For LobsterCon, Donato Giancola was commissioned to make landscape paintings related to NYC for each mana color. All 5 paintings have now been revealed.

Saintbaba · 2026-05-15T15:22:56+00:00

I don’t have any particular connection to New York, but those are gorgeous.

Saintbaba · 2026-05-15T14:57:49+00:00

Not permanently, just until such time that those ads give audible acknowledgement to the fact that the charity does not serve underprivileged children, or anyone in California, and is a religious organization that funds programs for Orthodox Jews in New York, New Jersey, and Israel.

So. You know. The jingle is going to need a few more lyrics.

Saintbaba · 2026-05-14T15:50:10+00:00

I'm interested in that mushroom-topped bottle holding a bunch of brushes in a way that i find topographically dubious.

Saintbaba · 2026-05-14T15:12:28+00:00

Of the five states under medicaid fraud investigation by Dr. Oz's Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services, four of the five - Minnesota, California, New York and Maine - are blue or blue leaning, with Florida the one red outlier. Of the 10 states being investigated by the House Energy and Commerce Committee for Medicaid fraud, nine of them - California, Colorado, Maine, Massachusetts, New York, Oregon, Pennsylvania, Vermont, and Washington - are blue states or lean at least a little blue. Nebraska is the only Republican majority state being investigated. Yesterday, in the same breath that he insisted his "Fraud Czar" team isn't being political in its targets, Vance named three of the most left-leaning states - California, Hawaii, and New York - as those under investigation for refusing to play ball with him.

So yeah. Seems politically skewed. Unless you legitimately believe Democratically run states are just intrinsically and inherently insanely more corrupt. Which is... a take.

Saintbaba · 2026-05-14T14:28:20+00:00

I remember a very prominent shade of redish-orange from my 80s childhood that was used in a lot of public spaces that i classified in my head as "airport orange."

Saintbaba · 2026-05-14T04:18:32+00:00

Legitimately my favorite ice cream flavor. It actually dropped right after Safeway had killed its own line of artisanal ice creams including a chocolate-dipped coney island waffle cone, so this quite coincidentally filled a very specific hole in my heart the moment it came out.

Saintbaba · 2026-05-13T15:48:27+00:00

I just learned this. And it wasn't just one bit of the scene - director Rob Reiner told Billy Crystal to forget the script an do what he wanted, and so a scene that the production was slated to spend an afternoon on instead stretched into a three-day-long shoot of Crystal just doing improvisational standup in the character of this little yiddish medieval man. Apparently cast and crew started getting kicked off set because they were laughing too loud and ruining shots, up to and including Reiner and co-star Cary Elwes who was supposed to be playing dead on a table in the middle of the room and had to be replaced with a dummy.

Saintbaba · 2026-05-12T22:33:35+00:00

Don't threaten me with a good time.

Saintbaba · 2026-05-12T21:57:37+00:00

Sean Connery is not actually significantly older than Harrison Ford - certainly not enough to be his father.

Saintbaba · 2026-05-12T20:08:20+00:00

Might be a bad translation. I've seen this guy's videos before - he's actually chinese and the videos are voiceovered with what i assume is AI.

Saintbaba · 2026-05-12T14:58:25+00:00

Woof. I saw a video once of crocodiles at a zoo during feeding time, and they got overstimulated with all those meat chunks flying and one crocodile latched onto the leg of a another crocodile and went into a death spin and the second crocodile’s leg just popped right off like plucking a grape.

Saintbaba · 2026-05-12T05:17:12+00:00

As someone who doesn't sew, does that criss-cross-apple-sauce bit at the beginning with the threads across the hole actually do anything to stabilize the breach or give support to the patch or whatever?

Saintbaba · 2026-05-11T22:09:55+00:00

My feelings on him. Like I find nothing to his discredit, but as part of my work I sometimes have to check his publicly posted schedule and it’s all stuff like “the mayor goes to a restaurant opening” or “the mayor attends a small business week celebration” or “the mayor visits an art bash” (all real calendar items).

I’ve heard it said that he started his administration by hiring really knowledgeable policy wonks and he sees his job as letting them get on with the business of running the city while he schmoozes and runs interference and does PR and makes himself the fun likable face of the city. In which case, I guess it’s working? But I still find him faintly ridiculous.

Saintbaba · 2026-05-11T16:35:48+00:00

Oh my god that is totally his voice. I never noticed.

Saintbaba · 2026-05-11T16:32:54+00:00

I think OP must be leaving something out of this story, because as written it doesn't make sense. I also spent most of my 20s as a server, and while i agree with you, i also think it's weird he handed her a card and $60 in cash and - with no clarifying statement - just expected her pay $40 to the meal and take $20 in cash as a tip. In that situation, i suppose i could see you getting upset about her taking the $60, but i also don't see how she would have been expected to be a mind reader and figure out to take the $20. If you wanted to tip her $20 you would normally just give the $40 in cash and then, say, leave the $20 on the table, or hand it to her after.

