000 at times. Celebrity ghost written novels sell 10k. 2000ad is now selling around 18% of The Sun newspaper daily distribution.

There are a lot of people who want to read well made comics but we kind of like the underdog status that it can’t be possible. Like the genuinely upsetting injustices of Kirby or S&S or Bill Mantlo are always in the conversation but never that Byrne is under oath in a US court he earned over $10m at Marvel or that Chris Claremont bought a private jet.

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Todd

Sky today announces Force & Majeure, a sharply funny and stylishly escapist new Sky Original series starring Emmy-nominated actor, writer, director and producer Natasha Lyonne (Poker Face, Russian Doll) and Emmy-nominated, BAFTA-winning actor and writer Matt Berry (Toast of London, What We Do in the Shadows). Created by acclaimed comedy writer Tom Scharpling(Monk, What We Do in the Shadows) alongside Berry and Lyonne, the sharply comedic series is written by Scharpling, Iain Morris (The Inbetweeners, Time Bandits) and Cirocco Dunlap (Russian Doll, The Second Best Hospital in the Galaxy) and is a retro-infused, playfully irreverent take on the classic TV action-adventure detective genre from Objective Fiction and Animal Pictures.

When British art expert (cum art thief) Thomas Force (Berry) and American mercenary Jennifer Majeure(Lyonne) are recruited by an eccentric, justice-obsessed billionaire Amanda Daventry, they find themselves tasked with defeating the evil plans of international villains operating in the most fabulous locations across Europe.

But as Force & Majeure team up to defeat the forces of evil, they must also work together to escape the clutches of Amanda, who may not be telling them the whole story.

This looks a promisingly daft 80s TV show concept. NBC Universal have the international distribution.

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Todd, Martin Smith, Uncle Retrospective

https://www.comicsbeat.com/batman-1-sells-500000-copies-goes-to-second-printing/

Impressive numbers from DC, they appear to have their mojo back in the last year or so.

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Sean Robinson, Dave, Ben

Arjan Dirkse wrote:

Still I think the same decline in reading and math is seen here in the Netherlands. A lot of kids who are going to high school don’t have sufficient reading and writing proficiency. It is not just a US thing.

I certainly don’t think it’s exclusive to the US at all. The UK has actually had a rise in those education stats while just about everything else has gone to the toilet but not every country is going to be improving every year.

I also don’t think anything I said really was about Europe deriding the US, although it’s valid that happens.

The more pertinent point is I think they are damaging those economic strengths that have been a notable step above most of Europe the last 50 years. Breaking ties and trust for really the short term enrichment of a few. I loved my visits to the US but won’t go again while the current regime is so randomly aggressive to travellers. We have countries this week opting out of US arms deals because of their erratic NATO responses. Hyundai/LG have paused that battery plant because they chained up their executives. The fossil fuel obsession is I can only see a very poor long term option economically. Last September China bought 25% of the US soy bean crop, this September that has become 0% and the farmers will go out of business in a year if they can’t replace that trade.

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Christian, Todd

[Al-x]

Al-x wrote:

Now I want to add WorkBalloon to my podcast list:

https://bleedingcool.com/comics/greg-rucka-on-dark-times-at-dc-comics-with-dan-didio-geoff-johns/

and:

https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/business/business-news/dc-cancels-red-hood-comic-book-series-charlie-kirk-1236368576/

• This reply was modified 3 weeks, 5 days ago by Al-x.

I’ve listened to Word Balloon for over a decade now. It helps that John Siuntres’ main career was in radio (mostly sports reporting I think). It adds a professional sheen a lot of fan/hobby podcasts don’t have. He’s sometimes a bit out of touch with younger guests, I think ideally he’d be like David Meadows and return to the 1970s but I can forgive him that as at least he tries.

Like a lot of interview podcasts though I don’t listen to every one, just the creators I am into.

The most entertaining were his Neal Adams ones, that guy had an ego like you can’t imagine. He basically invented everything from 1965 onwards by his own account but I still couldn’t help liking him and being amused by it.

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Ben, Todd

Martin Smith wrote:

I guess it would make more sense if anyone were selling things on under RRP, which is what I planned to do with a test purchase.

I went back in today and it seems that’s happening. The silly $390 Absolute Batman book is still there first (so clearly haven’t sold) but some guy is selling Batman Dark Patterns issues for $2.

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Martin Smith

Martin Smith wrote:

garjones wrote:

The idea of a TV ‘series’ in the UK is next to dead, it is ‘season’ now.

Which is good, because series meaning both a year’s run and the show entirely was pretty confusing.

To be fair originally it wasn’t. A series was a programme, a season was a series. ‘The programme will be coming to an end with its last episode today’ would be how it was used in the 1980s. It got muddled around the time box sets came in and labelling them series or season and the US and UK terms getting interchanged a lot. So now it’s probably better to use a standard.

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Martin Smith

I tend to agree with Ben. I think Morrison’s take was fine but it has a finite length of interest.

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Ben

I’m actually fascinated by the way that for all its ills the internet has for the younger generation basically fucked up almost all the norms of regional bias. I see Americans say ‘shite’ in comments. The idea of a TV ‘series’ in the UK is next to dead, it is ‘season’ now.  Korean music and Japanese animation are what they care more for than most western fare even though they speak English all day at home. My wife now watches Swedish crime dramas and Dutch romcoms, the language less important than the blurb sounding interesting.

Adolescence just won a truck of (deserved) Emmys but UK TV has been doing that kind of brilliantly acted social commentary for decades, it’s just now it got on Netflix with an easy button to watch if you live in Wisconsin. In 1988 I saw the first showing of Akira in a non Asian cinema with an audience of 200 people at a festival. This weekend an anime film debuted at $70m in the US.

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Ben, Todd, Arjan Dirkse, lorcan_nagle

Arjan Dirkse wrote:

Meanwhile Nepal has had what looks like a legit revolution, including burning down parliament and stripping politicians naked and dragging them through the streets. Not a lot of new about that in Western media, maybe they don’t want to give people ideas. There’s a new PM now but it remains to be seen what will actually change.

