All that money and effort and he still looks like an a B-tier action film actor three months after filming wrapped and he no longer needs to maintain the comic-book physique.

That would explain why Risa Whatsherface could afford to send two different flyers to my family.

I saw this one a while back… https://www.aliexpress.us/item/3256809753608812.html?gatewayAdapt=glo2usa4itemAdapt

Is it the one you got? Is it soft and squishy?

The 120cm size one looks like it has body pillow potential for when Blahaj doesn’t make quite the statement you’re after.

I keep looking for a mail-order spouse, but I’m only willing to order from the “free shipping once you spend USD10” section of Aliexpress.

I’ve been using Geany a bit lately-- it’s more of an “IDE-light” than Notepad++'s “editor-heavy”

But also notepadqq, or if you want a very ancient feel, Xnedit.

You forgot NsCDE.

They’re also tiny. I had one land on my arm recently and it was maybe 7mm in the lobgest dimension when fully stretched out.

So big “u wot mate?” energy with the tiny waving pincers.

Part of me wonders why this hasn’t been supplanted by now. They had smegging branded toothbrushes in the store today.

It’s not like we haven’t cracked the code of YA literature and non-threating fantasy.

But I suspect it’s more that it was one of the last major franchises before the hyperbalkanization of media.

Today, we’re spoiled for choice. You might find some great series about a 17-year-old vampire coming of age during the Long March, but your friend is reading an equally great series where the 14-year-old Princess of The Gryphon Riders uses her powers to solve Kessler Syndrome. You have no shared memes.

There isn’t a new franchise around with the same “broad cultural currency” and that’s why people remain in its gravity well.

i can’t imagine we’ll get back to the era when big releases meant midnight openings at every major store with blocks-long queues. Not even a new iDoohickey does it anymore. Yeah, GTA6 will have a few, but it will never be the same “trample the store clerks” energy.

To be blunt, we’d probably find the robots a lot more endearing if they placed themselves on an appropriate side of the Uncanny Valley.

Years ago, there was an IRC channel with a couple of simple Markov-chain bots and they were legitimately charming with their randomness, which ranged from “demented Pokemon repeating their name over and over” to “flash of insight”. But you’d hardly be quoting them in a serious conversation to a co-worker or boss, and nobody was promising superintelligence any day now from then to justify tripling my electric bill.

The good news is that Screen is the primary exception to everything getting more expensive.

You can walk into any Goodwill here with a $100 note and leave with what would have been $10,000 worth of Screens 20 years ago.

If trends conrinue, in 5 years, 27/32" OLED monitors will be 300 CNY used.

You’re doomed. I didn’t see the words “gas prices” once.

Voters, you see, can only hold a single thought in their head: if you promise them dinosaur juice at 40 cents per litre, they’ll happily kneel down and worship a dried out rat carcass.

I bought the first volume of Death Note and Eyeshield 21 on the same day, probably a promo offer.

I ended up finishing the 37-volume ramble about a particularily shonenified take on high school football, and selling Death Note to the used bookshop for $2 in credit.

The question is how many of those 50 cities are “major leage ready”-- big enough suckers to toss a billion dollars at a team, and prestigious enough that they’re a viable marketing play?

Even if they splashed the cash, I can’t really imagine the ads for “Chicago Bears vs Fresno Knuckle-Busters.” It might impact the percieved legitimacy and value of existing franchises if suddenly “lesser” cities/metro areas got on board.

Buffalo (and Green Bay) are to an extent outliers, grandfathered in from times when the economics and league structures were quite different. Would they be able to float a successful team bid today if they didn’t already have one?

I always said the cities providing the handout shoiud demand shares in the team.

So when they sell it to the next batch of mercs who offer a buck more to move the team to Schenectady, thry at least get their investment back.

TBH, I expected this game to die recently. With Las Vegas holding a team now, aren’t most, if not all cities big and wealthy enough to support one set for it? You’re not going to get far giving Los Angeles five teams, or trying to place a new team in Mesa, AZ because the one in Glendale, AZ is a 90-minute drive for half their catchment area.

bends over as Soviet anthem plays

Sorry, this instance has reliability problems, it returns an error despite submitting sometimes.

I assume part of the reason the USSR punched above its economic weight is that it didn’t need to devote resources to an eternal arms race of grooming and fragrancing products.

The Glade and Gilette companies probably have bigger R&D budgets than Tupolev or Sukhoi ever did.

I’ve spent the last few months putting way too much effort into hammering labwc into looking like my fvwm3 desktop, which in turn looks like a fever dream of PC/GEOS humping a garish Afterstep theme from the early 2000s. Bevels everywhere.

I’m literally working on desktop icons when you minimize windows.

I’ve spent the last few months putting way too much effort into hammering labwc into looking like my fvwm3 desktop, which in turn looks like a fever dream of PC/GEOS humping a garish Afterstep theme from the early 2000s. Bevels everywhere.

I’m literally working on desktop icons when you minimize windows.

From each according to his ability, INTO each according to his need.