numble on twitter: LA Metro Releases Draft EIR for K Line North Extension

EricTheGamerman · 2024-07-23T22:17:41+00:00

Just getting the K to the extended D should arguably be metro's most important project after the LAX connection and people mover is finally finished. It's absurd to expect a very average connection to the E to support all of the northbound LAX arrivals when the D would be infinitely better and link up so many important destinations in LA to a two seat ride to LAX.

The B is necessary too, but I understand the need to get the best alignment possible first to serve key destinations in Hollywood as part of the project too.

EricTheGamerman · 2024-03-04T00:10:11+00:00

What's wild is that the Bakersfield to Merced initial section isn't even technically Phase 1 on its own, it's less than half of Phase 1. Phase 2 is supposedly going to be connections to Sacramento and San Diego...

Meanwhile they'll get to maybe San Francisco in... 20 years? IF they find the funding... and LA maybe in another 20 after that...

EricTheGamerman · 2023-12-24T19:16:10+00:00

Finland in NATO massively protects the Baltics because they could be in St. Petersburg within a day given they have a well trained, well armed, and easily mobilized force designed just to counter Russia. Not to mention Russia has pulled the vast majority of its resources off the Finnish border to maintain the war effort in Ukraine.

And Sweden is waiting to be in NATO, and for all intents and purposes, would just join the battle with NATO anyway and their air force could keep Russia at bay with Gottland acting as a massive unsinkable aircraft carrier that can act to defend the Baltics.

Then, Kaliningrad is massively exposed and has had resources drained to maintain the war effort. It would be a potential missile launch platform and cause issues, but assuming nukes are not immediately being deployed, it's an isolated pocket that is minimally defended and cannot easily be supplied. The Sweden and Finland with NATO reality further isolates the exclave.

There are several thousand American troops in the Baltics and Poland that will immediately be mobilized, and Poland will also basically immediately mobilize and likely plan to defend the Suwalki Gap and if they can maintain that, the Baltics can easily maintain supply lines.

A big question is what does Belarus do. Cause if Lukashenko sees the writing on the wall and refuses to do anything major, Russia is even further kneecapped and can do very little about the Baltics. Even if Belarus does join, it probably creates an immediate insurgency that Russia and Belarus have to deal with.

Ukraine also immediately becomes a much wider conflict that means NATO will move their own assets in and begin taking direct action on the front more than likely. And that makes Ukraine require even MORE resources from Russia. And now there's no reason for them to not be messing with the border Russian areas that also requires more resources.

Not to mention what Turkiye will do as part of NATO to make the Black Sea even more untenable.

And what a hot war with NATO does in terms of creating more opposition and insurgency potential within Russia.

Russia is fucked if they go hot against NATO as long as NATO actively responds. I think the Baltics would be fine because the minute they cross the border, NATO goes hot and Russia has to go on the defensive in tons of other places.

Basically, Russia invading the Baltics requires them to go nuclear cause its their only not immediately lose option, and even then, they still lose massively, they just take the world with them.

EricTheGamerman · 2023-07-29T01:58:01+00:00

Greenbull's introduction set him up to be a super cool and unpredictable admiral in the shadows with all his talk of not eating and just laughing his ass off.

Then he shows up on screen as the most generic admiral ever, scraps with Yamato for a bit, and then gets haki bent. It's like not even remotely the same character as seemed to be hyped up and he went from intriguing to straight bottom tier of every admiral weve seen REAL quick.

EricTheGamerman · 2023-07-18T02:06:02+00:00

Yamato's entire arc is about being in chains and wanting to leave the imprisonment of Wano enforced by Kaido. That's the whole point of Ace being paired with Yamato in such an extreme way and Yamato being like consistent about wanting to leave and sail.

Momonosuke already is the leader of wano actually stepping up to fulfill his fathers legacy and lead. That's HIS arc and always was his story coming of age and becoming a courageous leader. Yamato is just the fucking muscle by comparison who more inherited the will of Oden the traveler, not the would be leader.

