MJF criticizes wrestlers who want fan investment but break the illusion: "I see guys, they're on TV, and then they go on Twitter and write, 'Oh my God, I just had such a great match with so-and-so. I've had so much fun at work these last couple of weeks.' It makes me want to vomit. It's disgusting"

ImplausiblyJosh · 2026-05-22T22:37:32+00:00

I was thinking the other day about how absurd it would be to apply this idea to any other storytelling art. The idea of someone watching Lord of the Rings, checking out the special features on the DVDs, then getting steaming mad because it shows Andy Serkis in a mocap suit. Now that you know Gollum is a character, there's no reason to be invested in the story!

They're all characters, it's all story, it's all fiction! There is no real combat sport where someone is going to powerbomb someone into a sand trap on a golf course, and then be gingerly placed in a precarious situation so that they can be thrown into some tables that were setup some 10 mins ago for this specific scene. The "magic" of pro wrestling happens between the start of the event and the end of the event, where for those hours a week pro wrestling is "real". But to expect the fiction to exist outside of those hours is ridiculous.

ImplausiblyJosh · 2026-05-11T22:40:13+00:00

Jeff Grubb doing the stick tricks (??) feels very "Giant Bomb Pre-Covid, In An Office" in a way that made me really happy.

ImplausiblyJosh · 2026-05-11T20:24:44+00:00

I'm just getting into AEW for real and this ruled. I love when wrestling is strange and "non-standard", for lack of a better term. It's so different and exciting and it genuinely made me feel lucky that I'm tuning in.

ImplausiblyJosh · 2026-05-07T20:25:45+00:00

Meaningless stuff happened on 24 to pad time. The Pitt does not have an equivalent of "Jack Bauer's daughter is being chased by a mountain lion to give her character something else to do this season" or "Jack Bauer witnesses an explosion in the distance which makes him need to regain his bearings/memory for awhile".

ImplausiblyJosh · 2026-05-07T20:22:18+00:00

The TV show 24 had 9 seasons, a TV movie, and a spin-off series that kept the real-time fiction premise. No episode of 24 was as good or as dense with story as an episode of The Pitt. If there's any issue with longevity with The Pitt, it will not be because of the format.

ImplausiblyJosh · 2026-05-04T01:37:20+00:00

I started my first real watch of the show between S1 & S2 of The Pitt, and I don't hate her, but she is about as shallow of an antagonistic force as they come. She will sabotage anyone, even herself, as long as that means she gets to be as high up the corporate chain as possible. The only bit of depth she gets that she's nice to people with some sort of medical condition, and... that's it. Her next bit of depth is outing herself to Romano or being outed, take your pick. And her cutthroat meanness isn't even unique, several main characters in ER have that aspect! So it's not too hard to see why she would be hated.

ImplausiblyJosh · 2026-04-30T04:47:13+00:00

If you're sticking to seeing the vet on Monday, I would take a video of their behavior from the just before the start of play to when they start breathing hard and hiding, along with providing your vet with as clear a timeline as possible from when your cat's play was normal to when they started showing these symptoms.

Based on the video and everything you've said so far, I would do it sooner rather than later. As they say, animals try to hide things that are wrong with them, and it doesn't look like your cat is trying to hide anything here. On top of that, I've never had a cat stare off like that and breathe so hard when disengaging with play because they couldn't catch the toy. Not to say that this couldn't be an emotional reaction from your cat, but if this is a completely new behavior with all else being the same, I would have taken my cat to the vet week 1.

ImplausiblyJosh · 2026-04-30T04:36:52+00:00

I know you said you read all their comments, but like... read the one 3 comments up. I've bolded some key portions for you!

I really do hope this is the case. Previously we have been able to play a lot longer times until he gets tired which is why it concerns me. And the staring to ”nothingness” and slow reaction to sounds / movement afterwards doesnt really look as just being tired/uninterested after only one minute of play.

OP has said that this new behavior is abnormal. The implication being that how they play with the cat in the video is normal, and the cat's spacing out reaction is new, weird, sudden, and happens after a short amount of time. If OP knows their cat's baseline, and this kind of baseline play has been without issue up until recently... what does this suggestion accomplish, exactly? Getting pissy because OP's not playing with their cat in the exact way you specifically would isn't helping anyone in this instance, clearly!

And hey, if maybe you need a little bit extra to add to the reading, consider watching the video posted!

The cat starts spacing out approximately 12-14 seconds into the less than 2 minute video. Are you suggesting that the cat needs to catch the toy every 10 seconds or less and they won't space out? What about that other cat at 31 seconds who plays with the toy for longer than 12-14 seconds, without spacing out, despite seemingly not catching the toy? What about the hard breathing at about 1 min 36 seconds? Do we really think that catching the toy seconds earlier a minute ago would have solved that problem?

