…no, the headline isn’t about me, even if I’ve been a bit of a couch potato lately. Get a load of this guy:
No real updates here at chez Major. Just been playing a lot of Elden Ring. I hadn’t played a From Software game before, mostly because I didn’t like the aesthetic, and I still don’t, but boy is the actual gameplay a real blast. It’s making me wish Breath of the Wild 2 would come out already.
Oh, and I’m doing the latest “expedition” in No Man’s sky. Super fun! I wish there were a few more player bases, though. There were a bunch on the first planet—I found one giving away free copper with big refiners you could use—but people aren’t settling down much elsewhere so far.
What’s been on all your TVs lately?
War for Ukraine Update 59: Odesa Under Fire
Jerzy Russian
Samwise is a Good Kitty. I guess he decided he does not need front paws and donated them to charity?
I don’t have a TV. However, I have been streaming season 2 of Picard. It is a lot different than season 1, and I am still processing it…
Major Major Major Major
@Jerzy Russian: any screen you stream TV on transubstantiates into a TV.
NotMax
Nothing to shout about but nothing decidedly terrible either. A month of averageness thus far.
All Hail on Netflix was what passes for a highlight. Entertaining enough as light diversion.
Jerzy Russian
@Major Major Major Major: Yes, these days it does. We ditched our TV circa the year 2000, and I have not kept up with the “TV” technology. Occasionally I will be in Walmart or similar place near the electronics and gawk at how large the screens have become. I mainly use my iPhone to stream, and occasionally my 16 inch laptop screen.
NotMax
@NotMax
Oh, also Thermae Romae Novae on Netflix an okay oddity, in small doses.
Yutsano
Samwise is best tuber. Although laying like that like that he’s more of a precious bean.
Jude
There’s been a giant hole in the exalted place Severance lived in my heart for the last few weeks. It’s on Apple TV. There may or may not be different ways to view it.
Produced by Ben Stiller. Has *perfect* casting and acting, brilliant writing. I’m holding off on the re-watch for some time when I can do a full binge.
Might give Russian Doll a try. Anyway want to push me one way or the other?
NotMax
@Yutsano
MewTube?
;)
Major Major Major Major
@Jude: Russian Doll is worth watching!
@NotMax: been curious about that one
NotMax
@Major Major Major Major
It has a very Japanese ethos.
Like The Hungry and the Hairy, also on Netflix, an acquired taste for outsiders.
RobertDSC-Mac Mini
I’m still working on Ghost Recon Breakpoint on my PS4. I’m nearing the end of the journey, sitting at level 97.5 out of a possible 99.
Separately, I have gotten into watching Facebook/Instagram Reels, short videos produced by users. There are a wealth of them and I enjoy some of those very much. I don’t watch shows anymore, but these short clips are entertaining to me.
artem1s
Season 6 of Better Call Saul is finally here. So far has delivered. Monday’s 9PM on AMC. While the story is excellent, I do love the cinematography work in the series. The vista shots of NM are beautifully shot, but they also have a way of framing and staging exterior scenes that reminds me of Herzog and Weir. And interiors that reminds me of Ozu. Someone on a Youtube recap of the first episode pointed out a shot that referenced the original Planet of the Apes. I love it when a filmmaker creatively borrows (or steals outright) from the masters.
It’s been a while since I watched a series that was rolled out over a whole season. Season 4 of Stranger Things is going to be slow rolled too I think. It starts in May.
opiejeanne
Samwise is a very pretty cat, and it’s nice that he allows you to play games.
Decided to watch Midsomer Murders from the very beginning and were surprised by how many episodes we’d somehow missed, and how little we remembered. It’s a just ok show.
NotMax
@opiejeanne
Instead of Barnaby, I refer to the lead in Midsomer as DCI Equanimity.
;)
Martin
Need to get back into NMS. I was one of the people who bought it at launch and stuck with it. Probably time to start a new play through.
100%ed Horizon Forbidden West. Back playing Project Zomboid, because it’s such an amazing game. About to start a Rimworld multiplayer with my son as another remote activity. Will probably also do a Factorio multiplayer with him as well.
Wanting to play Fallout 4 again for some reason. Might think about doing a permadeath.
Geoduck
I finally watched the first season of Star Trek: Lower Decks. (Yay for public libraries!) It was fun, and clearly made by people who enjoy more classic Trek. The main female lead could be grating at times, which I guess was pretty intentional, as she sets out in-universe to be a trolling slacker.
Tony Jay
Been enjoying the retro feel of waiting a week for each episode of Moon Knight and Picard. Both of them are doing something different with their respective formats. A special award goes to Oscar Isaac’s bonkers English accent which he clearly picked up from binge watching ‘Stath Does Flats’.
And, of course, Peacemaker was a simple joy. From the soundtrack to the dialogue to the casting, just perfect piss-your-pants no-pressure watching.
We’re also watching the latest series of Masterchef. The format might be getting a bit tired, and I’ll never forgive Greg Wallace for fronting that awful, awful, terrible, disastrous reboot of Time Commanders (you should have contestants fighting each other using the Total War engine, how hard is that?) but there’s always a couple of new cooks we really like.