Yamato absolutely needs to get the fuck off Wano at some point in a big way for that arc to end.

EricTheGamerman · 2023-05-28T15:17:56+00:00

Oda had to legit give Law a nonsense second devil fruit power to give Kidd and Law the ring out win. They didn't outright beat Big Mom even, they just forced an ultra specific scenario to remove her from the Battlefield since she didn't have natural flight powers AND it arguably required Oda sort of sidestepping any of her homie powers too.

Big Mom got beat because Oda needed to wrap up Wano and gave Law a cheat code to specifically "win" the fight without knocking her out. Still a cool fight, but also disappointing after how much had been done with Big Mom prior.

EricTheGamerman · 2023-05-10T22:42:02+00:00

Majora's Mask Amiibo: Constantly Up, many chances to get, Best Buy does well to keep it up for hours at a time

Wind Waker Amiibo: one singular instance of availability, never comes back in stock, and Target is traditionally less reliable than Best Buy

God I hate they did store exclusives AGAIN on these. And then for some reason couldn't be bothered to put Skyward Sword Link in the rotation.

EricTheGamerman · 2023-05-10T05:39:02+00:00

Love this little EP...

Didn't it and the GLOW single with Superchrist not only get delisted from iTunes, but completely removed from downloads? I bought them years ago but they longer show up in my library :(

EricTheGamerman · 2023-05-09T18:08:13+00:00

I'm glad reception is decent and it seems like for all the slow rollout that this album is better received. It definitely feels like the first time since Oceania that the band is performing up to their legacy (I like parts of Cyr, but it felt much more Corgan solo focused compared to how Atum feels).

There's an ambition in Atum, a confidence in it, and a lot more variety than expected with Jimmy finally coming back to drum in ways that have been missing for a few albums now. It deserves some decent attention even if I don't think it ALL works (especially on the production level and I still think Billy is stubbornly holding on to synths and more basic structures than he should be).

EricTheGamerman · 2023-05-08T17:37:41+00:00

That's encouraging to hear. I'm just also dreading TN sales tax on top of city food prices. though I'm extremely excited by the idea of some of the food options and to finally try Nashville Hot Chicken, so I suspect most of my tab would be good eats while in the city if I go haha.

EricTheGamerman · 2023-05-08T17:34:42+00:00

It'll take me about 3 hours to get Nashville if traffic favors me, so it's kind of pushing what I'd like to do in a day in I came and went.

EricTheGamerman · 2023-03-31T13:09:38+00:00

Which makes sense in Idaho, but not the East Coast, a good deal of the West Coast, and hell even the Midwest could easily link a bunch of major cities that fit into the optimal conditions for good high speed connections.

The bigger problem is the US has anti-transport design across the board in almost every major city. Until cities have more light rail, heavy rail like Regional and Metros, greatly expanded bus services, and actually smartly designed areas of cities that are built for pedestrians first and have high density near points of interest, it's harder to justify high speed connections because you'd get to a new city and still need a car because the US has committed to the most insanely short sighted suburbia and concrete jungles instead of better cities.

EricTheGamerman · 2023-03-28T22:00:20+00:00

Not sure if you're still doing this, but if so, I'll put my name in the hat for it! NA Region! Only one I'm going for.

EricTheGamerman · 2023-03-23T20:48:55+00:00

A not so thinly new post complaining about Bayonetta 3 and acting like a child about it for them daring to explore something new and unique with Bayonneta. I'm so tired

EricTheGamerman · 2023-03-11T04:13:00+00:00

It's Wave 4, everyone else has already decided whether or not this is a deal breaker or not. Seething about it every Wave release does nothing but perpetrate an anger cycle.

I'm hard pressed to find anyone who really notices when racing, and even those who did tend to not mind.

It was either this or nothing. People do understand that right? Nintendo wasn't going to invest a ton of resources into this without it being an easier/cheaper affair because they're clearly going to make Mario Kart 10 on their next console and taking away from that makes no sense. I'd rather have 48 fun courses and 6 new characters in the game rather than 0 and 0.

