Project Hail Mary, and another dose of the Regal experience

 This past week, I went and saw Project Hail Mary.  For those not in the know, it's basically the story of a man who wakes up, after an induced coma and with severe memory loss, on a ship at a distant star as the last survivor of his crew.  After working out/remembering why he's there (saving Earth, natch), he encounters an alien ship, crewed by the last survivor of their group, similarly looking to save their world.  Hijinks ensue, hurdles are overcome, and everybody makes it through.

I liked the film overall.  Sure, it's got its holes in the science here and there, but all in service of telling a better story, so I'm not going to nit-pick too hard.  There were even a couple of "oh, you decided to go there" moments that elevated the film a bit in my eyes.  Of course, it probably helped that I was in a better mood from a somewhat-improved theater experience from last time.

 I'm still working on that gift card I got for Christmas, so I chose a different Regal theater this time.  The main positive takeaway here is that you want to check the tag-spam of your theater/show choices for the "Recliner Seating" option - I'm sure it's more expensive (although I don't know for certain, since I did a matinee this time around, so it's not a simple apples-to-apples comparison), but actual adult-scale furniture with padding and the ability to put your feet up makes a world of difference, especially when it's time to get back up.

Beyond that, the compare-and-contrast with my last Regal experience was pretty spot-on.  Same dodgy app experience (and a note on the ticket booth to buy tickets at the concession stand instead of touch-screens), same commercial overload.  I did get to experience the concessions this time around, and what an experience that was - it's never been cheap, but I'm amazed at what it's become.  Candy is no longer hoarded behind the counter, but scattered through a serpentine approach to the stand.  The signage above the stand shows large photos of the products on sale, in their various combo packs, while the prices are relegated to a small bar at the bottom, barely legible while standing at the counter - not certain what percentage of "intentional customer behavior shaping" and "shame at the prices we're charging" is involved, but the first part's gotta be higher.  End result, for a small popcorn (similar size to the 3/$1 microwave bags you get at the grocer) and a medium soda (which translates roughly to Big Gulp sized) approaches $20, pre-tax.

Well, now I know what Regal brings to the table for the movie-going experience, and I remain unimpressed.  I figure I'll get one more movie out of that gift card, then I'm going to have to pay for a movie or two at other local theaters to see how deep the industry rot has spread. 

A few small items, while things are relatively quiet

 Weird that I can think of "at war with Iran and shooting up boats in both the Atlantic and Pacific" as relatively quiet, but here we are.  Everybody's fussed about the entirely-foreseeable after effects of the US attacking Iran jointly with Israel, so nobody's actively looking to rock the boat any further - assuming you don't include Trump "joking" about Pearl Harbor with the Japanese prime minister, of course.  Otherwise, Epsteinapalooza continues to simmer, alongside the many, many other problems Trump and company have brought down upon us.

Side note, did you know there's another No Kings protest scheduled for next week?

Anyways, the main bug in my bonnet today isn't the big picture, but a smaller piece of corruption and control.  Turns out, yesterday, the Nexstar acquisition of Tegna was approved.  You know, one of the companies that tried to support the FCC head in his attempt to get Jimmy Kimmel kicked off the air back in September, getting special dispensation from that head to bypass the law (under what authority?) to extend their empire further.  Some states have filed a lawsuit to try and stop it, but, in my mind, Tegna is already tainted.  So, as promised, I've dropped their local stations from my tuner's channel list.  Mind, the local Tegna station's main channel was the CBS affiliate, so it's just their also-ran UHF channel (CW affiliate, maybe?) and all the filler sub-channels for both that went away.  Kind of a wash all around, really, but I might miss getting tempted to watch some Svengoolie thing on a random Saturday night in the future, I guess.

 All the more time for games then, yeah?  Let's start with PowerWash Simulator 2 - I finished that the other night.  No major surprises, up to the end credits, which suffered a crash-to-"desktop" on my XBox.  Ah well, I had my fun, but I'm not champing at the bit to get any DLC for it, so take that for what it's worth.

Outside of that, I've added a couple more programs to my "games that have my attention" list.  Trash Goblin is a fairly simple game (barely more than a visual novel, really) where your young goblin self sets up a shop where he takes bits of trash sourced by his Auntie, chips away the worst of the encrustation on them, (usually) cleans them up, and (sometimes) pieces things together before selling them off to the townsfolk that stop by.  Most of the mechanics are forgettable at best (although the cleaning sponge you start with is absolutely wretched), but the chiseling part does a really good job at hitting the same puzzle-solving notes as manually examining an object you're trying to uncover/decipher.  It's got my attention for now, but we'll see how the story holds up.

