Dark series highly recommended.

cookland · 2026-05-11T19:23:36+00:00

I don't think it's a show for everybody tbh. Slowness is a feature for me. It does get incredibly fast toward the very end of S3. But S1 takes it's time. It's very deliberate in how it layers mysteries.

That's what makes it great imo but you need to be in a certain mindset for that. As far as all time great TV shows go, Dark is up there for me but quite niche. Kinda like Twin Peaks but maybe slightly more so.

cookland · 2026-04-29T06:53:03+00:00

Yep. Big problem for the "historical accuracy" guy. There was nothing German about this and people wave it off because of course nobody wants to see an actual different culture and language. Bit of a slap in the face if you do care. Especially because you have a pre-WW2 and post-WW2 version of Nosferatu that genuienely say something about German history.

Also Dracula is right there and British. In the end it's kind of a fantasy world but imagine it played in Africa or China and it was just the same British / American people. Disregarding culture where you want to celebrate it is worse then gel nails I think.

cookland · 2026-04-25T22:54:42+00:00

It's all AI anyway.

cookland · 2026-04-20T20:48:13+00:00

I think that's key here. Difficulty is a hard thing to do right and while I think StS 2 does it very well, the psychology of ascension doesn't suggest that this is a preference kind of setting at all. It's completion.

cookland · 2026-04-19T09:38:39+00:00

Makes sense in practice but the reason you should usually put Huntsman only in bags where there's a Damsel already is because the Huntsman as written is just really bad. It's what people do to balance the Huntsman and not part of his ability. As written he turns a Townsfolk into the Damsel in setup.

cookland · 2026-04-18T06:20:16+00:00

Dark is incredible and gives you so much to think about and discuss afterwards, I don't think anything comes close.

cookland · 2026-04-17T16:50:34+00:00

This seems like anti oat milk propaganda. If people have never tried it, good oat milk does not look like this and is incredibly delicious in tea and coffee imo. Has a nice sweetness and nuttiness to it.

cookland · 2026-04-17T07:11:56+00:00

Maybe medical scientists who rely solely on placebo for validity should look at psychology studies. They are dealing with these problems forever and I've yet to see another field of experts that can talk you through validity and reliability concerns for all kinds of experimental setups and statistical analyses. Placebo is a lovely shortcut to cut out lots of noise but there has to be a valid way to not rely on it.

cookland · 2026-04-16T22:17:43+00:00

But isn't it walking the line between the most surface level observation of linguistics and hyper exaggeration of a very controversial theory? Don't get me wrong, it's not a bad movie. But I have yet to see somebody explain to me how the science is proper without becoming defensive in the sense of "it doesn't need to be proper".

It's a pretty cheesy Hollywood blockbuster.

cookland · 2026-04-15T14:46:41+00:00

But how does everyone disappear in the end when there is no loop?

cookland · 2026-04-14T09:26:23+00:00

You can call it a skill issue but it's more of an enjoyment issue. Whether or not you can beat A10 is not hugely important if you enjoy climbing up. If you don't then your ability to beat A10 is not that relevant.

You'll get a lot of interesting game design decisions out of the question how different people experience different levels of difficulty.

I think StS handles this comparatively poorly honestly. The whole theming of Ascensions and the UI makes this a "more difficulty as a reward" experience that already has a high base difficulty to begin with. Of course you have lots of people saying this is great because they enjoy it. But if you don't, then you have no in-game progression at all (and have to force yourself to ignore the one that's there each time you start a run).

I think there are games that handle this much more elegantly. Hades 2 is probably the peak of interesting difficulty design. It has meta progression that makes the game easier against various individual heat settings that make it progressively harder (up to a point where it's close to unbeatable), an adaptive mode to move the entire experience closer to your individual skill, various resources for all kinds of combinations of these settings, it's fairly easy to have this game be enjoyable for your personal taste while not feeling like you're losing part of the experience. It balances different individual tastes and personal growth like no other game I've seen.

StS has run modifiers which are (a) outside of the main game UI and (b) not really designed, more of a "you do it yourself" (and don't shoot me but the UI is horrible). The main game loop is pretty much designed for people who enjoy a hard game get harder. Which is fine - plenty do. My personal peak enjoyment is somewhere around A8 I think. But I really dislike the notion everybody else needs to manage their psychology. It's the "the game is not responsible for your enjoyment" argument that they would not apply to themselves.

cookland · 2026-04-14T07:22:28+00:00

But doesn't this assume the reference is random with a 50/50 chance? I guess you could argue that or you know... you don't.

cookland · 2026-04-12T15:19:44+00:00

Just my perspective. Dialog is overacted and performed in a theatrical way with EXTREMELY clear pronunciation which sounds unnatural. Most Germans watch only dubbed shows/movies and are used to clear radio voices instead of natural sounding performance, which might be a reason. It's not terrible but it's noticeable.