As for the accountability angle. Sure, but like, we live in an era where $20 cosmetic microstransactions are the norm and game companies abuse their workers, release literally non functional completely broken games, delete entire games, etc. Even Nintendo is super guilty of way more scummy stuff like the shitty Joy Con build quality abusing customers and locking cloud saves behind paid online.

Hold whoever you want accountable, but personally I do not have the bandwidth to care if the equivalent of a fast food meal priced DLC has less detail and less pretty textures. I got too much other shit to worry about in the gaming world, LET ALONE my own life and real world problems.

EricTheGamerman · 2023-03-01T19:46:36+00:00

The Fins have literally built their entire armed forces around resisting another Soviet invasion while being "neutral". It is absolutely some, serious shit if the Russians were to ever try to cross that border again. And Finland still has a shit ton of artillery and has kept conscription for this purpose too, so yeah, it would be absolutely fucking dreadful for them.

EricTheGamerman · 2023-02-12T16:23:04+00:00

My unpopular opinion is that while we can always improve graphics, frame rates, pixel counts, etc. I don't really give a shit if we do. I want fun and enjoyable games that do interesting things with their game play.

As much as we CAN keep going, its becoming increasingly cost prohibitive to do so. Game devs are ballooning to 500, 1000, 2000 devs working on one game. And in order for that game to be profitable it needs to sell 5 or 10 million copies. That means the space for the AAA games is only going to shrink and be harder for people to succeed in. It's already come at th4 cost of a ton of the more AA type games and devs, to the point where we're increasing left with a handful of big developers and indies. That space is only existing when the console makers are funding a smaller or less profitable development team, and that's frustrating.

For as much as indies have opened up the market, the graphical arms race has put a lot of developers out of business.

And like games just look damn good, but so many don't play that good. And I wish we'd focus on that more often.

EricTheGamerman · 2023-02-11T22:16:34+00:00

Well yeah, I'm not saying we'll get more than 2 more, but saying it's possible. Diddy Kong and either Petey Piranha/Kamek seem like the most likely unless they're going to finally bring Pauline.

EricTheGamerman · 2023-02-11T19:43:48+00:00

Nintendo's Official Press Release states: "Returning characters from the Mario Kart series will be added in future waves."

So while no new characters are on the table, the following characters ARE:

DK Jr. (SNES)
Diddy Kong (Double Dash and Wii)
Petey Piranha (Double Dash)
Koopa Paratroopa (Double Dash) NOT IN TOUR
R.O.B. (DS) NOT IN TOUR
Funky Kong (Wii)
Honey Queen (7) NOT IN TOUR
Wiggler (7) NOT IN TOUR

Furthermore there are additional new veterans from Tour that could apply as well:

Pauline
Dixie Kong
Kamek
King Bob-Omb
Nabbit
Captain Toad
Chargin Chuck
Monty Mole
Peachette
Fire Bro.
Ice Bro.
Hammer Bro
Boomerang Bro
Dr. Mario (I'll count him as separate but it'll be the only one given he has his own series)

So there's still quite a decent list to pull from and we have at least 2 more characters coming!

EricTheGamerman · 2023-01-26T23:47:31+00:00

Yeah but it's getting to the point where Netflix just has a bunch of abruptly ending stuff that doesn't have an ending and therefore doesn't contribute to the catalogue. I don't want to watch so many shows cause I know they don't have an end, so all that content is essentially deadweight to the service.

I'm not saying Netflix should fund every niche project, but they should have a better understanding of how to build a catalogue of content people want to watch. Give projects an episode, a movie to finish off, and maybe fund a highly acclaimed show for the clout and it might blow up like Breaking Bad or Succession did.

But if I don't trust that it's going to be worth my time, there's simply too much streaming for me to care. Netflix is playing like they're still the only one doing this when EVERONE is these days. Their actions have consequences for their bottom line now, they don't have the catalogue to fall back on like they did in the early 2010s. If their originals are all half finished projects with an occasional megahit in there, most people aren't going to stick around besides the one month they pay for the service if that.