There's also Dawnfolk, which I'm playing on my PC due to the controller setup, mainly (anything d-pad related on the first-gen Steam Controller is not a good time).  It's a minimalist town-builder with a Commodore-64 aesthetic, including very simple mini-games for some tasks.  It hasn't proven to be "hard" (at the normal difficulty level at least), but it's both engaging and charming.  I'd say take a look, while the Steam Spring Sale is on, maybe it'll grab your attention too.

Again with the war criming

 Here's another one for the pile of "I never thought I'd say this", but... I kind of miss the bad actors in our government having enough respect or fear for their constituents that they felt the need to get their stories straight before they started their shenanigans.

This time's example?  Well, we're at war with Iran, now.  We've been blowing their leadership, people, and stuff up constantly for the past week.  Why?  Nobody has given a consistent reason to date.  The closest anybody's come is something along the lines of "they were going to attack us, so we attacked them first."  Try that line of reasoning if you ever find yourself in an assault trial, see how that goes for you.

Of course, once again, this is a war launched on a sovereign nation without Congress having a say in the matter, counter to what the Constitution requires.  No worries though, the baddies in both chambers said it's OK, although they can't seem to come up with a reasonable answer as to why.  I don't know what's worse, the ones who say it's "not really a war" (to which I would say, if the shoe was on the other foot, and DC was getting bombed for a week, would that be a war?), or the ones saying because Trump's commander-in-chief, he gets to do what he wants with the military (you know, like the Constitution explicitly doesn't say).

And what's a new war without new war crimes to go with it?  Take your pick, so far we've at least got us bombing a school (possibly chosen as a target using AI) and sinking a warship, then refusing to rescue survivors.  Just imagine what we get to look forward to if Trump decides air power isn't sufficient to cow Iran into submission and sends in land troops.

Mind you, I'm not terribly sad that Iran is on the receiving end of all of this.  They're a theocracy with decades of "death to America" running through their foundation (however justified some of it might be), and a regular supporter of actions destabilizing international relations.  Heck, if anything, I do like that they're not likely to be sending many more drones to Russia for their Ukraine campaign, and having an EV in a hydro-power state insulates me somewhat from their immediate ability to strike back at us economically via oil prices.

That said, I'd really prefer not to use fighting Iran as an excuse to become more like them.  I'd really like a functioning republic back, without our military leaders talking up a war in terms of hurrying Armageddon along.  Sooner rather than later would be good here - I'm hearing stumbling steps in the direction of making Cuba our next target.  Enough of this sort of thing and, internal governance aside, the other nations of the world are likely to start looking at us as something that needs "dealt with", especially if we're low on supplies from our prior adventures.

Fun movie, bad theater

 It's been years since I've stepped foot in a movie theater - the last post I see here that attests to me being at a theater was from 2011.  I'm sure I must have seen something else in a theater in the meantime (maybe Everything Everywhere All at Once?  Great film, by the way), but I couldn't swear to it.  However, I got a Regal Cinemas gift card for Christmas, and found something worth giving a go over the weekend, so away I went.  Sadly, there's nothing like years of absence to make enshittification stand out when you do eventually return.

First things first though, the movie... Good Luck, Have Fun, Don't Die was both different and better than I could have ever expected, given the setup.  A man shows up at a diner, looking like the prototypical paranoid homeless guy, ranting about being from the future, where things have gone horribly wrong due to social media and AI, and he's looking for team members to change how it all goes.  This is one of those movies that's better to go into blind, so I'll just say it's a little dark, a little gory, and supremely silly.  I giggled several times throughout, and not in an "it's so bad it's good" sort of way.  I heartily recommend it.

In contrast, we have the Regal Cinemas experience.  I mean, I know theater chains are struggling, but some of this shit is downright abusive.  I've still got credit on that gift card, so we'll try another of their theaters in town for my next experience for a compare-and-contrast, but some of it is outside of any one theater's control.

I knew I was in for disappointment as soon as I went to order a ticket through their phone app.  Yes, I'm sure there's some way to use a gift card without the app, but I'd already accepted that modern inevitability and set things up prior there, so it's not like the app itself is all that terrible, if you set aside the popup ads that get in the way of doing what you came to do, of course.

