wild_turkey

Dev is basically the tamer version of Elon Musk in this fictional world. No, I don’t think Elon would be immune if he conspired to sabotage a plan that cost the U.S., Russia, India, North Korea, and other countries unprecedented wealth to the tune of trillions of dollars. In this hypothetical scenario where CIA and KGB agents are present on Mars and torturing people for intel, I think the best case scenario for them would be extradition to Earth and a trial in the U.S. with life in prison. The more likely scenario is a quick space accident.

What exactly was the end game for Ed, Dev, and their crew? They will be criminals that sabotaged plans for the major countries of the world to gain unprecedented prosperity. They “saved Mars” but to what end? It’s a colony full of angry people who can’t cooperate to achieve anything of substance. How could Margo possibly take the fall for Aleida? Margo wasn’t even touching a computer, whereas Aleida was directly involved in sending the code. That made no sense to me and seemed incredibly sloppy unless I missed something there. How was there a riot with weapons and firearms and the only consequence was a non-lethal gunshot to Poole and some bruises? They could’ve at least killed some minor characters. The CIA and KGB agent torture sessions and power trip rampage were pure cheese. I guess I already thought Sergei was dead, so they brought him back just to kill him again. His poor wife, waiting at home and he never came back from work.

Those are the exact 2 movies I thought of. I didn’t think Saltburn brought anything new to the table and it tried to make up for its lack of originality by adding shock value. It was okay at best.

That felt like hot garbage to me. Seasons 1-2 were so good and season 4 was a complete mess.

Holy shit, end of an era.

That’s a much easier process if you’re an AI taking uppers.

Do you have inside knowledge of this? That’s a weird judgement to make otherwise.

When you say his brother is a much better writer, I assume you are referring to Jonathan Nolan? Other than the movies they co-wrote, I mainly know Jonathan Nolan from Westworld. Season 1 was fantastic but seasons 2-4 were a complete mess, and that’s his most recent work. What other Jonathan Nolan writing exists separate from Christopher Nolan that has you so impressed? Are you a big fan of Person of Interest?

It’s a fairly new (~6 months) hotel owned by Sandman built into a historic building. They have a nice lobby bar and a good sushi restaurant in the basement. Pictures look awful.

I have eaten at Musume a couple times. Doesn’t look good at all. Internet says there have been some injuries but hopefully everyone makes out okay.

Fort Worth is a bunch of Dallas retreads with our Texas Roadhouse and Whataburger and Starbucks.

Just finished watching for the second time. Fantastic movie and the awards are well deserved. Also, I see this thread has attracted the movie version of ATexanAbroad. Lucky us.

