Speak, Nerd, and Enter!

KatnissHawkeye5c

It’s a new week! A new open thread has arrived for you to talk about anything that went down this weekend and keep up with your pals as the week goes on…

Anyone see Independence Day: Resurgence? I was on the fence but the bad reviews have swayed me to wait until I can watch it at home.

48 Responses to “Speak, Nerd, and Enter!”

  1. Mark Wyman says:

    Been wondering about something for a couple of years now, finally going to ask. Now, I could google this, but I don’t want the answer, I want the nerdy answer.
    Q: What are sand shoes?

  2. Zatar says:

    Happy Canada day everyone!

    Today marks not only our national holiday but, also the anniversary of the battle of the Somme valley. This battle was one of the bloodiest battles in world war one and it is important that we remember the sacrifices that our soldiers made on that day.

    And while we celebrate everything that makes our nation great it is important that we remain vigilant and recognize that there are still great injustices in our nation. We cannot allow our society to slide backwards as we did under Harper.

  3. WheelchairNinja says:

    Today I recognized my first obit since starting to work at the local newspaper last week. It was a fellow wheelie. She was my age and we went to the same summer camp for kids with disabilities. I haven’t even thought of her in years, but it was still jarring to go “Oh look, a young person in the obits–she’s in a ‘chair–and my age–wait, is that??” No cause was given, but it said she died in a big city hospital so I’m guessing it was complications from whatever her condition was. It’s always sobering to remember that–especially as crips–we’re living on borrowed time. :(

  4. That Which Dreams says:

    So, for people who watch Game of Thrones…still…here’s a couple of thoughts that I had.
    1) Seasons seven and eight are expected to be six and seven episodes long, respectively. In that time, in the midst of everything else that must happen, Dany must conquer Westeros, and the seven nations must defeat the White Walkers. I just don’t think that it can happen that fast without making major storytelling sacrifices.
    2) One of Dany’s allies in Dorne is Ellaria Sand. Dany’s Hand is Tyrion. What will happen between the two of them when Tyrion learns that Ellaria murdered Myrcella.

    • Virtual queues are so traumatizing. I remember a few years back I had to go through one for just the HOTELS for SDCC and even though you log on at X time, so did thousands of others. And you just have to sit there in horror and wait, not knowing if you input everything correctly, not knowing if the tech is working correctly, or if you’ll get a reward at the end at all.

  5. That Which Dreams says:

    Netflix is ordering a Lost in Space remake (The TV show, not the movie.).
    http://www.spoilertv.com/2016/06/lost-in-space-netflix-orders-remake-of.html

  6. Nuuni Nuunani says:

    Wooo~ I got to read alot of books during my vacation, and played some android choose your own adventures. ^^

    Mythology 101 by Jody Lyn Nye was bleck. I don’t think ive come across such a sleezy and bleck protagonist in a book before. XD

    The first several chapters are just this creep stalking a woman and hiding out to watch her. Harassing her boyfriend out of jealousy, and trying to integrate himself into this womans life by befriending her friends and trying to follow her around. >_>
    Despite this, the book treats this as jolly good fun and the protagonist gets rewarded for it.

  7. Hey, Nerd Bird fellow gamers: PSN is doing a big promotion, “Mid-Year Sale”, probably an “answer” to the Steam Summer Sale.
    (Oh, my poor wallet…)

    US: http://blog.us.playstation.com/2016/06/28/mid-year-sale-week-1-up-to-80-off-100-titles/

    BR:https://store.playstation.com/#!/pt-br/promo%C3%A7%C3%A3o-de-meio-do-ano/cid=STORE-MSF77008-MIDYEARSLELP

    I’m checking the BR one more (my country!), but there are a lot of good offers on both of them! And, there is a lot for Vita players ^_^

    (It seems UK either won’t have one, or they haven’t announced it yet)

  8. VindicaSean says:

    I saw THE NEON DEMON last night with my wife. It’s the odd movie that could both be read as a feminist critique of fashion, LA and American culture in general, OR seen as simply documenting all that makes the aforementioned truly awful (though the second reading would completely dismiss the absolutely bonkers, very literal ending that supports the former reading much more strongly).

    But I got my Jena Malone fix. :) She’s wonderful in it (though there are some obvious trope-y critiques to be made about her character, I think it’s more in service of the greater focus of the themes than it might be in another film).

  9. Chris says:

    I am quite wiped from the weekend. I spent three days basically standing in a concrete warehouse trying to talk over very loud music about my board games.

