In the new GTA there should be an alternate story where you refuse your life of crime and start getting shifts either in the service industry or as a construction worker (there’s a secret path where you manage to get a decent job in financial services). Then you work there for 8–12 in-game hours an in-game day, 6 days an in-game week. And, assuming you successfully complete the rent/house payment minigame every month and your RNG on the yearly medical check-up is good, then after 40 in-game years you get put in a care facility and the bank seizes everything you own and your kids never call.

If you followed the secret path it’s the same ending but the facility is nicer and your oldest child gets the house instead.

But if you watch the four hours of end credits then you get a special Metroidvania-style game where your soul battles through the underworld. If you succeed then the game starts over.

Decided to listen to an interview with the fantasy author Janny Wurts (who was most popular in the mid 90s and is 72 years old) from a YouTube channel I’d never heard of called Beard of Darkness (a little cringe but I was prepared to allow it).

There was one point where she was talking about her issues with the way the West and our news and culture valorizes war. And then she talked about visiting the USSR in the 70s and going to a museum where the soviets had “looted” (some might say preserved) all these beautiful works of art from Europe during the war. But then she said, with some sorrow, I thought, that the museum had since been looted.

So I was wondering if she might be a fellow traveler. And then of course she pivoted into a story about how she visited a grocery store and the lack of choice was so limiting and dull, and extrapolated that to communism more broadly. And the host chimed in to say that communism is awful.

I’m not surprised, but I am disappointed.

I can’t be the first person to have observed this, but it’s amazing that we had the whole lifecycle of the Superhero in film in the 90s and the 00s. In the 90s they were like a pathetic joke for the most basement-dwelling of nerds, a throwback to the heyday of comics and the Superman films of the 80s. I mean c’mon. Darkman. The Crow. the Stallone Judge Dredd.

Then you get the pinnacle of the superhero in film with Spider-man 1 & 2. Then it enters it’s goofy slop era with Spider-man 3. Then you get the girtty revisionist take on the genre with Batman Begins and The Dark Knight.

Then, for some reason, they kept making superhero movies for the next twenty years? 2008’s Iron Man we can excuse as its purpose was largely to rehabilitate the career of Robert Downey Jr. But the endless cycle of braindead corporate action films that followed? Who was that for? Everyone, apparently, because they made all the money in the world, but I just don’t get it.

Westerns had the good grace to mostly disappear after Unforgiven, except for the occasional nostalgia piece like True Grit and a small contingent of indie/small films. And of course morphing into the neo-western, which became its own thing.

Was talking to a young chud with incel characteristics coworker and I was surprised when he revealed that he and his brother enjoyed Twilight. Given that it is a romance, and seen as being for women, I was really shocked he’d even deign to watch/read it. Then he told me he liked it for all the lore about vampire wars against the vampire pope or whatever and that he skipped over the romantic portions.

the rich are like dark elves: evil by nature, my shitty boss is an orc class traitor

Fun fact: Karl Marx was actually born in Orc City, centuries before the Elf King would raze it to ash.

Your writing sounds interesting. Have you, or will you seek to, publish it anywhere? I’d love to read it.

Will Adam Friedland have the bravery to ask, perhaps nonstop if he doesn’t give a straight answer, why Hunter Biden’s father and the democratic party so willingly cosigned the genocide in Gaza?

I’ve never listened to cumtown or this new show either, so I genuinely don’t know.

I can’t believe that Matthew Stover’s novelization of Revenge of the Sith didn’t make the list. What the fuck?

I’m really expecting this to be quite a bad film. Maybe not for the same reasons as the chuds, but still.

It’s funny, taking a look at his credits I really do like most of Nolan’s movies but I certainly wouldn’t consider him to be one of the greats of our time. He’s like a self-serious Michael Bay. He makes enjoyable if, on the whole, unremarkable blockbusters. I still haven’t seen Tenet. *Oppenheimer *was fine. Interstellar, Memento, and especially The Prestige are quite good, and I’ll always have a fondness for Batman Begins and The Dark Knight. And I haven’t seen Insomnia. So there’s only three Nolan movies I actively dislike of those I have seen, Dunkirk, Inception, and The Dark Knight Rises.

