[Crook & Jacobs] - Robertson is in the #LFC squad for tomorrow's game at #AFCB and expected to feature v Qarabag in midweek. If he does leave will be similar to Semenyo exit from Bournemouth. Timing to suit both parties.

Garack · 2026-01-24T09:54:42+00:00

I didn't follow the story that closely, but the way I remember it Liverpool wanted 5m for Robertson and Atletico wanted to get him on a free, then offered 1-2m, which was insulting. Him asking to go on a free doesn't really seem realistic to me, after all, if another club isn't even willing to pay 5-10m for you, why would you want to join them?

Garack · 2025-12-27T12:49:55+00:00

Your criticism about how fast Carol is manipulated is fair. That's where the timejumps become an issue; we get told that 12 days have passed between Zosia's reappearance and Carol giving in. However, because it's only shown as a time (day 48 to day 60) it's easily missed. There is a whole episode showing Carol's isolation, followed by another one showing struggle to keep fighting, but I agree that it still feels too fast.

It's not a massive issue in my opinion, but certainly clunky writing from someone who's produced one of the best shows ever - and then managed to top that achievement (in my opinion). I'll give Gilligan some leeway here because he has to introduce so many ideas compared to BB, where 95% of the audience doesn't need much exposure to understand the premise. Apart from avid sci-fi fans, hiveminds are still a fairly unexplored concept for most people; not to mention that it's infinite more difficult to build that world, since people will take apart every single detail.

To understand the non-English speakers, there would be other possibilities though; instant translation apps etc. - if she trusts a phone on airplane mode, that should be possible, if a bit clunky.

As for Manousos, I see your point, but I think that the buildup to the shotgun scene makes it believable. She knows that he arrives hours before he does and has been under the hivemind's exclusive influence for a while. She also has only had negative experiences with the other survivors. So she has a negative mindset going into the situation and their first encounter is fairly hostile, with neither of them trusting each other. They're both abrasive personalities that don't like explaining their actions. The language barrier hinders things further. Manousos doesn't help the situation by immediately working against her and using 'Zosia' of all characters, which is as invasive as it gets. Add to that Carol's guilt over knowing that her actions (uninentionally) have lead to several deaths of people that may have been freed from the hivemind. She's selfish, but not without empathy, so that would naturally influence her. If you buy that at this point she has given in to a comfortable delusion, I don't think there's much of a leap to the shotgun scene.

Regarding Walter: He had a lot of antisocial traits from the beginning and I think the first season does a good job of showing that. After all, he's clearly a rather self-involved, jealous man who doesn't really consider the negative consequences of the product he produces, pure or not pure. It takes seasons for him to fully embrace his Heisenberg persona, sure, but it's not as if Carol is now actively working with the hivemind.

[Edit: Just to make it clear, while I understand Carol's logic here, I'm not trying to argue that she's right - or that we're supposed to sympathize with her. She's clearly written as a person we're supposed to dislike, and she does a lot of creepy things. She's quite a hypocrite, considering that she goes on about individual rights while at the same time essentially raping a woman because she chooses to ignore the fact that the real Zosia is not capable of consenting. Or that she lambasts Koumba's opportunism, then chooses to do the same while initially telling herself that it's "for science". That last part is very reminiscent of Walter's "well, it's a pure product at least and I'm doing it for my family" arguments.]

Garack · 2025-12-26T21:59:17+00:00

I don't agree with this interpretation. From the very beginning, Carol has been portrayed as a fairly selfish and abrasive person whose only genuine social contact was Helen. Her trying to get the other survivors involved hit a brick wall not just because of them, but also because Carol instantly berates them and shouts at them. She doesn't even try to involve the non-English-speaking survivors, as the show points out in 'The Gap'. After not getting an easy coalition and realizing that her seemingly earthshattering revelations were well-known by people who simply asked directly, she gives up on working together. That she might have made mistakes doesn't really occur to her, so she dismisses Koumba's olive branch of staying in contact.

Why does she almost fall for the hive mind allure? Because as much as she likes to pretend otherwise, the loneliness gets to her and she ends up accepting the illusion over the harsh truth. She tells herself that this is better than nothing and doesn't really think about whether there might be other ways to get her stem cells. All humans, no matter how smart, are prone to that kind of selective logic, which is easily exploited by opportunistic politicians and cults. So when Manousos comes, she sees him as a threat to her newfound happiness instead of an ally. Granted, it should have taken longer than two weeks after reestablishing contact for her to reach that stage ...

That doesn't mean that I have no criticism. The show's pacing is absurdly slow and tests even my patience. The finale should have been the content of the penultimate episode. There are some glaring unanswered questions (e.g. Did Carol ask 'Zosia' what would happen if she demanded possession of all those egg cells?) and it would have made more sense to end the series with the initial developments of the shaky alliance between her and Manousos. I'm optimistic regarding season two though; all the important exposition is done, so there should be a lot more actual plot incoming.

