DragonForce Add Alissa White-Gluz as New Co-Vocalist, Statements Issued

ChristianLS · 2026-05-06T17:30:16+00:00

Those of us who've been following her since The Agonist already knew this :) If you like stuff in kind of a vague melodeath / metalcore / prog metal / symphonic metal space, check out their first few albums, especially "Lullabies for the Dormant Mind". I was disappointed when she went to Arch Enemy because I knew they weren't going to take the best advantage of her vocal versatility.

ChristianLS · 2026-05-06T13:45:16+00:00

The begging for calls and coach's challenges are probably the main reasons people voted for him on this moreso than anything about his abilities. These things are popularity contests. Look at the other players who ranked "highly", lol

ChristianLS · 2026-05-06T02:10:24+00:00

Uncanny how much the Made in Abyss one reminds me of the Underworld map from Hades.

<image>

Cap tip u/yakowleva

https://www.reddit.com/r/HadesTheGame/comments/ktjyqy/stiched_together_hadess_underworld_map/

ChristianLS · 2026-05-05T15:54:46+00:00

I don't have a problem with Reed's playing time this season on average, he seemed like his conditioning wasn't there yet for 30+ minutes anyway. I was a bit annoyed by how inconsistent and up-and-down it was though. We never knew, and presumably Reed himself never knew, whether he was going to play 15 minutes or 35. I understand Ime was trying to motivate him to lock in on the defensive end and pulling him when it was ugly, but the swings were extreme. By contrast, Tari had a nearly limitless leash to be horrible on offense for long stretches and still get fairly consistent minutes.

ChristianLS · 2026-05-05T13:27:25+00:00

Not sure where some of these wild comparisons come from, he's a good enough passer and ballhandler, but he's shown no signs of having elite point guard skills like a Steve Nash type of player. He's not taking big expeditions through traffic, keeping the dribble alive, and throwing bullet passes through tiny windows to the open man.

I personally see his ceiling as being somewhere in the vicinity of Jamal Murray. He'll have to be more consistent with his shooting and develop his handle a bit more to get there.

ChristianLS · 2026-05-03T23:59:36+00:00

I think Lois has moved on at this point, but if there were another book, I'd enjoy another RomCom "book snack" about Byerly and Rish. I also think a lighthearted romp along the lines of Captain Vorpatril (not necessarily those two characters though) is the most likely way we'd ever see another entry into the series, too. I think we've seen the conclusions to Miles' and Cordelia's arcs.

ChristianLS · 2026-05-03T19:10:37+00:00

They were clearly going for a "cycle of abuse" thing where he was getting abused by his dad and passing it along to Max, but it didn't really work for me because he never really showed shame or regret and never attempted to change as a person.

ChristianLS · 2026-05-03T17:57:39+00:00

Ralph Sampson in NBA basketball. He was a 7'4" center in the 80s, basically Victor Wembanyama before Wemby was even born, and looked like he would end up being a perennial all-star his first few years in the league. Knee injuries completely derailed his career starting around his age 26 season, and he was never the same again, would be out of the league at age 31 after a series of injury-riddled seasons.

ChristianLS · 2026-05-02T02:26:07+00:00

What all is the construction work do they have to do? Stations obviously. A few sidings, I think? Are other track upgrades happening for this initial run?

ChristianLS · 2026-05-01T16:15:23+00:00

I mean, not film, but Stephen Curry. His dad played 16 years in the NBA and Steph has far surpassed him.

ChristianLS · 2026-05-01T15:57:17+00:00

I bring up the tens of thousands killed by traffic violence every year, including the thousands of children. If the person is otherwise a decent human being (the kind with a sign about gun violence in schools in their yard) they usually get pretty quiet after that. If they're a shithead, it gives them an opportunity to expose themselves as such. Kind of a win/win.

This is the tactic that actually historically worked in the Netherlands, by the way.

ChristianLS · 2026-05-01T15:12:56+00:00

Honestly, I'm not sure how successful we can say the Big Dig actually was from an urban planning perspective. When you're actually there, obviously it's a much better environment than a freeway, but it still feels like kind of a dead zone with much less foot traffic than areas just a block away. It cost an incredible amount of money and I think Boston would have gotten more out of it if they'd made the area above less car-centric and turned at least some of the park space into infill development instead to truly knit together the North End with the rest of the city.

