Miguel Sanchez

I watched Robocop last night Why weren't Arnold Schwarzenegger or Michael Ironside in it?

"belly laughs"

Had this randomly popping into my head in work today too. An all-timer. You can see the inspiration for this and a lot of his music in the first ten minutes or so of this video.

If you were to imagine what someone would do to effectively destroy Twitter - functionality, user confidence, monetary worth - then Elon's played it pretty much by the book so far. I'll pick up Detournement's mantle and say his billionaire pals made him do it because Twitter is/was the closest thing the internet has to freely available instant, uncensored communication.

Gogglebox

Also after checking, Rosberg, 2016.

Nico "huh?" Rosberg remains the most irritating person in motor racing.

Some amount of traction from that Aston.

Red Bull are there. Ferrari are after them. Mercedes and Aston are a bit more after them. Everyone else is just... somewhere. McLaren have turned up with a literal clown car at the back. Great. Longest championship ever boys, strap in!

Bit shite, this.

Unboxed is going to be a fun watch this season.

I know it's a night race but they need to do something about the amount of colour on the cars. Aston, Mercedes and Alfa all look the same.

Is this the guy who puts mince in his macaroni cheese mocking other peoples' culinary preferences?

Week 9 update This should be fun. First is an obituary for Walter Mirisch: Walter Mirisch obituary | Film | The Guardian Not a bad return. Mirisch was 101 when he died so he's worth 24 Base Points for @JustOneCornetto with a Solo Shot taking that to 74 points. =============== Up next this week was pole vaulter turned minister, Bob Richards: Two-time Olympic pole vault champion Bob Richards dies at 97 (espn.co.uk) He was a Solo Shot for @LoonsYouthTeam but as yet there aren't any UK sources. ESPN doesn't count. I'll keep looking. =============== Up next this week was former Speaker of the House, Betty Boothroyd: Lady Boothroyd obituary | Betty Boothroyd | The Guardian I also enjoyed this: She brought a pizzazz to the speaker’s role, declining to wear the traditional full-bottomed wig, thus appearing attractively stylish and modern, in contrast to her predecessors. I also enjoyed this: After her election as an MP, Boothroyd made a feisty maiden speech, ignoring what had previously been the convention to avoid controversy when first contributing to a parliamentary debate. She claimed to be able to speak for “ordinary working people” and attacked the then Conservative government for its failure to alleviate the injustice of the two-tier society that existed in the UK. I also enjoyed this: She was judicious about the use of her considerable political authority as a member of the Lords, but campaigned against Brexit. She also deplored the Labour party’s lurch towards the left under the leadership of Jeremy Corbyn and despaired of the subsequent loss of the party’s former “Red Wall” northern seats. Boothroyd died at 93 so she's worth 32 Base Points for @Bodie, @Melanius Mullarkay and @Suspect Device. =============== Up next this week was French footballer, Just Fontaine: Just Fontaine obituary | Football | The Guardian Not a bad return, really. Fontaine died at 89 so he's worth 36 Base Points for @LoonsYouthTeam with a Solo Shot taking that to 86 points. =============== And finally this week we have cartoonist and clarinetist Wally Fawkes: Wally Fawkes, jazz musician and artist who drew the ‘Flook’ comic strip for more than three decades – obituary (telegraph.co.uk) Fawkes died at 98, so he's worth 27 Base Points for @tamthebam with a Solo Shot taking that to 77 points. After all of that, the standings look like this: 1. JustOneCornetto 255 2. The Naitch 208 3. buddiepaul 194 4. LoonsYouthTeam 187 5. psv_killie 185 6. peasy23 165 7. The DA 153 8. Desp, Ned Nederlander 151 10. Karpaty Lviv 145 11. Sweaty Morph 140 12. get_the_subbies_on 138 13. Arabdownunder, Bully Wee Villa, cdhafc1874, D.V.T., Frosty, HK Hibee, Mark Connolly, microdave, qos_75, throbber, weirdcal 134 24. Arbroathlegend36-0 110 25. Arch Stanton, Ludo*1, mozam76 101 28. alta-pete, Billy Jean King, Indale Winton, sparky88 84 32. tamthebam 77 33. ICTJohnboy 69 34. paulathame 68 35. atfccfc, chomp my root, DG.Roma, Donathan, Fuctifano, gkneil, HI HAT, lichtgilphead, Lofarl, lolls, Michael W, pub car king, The_Craig, thistledo 67 49. sleazy 55 50. Aim Here 43 51. Bodie, Melanius Mullarkay, Suspect Device 32 54. amnarab, choirbairn, Derry Alli, expatowner, Oystercatcher, stanton 31 60. Everyone else 0 The spreadsheet has also been updated with these scores: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1RxCIfczRUmrRrW79tUQ0vJ5KaHZpYENsTKmDqW4X3W4/edit?usp=sharing