Anyways, I pick my seat, select an adult ticket, and go to checkout... and they hit me with a $2 booking fee on top of the ticket price.  A booking fee, on their app, for their theater.  If I were paying cash, I might well have noped out at that point, but somebody else already paid for this, so what the hell.  Continuing on, as soon as the purchase is complete, I get no fewer than four "special offers" from various services that I have to decline before I can get the QR code for my show.  At this point, I'm wondering whether the convenience of the app beats just showing up at the theater and buying a ticket.

I get to the theater about 10 minutes before the posted showtime.  The first thing I notice is that the ticket booth is entirely unstaffed, humans replaced by touchscreens, so I fully expect the local purchase pattern to mirror the app.  That's not my problem for the day, though, so I head up to the ticket taker (or whatever their job is called now), get scanned in, and head off to the theater - no time to stop for concessions, right?

As I arrive, the ads are already playing, so I find my seat.  Turns out, whoever's in charge of arranging seats here has some airline experience.  I mean, there's plenty of legroom (because the layout of the concrete steps dictates it), but the fold-down arm rests are close enough together that I couldn't comfortably sit with one arm squarely on each (never mind the one-arm method they must be envisioning).  And of course, those armrests are also too short to lay an arm down, without your hand sitting in the drink holder - very convenient, if you have a drink, I'd guess.  I'd get one, but the show's about to start.

Of course, the show wasn't about to start.  From at least 10 minutes before showtime, to more than 20 minutes after, the ads continued to flow.  They eventually shifted to mostly movie previews, as expected, but not entirely - there was one of those superbowl AI ads thrown in the middle, which was kind of funny in hindsight given the way the movie goes.

Eventually, the ads end, the movie shows, I have my fun, then I creakily lever myself out of the seat and go home.  I will say, what was in the control of the local staff seemed to be fine - everything was clean and in seemingly good repair, and no hiccups from the projection and sound equipment were noticed - but, if this is the standard across theater chains for how they treat their customers, I'll stick with streaming, thanks. 

Coming up for air

 So, what, a month-and-a-half since my last post?  Sure feels longer than that.  The world at large is fairly quiet, maybe in part thanks to the Winter Olympics going on.  The AI bubble may not have popped quite yet, but it sure is looking wobbly.  Best of all, the U.S. hasn't started any new shit in the world at large as of yet, although we're definitely making moves that say beating on Iran a bit is a matter of when, not if.

Why might that be?  Well, it's because things inside the country have taken enough turns to keep the baddies occupied.  ICE did their best "occupying power" imitation in their Minnesota surge, up to and including executing citizens, but, amazingly, the citizenry neither cowered nor exploded into the violence needed to act as an excuse to impose martial law.  Things got bad enough on that front (for the baddies) that they had to replace the guy in charge on the ground, who eventually announced that they're going to pull back.  Of course, given the track record of truth in announcements from this group, that's a definite wait and see.

Meanwhile, Epsteinapalooza continues apace.  Having released about half of the total documents, with significant mis-redactions,  the Department of Justice (hah!) wanted to declare everything required by law to be released as released and move on.  Funny enough, Congress didn't see it that way.  The most recent visual stuck in my head on that is the head of the DoJ in a Congressional hearing doing three things:  contemptuously attacking congresscritters from a cheat-sheet, refusing to look at the victims seated behind her, and ranting about the Dow Jones Industrial Average hitting an all-time high (as if that had any bearing on her performance of her job).

Of course, those are just the headline items.  There's plenty of other smaller-but-not-less-important items, like the baddies trying to find a way to nationalize the next elections, because they're projected to do so poorly in them that they're willing to try and strip that Constitutionally-protected function from the states to protect themselves.  The clock is ticking, and I think it's sinking in that their New Reich plan is coming apart at the seams.

On the topic of waiting for things to come apart, can that AI bubble finally pop, or at least significantly deflate?  It's interfering (in a definitely first-world-problem sort of way) with me getting a Steam Machine and revamped Steam Controller!  The controller's the most important part of that batch, since it would let me play a few games I've been itching to play from my couch (I could make something work for the rest of the gear).  But Steam is apparently waiting on some clarity or stability on things like memory prices before they launch their latest batch of hardware, something I honestly don't expect to see this year.  But I wants them!

 While I wait, I'll mention that I've gotten some good mileage lately out of Reus 2.  It's really more of a re-imagining of the original game (which I wrote about back in 2013) than a sequel, but whether that's an improvement or not will be mainly a matter of personal preference.  I do like that it's no longer a timer-driven affair and a fair bit less fiddly, but you lose things I liked from the original like biomes interacting with each other.  All in all, I think I like it better myself, although there is a fair bit of "min-max your way to victory", as I put it in my original writeup.