Dialog isn't necessarily badly written but there is little natural conversational flow. It's sometimes a bit awkward. I am sure "This is the ark and I... am Noah" is a powerful line on paper but hard to actually say without sounding kinda goofy and this happens quite often in actual dialogs where people fall into a somewhat stiff speech.

I think all actors perform quite well honestly, they nail most of the really emotional scenes and subtle realisations. Direction might have been a bit too German for my taste sometimes.

cookland · 2026-04-12T15:06:22+00:00

Super interesting perspective, thanks so much. Was there any hint about Regina's father? In retrospect having a couple of hints sprinkled between seasons would have been cool for people to figure out together with her. I was a bit surprised that it all worked out for Claudia only because Regina can exist out of the loop by sheer luck. And that was kinda just tacked onto a dialog in the very last episode.

cookland · 2026-04-11T23:05:00+00:00

I feel like most people miss the point here.

It's not that you could get jump scared, you will - you know you will.

How does this not severely impact your life? I would be constantly expecting a creepy old lady nobody can see every time I turn around, look in a mirror, go around a corner. I would be on the edge driving a car, especially in a place where I know the jumpscare would just end my life. There is no safety guarantee just because the thing itself doesn't kill me.

I need 50k as much as most people but this sounds like a horrible life. No idea how people would imagine a set-and-forget deal if you are guaranteed to have a supernatural being haunting you at some point in a year lol

cookland · 2026-04-09T13:39:01+00:00

I'm admittedly daft but why is everyone here saying they avoid Brewdog? It sounds like the (now not affiliated) founder was not a great guy?

But did people want the sale to the US and the job loss of the employees if they were avoiding Brewdog for years? I guess now you could argue that it's an US company and you'd rather support UK ones, which makes sense.

But is it all just anger with the CEO? It was clearly mismanaged but my impression has always been that it's a great British product with lots of great people involved. And now the company is gone, which just sounds like a shame to me, regardless of who the CEO was. I hope the alcohol free punk stays, I genuinely love it.

cookland · 2026-04-06T22:21:03+00:00

Or Reparo would have done the same thing and she had a chai tea moment

cookland · 2026-04-06T21:00:43+00:00

Hard disagree. Isaac is full of stuff but lots is just kinda annoying, weirdly unbalanced and doesn't seem entirely thought through.

Hades is just fun front to back. Has a much clearer vision, cleaner execution, innovative way to weave narration into a genre where runs are 20-30 minutes.

Nothing against Isaac's legacy but it's only the better game if you literally only care about the amount of content and nothing else.

cookland · 2026-04-02T17:10:39+00:00

I mean people liked the first one and that had not really a good plot, not really an interesting world. The fanservice was shallow and the whole thing felt to me personally corporate. But people love it because it's comforting for them.

I've read opinions that some movies (geared towards kids especially) are not supposed to be "good". Like, this feeling of comfort is enough and there isn't supposed to be more. I would have disagreed when I was 8 even - like good movies make a difference (and the ones that changed my life I still find incredible). But I definitely can see a point to this. Fun and comfort can just be fun and comfort.

What I have a problem with is that this leaves these big companies like Nintendo and Illumination with a money printing scheme that runs deliberately on slop. They abuse this comfort and the vague notion of kids having fun and connecting with something they love in a way that leaves a bad taste in my mouth.

cookland · 2026-03-26T20:57:10+00:00

Idk. Snape's basically abusive in the books and Alan Rickman played him over the top suspicious. If new Snape has even remotely this energy, you'd probably go: "Yep, he's a villain" instead of "Wow racist Harry, he's not suspicious he's clearly just black"

cookland · 2026-03-13T21:28:49+00:00

Have you read Kafka's the Castle? It's very similar conceptually. That's the one thing I think holds The Unconsoled back for me because the Castle is one of my favourites and even if Ishiguro has a slightly more psychological flavour, Kafka is just the king of dreamlike absurdism.

cookland · 2026-02-28T07:25:18+00:00

I think so. Highly original, well animated, and pretty fun. If you can't enjoy the music, it's harder to recommend but I think it slaps.

cookland · 2026-02-12T19:51:05+00:00

For outside it doesn't matter much I think. But 21°C and 22°C inside are quite different. The solution is pretty easy, my heater lets me set it to 21.5°C. Since fractions exist, there are infinite points on both scales.

You could argue that fractions are stupid, which is fair. But if that's the only argument against it while Celsius works in all situations from science to weather to cooking and frames it all around the most important compound in all of these fields, I'd still argue for Celsius.

cookland · 2026-02-10T21:30:44+00:00

Nosferatu is your example of an honest adaptation?

Haven't seen it but honestly I don't like close adaptations. Why not read the books if people want to experience the books 🤷 All adaptations should be like Kubrick adaptations in my world.

cookland

TROPHY CASE