Six out of nine isn’t a great score and though on the whole I enjoy Nolan’s work he’s clearly not the right writer/director for an adaptation of The Odyssey.

Also, I still really need to watch the Uberto Pasolini film The Return, starring Ralph Fiennes as Odysseus and Juliette Binoche as Penelope, which I’ve heard is good.

Just saw The Devil Wears Prada 2 and I didn’t expect so much of the movie to be about McKinsey trying to destroy cultural institutions in the name of Capital.

To be reductive, the conflict of the movie is ultimately between two sects of the ruling class: greedy, self-aggrandizing billionaires who care for nothing other than the increase of their own personal wealth and suave sophisticates who want to benevolently use their wealth to be caretakers of culture.

Ultimately quite distasteful, but a fun enough film.

I was going to make a (mostly frivolous) comment about how Frieren is Christian propaganda and that rather than being read as an analogy the demons should be read as literal Abrahamic demons. But I like this better.

I discovered today that John Tester, who was a US Senator for Montana for 18 years until he was unseated by Tim Sheehy (the man who broke the arm of that (former?) marine that was protesting Israel and the Iran War), hosts a political podcast along with a journalist. Out of sheer boredom I decided to listen to the most recent episode, which came out Thursday, and features an interview with US Senator Adam Schiff, who you might remember led the first impeachment trial against Trump when he was still in the House back in 2020.

I was surprised how enraging it was to listen to. In the first portion of the show, before the interview, Tester is going back and forth with his cohost discussing the Iran War, mostly, and laughing at the antic of Pete Hegseth. The only thing I remember strongly is that there was one point where Tester was laying out the many wasteful follies of Donald Trump and he felt the need to stop and genuflect and say that “the President does some stuff right.” Why bother, in this political landscape, to make a meaningless gesture at bipartisanship? My only conclusion is that Tester genuinely believes that Trump has done some good things as President.

Then Schiff came on and the episode became more enraging. They discussed at length how they believed their Republican colleagues aren’t evil in their hearts, they are just scared for their jobs and prepared to vote however Trump wants them to. Immediately after that they discussed how, back in June of '25, Senator Padilla tried to get in Kristi Noem’s face when she was holding a press conference and got forcibly hauled off by security, and Tester asked Schiff if the republicans were privately aghast by that and Schiff had to somewhat impotently say that he couldn’t think of any Republicans who approached Padilla privately. And they both talked a lot about how much they wished fucking John McCain were still around to ream Trump a new one.

Embarrassing, cowardly drivel. Impotent criticisms of Trump. At one point they subtly implied it’s the voters fault for voting for bad people and not good people.

Also, I kinda forgot that as mainstream Democrats they were going to be opposed to Trump’s particular conducting of the War in Iran while also broadly agreeing that the Iranian government is bad and needs to go and offering no critique of Israel. I’ve gotten so used to my little media bubble that I forgot about the callous disregard most Americans have for the lives and suffering of the people in nations that are deemed enemies of the US. Test and co. weren’t particularly bloodthirsty about it but there was also no sorrow or regret or righteous anger for the indignity forced upon a whole people.

Vijay Prashad refutes claim that an article he published was AI generated

David Brophy, a historian of Modern China at the University of Sydney and a Harvard alum, who appears to be a pusher of the Uygher genocide narrative and a Xinjiang separatist, has taken to Elon Musk’s X(formerly Twitter) to accuse Vijay Prashad of using AI to write a review that has been published in the Monthly Review.

https://xcancel.com/Dave_Brophy/status/2042077191132082358

Brophy doesn’t seem especially trustworthy, having an obvious bias and I’m sure an axe to grind with Prashad given their differences in political opinion. But I haven’t looked into it myself, nor have I read the review, or the work being reviewed, or any of Brophy’s work (which at a glance does not look worth reading).

You ever notice how there were a couple measures passed to curb insider trading by members of congress and then, just a few months later, polymarket becomes a dominant force in our society?

Folks, a spadroon is a spadroon so I could be wrong but I’d swear that that sword in the OP image is a replica of Jack Sparrow’s sword from Pirates of the Caribbean.

