Emperor

Emperor OP , 17 hours ago

"And I stand by my answer, Goddammit!"

Emperor , 19 hours ago (edited 18 hours ago)

I remember when this hit the news and do hope it's been redone since.

edit: no updates on the Scottish Castle Association since 2012 and TripAdvisor photos show it unchanged other than some weathering.

edit2: Here is the episode of The Restoration Man that focused on the tower and it explains the planning process that led to this monstrosity.

Emperor , 19 hours ago (edited 18 hours ago)

It was featured in S1E4 of The Restoration Man, so I presume George Clarke is somewhere in that picture.

edit: and they return to it in S2E5 which is on YouTube.

Emperor , 18 hours ago

Here is the episode of The Restoration Man that documented the project - they go into the planning side of this in-depth because it's really a head-scratcher. The owner tried many times to get planning for more subtle alternations but they kept getting knocked back because it has to be distinctive enough that it's clear what is the old building and what are the new additions. What you see is the result of that messy process.

Emperor , 16 hours ago

Well it was filmed in the Scottish Lowlands not a million miles away (48 miles from Doune Castle).

Emperor , 16 hours ago

This mess is because the planning authorities rejected more subtle additions and insisted on something that is distinct from the original building, which is what they got.

Emperor OP , 18 hours ago

I suppose the craziness comes from it being a $21B undertaken to build two of the largest renewable projects yet, which rely on both working properly. That's quite a bold move and it's risking a lot of cash.

Emperor OP , 18 hours ago

It's starting to become increasingly common - there's a project in the offing to run a cable from Morocco to the UK to take advantage of all that Saharan sunshine. There's long been talk of stringing a few across the Med and building large numbers of solar farms across North Africa to speed up the green transition in Europe (at one point there was talk of worried insurance companies bankrolling such projects as climate change could bankrupt them). Eventually there will be a web of such cables into and across Europe shuttling energy around - excess British being stored in Norwegian HEP facilities, etc.

Emperor OP Mod , 22 hours ago

Sold!

Emperor OP Mod , 19 hours ago

He's been on a real winning streak since getting over his financial precarious streak where he was pretty much taking any gig offered.

Emperor OP Mod , 18 hours ago

I wasn't as bowled over by that one (and I am a big fan of Cage, Tak Sakaguchi and Sion Sono, so felt like it should have been a guaranteed hit with me) - it seemed like it was trying too hard.

Emperor OP Mod , 18 hours ago

Nothing yet but I'll keep an eye out.

Emperor OP Mod , 18 hours ago

Now that's a trailer - intriguing, without giving away any details.

Emperor OP Mod , 14 hours ago

And this.

Emperor OP Mod , 23 hours ago

That review says:

All of these action sequences – and they are legion – are crisply choreographed, high-octane yet always legible.

But The Guardian complains that, while:

the athleticism and fight choreography is impressive, even if the action is edited so frenetically that it’s almost impossible to follow.

As it's already on the Odeon app (although no screenings are listed yet) I'll be seeing this and will have to decide for myself - the way they filmed the action in Monkey Man really let it down.

Emperor OP Mod , 14 hours ago

Sorry, but I thought I'd share my suffering from the inadvertent flashback to Monkey Man whilst reading the reviews.

It was disappointing as there were a lot of good ideas in there that would set it apart from the other one-man-army films but they dropped the ball.

Emperor OP Mod , 21 hours ago

Yes, I did a double feature of Godzilla x Kong then Fall Guy and the latter was far more entertaining.

Emperor OP Mod , 19 hours ago

I think the issue is that May is usually a big earner for the film industry but everything is under-performing so far. However, as they mention, the writer's strike has pushed films back a month or two and I expect the start of the blockbuster season will be with the release of Furiosa this week but it should have an easy run at the box office as things are quiet until mid June into July: Inside Out 2, Quiet Place: Day One, Despicable Me 4, Twisters? and then Deadpool & Wolverine which is shaping up to be the big hit of the summer, unless Borderlands is better than it looks. Alien: Romulus and Beetlejuice² then finish out through to September. That's a lot of heavy lifting being done by franchises with only films like Sting and The Watched having much potential to be breakout original hits.

Emperor , 4 days ago

Sold!

Emperor , 4 days ago

It's okay to generalise about people who generalise about people.

Emperor , 4 days ago

How to work with someone that regularly arrives as the wrong answer?

Yes.