Long post / rant ahead. Like I said upthread, this was one of my favorite books I’ve ever read, and I recently finished reading it a second time, so it’s fresh on my mind. I watched the series this week and I’m being nice when I say it’s a gigantic fucking piece of shit and possibly the worst film adaptation I’ve ever seen, and yes I read WWZ and loved it, and watched WWZ and reluctantly liked it as something different. So I can tolerate some changes. Imagine if Thomas Keller sold his recipes to a local restaurant and you got hopeful to try them close to home, but that restaurant ended up being The Cheesecake Factory, and they cut out 70% of the ingredients and added some new ingredients like liquid smoke and Pace picante sauce, and then they mass produced their dishes and froze them and reheated them, and then served these recipes in a new restaurant they named The French Laundry. That’s the equivalent of the Netflix adaptation of All The Light We Cannot See. They stripped out all the depth and nuance and replaced it with stereotypical characters and hit you over the head with the same ideas and phrases because they apparently think the audience is too dumb to pick up something the first or even third time it’s mentioned. They replaced character building stories with things like gunfights. If you have read the book but not seen the series, you can safely skip it. You don’t need to see it to convince yourself like I foolishly chose to do. If you haven’t read the book, do yourself a favor and read it in place of watching this. Among the many changes I hated, which contains obvious spoilers: -Marie was age 12 in 1940, age 16 in 1944, and they chose a 29 year old actor to play her. Werner was 14 in 1940, 18 in 1944, and they chose a 26 year old actor to play him. I get that older actors often play younger characters, but these are clearly adults not even attempting to pass as children/teenagers. -Von Rumpel was given a much bigger role in the series as if they felt they needed a bigger bad guy. He appears to be imitating Christopher Waltz from Inglorious Basterds, but he does a very poor job of it and comes across as more of a cheesy Marvel villain. Just terrible and certain scenes were cringeworthy. -Lots of shootouts and threatening scenes at gunpoint, mostly involving von Rumpel, none of which existed in the book. Completely unnecessary unless you are pandering to a simpleton audience that requires more guns to stay entertained. -Volkheimer had very little role, essentially an extra. They did not show his training with Werner or their unit’s rampage through Russia and France or even their struggle in the hotel basement. -Frederick was completely eliminated. He was a critical part of Werner’s character development, but nope, because they needed that screen time for more guns! -Etienne was made into “The Professor” in the series and was the one broadcasting radio transmissions that both Werner and Marie grew up listening to. In the book, there was no character named the professor, and Etienne was merely playing recordings of his dead brother. Also, Marie never listened to him growing up, nor did Werner ever actually meet him. -Etienne did not die in the book. He was imprisoned for a time, leaving Marie alone, but they later reunited and moved to Paris. Also, he never rode a motorcycle through the street and had a shootout with a German officer, but of course, more guns!!! -Marie spent the final act of the book secretly confined to her attic, starving and dying of thirst, broadcasting on her radio, while von Rumpel occupied the house below her. Werner listened to her from the hotel basement, then escaped and went to save her. This was replaced in the series with a shorter direct standoff with von Rumpel in which Marie kills him, using a gun of course. -Werner very clearly died in the book. Also, the show added an embrace and kiss between Werner and Marie because that’s the Netflix formula. Can’t have a show where the lead female and male don’t get that textbook kiss. -Marie’s father was imprisoned in the book and never had a face-to-face confrontation with von Rumpel, but I guess the show needed von Rumpel to kill him to make him a bigger villain. -The true location of the Sea of Flames diamond was much more of a mystery in the book. Even Marie’s father did not know if he truly possessed it. He never told Etienne or Madame Manec or their resistance group about it, nor was it ever visualized by Werner or von Rumpel. The show changed all of this presumably because they felt the audience needed to be absolutely aware of its presence, and because it would be so awesome to have the bad guy die while looking at it. I knew this would be a disaster when I saw Netflix and Shawn Levy were behind it. It’s too bad we couldn’t get an 8-10 episode adaptation by the Coen Brothers on AppleTV. The attic scenes, the hotel basement scenes, and Werner’s travel could’ve been epic.

If you’re a Texas fan on a Longhorn message board taking sides with Aaron Rodgers on anything, you probably need help. That doesn’t matter if the other side of the argument is Jimmy Kimmel or Bob Stoops or the Tiger King.

I’ve been interested in vinyl for ~10 years but I always thought it was too big of a commitment or I’m not enough of an audiophile to justify jumping in. My music tastes are highly varied, basically anything except modern country or heavy rap, but I’m a child of the mp3 and Spotify generation and I have a short attention span that makes it hard for me to play entire albums straight through. I also struggle a little bit with the idea of paying $20-35 for albums that I can already listen to through a service I pay $15 monthly to use. It’s a character flaw that I’m not proud of, but I’m still a tiny bit envious when I go to someone’s house and see their vinyl collection, or see it featured in a TV show or movie. My mom needed a Christmas gift for me and I honestly couldn’t come up with anything so I finally decided a turntable might be nice. I did some limited internet research and found the Fluance RT-82 was commonly recommended as a starter turntable. I was originally attracted to the Audio-Technica AT-LPW40WN because I wanted a lighter woodgrain style, but the internet pointed me towards the Fluance model. Santa was nice as always and fulfilled my Christmas wishes. When my uncle died about 10 years ago, I acquired a few records from him. They’ve been in my closet ever since because I had no way to use them, but I got them out and was pleasantly surprised to find some gems: The Beatles - Sgt Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band The Beatles - Hey Jude Pink Floyd - Dark Side of the Moon Eagles - Desperado Beethoven - Symphony No. 5 Not knowing I already possessed it, Sgt Pepper was going to be one of my first purchases, so that was a great discovery. Tonight, I set up my new turntable, which will be playing through my Denon AVR-x1400h receiver and Bowers & Wilkins 606 bookshelf speakers. It was all quite exciting and I thought it was really cool to be able to listen to “Lucy in the Sky With Diamonds” playing from the same record that my late uncle once listened to. I liked him but don’t have much left to remember him by, so this is kind of special. Whatever reluctance I had to get into vinyl, a switch flipped and I’m eager to start adding to my collection. I don’t expect this to replace Spotify in my life, but they can complement each other, much like paper books can coexist with Audible and podcasts. I live in Fort Worth and I see Doc’s Records mentioned in this thread, which is about 2 miles from me, so I’ll be checking that out as soon as I get back from New Orleans.