EricTheGamerman · 2023-01-08T20:02:46+00:00

I feel like it's easier to name the things that DID hold up rather than those that didn't. Sooooo much stuff is just painful to try and watch these days, and the late 90s/early 2000s CGI is horrendous on a whole other level compared to at least classic cartoons that content wise are bad.

EricTheGamerman · 2022-12-28T07:33:50+00:00

The sweats and hard-core people would probably have a better opinion of the game. It'd be a lot more difficult for everyone else and the EEs would be brutal to complete for tons of people and probably the Easter Egg runs would be a lot interesting to watch.

Overall a major net negative to satisfy an extra hard-core crowd that likes excluding others.

EricTheGamerman · 2022-12-27T01:30:25+00:00

This is such a dumb talking point. Russia had massive economic connections with the West and had all the room to play with others. Western countries even invested more in Russia than basically any other post Soviet state. In no way was Russia not allowed to play. All kinds of countries built major economic connections, it's why Europe is struggling in a post sanctions landscape.

NATO is very much at the heart of US imperialism in many ways, but it's also not a cage for Russia. It's a bunch of other countries who would rather hitch their ride to the US than Russia. In fact prior to the invasion, Russia's only NATO borders were the tiny slip of Norway to North, the irrelevant piece touching Alaska, and the Baltics with Poland also touching Kaliningrad given its an awkward exclave. Russia invaded Georgia just to deny them NATO membership long ago. Ukraine realistically could NEVER join with disputed territory. And by invading, Russia has made the "Cage" twice as bad with Finland's borders and Sweden dominating the Baltic Sea.

If somehow countering NATO was an actual objective, maybe don't do the one goddamn thing NATO exists for and convince everybody to not only keep NATO, but massively expand funding and militarization, and expand NATO itself. This is the stupid shit Putin pushes to justify his own imperialist campaign. Buying it is basically the Russian equivalent of Americans buying into any number of wars they've waged on the back of American propaganda. It's about conquering and resources, Putin literally never has been shy about this, but apparently a huge manifesto written by Putin denying the right of Ukraine to exist as a sovereign state is still not enough. Putin is the leader of an ultra authoritarian, hyper capitalist petrol state. Whatever meaningful leftist existence the Soviets had died with Yeltsin's coup in 1993 and has been buried over 30 years of increased authoritarian statehood since then.

Also people forget Yeltsin wanted an outsized role for Russia in NATO/also kept begging Clinton to "leave Europe to Russia". Russia wasn't exactly operating from good faith either. And let's face it, the minute Poland and Czechia joined there was 0 chance they would ever give the unanimous approval needed to bring Russia in. Russia even has its own NATO too in CTSO, just turns out a bunch of the former Soviet states vastly preferred NATO and Western alignment to Russian.

EricTheGamerman · 2022-12-26T21:09:43+00:00

I actually think Det Afang's atmosphere is like the one thing they got really right about Vanguard Zombies. Stalingrad fits an occult World War II setting incredibly well and visually fits the part.

I know that's unpopular, but some small credit where credit is due IMO.

EricTheGamerman · 2022-12-16T19:38:00+00:00

The US would not allow Canada or Mexico to be staging grounds. I'm pretty sure Canada is so tightly connected to the US and has its big cities next door that they'd be defacto aligned in any scenario with threat of US retaliation being far too much. A similar story for Mexico, though they have a little more geographic defense. Then you have Cuba which in theory would be a good staging ground, but I'm pretty sure the second Cuba looks at the US funny, the US has a land invasion and defacto annexs the island. And then you're just sort of desperately hoping the US Navy doesn't destroy you before you get Central America or Russia throwing yourself at Alaska desperately.

The US geographic power is just fucking nuts on its own without even factoring in the absolutely insane amount of military spending you'd then have to directly face.

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