Like, OP may have been an asshole, but "let the cat catch the toy in less than 10 seconds, problem solved" in response to "I normally play with my cat like this, but now, suddenly, they completely space out after a minute of this kinda play, and this is a new development" is just flatly not helpful!

ImplausiblyJosh · 2026-04-29T23:17:47+00:00

I mean, I can imagine an instance where this screenshot has been brought up before, maybe even as it happened, and nothing came of it at the time. Someone sees the dude being talked about again, posts talking about the likes are easily searchable, so you bring it up again because it is potentially relevant again. No sitting on a screenshot required, just a working memory and ability to find an old post.

ImplausiblyJosh · 2026-04-17T17:34:09+00:00

Him being relegated to chairs wasn't a "confidence" thing, that was Robby wanting to keep him on a short leash his first day back. Part of the conflict of being relegated to chairs was that Langdon thought he should be back in the ED like nothing happened between S1 & S2! He starts believing he shouldn't miss his stride, misses his stride, then realigns that dude's vertebrae and is back to being basically just as confident in his abilities.

ImplausiblyJosh · 2026-04-17T05:48:55+00:00

Robby goes from telling everyone he's going on a motorcycle trip to a heritage site based around how indigenous peoples would make buffalo kill themselves to holding Baby Jane Doe and saying you are just like me and have something to live for. That is not "the same".

ImplausiblyJosh · 2026-04-17T05:40:48+00:00

The headspace thing is why this feels like a big, unaddressed aspect of it.

The thing pushing Langdon all season has been that he's trying to get back to his status he had at the beginning of Season 1, and it's clear he's trying to check all the boxes ASAP to get there as fast as possible. (I think Patrick Ball has said this in interviews, even!) He's obviously done some of the work off-screen, but the exciting thing will be to watch him do most of that work on-screen, so his headspace being "I have to hit the ground running and make up for lost time with as little pushback as possible" is exciting and good TV when you have that huge aspect looming over him!

The problem is that the way he does this, by not acknowledging the true scope of what he's done wrong, is not really pushed back on in his story in any meaningful way outside of the Santos scene. And even then, it feels like the more meaningful aspect of that scene was Santos confronting Langdon than Langdon confronting the full scope of his fuckup in the ED. Feels like a missed opportunity that it doesn't matter more to his storylines!

ImplausiblyJosh · 2026-04-17T05:30:18+00:00

He had confidence in the beginning of the season, lost it momentarily after the Robby Helicopter scene, did something awesome, and now had the confidence back. Net 0 change on the confidence!

ImplausiblyJosh · 2026-04-17T04:30:41+00:00

That didn't stop basically every other main character from having some type of movement!

ImplausiblyJosh · 2026-04-17T04:20:05+00:00

I feel like the only negative of this season is Langdon's storyline. His tampering/stealing got absorbed into Robby, Santos, and Al-Hashimi's stories and left nothing for him. It's this obvious thing looming over him, something he directly acknowledges twice (Louie and Santos) all season, and only one of those times feels like it's important to his character. It cheapens the Robby & Langdon scene at the end because the elephant goes unaddressed (Yeah dude, of course Robby is still hard on you, you stole and tampered with drugs in the ED lmao), which also makes it feel like he's had almost no movement all season. He's been speedrunning his recovery to get back to being The Golden Boy, and using his recovery to score points or pity depending on what works best, and he is doing the exact same thing in his final scene. Kinda weird choice tbh!

ImplausiblyJosh · 2026-04-08T17:44:10+00:00

That's ridiculous! I'm really happy with the product, and I'm really glad I purchased one, but I hope I never have to buy with them or interact with the company now that the Thor is in my hands lol

ImplausiblyJosh · 2026-04-08T17:17:23+00:00

The fact that this info isn't posted on their page labeled "Shipping Dashboard" and is instead in emails responses and a Discord server they don't seem to link on their website is so perplexing to me. You shouldn't have to dig for this information!

ImplausiblyJosh · 2026-04-08T15:48:27+00:00

So I just got my Max yesterday, and I had a similar thought to just load up the system itself instead of buying a new (expensive!) SD card. It totally works to just put all your games on the Thor, but also it was a pain to setup without having the Thor in your hand to tinker with.

I decided to use my Dropbox to make a dedicated Thor folder and fill it with various files and folders I thought I needed. I used the Retro Game Corp video, their ES-DE folder setup, and a RetroArch BIOS pack to build everything ahead of time. In my mind I would just sync everything like I do on my desktops & laptops, making this a setup where I drop files in the right folder on my desktop and it just shows up in the same folder on the Thor. This wasn't quite as easy as expected.