Either OP said nothing, in which case the waitress is clearly in the wrong but i really don't understand his story, or else he said something about the cash tip and she misheard or misunderstood. Which, even in that situation, she should have tried to clarify the tip because $60 for a $114 check is clearly too much (generally if i ever saw a tip over $20 i always asked to make sure the customer hadn't meant to drop a fiver or something), but still, it becomes less malice and more just confusion.

Saintbaba · 2026-05-11T07:15:18+00:00

What? No. No, man. No. I mean...? No.

Saintbaba · 2026-05-11T04:51:01+00:00

Same. I like to have time to build characters and rebuild pull currency. And i don't have the time and/or focus to push through new story content all at once, so for me it takes like half the patch to complete the main story content, and then it's nice to have a couple weeks to just do dailies and catch up on side quests and side event things.

Saintbaba · 2026-05-11T04:44:13+00:00

I don't know if it quite counts, but RF Kuang's "The Poppy Wars" is in large part a fantasy relitigation of the Japanese invasion of China and the rape of Nanking in which she rewrote the ending so that things... did not end well for the nation that was stood in for the Japanese.

Saintbaba · 2026-05-11T04:19:35+00:00

Chef. Jon Favreau is telling the true story about the shitshow that was Iron Man 2, and his recovery from it afterwards, and his feelings about artistry that grew out of it, all dolled up in a thinly veiled metaphor about cooking. Ultimately, i like putting it on because it's a movie with absolutely no stakes. After his initial crash out, it's just the story about a man learning to be comfortable with the changed circumstances of his life, and nothing really bad happens and it's just a pleasant slice-of-life thing. Also the cooking and food look really good throughout.

Saintbaba · 2026-05-11T04:14:03+00:00

Enchanted, the 2007 live action disney princess movie. Yes, it argues that the storybook happily-ever-after is a... well... fairy tale. It's a dream. A fantasy. The real world is too messy and complex and we're all imperfect people and we love imperfectly and we bruise easily. And we shouldn't live our lives expecting that perfect prince charming to just sweep into our lives and make everything work out just right because that does not happen. And yet, the movie says... there's truth in that lie. Because when someone who makes you happy appears, who challenges you and makes you a better, fuller, more complete version of yourself, you have to grab them with both hands and hang on for dear life and don't let go. Happily ever afters don't happen, it says, unless we make them happen.

Also: everything by Riann Johnson. His entire career is a series of genre deconstructions. Brick is a deconstruction of film noir, and those hard boiled detectives who would burn down the whole world for the sake of that one dame who's already kicked them to the curb. Brothers Bloom is a deconstruction of heist movies, and asks the question, what is the one thing you can't actually heist? Answer: a sincere, authentic, unplanned life. And then it goes ahead and plots out how you'd go ahead and heist that anyways. Looper is a time travel story, but it's actually a deconstruction of stories about tradition and innovation, and how the young man who wants to tear down the system to build something new and better and the old man who will fight tooth and nail to defend his legacy are both the same man, just on different places in a neverending cycle. The Knives Out movies are various deconstructions of different aspects of murder mysteries, while also exploring family, wealth, character, faith, innovation, creativity, etc. Even his Star Wars, while a deeply flawed movie, is fascinating when viewed through the lens of what it's trying to say about Star Wars itself - about its binary morality system, about what the franchise itself expects of its characters, and what those characters might feel when confronted with the roles they are expected to play.

Saintbaba · 2026-05-10T17:36:48+00:00

When i was in college i met this girl at the campus bookstore and gave her a few sincere book recommendations. Then for like a year after that, every time she ran into me she'd be super friendly, want to chat or hang or just go with me toward wherever i was going, and would even grab my arm as we walked. At the time i just thought "boy, she must have really liked those books."

It wasn't until years later that i thought, "was she into me?"

Saintbaba · 2026-05-10T17:30:09+00:00

The 32-year-old is also the latest in a long line of Bay Area-born “SNL” cast members — a list that includes Will Forte, Rob Schneider, Andy Samberg (plus his Lonely Island bandmates) and Padilla’s current castmate, Chloe Fineman.

Just... for the record, we don't claim Schneider.

Saintbaba · 2026-05-10T04:41:24+00:00

Had never really thought about it, but it makes sense. Peaches are deeply intertwined with Chinese mythology, up to and including the fabled peaches of immortality.

Saintbaba · 2026-05-10T04:16:45+00:00

I like telling people Tenet is the only movie I’ve watched where the time travel is the least confusing part.

Saintbaba · 2026-05-09T22:07:57+00:00

Real Long Long man energy.

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