Did ESPN cut away from the halftime show early to show extra commercials? Could they extend that same courtesy to FSU during the second half?

Speaking of online recipes, why is it that every online recipe now requires me to scroll past a 12 paragraph story about how someone’s grandmother used to make XYZ and it smelled so good, scroll past the ads, then get the steps of the recipe without any specific ingredients, then scroll past more ads, then find the actual ingredients at the very bottom before an ad pops up to cover them? I don’t want the story, and please put the ingredients first.

Well I do like European beaches and Mediterranean destinations, so that lends itself to summer months and I’m just fine with that. Although I would like to go skiing in St. Moritz or Chamonix at some point, so perhaps a winter trip is in my future.

I’m interested in flying DFW-MAD in June. I see a nonstop on Iberia for around 60k Avios round trip in economy, but I don’t see any options for booking business class with Avios on any of the dates I’m considering. Anyone know how likely it would be for me to book the economy fare on Avios and then be able to pay cash for the business upgrade? I would possibly settle for premium economy. I’m hesitant to book and then not get any upgrade options and be stuck in basic economy. Or is there another approach I should be taking?

Why does it seem that way to you? I’m not sure what you consider “nicer”, but I eat out around FW often and none of my favorite spots are Dallas retreads.

Don Artemio is good and similar to Maria’s. Quince could also go in that conversation. Ellerbe is great farm-to-table American food and open for lunch. Lucille’s is always a good choice and a little more on the casual side. Winslow’s too but haven’t been there in a while. Press Cafe and Tavern both also owned by the Maria’s and Pacific Table group. Press has a great patio if you want to be outside. I like Tavern more for all around food and drink quality. Clearfork is boring to me. If you live in Dallas and go to FW to eat at Clearfork, it would be like living in Colorado and going to New Mexico to ski. It’s the same stuff on a smaller scale.

I liked all 3 of the remaining teams so I was okay with any of them winning. Greg and John ran the best overall race and definitely deserved to win, but they also seemed like they needed it the least. But it’s not a charity show, so need isn’t the determinant. They earned it, and even though their final leg was sloppy, they nailed the memory challenge to lock up the win. Joel and Garrett needed it the most. I was a little bit indifferent on them personality wise, and they were for sure underdogs that never seemed dominant in anything, but always just good enough to move on. I wanted them to pull it out because one of them has a special needs daughter and that would be life changing money. Too bad, but I like to think Greg and John gifted them a little something. Rob and Corey were fantastic. I loved their dynamic and just a great father-son relationship on top of Rob being deaf. I rooted for them all the way, and if not for the special needs daughter thing above, they would’ve been my pick. I don’t think they needed the win because their lives seem rich in ways that money can’t buy, and I suspect they are happy regardless of the outcome. I hope Corey makes contact with his dance instructor.

To stay there or for dinner or the bar?

The people I know who have been there said it was good. I think the struggle is when you categorize it as a BBQ joint and compare it to places like Panther City. It’s not trying to be that. It’s not something I’m particularly interested in, but it would be hard to bet against Felipe Armenta right now. His other restaurants are very successful.

Agreed. I think they rushed the plot to Mars too quickly in season 3. They probably could’ve developed more U.S. vs Russia tension on the moon for another season and kept it interesting, then save the Mars landing for season 4. Once you put humans on Mars, there’s not much left unless they have them colonize one of Jupiter’s moons or possibly do an even longer time jump and do interstellar travel with an entirely new cast. Maybe when they were writing season 3, they didn’t know if season 4 would be guaranteed, so they wanted to get the Mars stuff in while they could. And maybe actors’ contracts prevent jumping too far and scrapping characters like Ed, Danielle, and Margo.