The Morton fanbase's ability to fight among themselves is unmatched on P&B Queen's Park v The Ton 4-3-23 - Page 5 - Scottish Championship General Chatter - Pie & Bovril (pieandbovril.com)

There's an advert for Nando's on the go which appears to be in a foreign language.

Is football timekeeping set to change forever? - BBC Sport Lot of shite. f**k off.

Hades (PS4, 2021) Quite early in my time with Hades I thought of a very clever way of describing it. While I don't write down anything about a game for its review when I'm playing it, I probably should. In this case it's only one line and I know what it was, but in the six weeks or so I spent playing it my opinion of the game changed a lot between my quip and the finish. What at the time seemed like an intelligent reference for an intelligent game now seems hollow, considering how long it took me to achieve what ultimately didn't feel like much. Either way this tortured intro will no doubt take all the charm out of my clever summation, so maybe it's appropriate after all. Hades is the sort of thing you'd get if Kafka wrote the Odyssey and it was made into a video game. You play as Zagreus, son of Hades and heir apparent to the Underworld. Only it turns out the Underworld is an eternity of admin and filing and never leaving and never dying and doing the same thing over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over I stopped typing that after my first mistake and one day the young Zagreus decides he's had enough, picks up a big sword and leaves his bedroom to go and fight his way out of Hades and to the surface. What follows is a roguelike perspective on Greek mythology with vivid environments, rounded and complex characters, and comprehensively great voice acting. Once you leave your father's domain you're faced with a series of rooms and an assortment of increasingly tough enemies. You'll get so far and then you'll probably reach an enemy that you can't overcome. You'll die, you'll return to Hades and he'll laugh at you. Then you go and try again, with the rooms changing each time under the guise of "underworld escape attempt deterrent." This means each gameplay sequence is technically different in a way which ties into the actual setting of the game, which is an effective ay of creating depth. Rather than try and brute force your way through a particular enemy or room, you have enough of a sense of variety to force you to change your strategy. As you go through the various rooms you collect rewards once you've defeated all the enemies. The Olympian gods pop up, give an extremely charismatic speech in support of you escaping the Underworld and joining them, then they give you a choice of powers to affect your attacks or other gameplay modifiers. There's no real subtle way of saying this but each god is brilliant. Even though you only see the text and hear the audio to go with one of a couple of still images, there's an incredible sense of depth to every character in the game. And not just because you can end up reading dozens of them for each person. Even with just a cursory knowledge of Greek mythology you just instantly buy into every character you talk to. You want to know more about them, you just want to hear them talk more because it's so enjoyable. Even the ones who don't like you, like the boss fights at the end of each stage of the Underworld. Every character in the game is great, without exception. Patroclus and Thanatos are a bit miserable but they've every right to be. During your returns to your bedroom you can use rewards found in your escape attempts to upgrade various things - you can unlock powers which affect your rewards or health, and you can unlock bonus resources to use when you're out on a run too. Despite not really paying attention to it when it was released I feel like I knew a lot about Hades already - its story and gameplay were centred around this sense of repetition and gradual strengthening. The story and gameplay balance each other out enough that to get to the 'end' - which is ten successful escape attempts - you'll feel a genuine sense of character and statistical development which all just feels natural. The game probably gets a solid twenty to thirty hours out of this, and for a small(ish) indie developed roguelike that's commendable. It's been a while since I've played a game where I think "Oh I'll just put this on and oh look it's several hours later," so I enjoyed that sense of childlike obsession again. One thing I need to