 

Honestly stuff like the rally in London is just tame and harmless, some silly people waving a flag and raising their fist and saying “we’re not gonna take it”.  The people in Nepal were actually mad as fuck, desperate and ready to kill anyone that stood against them. In the West people are mostly tamed.

 

(I think there are probably some radical nazis among the crowd in London who would be ready to kill but I don’t think that is true for most of them, they’re probably more like boomer conservatives who think Starmer is a commie or something silly like that.)

 

Of course it’s mostly good that people are a bit more relaxed and not ready to freak out and start some violence but there must also be some willingness to fight tyranny when it occurs. Sometimes violence is justified, as a last resort, under extreme circumstances.

It’s an interesting thing with Nepal.

A guy on Bluesky I follow, roughly the same age as me and political leanings, took the piss out of someone commenting to one of his posts that kids weren’t reading about Charlie Kirk’s murder but the Nepalese revolution.

I asked my two teens on their Tik-Tok feeds and they actually backed up the Nepal side of the argument. They didn’t know who Kirk was but saw several Nepal videos.

The disparate way we get information now is fascinating. My Tidal app fed me a playlist based on what I typically listened to that I played in the car as I drove her to college, she’s 16, born in 2008 and immediately identified a song by the Cocteau Twins. At 16 I didn’t know who the Cocteau Twins were and they were contemporary but not on the BBC Radio 1 playlist. It would be the equivalent of me listening to tunes from 1956 of which I knew nothing.

 

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Todd, Uncle Retrospective, Ben, Arjan Dirkse

I signed up months back and forgot about it until they sent an email so have the beta access. It needs work but looks promising.

The interesting thing is that the US has not been great in any of those stats for a long time, that show is pretty old now and nothing much changed positively.

Where they have exceeded most other countries is economically and ironically there’s a lot at risk there now. The tourism industry will take a massive hit, nobody I know will go to the US now unless they have to for work or already booked and paid for tickets. The massive debt coming from the ‘big beautiful bill’ risks the safest investment post WW2, US bonds. They are going all in for fossil fuels which is potentially a disaster, it’s an extremely long term payoff, new oil and gas locations can take a decade to come online, by 2035 most European countries will have made new petrol cars illegal. The best guess is that will be drilling for hugely devalued gas and oil by the time it reaches the market.

I read a book from John Pilger a long time ago and while he somewhat lost it in his later years, he was very clever in criticising the right using their own quotes. He had the CATO institute saying lax immigration gave the US a $50bn advantage per year over European countries because of low pay. That may also be wiped out.

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Christian, Ben, Todd

 

This This is the beta of the new site from the ex Comixology people. Looks very similar but I notice they have a ‘resellable’ tag on the books so looks like you can trade after you’ve read.

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Andrew, Dave

Was reading from a comics retailer online that one issue of Red Hood is suddenly selling like hotcakes. Nothing like the speculator market to make hay in a crisis.

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Sean Robinson, Todd, Ben

I am back!

Not sure what the error was, I raised it with the hosting company and it immediately fixed. Makes me suspicious the server crashed and they just rebooted it when I raised a ticket.

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Andrew, Dan, Sean Robinson, Bruce, Todd, Martin Smith, Dave, Ben

Dan actually got me by posting on the Patreon wall which got sent to my email. For some reason Patreon has never been set up to notify if anyone either increases or removes their sub, you have to log on seek it out.

It’s quite bizarre really, a (rightly deserved) consumer boycott should be most effective but on that platform just any reply of ‘bananas’ on the wall to a 5 year old post has more effect. Silly really.

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Christian, Todd, Al-x, Ben, lorcan_nagle

Actually I may have underestimated my abilities as I think I’ve fixed it.

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Keravin, Martin Smith, Al-x, lorcan_nagle, Tobias Radesäter, Ben, njerry, Christian, Todd, Dave

Guys,

Apologies. I took some time away because I was having some mental health issues. When I get down I have a tendency to get argumentative, I wanted to spare you that for a little while wit every intention to return and had no idea the site had major issues until I saw it come through on Patreon today.

Now I know I’ll get on trying to fix it. It looks beyond my abilities at first but will see if I can get help from my old dev guy.

 

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Martin Smith, Al-x, lorcan_nagle, Ben, njerry, Todd, Dave

Vikram wrote:

I doubt they’ll succeed or have any great longevity either, but that’s not really my point.

Then what is the point?

You have some big names in the industry. They can do well if they provide intriguing characters and stories. The Image launch really didn’t do that. They sold a lot of comics on hype but as characters nobody cares.

Vikram wrote:

I.E. they’re trying to do what McFarlane, Lee, Larsen et al did back in the day. Create characters that sell books rather than creators or concepts.

Did they do that? I’ll give some credit to McFarlane for his dedication to Spawn but most of the Image launch books were just analogues of existing Marvel and DC books. I have an archer superhero, he’s called Shaft and not Hawkeye, even though he’s really Hawkeye.

I have admiration to some degree for that era and the energy they brought but 30 years on next to nothing they originated is being published.

 

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Christian

Arjan Dirkse wrote:

A prominent Chinese vlogger has suggested Hamas are too mild and Israel has to be treated similarly to Germany and Japan in WW2, and they have to destroy and slaughter whole cities basically, like was done to Hiroshima and Dresden.

Yeah but Arjan, why should we care about a Chinese vlogger and his or her opinion?

We have a society now where basically anyone can broadcast, make their own TV or radio show. It doesn’t mean they are well informed or have much useful to add. Has the vlogger ever been to Israel or Palestine? More likely they just sit in China and make provocative statements for clicks.

Elon Musk is a big fan of Ian Miles Cheong who posts day and night on US policy, he lives in Ipoh in Malaysia and has said in a past post he’s never even been to the USA. In truth he has no real interest in shit like gun policy in the USA, it doesn’t affect him or me for that matter, he’s getting ad revenue for being provocative and cultivating a particular audience.