Also, not to do a Pirates-themed version of sincere Harry Potter posting (I am about to do just that), but while I know Johnny Depp turned out to be a wife-beating piece of shit, and the Pirates movies became terrible franchise slop, I loved that first movie so much that if I had the disposable income I’d totally pay the $750–900 to get a genuine Jack Sparrow sword replica from the blacksmith who made the originals for the films, Tony Swatton.

I haven’t thought about it enough to articulate why, but I really liked Train Dreams.

I liked Bugonia, but I didn’t think it was incredible and was surprised when it was shortlisted for Best Picture at the Oscars.

Marty Supreme, OBAA, and Sinners were all good.

F1 was the worst movie I saw in theaters last years. Enjoyed Eddington, If I had Legs I’d Kick You, and Caught Stealing. Disliked Companion and Mickey 17.

If I was John Oscar I would’ve given my Oscar Award to 28 Years Later in 2025 and 28 Years Later: The Bone Temple in 2026.

Really want to see Sentimental Value, The Secret Agent, and the Filipino(?) film Magellan. No Other Choice wasn’t on my radar before awards season, but now I want to see it. It was Just an Accident wasn’t on my radar until this post.

FWIW, Uncut Gems is my favorite of the Safdie Good Time/Uncut Gems/Marty Supreme trio of movies.

decided to start up my old Bannerlord save. I got to a point where I was a powerful vassal in the Southern Empire, but I wasn’t so powerful that I could seriously entertain winning an independence war. I had control of one city and two castles captured from the Western Empire, and they were positioned such that anytime a war kicked off with them my holdings were surrounded by enemies.

Then the Southern Empire went and got all bellicose against the Kurzgesagt right up until the Empress was humiliated in battle. She’s captured, her army destroyed, at the time I was in Battania trying to level up smithing. The Western Empire, Northern Empire, and Aseri declare war on the Southern Empire. Kurzgesagt take Onira, the personal city of the Empress (Bannerlord doesn’t exactly have capital cities, if you’ve never played it). The Northern Empire takes the city that was held by the second strongest clan in the Southern Empire.

I try to form an army of my own and set out to take a city near my own from the Western Empire. Unfortunately I only form a 600 strong army and was narrowly defeated by defenders who came to lift the siege. Might’ve even eked out a win if my character hadn’t been wounded, though I’ll admit I’ve never had a strong grasp of M&B battlefield tactics. Lost a very strong personal army (or I felt it was strong, anyway, like I said I don’t really get the tactics), which at the time was 180 strong, about half veteran cavalry and the other half divided between veteran archers and footsoldiers.

The Empress manages to make peace with all the realms against her.

Suddenly here I am, reforming my army from the ground up, when the Northern Empire, Kurzgesagt, and Aseri declare war. I stop and take a look at the internal factions of the Southern Empire. I am only Clan Level 4, and before the disastrous wars I was like the fourth most powerful clan in the Empire. Now I’m number one. No individual clan leader can control more troops than me. With the Southern Empire facing war on multiple fronts I feel like there’s no reason not to declare independence. But I don’t know. I’ve never actually done the Dragon Banner thing, maybe I should just ignore it all and forge on with that.

Hey if it works it works.

This isn’t directly related to your post but when am I gonna get a chance to discuss woodworking on hexbear again? So I’ve got a copy of this book, Medieval Furniture: Plans and Instructions for Historical Reproductions, and the first project is making a simple oak bench (see fig. 1). The whole thing can be made out of two 10’ 1x8s. But I live in an area such that I have to rely on the local big box store for my lumber. To make this baby out of oak from the store would cost me $125†, which is too rich for my blood. But to make it out of pine would only be $25†. Trouble is I’m a big guy. A really big guy. So I’m not confident that I wouldn’t go through the trouble of making the damn thing only to have it snap in half the first time I tried to sit on it.

Fig. 1. My crude sketchup model of the bench. The original medieval bench has some decorative carving I certainly wouldn’t do, but also some more elegant curves in the legs and the long seat stretchers that I was too lazy to go through the hassle of modelling.

† Prices based on pre-war figures