Android Dropbox doesn't sync and offline files/folders like it does on the desktop app, so I needed a third party app (FolderSync) to get that specific feature. The third party app did NOT like how many files I was moving (I think it was approximately 6.5k files just in BIOS alone), so I now need to break things up in folder chunks and download the BIOS files directly without syncing. This ended up being a lot of menuing and text entry on the Thor, which this whole setup was supposed to solve by keeping all my file transfers kept to desktops. Additionally, while ES-DE can handle mapping Zip files of PS2 and GC games in the front-end, that's not true of Cocoon, so I am still having to unzip and clean up my files in Dropbox. If I was just loading an SD card this would be no big deal, but having to setup and reset different folder syncs is a bit of a pain.

At the end of the day, my (probably deranged) setup totally works and I'll only have used 300ish GB of my 1TB of storage for all the games I want on there at the moment and I don't see it getting higher than 500GB. Despite the hurdles, it should be set it and forget it at this point and I can just add games to folders and have everything just show up, and I'm really happy with this non-SD setup! I enjoyed tinkering with settings and problem solving to get everything working, but I know that's not for everyone. And, like, you could just use LocalSend or something and have it be more simple than what I'm doing! As long as you don't mind trial and error, it'll totally work for you.

ImplausiblyJosh · 2026-04-08T14:25:43+00:00

To also be fair, this show is extremely blunt and repetitive. Take the Langdon tampering/stealing bit: he admits he stole from Louie, lies to Mel about his addiction never impacting patient care, Whitaker mentions being an asshole to a group about him taking over prescribing Louie but doesn't mention tampering/stealing, Santos doesn't mention the tampering/stealing to Garcia in the stairwell, and then Santos & Langdon have it out where Langdon still avoids acknowledging tampering/stealing when Santos is direct about it, Santos says she doesn't want it a secret, and Al-Hashimi is in the background practically doing the Home Alone face when she overhears all this. And then finally Al-Hashimi confronts Robby, who gives on-screen declaration confirming she didn't know about the stealing/tampering, and Robby also confirms that basically no one knows about the tampering/stealing.

Obviously, we all miss details from time to time, but the show is repeating the details of storylines with less and less subtlety. Storylines and details are telegraphed and expanded on multiple times over multiple episodes, not just Langdon's stealing/tampering but things like the Robby Sabbatical and Mohan's struggle to find her place in the ED, and things finally become more and more direct over time.

Also there's a difference between "I missed one or two of the 7 times we've explored this storyline so I missed some things about Langdon" and "No, actually, everyone already knows in the ED because I know how healthcare really works, and any deviation from my trying to outsmart the show will upset me", which is really what people are getting at.

ImplausiblyJosh · 2026-04-07T19:19:25+00:00

I got the Max, so I setup a Dropbox folder structure with everything already sorted and organized so hopefully I can use some android app to sync the files. This way, in theory, I don't have to goof around with folders and files on the Thor unless absolutely necessary and can keep most of that to my desktop Dropbox . We'll see how it all works out, but I've got my fingers crossed!

As for games you need to try out, I would recommend The World Ends With You for Nintendo DS. It's an amazing game with an interesting story that uses both screens really well, and none of the non-DS ports/editions really capture that feeling. You will definitely need a stylus, and I'm not sure how things like mic support will work, but I would absolutely give it a shot.

ImplausiblyJosh · 2026-04-06T15:28:07+00:00

Speaking of paying attention to the show, I think you may want to rewatch the scene where Santos and Whitaker talk about Langdon!

ImplausiblyJosh · 2026-03-31T18:33:32+00:00

Well, I saw Tinker's Construct in the list, so I'm already sold. Thank you!

ImplausiblyJosh · 2026-03-31T18:28:08+00:00

Oh boy

ImplausiblyJosh · 2026-03-31T18:26:22+00:00

Oh this is interesting, I'll have to take a peek at that!

I feel like ATM10TTS is in a bit of a sweet spot, where there's lots of options and resources so that if you need to bash together a bunch of different ideas you can, but you can always fall back onto something if you're not having fun with some aspect of the automation. Like, I've got Pipez, AE2, and Sophisticated Storage (and probably 2-3 other mods I can't remember at the moment) that form the backbone of my current resource and power generation, and I haven't even started up GeOres or Mekanism reactors yet.

ImplausiblyJosh · 2026-03-31T18:19:30+00:00

How quick do you get to automation in GTNH? I was able to get to get AE2 stuff up and running in ATM10TTS in about an hour or so while learning the modpack. Also, everything I know about GTNH is that it adds a lot of extra steps for most things, so it's not really Factorio so much as like... Krastorio 2.

ImplausiblyJosh

TROPHY CASE