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Dave, Todd, Ben, lorcan_nagle

What is frustrating for all is there is a relatively easy solution to this really. Like I said the West Bank is not desirable territory, it’s mostly a desert and has no resources of any note. Nobody here would choose to live there. The water from the Dead Sea and Sea of Galilee is being sucked dry, the reserves lowering every year.

A two state solution would leave Israel with the nice bits and Palestinians accepting rule over what is left. The Gazans are more extreme because they live in more extreme circumstances. One begets the other and there is no security method that can ever make people safe over thawing of relations. In Northern Ireland they had fences, they had watchtowers, they had roadblocks and tanks on the street – they had more violence than when they removed them after talks.

You can’t provide security via strict controls, there is no precedent for it.  The more desperate they make the lives of people in the Gaza strip the less they’ll care about repercussions. It’s a vicious cycle. One violent act produces the next.

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Todd, lorcan_nagle, Ben, Christian

Ben wrote:

I hope they also issue trades later on.

They will, as long as they don’t flop massively. Having read Gillen’s analysis of Image sales the creators make the bulk of their money on trade sales after the costs have been settled on the issues.

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Ben

Ben wrote:

I’m not sure ramping up production is that good an idea. A steady stream of product yes but companies can easily go off the rails doing too much too fast.

Yeah I have always been wary of ‘linewide’ launches. I don’t think consumers want them, even original Image with the biggest hype comics have ever seen dripped their launch titles month by month. When single issues are $4-5 a pop nobody really wants to commit to $20-40 extra a month on an unknown ‘universe’. If you think of things like original Marvel from the launch of FF or even Vertigo, they grew very organically off one title and then branched out.

Saying that I think this looks less taxing than most but I would go back and advise them to launch one at a time and get the hype if the product is good.

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Todd, Ben

Christian wrote:

You don’t even have to do that, as far as Hamas are concerned. They can go to hell.

They are essentially a death cult. What they did would be the equivalent of a handful of us idiots breaking into an army barracks and hitting the sleeping soldiers with soap in socks. There is no other outcome than you will get fucked up. It’s not just suicide run for their fighters but thousands of their citizens.

This is just a downward cycle of shit with all responsible as they gave up on peace talks in the 90s.

Having been to Israel/Palestine (and I use the combined nomenclature there as when you travel around it is is hard to know which ‘state’ you are in) it’s a very strange place of contrasts.

It is underestimated how much the ‘settlers’ are religious fanatics. There is no logic to their actions, the country is split between the verdant Mediterranean side and the harsh and dry western bank. I went to Haifa, a lovely coastal city with a roundabout just outside that had a Jewish menorah, Christian Christmas tree and an Islamic crescent on it. Everyone just got on with their lives in a mixed society. They could do that across the whole area but they don’t want to. No normal person would move from there to a fucking desert area with threat of harm every day unless they are making some stupid point.

It’s so frustrating to watch again and again taking the path of hate and violence over what could relatively easily be space for everyone.

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Dave wrote:

I got the impression from the careful wording of the statement that this number also included nu-Who, Doctor Who Confidential, and all the various spinoffs too, though.

It does include those. I read a more detailed story saying the number includes Sarah Jane Adventures, Torchwood and Confidential.

Martin Smith wrote:

Not just blowing up Cardiff with a faulty nuclear reactor, but that they’re demolishing Cardiff Castle to do it. It’s only mentioned in one line, I think, and it’s apparently just drifted past me on previous viewings.

It is quite ludicrous.  Placing a nuclear power station in the centre of a city first of all and then demolishing a historic site to do it rather than a 1970s shopping centre or something.

It is a ‘feature’ of RTD’s writing though that he’ll go for bombast over realism at times.

Ben wrote:

Talking of Nikolai Dante, with so much more material available digitally, I had thought it might become more well known, but it seems to stay an under-the-radar epic.

It probably always will. I’ve pushed it as an all time great and it will be largely ignored as there are no big names or publisher.

As a long term character narrative in comics with a beginning, middle and end it is probably only matched by Preacher.

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Todd, Ben

Honestly John M Burns is amazing. He’s been churning out quality and quantity in his 2000ad work for years now and I knew he was way past 80 years old and yet putting out more content than artists a quarter of his age.

He deserves his rest and retirement. I don’t know anyone else his age that plugged away so hard and didn’t dip in quality.

I have many complaints about how The Order plot is incomprehensible but his artwork is sublime, as was the Nikolai Dante run.

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Todd, Ben

Ben wrote:

That was superb.

Love the trailer but I also just love RTD as a writer.

Having read his philosophy in ‘The Writers Tale’ which revolves around character moments, then work the plot around them. It is to a huge degree the antithesis to most sci-fi fans thinking, which is primarily imagined science and plot logic. The Star Trek fans that buy a manual of how the Enterprise works but most modern Star Trek is really tedious as a result.

I know that has weaknesses, there can be bits where it goes over the top, but all my favourite writers have ‘tics’ that annoy others. I have always loved Claremont or Heinlein or Sorkin that do that. Russell post his Dr Who stint has the best monologues in TV in ‘Years and Years’ and ‘It’s A Sin’. It may often be flawed but nothing he does is boring. I can’t wait and it really looks like like the Disney+ deal has increased the budget.

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Ben, Dan, Dave

The biggest argument against the EU has always been the CAP. It’s a policy that costs a huge amount of money to appease constituents and enable them to not be very effective at what they do.

We tend to be drawn into very binary arguments nowadays, that either the EU is perfect or disastrous. It has never been either, you can also rip it apart for the approach to Greece’s problems, where the priority was propping up the Euro in the richer countries over helping the Greeks. I can also praise that it is pretty much the only global institution to challenge tech monopolies.

I am still strongly remain/rejoin on the EU argument but the CAP is still outdated and bad.

They should also introduce a meat tax.

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DavidM, Christian, Dave

As with all these lists, it’s hugely subjective. Even in terms of influence Survivor was a huge reality hit in the US ignored in Europe as Big Brother was the thing. Besides that how do you easily compare a sitcom with a reality show with a serious drama?