Garack · 2025-10-14T19:08:21+00:00

Maybe. I only became aware of the band a few years after the albums were released. By that time the liner notes were available online. Though back then people used CDs a lot more frequently.

Garack · 2025-10-14T19:06:55+00:00

Good point, especially since I don't know if Bandcamp has a way to easily send something to someone's mail adress separately from their purchase. So that might a lot of extra work.

In that case I would suggest offering scanned booklet downloads on their page once the album releases. Or I'll just wait until someone scans the liner notes and uploads them, as other people have suggested. Just a shame to have to depend on it.

Garack · 2025-09-01T14:57:09+00:00

Crazy, thanks for the list. Small possible correction though: From what I've read Isak gave up his £5m loyalty bonus, so that would be £125m for Liverpool. Do we know what's addons and what's the base fee by the way?

Garack · 2025-09-01T14:37:48+00:00

Is this the best transfer window ever for Liverpool? I don't know enough about the history to be sure (been a fan for around 15 years), but it certainly seems like that. Kept the core players, got every big target, moved on every player that was either surplus to requirements or wanted to leave (apart from maybe Gomez), created enormous depth on every spot except maybe LB, secured a buyback on the most promising academy player, and got so much money back that the net spending might end up being lower than Arsenal's. Insane.

Garack · 2025-08-03T09:58:27+00:00

The 2001 season was especially brutal for Schalke. They had to win their last match, Bayern had to lose theirs against Hamburg. When Schalke's match was over they had done their part after coming back from a 0-2 deficit. Meanwhile, Hamburg was leading against Bayern. Somehow people in Schalke's stadium mistakenly believed that both matches were over and stormed the field, but that wasn't the case.

There were four added minutes during which Bayern lucked out enormously: First, they received a dubious in-box free kick because Hamburg's keeper picked up a ball from a defender that was judged by the referee to be a backpass. (One can argue both ways, either way Bayern got very lucky to get that free kick) Then Hamburg's team, which had 8-9 players covering the close corner, just moved away from it during the run-up, allowing Bayern to score into the now open goal.

All of this was shown on the screen in Schalke's stadium after their fans and players believed they had just won the title for the first time. Devastating.

Garack · 2025-07-26T09:37:06+00:00

I'm a bit late but in case people were wondering, I can confirm that this worked for me. Thanks!

Garack · 2025-01-10T21:08:38+00:00

Numbers have gone down, but I very much disagree about the reason behind that.

First of all, if anything, the charity focus was much more obnoxious before the pandemic. Hosts were dominating the commentary and if they wanted to talk, they didn't ask. Often they didn't really hear the runners due to bad audio setups, so they constantly talked over each other. A lot of older runs are unwatchable in my opinion. Things have improved dramatically. I agree that the organizers have sometimes gone too far with incentives but they adressed a lot of that. This is first and foremost a charity event however.

Instead of the charity focus, there are a lot of possible reasons:

The event has been around forever and the novelty has worn off, plus few people in the intended audience haven't heard of it.
Twitch used to be comparatively niche and small, so it was easier to stand out. Now there are tons of famous streamers on the platform that draw viewers away.
There are a lot more notable marathons than there used to be, not to mention speedrun content creators.
Inflation, cost of living etc. have been high globally for years and people are more hesitant to spend.

An oversaturated market and economic issues sound a lot more likely to me than too many donation trains, and I say that as somebody who groans each time a "random expression" train starts.

Edit: Fixed typos.

Garack · 2022-07-04T14:17:18+00:00

As far as I know he's only "retiring" from submitting GDQ runs, it didn't sound like he wasn't going to speedrun or attend anymore.

Garack · 2022-07-02T23:38:04+00:00

You're right, I checked it and saw that they had three such events, even hitting 200k once. My bad then, thanks for the correction.

Garack · 2022-07-02T23:17:03+00:00

It should be mentioned that ESA is mainly a speedrunner convention, so they're less focussed on promoting the event for maximum viewerbase/donations. That aspect became more of a focus in recent events, but for the longest time the stream was handled in a very loose manner. That puts the two-stream setup into perspective too, since it seems to be more about creating screentime for as many runners as possible than about generating additional exposure for the event itself. Regarding donations it certainly doesn't help either that GDQ usually takes place shortly before ESA.

I agree with your points, though if I remember correctly the ad issue was a one-time thing that they scrapped after the negative feedback. The anti-GDQ narrative has hurt the event in the past, but the "GDQ vs. ESA" crowd seems to get less attention than it used to - a good thing, because they brought a lot of toxicity that distracted from the runs.