No more finger-wags from me for a while

 Time for another milestone on the "I never thought I'd see the U.S. do this in my lifetime" track.  Proving once again that "America First" means "I get to do what I want, and none of you will stop me", yesterday Trump unilaterally invaded another country, attacking their military, abducting their leader, and declaring that the U.S. is now in charge there until he says otherwise.

Now, there's a lot of people who are actually happy about this state of affairs, since the country involved was Venezuela.  A lot of exiles like it, because the ruling party there has a history of disappearing people it doesn't like, and many are thinking it's the beginning of the end of their exile.  Some people in the oil industry are doubtless very happy, since they're looking at getting back assets that Venezuela nationalized some decades back.  And of course, Venezuela has been all to comfy with Russia for quite some time, so I'm sure there's some people who are putting this up as a "win" on their tally boards for international influence.

But all of that ignores a few things, starting with the whole "invading a country without declaring war" thing.  I mean, that's basically what I've been pissing and moaning about Russia doing to Ukraine for the past few years (and, incidentally, is a fine example of what happens when the quick, surgical strike doesn't pay off as intended).  As far as the rest of the world is concerned, in one stroke, we've gone from "their current leader is a bit unhinged, but we can work around that" to full-on mad dog status.

Why didn't we declare war?  Well, that would have meant getting Congress involved, since that's one of those "only Congress can do it" things in the Constitution... and of course, Trump didn't want to ruin the surprise, so he just... didn't.  As of this writing, the response of the Congress critters has been along party lines, which is simply insane - Trump prevented you from having any input, and you're somehow fine with that?  He just pulled a Pearl Harbor on Venezuela, and that's hunky-dory by you?

Well, as one lone American, all I can say to the rest of the world is sorry.  Don't feel too bad about treating any promises we make in the worst of faith from here on out, and definitely don't feel bad about needing to set up anti-U.S. alliances to contain our madness.  Russia, Israel, apparently we're one of you now, so I won't be asking you to fuck off for the foreseeable future, until we get our own shit straightened out.  And of course, lest I forget, China, I won't even bat an eye if you decide to finally invade Taiwan at this point - we've proven that we're in the age of "strength means more than civilization" now, and, at the very least, you've got territorial claims there that we didn't when we decided to eat Venezuela.

As for me, I long ago swore a pledge of allegiance that included the line "and to the Republic for which it stands," so I'm going to be doing the bare minimum in support of this country until and unless we have a functioning Republic again.  Of course, there's that other oath I swore about defending the Constitution against all enemies foreign and domestic... we'll just have to see whether anything aligns to force action on that oath in the days and years to come.

Winding down another year

 ...and, just to get the necessaries out of the way, a happy holiday fuck-off to Russia and Israel.  Hamas, I'm going to stop worrying about for a bit at least - with their leadership getting assassinated in spite of the cease-fire that's supposedly still in place, I think Israel can bear their share of fuck-offitude for a while.

Here in the US, Epsteinapalooza has kicked off, with Trump's Department of Justice attempting to slow-walk and over-redact document releases.  Luckily, whether by ineptitude or sabotage, some of those redactions were apparently done by "highlighting in black", making them trivial to undo, so that's nice.  Between that and the upcoming expiration of Affordable Care Act health-care subsidies, the coming month could be entertaining, at least.  Now, if we can just keep them from unconstitutionally embedding federal controls into state-run elections, we might be getting somewhere.

On the games front... I did manage to finish categorizing and organizing my Steam library.  For a library of several hundred games, at about 1-2 hours a day, it took me about a month to finish.  About 44% of titles ended up being "I'm done with this" (for either possible meaning of that phrase), a further 4% are unsupported by Steam Deck, and 2% are buggy enough to not bother playing until/unless they get fixed.  That'll simplify finding things I actually want to play, especially once the Steam Machine launches (assuming a reasonable price-point there, of course).

Beyond that, it's Steam Winter Sale time, so I've got a few new toys to peruse there... but of course there was a gap between ending my categorization and the sale starting, and I didn't want to play nothing but PowerWash Simulator 2 for hours on end... so I reinstalled Warframe.  Let me tell you, it is nothing but amazing how well that game has held up over the years, as well as what they've managed to do to expand on its basic formula.  If you've never played it, I'd recommend it... and that's about the one free-to-play game that I can say that about.