What they do well is remind you there are lots of good things out there, after finishing my Peaky Blinders binge yesterday I’m going to tackle Better Call Saul next.

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Sean Robinson, njerry, Christian, Dave

To be fair the Tory conference has been marginally more successful than the last one with Truss.

They really need to go now, flat out of ideas. It’s basically just lying about shit now. They promised in their 2019 manifesto to electrify the South Wales train line, cancelled it. Yesterday Sunak said they would electrify the (less busy) North Wales line, it’s never going to happen. Meat taxes never happened.

I saw a thread on Twitter that detailed how they have announced making the A1 dual carriageway near the Scottish border every single year since elected, promised again yesterday. Nationally people won’t know that and it may sound good on his list of works but locally they will know it’s a long undelivered project.

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DavidM

Dave wrote:

The truth is that despite 13 years in power, the only area where the Tories have had any real electoral success for their entire tenure is with stoking this kind of division.

They’ve been surprisingly honest about it. Lee Anderson saying on camera they have nothing to run on but culture wars and pushing anti-trans rhetoric.

I think like many parties after a while they run into a cul de sac, appealing to the further right when most don’t care. 50% of Brits surveyed have never even met a trans person, far more will be affected by discount chain Wilco gojng bust, it’s the key anchor for my local shopping centre in the UK.

Sunak is just offering daft policies that will never happen, like everyone learning maths to 18, they don’t have enough maths teachers as it is. He’s now extended it to be being even more nonsensical by ruling out laws that were never happening anyway like a ‘meat tax’. It’s not without impact but I can only see it influencing those who already vote for his party.

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Todd, lorcan_nagle, Dave

Todd wrote:

On the American version of Strictly Come Dancing, Dancing with the Stars, they have devolved into classifying TikTok and reality TV people who appear on it as “stars”.

There can be a circular pattern with ‘celebrity’ TV. The ‘celebs’ often on UK shows now are just known because of other reality shows.

It essentially destroys the appeal because I am not snobbish and have enjoyed many celebrity reality shows because of how they may interract. The juxtaposition of say a politician with a punk rocker is fundamentally intriguing as normally they wouldn’t meet each other.  It’s a big part of the appeal of UK chat shows, where by virtue of them being weekly and not many of them, they line up multiple A listers and interview them as a group. The best bits really are where they ignore the host and you find out they may have a crush on the other guest or conversely have no idea who they are.

If we already know from previous shows that someone is largely just seeking attention as their main motivation it’s not interesting.

Arjan Dirkse wrote:

Since yesterday my twitter is filled with tweets about Musk, Tesla, SpaceX etc. Like all these tweets are basically just ads for Musk.

I get multiple very suspect ads with Musk in them promising me $1ook if I am not a millionaire off their crypto scheme in 3 weeks. Twitter is a complete shithole right now, he can’t even control ads that misrepresent him (and I have reported them and they keep coming). I spent a decade never seeing Musk’s genuine posts because I wasn’t interested, now that nonsense appears every day.

A large chunk of comics Twitter has left for Bluesky, it is still ‘invite only’ but they are trading invites quite briskly.

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Todd, Ben, lorcan_nagle

Sean Robinson wrote:

How does Manga sell at an LCS?

Manga is actually an interesting example as the sales go through several models. They start at anthology, then collections which are generally cheap. My son bought 3 maxi volumes of One Piece in Forbidden Planet London for $20, a thousand pages for the cost of 100 pages of new US comics.

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Ben

Rishi is fucked basically.

This looks like a final spin of the dice betting on anti-green policies because maybe they had a huge vote loss but hanging onto Uxbridge by the fingernails is all he has. It doesn’t really impact people, demanding cars all go electric by 2030 never said you couldn’t buy ICE cars afterwards and most people in the UK don’t buy new cars but second-hand.

It doesn’t seem to be moving the dial, it’s just appealing to voters he already has. It smells like Major’s ‘cones hotline’ nonsense on the verge of him being hammered at the polls.

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DavidM, Ben, lorcan_nagle, Todd

I’m coming to the end of Peaky Blinders (2 episodes left), a show I have ‘binged’ on Netflix over a few weeks.

I’ve really enjoyed the show. The last series suffers from absence of Helen McCrory who died of cancer before filming. She was rarely front and centre in any of the stories but her influence more obvious when the ‘matriarch’ role is removed.

It’s a beautifully filmed programme with great performances, there are some stretches of credulity in the plot of season 4  (which has Adrien Brody really hamming it up as a New York/Italian gangster like he’s been asked to parody Brando in the Godfather) but they tone it back down again after that and despite it all the tension in the final episode of that season is really quite scary.

Tom Hardy’s appearances though are riveting. I’m not in a position to say if his character verges on Jewish stereotypes in places but the cadence of his delivery and dialogue mean you never know what he’ll say next and he lights up every scene he’s in.

It was interesting Googling the factual side of it. The ‘peaky blinders’ criminal gang did exist in the Small Heath area of Birmingham, they did dress really well and as wealth came moved into posher circles and country houses. The timeline has been manipulated, the show starts at around the time their influence was on the wane but narratively I can see why the post WW1 setting works so well for the characters.

 

 

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njerry, Todd

Ben wrote:

I know nothing of the source material but, with Netflix actually going for a second series, am working my way through One Piece. And it is excellent.  Good characters, active heroes and villains, smart use of and clearly indicated flashbacks, topped off with a great sense of balance.  It knows when to be fun, scary, action, dark, mysterious – you get the idea.

My kids are One Piece mad, the anime just goes on forever, they are on episode 270-something (Netflix drop a dozen new episodes every month).

They liked the live-action adaptation and it’s received a pretty good reception from anime fans who have a history of disappointment with ‘Hollywood’ adaptations so are not the easiest to please.

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Todd, Ben

It may not have been in the past, my mum used to defend conservatives, even if she never voted for them as people with a level of conviction and some logic.

Right now it is obvious, their entire agenda is just retaining wealth. None of it makes any sense outside that lens. The UK is a shambles of a country, nothing works, it doesn’t lack of money it just has a system that directs it upwards rather than downwards. As does the USA.

