Emily Mortimer, I think she was in The Newsroom and was quite good there.

As far as the show, the first season was entertaining. The second season a little less so, though nice to see New Vegas again. Lots of fan service across both. However, I did not find either very memorable. It's fun to watch but very forgettable. I suppose it's like how Bethesda games have the breadth of an ocean (or at least a large lake) but the depth of a puddle... or to put it more accurately to how much love they put in their games, a puddle of dog piss on the asphalt on a hot summer day.

This question gets a lot more complicated if you allow custom firmware discussion, e.g. of Android phones.

My Galaxy S3 had a nice one, but it almost certainly was not from the stock firmware. I remember a glowing ring that would fill up.

$4.79 (you're welcome!) is a heck of a deal for a game you'll get 100+ hours out of (across all three). And you'll probably play it more than once. There are choices that carry over from the first two into the third games, and, as such, there are optimal paths in the third one you need to start setting up in the first one. So, play it normally the first time, then look up some guides and then save everyone.

I paid $5.99 for this on Xbox. So for the guy saying you have to run Origin (EA's launcher) in the background, that's not necessary there. I have an Origin account but I did not need it.

Oh, and it is a single player game, but keep in mind Mass Effect 3 was designed around lootboxes and gambling. The Legendary version takes all that out and rebalanced the game around not having any of that. I'd say they met us more than halfway. Now granted, if your computer isn't fast enough to run the game and Origin at the same time without losing frames, yeah, come to Xbox and play it here. Otherwise, it's not really an issue. How resource hungry can Origin be?

This is a good game, but I don't think they ever finished it. After playing the four Mass Effect games (which I got at deep discount — I paid $10 for all four), I found this in my Xbox library. It's a bit dated as far as CRPGs go, but it's about what you'd expect from the Mass Effect team after Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic and before Mass Effect. The whole game is pretty good, but I ran into a loop I couldn't get out of at the end. I got to a point where it seems like you're scripted to die. Only, it just sends you back to the beginning of the fight like you're not. But you go through all your healing stuff, all your party members die, you give it everything you got, and you still lose. Over and over again. After three or four times, I called it a loss and figured, I saw all the game has to offer. And I wasn't mad. I don't think I paid for the game. I think I got it with Games With Gold one month. And I got like 20-30 hours out of it that I enjoyed. So maybe on PC, there's a fix (or a cheat) that lets you see the ending cut scene. Me, I don't care about that. I went to Wikipedia and read what happened at the end. I could have watched the scene on YouTube. Sounds like sour grapes, but I'm still recommending the game. It's about the journey, not the destination. And maybe you'll fare better than me.

But this isn't the only time BioWare has pulled this exact bullshit. Mass Effect 1, the original (non Legendary) does the same thing, but it's way more obvious what is happening. If you set it to anything but the hardest difficulty, your experience is managed by set amounts. The experience management gets turned off (i.e. you default to the hardest difficulty) when you take the Mako down to a planet. The same thing happens in Dragon Age: Origin in that final fight. The game stops respecting your difficulty choice, and you're forced to use tactics you were never forced to learn. They decided that was wrong for the Legendary Editions of the original Mass Effect trilogy, but they never fixed it in the first game, nor in Dragon Age: Origins despite knowing about it. They just don't care.

So manage your expectations accordingly.

I also had Dragon Age II, but I couldn't get into that one. It's just not fun. I do not recommend that one, so I don't recommend the third one (Inquisition) either, just because I couldn't get through the second one. Not because it was hard, but because it was boring. Just my opinion. I hope someone with a different one speaks up.

There really is an easy solution to this. Firmware locking, like how phones do. Like how if you steal my iPhone, you can't use it because it's tied to my Apple account, and you don't have the password.

Tie each Steam Controller purchase to a Steam Account. Lock it to that account for one year. After the year, the user can connect the Steam Controller to their computer running Steam, and unlock the firmware.

This would make it so the scalpers wouldn't be able to resell them. Well, they still would, but once word gets out that it's locked to their account for a whole year, two things will happen. One, they're gonna lie and say it's unlocked and they'll rip a bunch of people off and no one will trust them. Two, they will offer to be your agent, you will need to give them access to your Steam account so they can buy it for you and then sell it to you.

The problem with the latter, and the Steam controller in general, is the thing is $100, and with everything going up, you can get a better controller for half that or less — you just don't get the trackpads. But, give it time. Someone else will add them, and then you can get basically the same thing without contributing directly to Gaben's eighth yacht, or his ego.

The game is what wasn’t ready. They shipped without a map for about a year. They ignored game breaking bugs posted to their community Discord (the official one they moderate). One notable one that was still unpatched after a year of being notified was how in random ship encounters, the leader of the enemies would be aligned to Constellation, meaning if you or anyone in your group killed them, all your allies turn against you. That should have been an easy fix. They just did not care.

Honestly I'd like it better without the Fandango logo. Saw one earlier with Dolby on it. Leave the logos on the bottom and out of the way.

They absolutely aren't. Their last mainline game was Starfield, and it shipped without a map function. Two of my favorite bugs include the one where if you try to open the liquor cabinet on the pirate station, the doors open inward, forcing the bottles through the walls and they fly every which way in the CIC. Or the one where a crew of spacers has taken a ship hostage, so you dock and kill the spacers to save the ship, but the spacers leader is aligned to Constellation, so if you complete the randomized side mission, you piss off your crew!

Their other current projects are live-service money grabs (Elder Scrolls Online, and Fallout 76). So no, they aren't.

If you don’t do it every day or on a regular basis, you lose the drive.

