SpaceScotsman

I don't mind injected podcast ads so much, especially for smaller podcasts that need some financial support. What I tend to do is use a VPN, that way the podcast is in my local language, but the ads are in another that I don't understand. I get my podcast, podcasters get paid, and I avoid tracking and brainwashing. win-win-win

Elect a president, but call whoever wins a king/queen. We get democracy, they get a royal to fawn over.

How many contrasting qualifiers does it take for a comparison to become useless?

• Mamdani?
• Female mamdani?
• White female mamadani?
• Seattleite white female mamdani?

This is one of the points that a French MEP brought up during the meeting. If this is pursued it could as a side effect open up space for digital "orphaned works" which would be fantastic.

Some parts of this bill, increasing the places where vaping is not permitted in line with smoking, are very welcome.

But bans of addictive substances only result in criminalising people who are addicted and putting them more at risk of harm, because now in addition to lung cancer they'll have black market goons to deal with as well.

her avian intelligence was a parrot. pepper and carrot » cepper and parrot

While this is true, cars of any kind shouldn't be going faster than 50k in a town/city anyway

The height of the london eye? Is this a UK citizenship test or a london citizenship test?

It may be waiting to enshittify, but as it is still DRM free, that's not a huge deal breaker (as long as they don't change this policy). Plus, they're still doing Bandcamp fridays, so it's still the best way to financially support a musician at the moment.

I want it banned. Then I want to see all the MPs who have continued to use it these past years figure out where they're going to get their "engagement" from now.

Thankfully no microsoft, but I do have to use google workspace.

at least i can sandbox it to a web browser? small wins...

I've only watched the first episode, I don't know if I'll watch the rest. I think I've hit on the key problem that this episode has: Interesting ideas, that it just doesn't do anything interesting with. There are three key areas the episode could have focused on:

• Translation. You have to be incredibly arrogant to assume you could instantly translate a language you've never spoken before. We get some hints of this but they never lead anywhere because the whole scene is cut off by the emergency alert and the cut to the news montage. The mistranslation we briefly see never has a chance to set in with any major down-the-line consequences. Even the reference to misgendering is a throwaway because there was never any danger of it leading to offence, and it comes across virtue signally more than having meaning. And I am very confused why the scene is directed as if this is the first time they've shared a dialogue, when there is loads of dialogue, equipment, and prior process to suggest they've already done this before.
• Diplomacy. Similar to translation, we never get a chance for any misunderstandings, cultural shocks, subterfuge, political bargaining. We get a generic british diplomat who has to leave before we even get a chance to know him and his mindset. We get some obvious low hanging fruit about pollution, but without any serious discussion. I suspect this may come in later episodes, but this first one fails to make a big impression on this.
• Gerry Anderson rube goldberg machines. The big tank forms a huge set piece. We get a very quick tease of a disaster scene, but it doesn't lead anywhere. It fails to grip me with drama because there's a sudden fear things are going to go wrong, only for the problem to immediately resolve without UNIT's intervention itself when unnamed scaffold worker #3 tightens a bolt and fixes everything. If they wanted to play this up, they failed.

Other gripes:

• It starts with a dodgy CGI jumpscare, the soil liquefaction scene was honestly more terrifying, as something that can actually really happen in certain circumstances like earthquakes, but that only takes place about 10 minutes in. The liquefaction murder would have been a far more terrifying cold open that jumping in to a fishing boat monster. The story is being told from Barclay's perspective, so I don't think we should have seen any of the monster until the first time Barclay sees it in person.
• The voices of many of the cast were far to mumbly, I needed subtitles early on. No nonsense army captain has a particularly low monotone voice.
• The reference to the doctor didn't need to be there, it didn't contribute to the plot in any way. A spinoff needs to be able to stand on its own two feet. We already have UNIT, Kate, etc as the "hand over" characters, and I didn't even see the whoniverse logo at the start, so I don't know what the ultimate goal is there.
• Another admin security failure from UNIT. They keep doing this. They're supposed to be the toughest top level security force on the planet, and they can't get a basic HR form right. I can suspend my disbelief for sea monsters and instant translation tech, but 'I'm here by accident' is just to much. The hand wavy "ah, but you're the civilian we need here" doesn't fix it.
• Various minor writing issues. They "put the body far away from the village"? It's literally in one of the houses next door. "I'm here by accident", to which army guy immediately replies "So you're saying you're here by accident". Why the deck chairs just to watch a loudspeaker blast some sound waves? Why is a helicopter carrying steel beams across london?