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Ben, lorcan_nagle, Todd

lorcan_nagle wrote:

Exactly this. Like it’s fine to not trust authority, but without an underlying ideology it becomes little more than contrarianism and you’re vulnerable to radicalisation.

Yes and what’s also quite clear is the ‘alternative’ option (I have an old work colleague that posts this stuff out all day) is strangely a collection of a menu of indentikit views.

I see very few people (actually I do know one single person on Twitter, who leans left but challenges some assumptions) who doesn’t embrace a package of takes and actually challenges anything much.  The gender critical also defend Brand and also attacks Ukraine and also don’t like 20mph urban speed limits. While sold as ‘questioning the mainstream’ it seems to be just another package of beliefs. We can never have any nuance. Is anyone pro trans and also slower speed limits? It doesn’t look like it even though the subjects are completely disconnected.

I heard a great interview today with Naomi Klein in her book ‘Doppelganger’ where people confuse her with Naomi Wolf who has shifted from a noted feminist to a radical right wing voice on Steve Bannon podcasts. She points out she doesn’t hate Wolf, has a lot of sympathy that she was rather humiliated in a 2019 BBC interview where she had misunderstood a 19th century oddity of wording that suggested a death sentence. It kind of shafted her credibility with her usual audience so she went for the ‘far right’ package.

Yet Klein was one of the first to point out the big pharma con in her books and also agrees Pfizer made huge profits from the Covid emergency but that also doesn’t mean wearing a mask to protect yourself (or loved ones) is silly. That nobody is critical of the idea that Soros and Murdoch pay money to amplify their views via lobbying and media because they are rich. Just that they embrace one or the other completely.

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lorcan_nagle, Todd, Ben

Al-x wrote:

https://apnews.com/article/rubiales-fifa-spain-suspension-kiss-womens-world-cup-1559a704b765b834d94544ee0b119efc

Honestly I watched this live and you don’t have to be ‘wokerati’ to see his behaviour was not normal. He kissed Hermoso on the lips with a forced hold of the head but for the rest of the women he was kissing them on the neck and the like.

There’s no hint I have been given in my life that isn’t a very intimate gesture. I have never kissed anyone on the neck or lips I wasn’t romantically involved with. I know Brits can be uptight about physical contact but that shit is mostly the same in Spain, you can kiss both cheeks as a greeting, not neck and lips (and then grab your balls).

He’ll end up regretting this stance, I know his mother is on hunger strike or some shit but in so many situations the cover-up is worse than the offence. If he said he was overcome by the occasion and sorry he went to far with a genuine apology he’d probably be fine today.

 

 

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Ben, Todd

DavidM wrote:

He’s not a head of state, he’s Vito Corleone. Think of him like that, and everything he does makes more sense.

Yes. 100%.

The Rest is Politics podcast this week said much the same. The way he removes his opponents could be much, much more subtle but that’s not the aim. Putin is sending messages that insubordination is not acceptable. His opponents have been shot by assassins, poisoned by radioactive materials nobody outside a government would have access to or shot out of the sky by missiles in this case.

If you want to disguise you killed a guy in Salisbury you can knife him, pretend it is a mugging for his iPhone. Irradiating him is sending a message that you don’t have to admit you did it, but you did and don’t fucking mess with me. He behaves like a Mafia boss.

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Christian, DavidM, Ben, Todd

Gah you are right. I got caught in the dreaded Spencer/Spurrier trap.

It’s not even that normal in the UK for Simon’s to refer to themselves as ‘Si’ so two writers with very similar paths of 2000ad/Vertigo is not fair on the hard of thinking.

Anyway, the trailer works for me, hope the show lives up to it. I’ll be watching.

 

Chris D wrote:

Jeez, these politicians need to learn to let go of power.

It’s a deep problem I think. You look at Murdoch now in a different setting, he’s in his 90s still running the empire, just relax on a beach, you have more money than you can spend before you die.

I’d retire tomorrow and just arse around having fun if I was a multi-millionaire but there’s a mentality to these people that can never let go. I’m not hugely a fan of term limits or age limits per se, I think the former can prevent a genuinely good operator being re-elected and the latter can be ageist, old people deserve to be represented too.

It is a mindset though that these people can never let go and it’s an unhealthy one and that means we have people with power fetishes like McConnel and Feinstein not helping. He’s in a hugely influential job and has frozen twice, unable to speak.

I think gerrymandering and lobby money are also huge contributors to this in the US.  The UK is finding the opposite. Tory MPs are resigning in droves at the next election as they think they’ll lose their jobs, which by polling estimates they probably will, the age of positions in power is much lower. We’ll have two guys now aged 60 and 43 contest the next election.

Despite a few attempts otherwise the districting/constituency process is generally independent and based on demographics. When you see those convoluted maps in some US states it makes ‘first past the post’ an even worse system as probably most seats are safe as houses whatever you do or say.

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Chris D, Todd, lorcan_nagle

Hooray, ‘tweaks’ for the win!

(Been fine for me too).

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Ben, DavidM, lorcan_nagle

The trailer for Bodies does look interesting, I never read the comic although saw the press for it at the time.

With Si Spurrier as a writer I took some time to get into his work, or he took some time to hone his craft. I wasn’t keen on his early stuff but his Hellblazer and more recent work from that has been very good. Hopefully whatever deficiencies you (Paul) found in the comic have been fixed in the screenplay as it is an intriguing concept.

(I think being fixed at screenplay level is something that can happen, most notably in the Harry Potter films where they are paced much better than the books that wander off on tangents and forget the main plot for large stretches).

Ben wrote:

I think if you can spot the time going by then a film needs to be shorter.

It’s a simple measure but I generally agree. Some long run times are justified but in some films I do glance at the watch and that’s a very bad sign. If you pass the ‘never look at the watch’ measure then you’ve timed your film well.

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Ben, Todd

This is not a bad thing for me and maybe a very positive correction.

A couple of years back I rewatched ‘An American Werewolf In London’ and it has many classic scenes, the Slaughtered Lamb, the repeat dreams, dead friend in the cinema, but it ends at 90 minutes. There’s no fat on it at all.