Also, between AI, fan fiction, and social media, no one from the newer generations is reading original hand written fiction anymore. Some are, I’m sure, but most of, say, Stephen King’s Constant Readers are Boomers, Gen X, and Millennials. Looking at Gen Z and later, they know who Stephen King is, but most of them don’t care. They’ll watch a Stephen King movie, but never care about the book. And that’s Stephen King. One is the world’s biggest and most prolific writers (and my favorite) isn’t getting new readers. So how do you think the little guys are faring?

If you wanna write to write and not get paid and have a few people read it, write fan fiction and publish it on Ao3. If you wanna write original stuff, write fan fiction and convert, like what happened with Fifty Shades (it was originally Twilight fan fiction). Even still, it’s rare that that’s profitable.

Everything James Bond has is tailored to him; why wouldn’t his suits be the same? Same with his mundane gadgets having all kinds of secret features? Same with his suit. I just assume it’s a bespoke suit that is cut very well and has secret features like everything else he uses.

Or: he can make video calls on a watch in the 1960s and mobility in a suit is where you draw the line??

Not exactly what you asked, but I think it’s important to note how old protest songs are still so relevant. I listen to a lot of 1980s music (in fact, presently playing my 80s playlist, just went from Tiffany to Belinda Carlisle) and older music.

Listen to the 1971 song Won’t Get Fooled Again by British band The Who. I’m sure most of you have heard it. Listen to what he said 55 years ago and imagine it was written this year, and see how relevant it is.

Shigaraki Tomura, Boku no Hero Academia.

For starters, he’s this regular emo kid (about 19-20), except he’s got like a dozen disembodied hands grasping him from his torso and arms to his head and face.

The reason for the hands is pretty bizarre. Spoilers for the second half of season 5:

::: spoiler Tap for spoiler He killed his whole family, including his sister, parents, and grandparents, and was adopted by the world’s greatest villain, who preserved the hands and attached them to him to remind him where he came from. :::

Oh, his super power? “Decay.” Anything he lays all five fingers on turns to ash. It’s as awesome and terrible as it sounds. What’s worse? Final season spoilers:

::: spoiler Tap for spoiler Decay wasn’t originally his power. The greatest villain can steal and give out powers. He actually took Shigaraki’s original power and replaced it with Decay. He set him up for failure and then adopted him to turn him into a monster. :::

The author, Horikoshi Kohei, is a huge Star Wars nerd. If Shigaraki Tomura sounds like “anime Darth Vader,” that’s intentional. Except when “anime Luke Skywalker” tried to turn him back to good, final season spoilers:

::: spoiler Tap for spoiler It doesn’t work. Shigaraki tells Midoriya he’s too far gone and gives him a message to tell his best friend, another, minor, villain he played League of Legends with — I’m not kidding, they drop that name — and Midoriya delivers the message. Which is basically that right up to the end, he wanted to destroy everything. The message has the intended effect of showing the younger man that he was wrong. :::

And the kicker? Minor season 5 spoiler:

::: spoiler Tap for spoiler Shigaraki Tomura wasn’t even his name. Shigaraki was the family name of the villain who adopted him. His birth name was Shimura Tenko — he was also the grandson of Midoriya’s mentor’s mentor. :::

Note that all names use the Japanese naming convention of giving the family name before the given name (e.g. “Lincoln Abraham”), and the show is known outside of Japan as My Hero Academia.

Edit: I also like GLaDOS. YSK she’s also in Cyberpunk 2077, if only in spirit. Ellen McLain reprises her role and reuses some lines while voicing a psychotic robotaxi. I assume, with permission from Valve (who probably loved the cameo).

Meanwhile, their biggest competitor is either Linux or UNIX. That is, if you accept that macOS "is UNIX." It's been UNIX certified for a couple years now, but it's UNIX in name only. While Steve Jobs' NeXTStep was based on UNIX, NeXTStep was also vapourware. Still, it became OS X which became the macOS we know and love (or hate) today. But the truth is, it's UNIX 3 certified, which is a decades-old certification, and it only just barely makes that. So it's a thing Mac users brag about. "A UNIX system! I know this!" Jurassic Park meme. And then of course there's Linux. And of course Windows has the Linux subsystem. Still, non-*nix is going the way of the dodo, just like Win9x did when Microsoft realised WinNT was the future. First with the tranwreck that was WinME, but much more importantly with WinXP. And NT was good, but its time is up (or will be soon).

One-Winged Angel. Just the intro, before the Latin. Specifically this version.

The best final boss music to a video game was 29 years ago and has not been topped since. Of course, with the rise of PlayStation and disc-based games (ironically, where Final Fantasy 7 was released and in which form), games became more about the journey than that final fight. There were still "last boss fights," but they became less the focus and more about the end of the journey. But after beating Sephiroth for the first time, and he sprouts a wing (just the one!) and this song kicks in, and the real fight begins... that's when you knew you were in some shit. Especially if you reached max level and Sephiroth took literally an hour to beat (I think this was an early anti-cheat thing).

Bought for me: the NES deluxe kit with console, controllers, light gun, and Mario/Duck Hunt.

I first bought Super Mario Bros 3 as in, with my own money.

I’m Gen X, I don’t.

I might say “that’s pretty fucking funny” though

Um... no? It's considered law enforcement. They would lose their position and any certifications would be suspended first.

Most likely they'd be sent to one where they don't know anybody. Possibly even transferred out of state. And placed in some kind of protective thing like they do for child molesters and such, since I'd think the state would be responsible for their safety (to some extent/on paper at least).

Yes, that's the one. I love the look of both games, but I recognize that Cuphead is beyond my play ability. Gorgeous game though!

A friend told me about Bad Omens (metal) and I’ve been listening to them. I don’t usually like heavy music these days, but sometimes it can be cool and they have some clever lyrics.

I feel like they’re missing opportunities and leaving money on the table with this franchise. The fake band should be putting out music outside of the movies.