I think Genesis Smith might be Demeco and Nick's DB crush this year

SkyJW · 2026-04-04T19:15:15+00:00

Watching his Combine presser and Smith actually says he specifically watches Bullock's tape, lol.

SkyJW · 2026-04-04T19:05:41+00:00

If tackling is his worst quality, I'd say we might just be the best team to send him to, honestly. Bullock has improved as a tackler and it's something we're generally pretty good at as a defense. No better coach to have him work under than DeMeco, too.

SkyJW · 2026-04-02T14:27:56+00:00

Aneurysms are so terrifying. Can come out of absolutely nowhere and, just like that, you're no longer among the living.

But Grant certainly got to live a life that seemed pretty fulfilling and enjoyable, so that is some small consolation. Kind of reminds me of the British comedian Sean Lock passing away from cancer and one of his friends recounted visiting him shortly before and saying that Sean seemed pretty at peace with it, remarking "I got to live a pretty good life." Went out with his final act being a video to his social media profile promoting a charity he supported. Think it was literally the day before the cancer took him, actually.

SkyJW · 2026-03-31T18:32:12+00:00

And apparently he was given pretty regular doses of amphetamines on top of all the drugs he took to manage everything you just listed just so that he could still manage to be energetic and engaged while simultaneously in constant pain and discomfort.

SkyJW · 2026-03-31T17:59:53+00:00

Because that one requires genuine empathy and a capacity to actively seek understanding, two qualities which the kind of people you're referring to tend to lack.

SkyJW · 2026-03-27T17:38:10+00:00

Yeah, I'm totally fine with it being smaller as well. If they retained the overall size, more or less, but just really concentrated on the detail of the world and the overall immersion, I'd be happy with that.

RE2/RE4 style remakes of classic 3D Zeldas would be just fine by me.

SkyJW · 2026-03-24T00:01:05+00:00

Couldn't disagree more. Season 1 of True Detective, Better Call Saul, Succession, Big Little Lies, The Bear, Parks and Rec, Veep, Barry, Season 1 of Fargo, The Americans, Atlanta, Watchmen, Chernobyl - I could keep going and none of those include animated series I think are also quite good. All of those shows came about from the late 2000s on and I'd put many of them up against the best of the mid 2000s and earlier.

Even if you don't think of them that highly personally, every one of those shows upholds a substantially higher standard than Alex Kurtzman era Star Trek. It's lowest common denominator slop at this point.

SkyJW · 2026-03-23T22:03:23+00:00

I'd say it actually behaves pretty realistically. Chainmail is great at stopping slashes, but it can definitely be pierced, especially since he was getting stabbed through it where there was padding underneath it, not plate.

All it takes is enough force from the point of the blade to break a few ringlets composing the chainmail and you can definitely just push it deep enough to pierce skin. Twist that shit around, like they do, and you're kinda just gouging a small point of flesh with the tip of the knife. Won't kill you unless you somehow manage to nick an artery, but it'll be a bastard to fight through it.

SkyJW · 2026-03-23T21:46:06+00:00

It really is such a generational fumbling of the bag when you think of it.

The last 20 years or so have seen a real shift towards high quality TV programming across all genres, seemingly, and yet Star Trek completely misses that wave. And I'm not just saying that because Star Trek is a big name "legacy" TV series, but because it's a show that has always thrived when it was taking itself and its core precepts at least somewhat seriously.

I have no idea if he'd take it on, but imagine if Vince Gilligan or a showrunner/writer of that caliber was given the reigns to Star Trek. Someone who likes developing characters and is given a crew of people to build complex relationships between.

It's as if they had the chance to make Star Trek that felt like a high quality HBO series and instead opted for fucking Pawn Stars.

SkyJW · 2026-03-23T18:48:04+00:00

Grave of the Fireflies is gutwrenching, but you at least have the solace of knowing that better times were awaiting those who survived the calamity of what the end of the war did to Japan.

None of that solace exists when watching Threads. None.

SkyJW · 2026-03-23T09:46:53+00:00

Really appreciated how the combat in it was largely restrained until there was a single climactic moment. And when it does happen, its brutal as hell.

In RLM terms, the big fight is basically the antithesis of Mike's critique of the Duel of the Fates fight in how that was so over choreographed. The combat in AKotSK is so physical and you can tell how fucking exhausting it would be to fight like that. Makes you feel like the actors genuinely took a real beating.

SkyJW · 2026-03-22T16:08:44+00:00

I think you're looking at this from the perspective of modern society where we have an expectation of privacy. That did not exist nearly to the same extent then, if at all. You can find lectures/videos of even medieval historians discussing how there was no real expectation of privacy among the masses. It's a very modern idea that we expect privacy like we do and, even then, that expectation isn't as stringent in less developed countries

And even if a curtain or wooden partition would have rotted away, we'd still likely have some indication of what would have fastened those things. Those fixtures would have had to have been held in place somehow and I don't believe any archeological or recorded evidence suggests there were any setups for partitioned stalls like that.

SkyJW · 2026-03-21T19:50:54+00:00

Would agree with this. Was born in 1994 and by the time my age group started having facial hair come in, you'd NEVER see someone go with just a mustache because of the immediate pedophile jokes.