I’ll defend Avengers:Endgame a lot as it delivered a lot of deserved character development, unlike the Snyderverse that made relationships up offscreen, but it is too long. It would have been better with half an hour lopped off.

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Uncle Retrospective, Todd, lorcan_nagle

Martin Smith wrote:

Oh yeah, he’s gone the full dipshit online. Look at some of the people he follows: GB News anchors and the “Free Speech Alliance” (who support the speech of transphobes).

It’s nothing new really. Millar was a big Brexit fan, albeit coming from a Bennite (Lexit) perspective rather than a Farage one. He’s not someone I would hold as remotely politically sound, he loves a conspiracy. Brexit has clearly been a complete disaster and he’s liking RFK for the stuff about his family being assassinated. The problem is that conspiracy blinds people to the obvious, that most politicians do what they do because it profits them, either during or after office.

Despite that he does generally know how to sell comics. Probably only Kirkman of his generation could argue he knows better. Post Hickman taking on X-Men, which ended prematurely, I hear no buzz for anything other than, back to Kirkman, the Hasbro stuff he also marketed really cleverly.

I do get the desire for ‘straight to trade’ from fans. That would be fine for me and it works for the European market but I’d have to say if it were me as publisher it’s a hard sell over making money twice on the same product. I think we also have to consider that a lot of that material is one volume of 48 pages a year. Similarly to 2000ad with their 6-8 page strips the entire way you tell a story changes and is compressed. It’s a lot more focused on the artwork as those guys have a lot more time. None of that is bad per se but it is a massive change in focus I don’t know US comics with their production line system are ready for. How does it effect comic shops if they get one 48 page volume of Superman a year? Maybe it’s okay, The Killing Joke is in that format and has sold well for decades but also it could drive them bust, there is no incentive to use them over online discount bookstores.

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lorcan_nagle, Todd, Ben

Ian Smith wrote:

It weirdly opens here on a Monday which I don’t think I’ve seen before.

It’s happened  a few times and is essentially a PR scam. It only applies in the UK (and Ireland) that they count everything after Sunday as the next ‘weekend’ so they can quote great opening weekend figures despite it being shown over 7 days. Don’t ask me why, it makes no sense but they set it up that way.

In Malaysia they change films on Thursdays rather than Friday’s because some states follow the Muslim weekend (Fr-Sat instead of Sat-Sun), then adding in Wednesday previews sometimes they are also rigging the system with 5 day weekends even though it at least has a logical reason behind it.

It’s why on a global releases I often drop the first review on the board (being 8 hours ahead of GMT also helps).

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lorcan_nagle

Ben wrote:

, didn’g know Jon Sopel was so good at very sharp one-liners.

It is a big release that these ex-BBC or other mainstream media peeps can do what they want in the podcast format. Emily Maitliss saying ‘fuck’ is a lot of fun.

I think she likes it more than the other two, she’s first into the swear-mobile.

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Ben

I think Millar has a bit of a point though.

Whether it be new or old there isn’t much driving hype in big 2 comics. Not to slag off the new bunch but they really aren’t driving mainstream comics like they did 20 years ago. In fact even like Kirkman has done by ending his most popular book by surprise or launching one the same (and using returnable rules to stop retailers hating him for it).

There are a lot of good comics and creators around now, on average the quality may be better than the Jemas/Quesada era where they combined a lot of classics with some right rubbish. Post Hox/Pox though I don’t see many people caring too much.

Si Spurrier has been a writer I have always liked but never loved, saying that his Black Label/Hellblazer and X-Men work has been pretty great . He is relaunching The Flash, that may be great but apart from his own promo posts on social media nobody seems to give a shit. Hype artists have been sidelined because the deadlines are too tight and any runs are just fill-ins or rotations.

 

Okay got this message in the last 10 minutes:

Greetings.

We’ve done tweak related with the reported issue.

Kindly advise your side to monitor the situation at the moment, and let us know if the 403 error still persist.

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lorcan_nagle, Todd, Martin Smith, Ben, Uncle Retrospective

Yeah it is intermittent, happened to me last night just before I went to bed after being fine.

I have a tech looking into it, please do me a favour and if it happens again give me the time in GMT/UTC so they can check logs.

It is quite silly.

There’s a culture war going on that deliberately denies a lot of common sense.

Some sports (or even games) that are heavily based on power or endurance are very affected by small margins. Swimmers and cyclists shave chest and leg hair to get an advantage that wins them medals. The more it is based on skill the less it matters. Women have entered snooker and darts tournaments. Fallon Sherrock got a 9 dart finish the other day which is perfection in that sport.

I’m a big rugby fan and a lot is said around whether PEDs are used or not as the athletes are BIG, I don’t think it makes that much difference, you could feed me with steroids and growth hormone and put me in a women’s team and I would probably still be shit because you need passing and kicking skills. In weightlifting that may not be true.

Everything is ‘all or nothing’ in an activists mind so yeah we ban trans women from chess even though it makes no logical sense and the only defence of it is women are thicker than men.

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Todd, DavidM, Al-x, lorcan_nagle, Ben

Martin Smith wrote:

Weird thing is I saw a news report the other day about him being in Niger touting for business for Wagner on behalf of Russia. You’d think they wouldn’t want to kill off the guy spearheading that. Well, you’d think anyone other than Putin wouldn’t.

The News Agents podcast addressed some of this. Wagner is actually just one of many private mercenary armies running out of Russia, the most well known but their thinking is they place a new head on the same body and carry on. Using proxy wars to extract valuable minerals from Africa.

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Ben, Todd, Martin Smith

I have heard moans across many years about subscription services, either being late or in bad condition.

However it doesn’t really change the business element. Subscriptions have always been more desired than shop sales, you still get great offers and retailers in publishing models typically take at least 50% of the cover price. I subscribed to Time magazine a few years back because what I paid was a third of the (pretty cheap because of the region) cover price.

My mother has a new history book out this year from a publisher, she’ll get 10% of that retail price as royalty. Her out of print books I uploaded to Amazon pay out 70%.