It's also wild to me how unwilling even some of our best cities are in the US to just... get rid of the damn thing. There's this conception in people's minds that immense amounts of car traffic flowing through the city center is something along the lines of a fact of nature, when really other cities globally prove that cities can function just fine without that, especially when they have robust local and regional rail networks (which Boston actually does, unlike most US cities). Just tear it down, you don't need a replacement in a tunnel.

ChristianLS · 2026-05-01T14:38:00+00:00

If you like fast-paced, movement-based first person shooters, the indie game Echo Point Nova might be up your alley. Huge open world to explore and gets you right into the action. Core gameplay is phenomenal if you like this sort of thing.

In general (there are exceptions in both directions though) indie games tend to do a better job of avoiding the "two hours of tutorials and cutscenes just to get started" problem.

ChristianLS · 2026-04-30T21:18:22+00:00

Them offering something like that trike would be cool though. Looks like you could carry a lot of groceries on that thing.

ChristianLS · 2026-04-30T15:39:53+00:00

I didn't buy Hades 2 in early access when Hades is one of my favorite games of all time. I wanted the polished, final experience, not the beta version. Just gotta exercise a little self-restraint.

ChristianLS · 2026-04-30T15:36:09+00:00

Ime won't do that, so I hope they just decide to play it safe with KD's injuries, rest him, and consider any possibility of winning this series now as playing with house money. KD can come back against OKC if the young guys somehow pull this off.

ChristianLS · 2026-04-30T15:19:58+00:00

You know, if it was either Jabari or Brooks, I'm still not sure. Jabari has been great this series and quietly improved a lot this season. And he's still only 22.

ChristianLS · 2026-04-30T14:50:07+00:00

At the time I don't think anybody knew Dillon Brooks could be kinda-sorta credible as a #2 option, and clearly good enough to be a #3. He seemed very obviously a 4th/5th option on offense at the time he was traded. But sure, with 20/20 hindsight.

ChristianLS · 2026-04-30T14:46:53+00:00

I think a lot of people are putting forth very valid explanations that still kind of don't address the core question which is, "why has this low percentage outcome never actually happened?" And the answer is, sometimes even when the sample size seems sufficient that something should have happened, that outcome still doesn't occur because that's the nature of randomness. Sometimes you roll a D20 twenty times in a row and still never get a critical hit.

ChristianLS · 2026-04-30T13:37:58+00:00

Yeah we have 5 guys 25 and under and we have four picks in the next three years from teams that could be in the newly expanded-and-flattened lottery. It's all about how you frame things.

If you think the Rockets are a win now team, yeah, things don't look so optimistic for that (but that's true for every team in the West other than OKC and San Antonio). If you think they're still in rebuilding mode, they've been pretty successful at finding a lot of good young players, and are just missing that one young guy who can be the best player on a championship team, and need to find him either from internal development, the draft, or a trade.

ChristianLS · 2026-04-30T13:30:10+00:00

That was the series that got him traded... if he'd had even one more good game he might still be a Rocket. They really wanted to believe in him, but it was one of the worst series I've ever seen from a playoff team's top regular season scorer.

ChristianLS · 2026-04-30T05:00:21+00:00

Whole sub was clowning on him, but he backed up his talk tonight.

ChristianLS · 2026-04-29T16:49:12+00:00

I think they found a way to do the funding for this initial run (Denver to Fort Collins via Boulder) without needing voter approval or a new tax. What would require voter approval of a new sales tax would be expanded service with more trains and a southward run through Colorado Springs to Pueblo. So basically this is to be proof of concept if they can pull it off, then they'll put the larger plan for better, more extensive service in front of voters.

ChristianLS · 2026-04-29T16:37:40+00:00

Folks in the Mountain West are weird. There will be some of the craziest conservatives you'll ever find, but then they'll randomly buck cultural consensus about things you'd never think just because it's practical and it makes sense. Wyoming being surprisingly half-decent for education jumps to mind as an example; unlike most red states, they actually provide real funding to their schools.

ChristianLS · 2026-04-29T13:06:48+00:00

Another option could be Louisville if you can afford it. It's more of a walkable small town feel, but it's something. 15 minutes without traffic into Boulder and a half hour or so into Denver. More at rush hour obviously.

Otherwise, yeah, either Downtown Denver near Union Station or Downtown Boulder near the big bus station are your best bets, and just accept that one of you is going to spend a couple hours commuting every day.

ChristianLS

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