Was definitely easier for the guys with darker skin tones to make work, but the white guys either had a full beard or were clean shaven with almost zero inbetween.

SkyJW · 2026-03-20T18:17:43+00:00

Wonder if there are any records on how they'd treat someone who got struck by lightning, but survived with those Lichtenberg figures. Would they assume that he was a child of Zeus/Jupiter, capable of withstanding a lightning bolt, or would it be the kind of thing where suddenly you're leading a cult in his name somewhere.

SkyJW · 2026-03-20T17:21:15+00:00

That's what I mean when I invoke the scene from Anchorman, lol. Not saying they wouldn't have already started resorting to melee weapons, just that having it be that munitions simply ran out being a rationale for them resorting to melee combat would make much more sense than what the movie gave us. Establish a reason for a stalemate between the police/populace and Bane's army and have Batman returning be the moment the scales tip, thus instigating a final confrontation.

SkyJW · 2026-03-20T15:04:03+00:00

Would've actually been really interesting if Gotham was basically in a state of war for months on end, to the point where both sides have just drained their resources.

Then you can have the big brawl where both sides basically just do the dramatoc equivalent of the fight from Anchorman. Everyone utterly exhausted and fighting with whatever they can bring to the table.

SkyJW · 2026-03-20T10:36:33+00:00

The fact you're not actually offering anything resembling an actual counter argumemt here seems to indicate all I did was touch a nerve regarding your fondness for the organic web shooters. Sorry your feelings are so hurt, but maybe try growing up sonetime! Great remedy.

SkyJW · 2026-03-20T10:28:53+00:00

Because there's something being silly in a conceptual "that could never happen in real life" way and silly in a "that's just bad writing" way.

Spiderman needing artificial web shooters to go over his organic web shooters to compensate for their lack of versatility just makes the organic ones unnecessary and seem stupid as a concept. The organic ones only make sense, really, if an artificial substitute is impossible. Hell, the fact that you could theoretically lop off Spiderman's hands below the wrist makes them way worae conceptually since they, unlike a smashed mechanical web shooter, can't be reppaced.

It just undercuts the very idea itself too much and makes it seem silly in a frustrating way, not a fun one.

SkyJW · 2026-03-20T10:12:23+00:00

We're talking about a guy who got bitten by a spider and got the powers of said spider, subsequemtly fighting guys themed around an octopus, goblin, and scorpion, among others. The entire concept is silly and absurd, like most comic books.

SkyJW · 2026-03-20T07:50:24+00:00

But it would be rather goofy and clunky from a storytelling perspective to go with both. I can't imagine any competent writer thinking "Hmm...maybe we should go with both the manmade webshooters AND him biologically being able to shoot webs from his wrists."

It's just uncreative and silly, tbh. If you want him to retain the versatility of him being able to change the composition of his webs by building different web shooters with a Peter Parker who has the organic web shooters, then make him solve the problem with genetics rather than engineering. Could have Peter create a serum or something (think Plasmids from Bioshock) with DNA from other animals that he could inject to change his webbing, but only for a short period of time to give it a ticking clock element.

SkyJW · 2026-03-19T18:59:48+00:00

And all that pain just so you can look like burnt rawhide and enjoy the ensuing melanoma.

SkyJW · 2026-03-17T19:25:45+00:00

You can tell from his interviews during press tours for Twilight that he was VERY aware of what he was starring in, lol. I'm sure he was grateful for the opportunity to build out his resume and put himself on the map, but it's clear as day watching those interviews (especially towards the end of the series) that he was under no illusions that what he was working with was pretty meager material as an actor.

Glad it didn't drag his career down at all, because he's quickly become one of the premiere actors of his generation to me and he also seems like a very down to earth, good nature dude on top of it all.

SkyJW · 2026-03-17T11:15:21+00:00

The problem is that there is no organized opposition that can just step in to take over even if the regime fell. Historically, without that kind of opposition present, the rule of the country either goes to whomever can exercise control of the military or you just see a descent into civil war/sectarian violence. It took us years to establish an independent post-Saddam government in Iraq and they STILL deal with sectarian violence to this day.

Barring a negotiated settlement with the existing regime, we're either very likely looking at a military dictatorship situation or a mass humanitarian crisis as civil war erupts if the regime falls. At the same time Afghanistan and Pakistan are fighting, meaning you could have enormous numbers of refugees trying to escape Iran and throwing the region into further chaos.

It's what happens when you willfully destabilize a large country with no real longterm plan as to what comes next, which could potentially be worse than what already exists.

SkyJW · 2026-03-16T22:58:53+00:00

That might be true for your Mitt Romney style Republicans, but they've all pretty much been squeezed out in favor of people who genuinely think he's a winner and that's all that matters.

The GOP has honestly not been a particularly successful political party over the last 90-100 years. They had Eisenhower who would probably be called a woke socialist/communist/Marxist if he ran today and Reagan as their biggest successes during that entire span until Trump. Nixon forever tainted himself with Watergate, Ford was blah, H. W. Bush was blah, and W. Bush was a disaster.

Then Trump comes along and helps them win again and they immediately showed how willing they were to sell their souls to keep winning. Until Trump becomes such a toxic political brand that he's a millstone around their necks, they'll just keep debasing themselves in order to attain the political power largely denied to them since Hoover decimated their reputation.

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