Marvel will have costs to maintain a service like Unlimited but it’s likely their profits would be higher than that 70%. Maybe 90% when a retail sale gets them 30% at best after printing, distribution and retailer deductions.

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Todd, njerry

It’s an interesting question. Subscription has always been favoured because it guarantees income. I used to get so annoyed reading US import comics in the 1980s that those subscription offers were so cheap, half the price even though they mailed it to your door instead of you going to the shop and we couldn’t access them.

There is almost nothing transparent with comics sales now, not even the physical ones after Diamond lost their monopoly so we have no idea how many $69 subs Marvel are getting. It’s a global service too, as an example hundreds of millions of fluent English speakers in India can now read all the latest Marvel comics for the first time.

It does ask questions about new material volume though, in comics as well TV and music really. I can currently read every Marvel comic released for that $69 a year, I don’t come close. How many new shows do Apple, Netflix, Prime have to create to keep me subscribing? (Or more pertinently not just me but a global audience with many different tastes).

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Todd

Christian wrote:

Like how people keep believing that crime gets worse every year in many countries the statistics actually show the opposite is the case.

Yup it’s a repeating thing. While there have been slight increases recently crime has fallen dramatically in countries like the US and UK since the 1980s, so much it has engendered many theories on why, like legalising abortion from the Freakonomics guys or removing lead from petrol (which I think is the more convincing one but as with most things it is going to be many factors).

You have stories about young peoples bad behaviour but modern kids study harder, drink less and take fewer drugs than when I was 18.

While I think for some it is deliberate to keep people scared, some organs like the Daily Mail make it very obvious that’s their aim, I still go back to the theory Alain De Botton gave in a talk for even the most balanced media. News reports the unusual, if it’s what happens normally it isn’t news. What we view as a ‘window onto the world today’ is almost the exact opposite, it’s things that happened today outside the norm.

Conflicts like Syria which filled the headlines when they started are now never mentioned because that conflict is the status quo, it’s not ‘new’s any more. 25,000 people in a row being generally polite to a McDonald’s staff member is not news, the one who has a fit and throws a chair goes viral. So we see a one in 25,000 incident as the way things are today.

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Todd, lorcan_nagle

Todd wrote:

Even going somewhere else would not have guaranteed his safety.

No definitely not guaranteed, we saw the lengths Putin will go to get his man by sending assassins into the UK.

If it were me though, and Prigozhin had plenty of money, I’d head somewhere very remote and take my chances with that.

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Todd

Watchmen sequels in both comics and TV fail when they don’t acknowledge John no longer gives a shit.

It’s a fundamental part of the text, he goes to Mars as he’s above even bothering about humans any more, he treats Laurie badly not through malice, he just moves further away from connecting with the human race. He was more connected in the 1950s but he can’t sustain it, it’s why he has his cock out in the 1980s compared to full suit in the 60s and underpants in the 70s because he doesn’t care what anyone thinks any more.

Doomsday Clock is technically a very very good comic, the HBO series is too. They both fall down because they can’t resist dragging Dr Manhattan back in. I have never even seen the last episode of the TV show because of the whole premise of ignoring that character arc, that they reverse that entire point because he has the horn for some girl, and I lost it at that nonsense.

No Watchmen continuation can work if they retcon Dr Manhattan’s character path, which the main ones both have.

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Martin Smith, Todd, Vikram, lorcan_nagle

Honestly that is mostly my response, no idea it was out. I was told by friends it was heavily marketed on Instagram (a SM platform I don’t use), which seems to suggest that isn’t the best option and the film is being quite well reviewed. I have a 12 year old son who is target market for this material, never mentioned it existing, never asked me to take him. I am a comics fan, never even seen a trailer.

By contrast my wife asked me to take the family to Barbie, which is the first time in 16 years of marriage she has ever driven that conversation, it’s either me or the kids suggesting what to see.

Studios, maybe redirect some of the budget to effective marketing. Travelling to UK/Ireland last month the Barbie ads were everywhere.  Nobody could not know it wasn’t in cinemas.

 

 

 

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Todd

Todd wrote:

So damn true. He should have known that if he didn’t finish what he started a couple of months ago, he was a dead man walking.

It’s hard to grasp what he was thinking.

Even with calling off the ‘coup’ common sense would say get way out of Dodge, don’t head back into Russia, whatever ‘assurances’ were made.

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Todd, Ben

Thanks for the feedback Todd. I will ask the hosting guys why this is persisting so long.

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Todd, Ben

Honestly it is hard to tell.

The 404 error is site not found. That was because the server crashed, which is now fixed.

403 errors are DNS based which is basically the process of translating a written web address into an IP address of a server. When we changed earlier in the month those errors are expected as browsers etc store that info to make page loading faster but should clear after 3-4 days. Typing the address versus bookmarks can also help.

If I raise them as a ticket the reply just comes back to clear browsing data/cache, use private browsing (which bypasses a lot of stored data) but in practice it doesn’t seem to be working as clearly as that.

That makes some sense of why Todd can view on one browser and not another as how they used stored DNS shortcuts may be different. I am kind of holding on that this will still clear with time but if 403’s persist please send me details of the time and browser used.

 

Ok so over the weekend there was a big server crash which they recovered alphabetically. I am tempted to rename this site Aardvark.net.

https://status.exabytes.my/incident/383066

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Todd, DavidM, Ben

The two aren’t incompatible.

Scott is desirable but a dick. Knives desires him but he ducks out slightly because he’s conflicted by her age. I have two friends when I was a teen exactly like Scott Pilgrim. Technically losers as they lived with parents or whatever but could shag anyone they wanted. One night he was wasted on mushrooms, almost set his own hair on fire and still had two girls fighting over him.

Cera Scott is not that person, he’s the nerd that got lucky. That’s not what is in the comic, he’s a lazy fucker that still gets the girl because he’s hot.

Ben wrote:

Simon and Shuster has been sold to a private equity firm.

The impact on comics? Hard to know, but S&S have a distribution arm that Image recently signed a deal with.