    P.S. I have a game on Kickstarter right now, if you’d be interested: http://kck.st/28KC5xx

  10. WheelchairNinja says:

    Hoo boy. Not sure if I’m allowed to talk about this, but The Mother Ship just said in their newsletter that they’re going to have an article this week about how the representation on this past season of Game of Thrones was very different than previous years. If I they’re smart that post won’t even HAVE a comments section… http://i.makeagif.com/media/11-05-2015/gSW6V0.gif

    • That Which Dreams says:

      What’s The Mother Ship?

      • Alan Izar says:

        from the initials, the site a lot of members came from.

        • That Which Dreams says:

          I suspected that, but when did they get a newsletter?

          • WheelchairNinja says:

            I became one of Their Monitization Subscribers to try to help the site out, and it comes with a daily newsletter.

    • You know, I was starting to wonder if anyone over there was going to do some criticism on the show this season. It’s been a barren wasteland on the internet in that regard.

      • Alan Izar says:

        They disavowed the show last year, after Sansa and Ramsay Stu’s wedding, didn’t they? They sworn they wouldn’t do anything about if anymore if I recall correctly.

      • WheelchairNinja says:

        I’ve tried to avoid any discussion since I don’t want the next ASoIaF book spoiled (yes I know I’ll be waiting another twenty years, shaddup), but while I’m sure it does deserve a well-written critique, I fear such a thing being posted on TMS will only give justification to all the trolls (who apparently were still commenting as recently as a week ago… o_O).

        • Alan Izar says:

          This blog http://gotgifsandmusings.tumblr.com/ does some great analysis of it.

        • Trolls, oh god of course they were. Sigh.

          I’m in a weird spot of wanting to continue with the books. Twitter spoils me weekly for them because no one can stop talking about the show but now we’re going to get to the part where anyone who interviews GRRM is going to ask which of this season’s things are actually stuff from the unreleased books and I honestly think they should just not do that because fans have been spoiled enough.

          • WheelchairNinja says:

            Well that’s an easy fix: stop doing interviews and devote that time to writing! (I kid, I kid…)

          • Yeah, I guess for you its impossible to avoid spoilers :(

            I managed to get past this season more or less unspoiled. Let’s see if I’ll be this luck next year.

            I think GRRM said a couple times that the TV series and the books are separated entities now. Of course, it’s to expect that some things will be (more or less) the same, but I believe the books will hold a few surprises to us. And, hopefuly, GRRM can keep those surprises away from the inevitable “Books vs TV” interviews.

          • Alan Izar says:

            I guess I’m in the odd with the rest of the world, but a lot of times I don’t mind spoilers.

            I ascribe to the idea that storylines are all basically the same (I read “The seven basic plots” by Booker a while ago) so I’m more interested on how you tell the story, since I believe what matters is how good you are at it.

          • Basically, I just like being surprised. Sure, lots of times where the story is going is predictable but especially in ASoIaF, I’ve been surprised and enjoyed what I didn’t see coming.

        • Honestly, I think having the occasional article about Game of Thrones or Ghostbusters or ethics in gaming or what have you to serve as the troll version of a Roach Motel is a great idea. It gives the site some hits and keep the trolls so frothing mad about this one little subject over here that they don’t bleed into the community comment sections.

    • just gonna leave this here

    • I haven’t been on there in a month or two! Now you’re tempting me. WHY THIS.

  11. That Which Dreams says:

    One reason that The Grapes of Wrath is so historically important is that it takes what is an abstract happening, the plight of the mid-western farmers, and makes it personal. It allows people to actually get what is happening to these families from an emotional perspective. As a parallel to that, here’s HonestlyNatalie’s reaction to watching Wynonna Earp 1×13, and an emotional view of how the Bury Your Gays trope matters.
    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PTJ49dYl-T0

  12. I’ve got no interest in Independence Day Resurgence. Emmerich has proven over the last several years that he’s lost his ability to make good movies, and I don’t need a bad sequel to one of his good films to prove it.

    • VindicaSean says:

      I just saw it yesterday and it was so, so aggressively stupid and dour (which is strange given how relatively light the first one was). Total hatchet job on the editing, too, which resulted in a movie that assumes a lot more history with the characters than is really warranted. Characters whose deaths are treated like Big Important Moments have no weight whatsoever in execution, practically being introduced just to die dramatically. You’re right to avoid it.

      • That sounds like a lot of the problems I’ve had with Emmerich’s more recent movies. It feels like the quality of his movies is directly related to how serious the movies takes itself and how pleased the movie is in watching random characters die. You had the pretty good movies like Independence Day and Stargate that were fairly light, then you had the more disaster revelling movies like The Day After Tomorrow that were more decent but not great, and then there were the super serious movies with a mean streak like 2012 that were just crap. It’s been a distinct downward slide.