add here is to say that if you're struggling to make progress in your escape attempts you can turn on God Mode. God Mode increases your damage resistance by 2% every time you die, so even this feels as natural as the rest of your gradual development and strengthening as you keep playing. The problem is I don't see how you can play without this turned on. I'm going to complain later about how long it took me to finish Hades and I'd probably still be playing it now if I hadn't used this mode. It's got nothing to do with my playstyle or the weapons or upgrades, the game is just very punishing. Once you've finished the game a few times and are used to everything, if you turn God Mod off you realise just how significant the difference it made was and if anything that just makes it worse. That's when you really wonder how you're supposed to play without it. There's a Hell Mode too where everything gets harder if you're a complete masochist, but as it is I don't think it's a good thing if you can spend as long as I did with a game and feel like you needed to make it easier to actually finish it. In addition to the various godly boons and upgrades there are (eventually) six different weapons you can use, and four different powers you can give each of those. After escaping to the surface once you can also add modifiers to your runs such as time limits or giving enemies new powers. Based on everything I've said the gameplay possibility is endless and you'll never tire of interacting with the various characters as you find them. It's at this point I have to say though that it... doesn't. When you start and as you're uncovering the story, it's great. You enjoy just about every aspect of what you're seeing and it's fine. At some point though you realise that there are only four areas, and actually the enemies are quite limited. The layout of the rooms themselves don't make a difference, they all look the same anyway. Asphodel is filled with magma that gets in the way. Elysium is full of annoying respawning guys with shields. Styx is filled with those stupid poisoned rats. And unless you're using the gun or the bow and arrow the most effective combat method is to aim at whatever you want to die and press triangle, square and circle at the same time. Calling the late-game of Hades a button masher almost feels generous, but I would on occasion feel some pain in my hand when I'd been spending too long spamming all the buttons at once. I'm not old, shut up. Although my journey to the platinum trophy went well beyond what most normal people would experience with this game, for once I can say my complaints were almost completely within the game's natural length. There's an epilogue some time after the end and it takes a while to get there. That's when all the problems come to the fore. The gameplay is what it is. The characters are all still interesting but when you want your conversations to reach a certain point to trigger an event, you realise they just won't shut up. Being able to romance some of them is of scant benefit, but I will commend the writing for taking something as established as Greek mythology and doing something human with it. You just get fed up listening to it outside of the gameplay which you're not invested in anymore, and the environments which have all blended into one. Before you notice that though, the environments are great. The 2.5D sort of top down isometric rougelike stuff is great when it's done well, and Supergiant is a studio which does this about as well as anyone. The visuals are bold and detailed. The sound is vivid and brutal. The various boons and powers all add visual variety, and as I mentioned the depictions of each god... every character even, are just perfect. Even when you're button mashing you do still notice how good the game looks. I don't think it's fair for me to judge this game based on my experience with the last 50% of my time with it. It's not fair, but that's probably going to be my lasting impression. It took me about a month and a half of pretty regular playing to finish everything and for at least those last two weeks I just wanted it done. After I'd finished everything else trophy-related I was speedrunning as quickly as possible to get it done. Does this qualify as actual commentary on the game's quality or content? I'm not sure. I've never really been into measuring a game's worth by how long you can spend with it, but I think I've realised there is definitely an upper limit to that.