Honestly it’s all very hard to fathom.

Initially when publishing started it was all quite simple, and remains for books more of less the same now.

You agreed as an author a royalty deal with a publisher, you retained all other media rights but they retained publishing rights for as long as they kept the work in print. Eventually, 50 and later 70 years after your death it goes into public domain where anyone can use it for free.

Now we hit an era of corporate properties, like Mickey Mouse and Superman at that age, it becomes a lot more complex. Simon and Schuster settled with DC after several lawsuits but DC still own Superman etc, except very soon they won’t own the concepts of Action Comics #1.

 

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Todd, Ben, lorcan_nagle

I’ve been watching Peaky Blinders for the first time on Netflix. What a great and weird show, a 1910s period piece set in Birmingham with an A list cast. It is beautifully filmed and a good story romp with plenty of twists and turns, loving it.

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njerry, Sean Robinson, Ben, lorcan_nagle

Not for me. Cera again, Scott is not a nerd, he’s a super cool guy who is lazy as fuck.

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lorcan_nagle

Arjan Dirkse wrote:

Of course some jurisdictions have laws against “cruel or unusual punishment” but you could argue prison conditions in most countries are cruel and people should therefore not go to prison.

That’s pretty much just the US I think that has that written in law, and yeah the issue is it is like most laws hugely subjective.

They have had many arguments over which parts of the death penalty are cruel or unusual (stopping hanging and firing squads) and those are ongoing but you are right a definition that broad could include any prison sentence or solitary confinement or whatever. A strip search could be cruel and unusual if you think it is or a court does.

It’s my big kind of pointless mission in life to point out that law is a quite useless and ineffective tool in defining how people behave. I’m not advocating lawlessness but if harsh sentencing were the key then the US with most citizens in jail should be the safest country on Earth, it isn’t.

In the 90s The Netherlands had a very lax approach to cannabis especially, while global treaties didn’t allow it to be formally legalised you could buy it without problem in the allocated coffee shops. The UK and US at the time that had sentences of several years for even using had more smokers per head of population. Singapore in 2003, which has a mandatory death sentence for drug trafficking, had more ecstasy users per weekend than the UK.

So set your laws as you want but you either need buy in from your populace or very effective enforcement. It’s no use declaring purple curtains are illegal unless you have enough curtain inspectors to check every house, and if that’s a ridiculous ask the public will reject it eventually.

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Todd, lorcan_nagle

I have spoken to the hosting company again, the random effects and no downtime for some says it is still lingering DNS problems with the server move. We have 100% server uptime since the shift.

This article may help supply some ways to clear it up:

https://www.businessinsider.com/guides/tech/dns-server-not-responding

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Todd, Ben

I think they have the wrong coach Al, been underperforming since they were installed.

Australia are the surprise package this WC it seems, lots of expat Aussies and English here so may pop along to the pub to watch their semi final game.

Thanks guys, I’ve been away a couple of days so just catching up. The issues seem to be gone for me but looks like it is lingering for some.

I still think it is just DNS relates so things like clearing cache, using private browsing etc should re-adjust to the new address. If anything is persistent I can follow up with the hosting company.

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Ben

Christian wrote:

At least, that’s what happens a lot in Germany, it might be different in the UK anyway.

It isn’t.

I may appear a little radical on this. I do get what Dave is saying in that you can’t just wave away minor criminal activity. However we massively punish minor offences. That woman could dodge bus fares for her entire life (which she didn’t by the way, the police admit she paid) and come nowhere near the damage caused by offences never charged. 97% of rapes in the UK are never convicted, that concerns me more than fare dodgers.

The Guardian last week in its podcast had an expose on a massive white collar fraud around Norton motorbikes. The owner ran a scam where he used previously convicted fraudsters to manage people transferring pension money to them, tax free, which was a lie, the paid masses in taxes. Investors lost 2.5m pounds, 14 motorcycles were ever built and he walks free as a bird.

Today’s headlines in the UK papers are about jailing shoplifters yet Baroness Michelle Mone got multi-millions in PPE money for a company that couldn’t and never delivered and owes 130m to the public purse and she’s fine, no papers are interested and she’s on her yacht. Some poor git on a council estate in Birmingham will stupidly not pay for his chips and tell a copper to fuck off and get 5 years.

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DavidM, lorcan_nagle, Ben

Yeah so none of that was working a few days back. I think we have to pay the patience game rather than anything is broken.

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Ben, lorcan_nagle

I had loads of 403 errors yesterday but none today. Let’s try an image.

 

Ben wrote:

Oh, I don’t know Vik, we all pay what we think it’s worth.

Yes but that always has macro measurement too.

As someone who has published and had to measure cost and demand I do get why the ‘luxury’ style collections are hard to manage and easy to cancel. The more you pay to print the more your miscalculation on sales can cause losses.

I may want Strikeforce Morituri in an absolute edition but if you make 5,000 and only 1,000 want to buy it you are sitting on massive losses and probably losing your job.

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Chris-S, Todd, Ben

It is very sketchy. Earlier today all I got was 403 errors and now it’s all fine. That inconsistency in function is ironically consistent with an IP address move but if it carries on for the next day or two I will open a new tech support ticket.

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njerry, Todd, Ben

There is basically no way to parse from attempted murder of a stranger to ‘he’s my friend’ in so little time. It’s bad storytelling and an error which probably really isn’t Snyder’s fault.

Warner/DCU at the time wanted to accelerate the crossover stuff to match Marvel and I don’t know how you really make that work. They should have gone with Man of Steel 2, a Batman standalone etc. Then you can make it work. You can’t have an emotional tag with Diana calling to Kal-El’s humanity when on screen they have barely met. She learnt that name from Lois who should have been doing that appeal, the  it works.

It is quite annoying really that this entire discussion has become so binary and political. Either it has be genius or junk. The sequence in Man of Steel when Superman first flies is brilliant. The idea that Batman is emotionally tied in that way isn’t justified by the plot so far.

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Christian, Todd, Dave, Ben, lorcan_nagle