Emperor , 4 days ago

More than half of the allegations are from women who said they were under 18 at the time of the incidents. Some said they were as young as 15, although he may not have known their ages.

...

Separately, Copperfield has faced scrutiny because of his association with Jeffrey Epstein, the indicted child sex trafficker who killed himself in prison in 2019.

Copperfield was among the high-profile individuals who were named in Epstein-related court documents that were unsealed in January. The inclusion of Copperfield’s name does not mean he committed a crime. According to one sworn statement, Copperfield asked one woman – who, it later emerged, was one of Epstein’s victims – whether she was “aware that girls were getting paid to find other girls” for Epstein.

A very nasty picture continues to reveal itself.

Previously:

Numerous court documents identifying associates of notorious sex offender Jeffrey Epstein were made public on Wednesday.

Some of the high-profile names in the court documents include Prince Andrew, the former US president Bill Clinton, Michael Jackson, and David Copperfield.

...

One document included a deposition given by Johanna Sjoberg, whom Maxwell allegedly procured for the purpose of performing sex acts on Epstein.

Sjoberg said in her deposition that Epstein “said one time that Clinton likes them young, referring to girls”.

...

Sjoberg also said that the late musician Michael Jackson was at Epstein’s Palm Beach mansion, and that she met the famed magician David Copperfield.

“Did you ever meet anybody famous when you were with Jeffrey? she was asked. “I met Michael Jackson … at [Epstein’s] house in Palm Beach.”

Asked whether she massaged Jackson, Sjoberg said: “I did not.”

As for Copperfield, Sjoberg said that he attended dinner at one of Epstein’s homes and “he did some magic tricks”.

“Did you observe David Copperfield to be a friend of Jeffrey Epstein’s?” she was asked. Sjoberg replied in the affirmative.

“Did Copperfield ever discuss Jeffrey’s involvement with young girls with you?” she was also asked. “He questioned me if I was aware that girls were getting paid to find other girls.”

Copperfield, she said in the deposition, didn’t tell her any specifics of that question. “Did he say whether they were teenagers or anything along those lines?” she was also asked. “He did not.”

I imagine a lot of associates of Epstein aren't sleeping well at the moment. Good.

Emperor , 5 days ago

Good second half too:

That search/SEO is broken seems to be part of the game plan here.

It's probably like Russia burning Moscow against Napoleon and a hell of a privilege Google enjoy with their monopoly.

I've seen people opt for chatGPT/AI precisely because it's clean, simple and spam free, because it isn't Google Search.

And as @caseynewton said ... the web is now in managed decline.

For those of us who like it, it's up to us to build what we need for ourselves. Big tech has moved on

That's why we are all here.

It's interesting to think that Big Tech might just move on from the Web, leaving it to us ordinary humans to go back to the way we were doing it in Web 1.0 just with fancier tools at our disposal. I quite like the idea.

Emperor OP , 6 days ago

Now you can make those emails much less boring.

Emperor OP , 5 days ago

Where can I subscribe to your newsletter?

Emperor OP , 5 days ago

They're the dregs left after we quit.

Emperor OP , 5 days ago

Not necessarily superior but we clearly took the best with us when we left. 🤔

Emperor OP , 5 days ago

Then this is your lucky day.

Emperor , 5 days ago

Start !neilgaiman

Block !harrypotter

Emperor , 5 days ago

Interestingly, on Gaiman and attribution, he came out with a graphic novel, The Books of Magic, with a main character very similar to Harry Potter. This was 7 years prior to Rowlings publishing the first book. His response to that similarity was equally charitable, chalking it to creators tapping into the same unconscious material.

Before either you had Luke Kirby in 2000AD. While it's debatable whether Rowling would have been reading Vertigo comic books, Gaiman wrote for 2000AD.

Emperor , 5 days ago

I'm one of the Admins who removed that content - it was your average snuff and sexual mutilation spam, if you would like to see more of that kind of thing then the Internet is that way 👉

If you are ever curious about post removal you can always check the modlog, which is this way 👇

Emperor Mod , 1 day ago

I was quite amazed when I realised the trailer included key scenes from the climax of the film - not sure what they were thinking there.

Emperor Mod , 1 day ago

Saw it on Thursday and enjoyed it - the film is daft fun but there are lots of nice touches and Easter eggs. It was also good to see Emily Blunt in a less serious role as she has good comic timing and was clearly enjoying herself.