Our current favourite is basically an aged up version of our niece, so we’re there for her.
JoyceH
I don’t seem to be in the mood for new stuff lately. I’ve been rewatching stuff I’ve already seen and rereading stuff I’ve already read. I just finished watching all ten seasons of Stargate SG-1, ready to start on Atlantis. (But not Universe, which I didn’t care for the first time.) And I am once again rereading the Lucia books.
Tony Jay
@Geoduck:
I’ve started luring the boy into the sci-fi underworld through the gateway medium of Star Trek: Lower Decks. It helps that the humour and art style is very similar to his current favourite Boy, Girl, Dog, Cat, Mouse, Cheese, so I think it’s working.
Such a cunning plan.
Tim Ellis
We are watching “Old Enough”, which is an adorable Japanese show about very young kids (2 to 4 years old) running their first solo errands. Highly recommend, it’s just the right balance of adorable and chaotic to offset the stressful and highly structured work days I’m having right now (we are six weeks out from an election in Ontario).
J R in WV
Thanks for the late nite thread! We’ve had some difficulty with some of the bigger laptops — one somehow got a MS viral bug popping up randomly telling Wife her Ubuntu laptop had a security failure and that she should call MS security at this special secure phone number really stupid but irritating, is at the shop for an OS reinstall…
So I’m surfing the internet with an 8″ tablet — way too small for TV or movies while Wife uses the only remaining bigger laptop mostly for MSNBC. Typing a coherent comment is an act requiring both much patience, and determination.
Wife came home from the hospital Friday evening after having a defective C5-C6 disk removed by a neurosurgeon which was interfering with her spinal cord. Evidently a very old injury as things were a (neurosurgeon technical term here!) calcified mess, now properly repaired… but she gets to watch whatever she wants right now!!
sab
@J R in WV: Happy to read that your wife is doing well. My sister-in-law had similar surgery about ten years back. It was a life-saver because she was in such pain before the surgery.
David ? ☘The Establishment☘? Koch
I’ve been watching the new season of “Everyone Does Raymond” on Pornhub
wetzel
We’re all kind of wrung out on TV.
Enjoyed Wheel of Time. My son and I know the books, and they are doing a good job.
Everybody’s glad over here that Better Call Saul is Back. The lovely wife never has seen Breaking Bad so we’ll see the story chronologically, which should be interesting.
The war is getting to me. It’s hard to concentrate. I don’t want to watch TV problems, really. Lately I’ve been in favor of the ‘Great Walking Tours’ or ‘Exploring Sicily’ type of shoes. Watching sea creatures. That kind of thing.
Maybe something happens in the fifties. I don’t get excited about TV shows. I remember getting excited about something similar in 1994 or 2005 or whatever. It’s like a very long cheese platter that’s starting to repeat in the cheeses. It’s not that. There’s just too much TV. It’s too much the family hearth. After the pandemic, I’m just not wanting TV I guess. It’s hard to attribute.
Martin
Oh, for watching, The Way of the Househusband on Netflix is pretty good. “follows an ex-yakuza boss who retires from crime to become a househusband.” It’s funny.
Ohio Mom
@wetzel: We haven’t had a TV in about ten years.
My only must-see in real time has been the debates and I find a way to watch them on the laptop. Otherwise it’s YouTubes for this and that but nothing long and involved.
But now at 67, I’ve been toying with the idea of getting a TV. So I don’t have to think in the evenings. I’m also considering going back to reading whole books, if my old eyes can hack that. Might need to do ebooks with their backlighting.
Rich Webb
Re: No Man’s Sky and Expedition 6. There are few player bases in the starting system because you won’t get a Base Computer until the end of the final phase.
PS. There’s a Sentinel Pillar on Mida 88/G4 in the Oweslie-Wagos XIV system (third rendezvous, Exp 6) at 15.18 50.00. That info may become useful along the way. ;-)
Yutsano
@Geoduck: Watch season two. The writing for her (and all the characters) gets better.
@Tony Jay: See if you can get him into Prodigy next. It’s a much more serious tone but the writing is amazing. And supposedly it’s more child oriented (It’s on Nickelodeon in the US) but I loved the whole show. And if he asks who Janeway is…let the journey begin!
JAFD
Good day, fellow jackals !
Was at cardiologist’s this week. She wants me to try new pill “Jardiance – you’ve seen the commercials for it?” Told her I didn’t have TV, she was pleased.
Am in a half-dozen games, now, on 18xx.games – website for playing the 18xx-series of boardgames on railroad building and robber-baron finance. Oneovdesedaze maybe I’ll win one….
Major Major Major Major
@wetzel: TV is just worse I think.
dnfree
@JAFD: I’m on Jardiance. It works, but it’s expensive. I feel lucky that I can afford it.
Rule of thumb: if it’s on TV, it’s expensive. Remember when you used to see ads for Crestor? Now it’s a generic called rosuvastatin, not worth advertising.
ETA that I take it in conjunction with metformin.