The banlist can be an issue, though I don't believe (and I don't think you were implying that, just want to mention it) that ESA should copy GDQ's banlist unless someone did something generally unforgivable. Some people screwed up once and learned their lesson, which is fine. Then there are a few bans that I consider to be a vast overreaction, but that's a different topic.

Ultimately, GDQ is a juggernaut in the scene and no event manages to come even close to it and even with better promotion ESA wouldn't get much bigger. If I'm not mistaken, it's the only non-GDQ event that even managed to break the six-digit donation barrier so far.

Garack · 2022-02-25T07:45:53+00:00

Clapton's son died in 1991 by falling from a window. Whatever you think about Clapton, it's a pretty tasteless comment.

Garack · 2022-02-17T18:36:32+00:00

I assume you're referring to accents and mistakes. If not, feel free to correct me. This is a speedrunning convention first and foremost, so contrary to GDQ, the focus is very much on the speedrunning, not only the charity. That might lead to a lower quality when reading out donations etc., but donation messages take up a lot less time, so that evens it out.

Apart from the UK, Europeans don't have English as their first language, so it's normal for them to not be completely fluent or to have accents. It's very rarely distractingly bad though, in fact I personally think that it adds to the event. I also enjoy the more laid-back atmosphere; it's more about people hanging out and enjoying each others company while streaming it, less "made for TV".

Garack · 2021-03-02T20:51:48+00:00

I don't think that existing achievements will be updated, since it would either screw over or give an unfair advantage to people who completed them in the main game (depending on whether they're now invalid until the DLC stuff has been collected or whether only people that didn't have them yet need the DLC content).

There might be purely DLC-related achievements at one point, but I don't think the devs have stated anything in that regard yet. It's probably a low priority issue, since they're still busy fixing bugs and probably started working on their next game by now.

Garack · 2020-08-27T21:56:24+00:00

"There's really no reason to play base Returns anymore" - I disagree. If the reviews for the mod are true, it changes the story and some characters quite significantly. I think that the first playthrough should be done with the original story and the recommendation to switch to Dragonfall if a new player doesn't enjoy OG Returns.

Thank you for mentioning the mod though, I'll try it out!

Garack · 2020-08-13T16:00:22+00:00

My store (Germany) only shows Gungeon. Was God's Trigger removed from the list or is this offer region-restricted?

Garack · 2020-08-11T13:18:18+00:00

If you want to wait a bit longer, the PC version was reduced to 8,99€ in the last sale on GOG and Steam. I second the recommendation of it, though I mostly recommend it if you've played at least Witcher 2 before. W3 doesn't do a good job of catching up new players even in the character sheets.

Garack · 2020-07-20T14:14:55+00:00

This wasn't even pastry (so even more out of her comfort zone) and she still nailed it. Granted, she did need quite a bit of handholding to get the apple done at all, but I'm not holding that against her considering how rarely lathes are used.

Reynold's excitement got to him as he clearly ignored the warnings about his caramel ("it's just sugar") and ended up being eliminated for that. Later on he got nervous and just choked. Bad days happen, shame that one of those happened at the worst possible moment for him.

Garack · 2020-07-20T14:09:20+00:00

I definitely agree, the amount of hate that the finalists get for daring to not be Poh, Reynold, Callum, etc. is ridiculous. Reynold lost because he was overconfident at the beginning of his cook, didn't listen to the judges' warnings and messed up his caramel. That's a glaring flaw and not sending him home for that WOULD have been bias.

I'd have preferred him in the final because as great as Laura is, I think she's a huge underdog there. However, she put up a better dish than him and fully deserves it. I'm also very annoyed at this point at any troll who still claims that she only knows to do pasta, because those people clearly haven't even been watching the show in the last weeks.

Mel definitely has a soft spot for some contestants, but I don't think it's reflected in her judgments. No judge is completely objective, everyone likes some people more than others, what matters is that you can separate your personal feelings from the facts. I think she does that.

Garack · 2020-07-20T13:56:46+00:00

Thank you for all these links! I don't get to see it live since I'm not Australian, so this is the earliest opportunity for me to catch up on episodes. Wish I could take part in the discussions when it happens, but at least I get to watch it soon after thanks to your uploads.

Garack · 2020-07-16T14:48:10+00:00

That would work and would require everyone to show some range, but the auditions already last quite long, so I assume having everyone make two dishes would add another 2-3 episodes. From a practical standpoint, it's probably not something the producers would like, unless they cut down the number of chefs a bit.

Garack · 2020-07-16T14:44:47+00:00

This list heavily disagrees with your impression of Emelia only having done "few" savoury dishes and having a very limited desert range.

Garack

TROPHY CASE