Violence Night

Just before the event hits, let's see the latest comedy action flick around Cinta Klaus.

Santa is out delivering presents, but is caught when a bunch of thugs decide to invade a rich people's mansion and he has to pare down his naughty list.

Which makes it sound a lot more basic, but from the trailer I was expecting more that Santa was out and about and gets called in by the girl believing in him, but nope, he just happens to be there. And he's saving rich people, which are the ones with the large houses and money that attract thugs but have lots of room for running around beating them up. I guess the poor people can save themselves? Well, actually, they would never be attacked in the first place, so yay for them I guess?

Does this sound a little Die Hard? Well, yeah, and they even call out that movie in this, but that doesn't draw away from... it's a lot of fun. Santa gets his roots on and the movie treats him as an actual person with Christmas magic giving help in some things. Which means that David Harbour gets to have fun, and I do wonder how often he had flashbacks back to being the Red Guardian.

The rest of the cast were good, with Beverly D'Angelo having the best time not giving a shit. But I can't quite buy John Leguizamo as a master fightersman.

So yeah, some fun for seeing in some xmastide, but it's not going to be more.

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Convergance

I complained about Marvel, so I should complain about DC. The basic premise of Convergence is "What if we did a low rent Crisis at home?"

Brainiac evolves and gets Telos to gather Gothams and Metropolises from across the different timelines, and then the heroes are forced to fight each other. In the mean time, a group of hero variants that no-one cares about deals with Telos and another chap whose name I can't recall but turns out to be another villain for them to fight.

As you might be tell, I wasn't too impressed with it. It was just an excuse to bring back previous continuities of heroes that various writers liked and play with them a bit. Aside from the main story line, all the tie ins were two parters, which were usually Part One: We've been here a year, and Part Two: We fight someone else. (Somehow, for the year, all the heroes had their powers removed, unless they didn't.)

At least with Crisis, they change the way the universe goes, resetting the continuity and what not. But with this, it is just mashing things together, and since none of the universes really are impacted in any significant way, it doesn't matter in the slightest who wins and who loses. Let alone I couldn't remember half of them, and the other half weren't distinctive, that revisiting them didn't feel special.

This was aggressively advertised in comics leading up to it.. and during it, it aggressively advertised the next thing. So it was just a brief stop on some larger map for selling comics, and doesn't matter if you pay attention to it or not.

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Disney pinned

This is part rant/part technical support. [UPDATE: NOPE, STILL NOT WORKING!!!]

I subscribe to DisneyPlus. Yep, I give the Big Mouse money. Shocking, I know. All of us are already under its sway it'll be quicker to list people who aren't either supporting or employed by them. But I get DisneyPlus, and watch all them episodes. (And because I'm me, yes at two-speed.)

But recently I hit a problem. Latest episodes of Willow and National Treasure would not play. Like I get the Disney Plus logo but... nothing. Episode did nothing. And yet, I could watch other things, like the X-Men animated series, so it's not a blanket thing.

And, more oddly, the episodes do play in the separate app. I watch in Chrome, mainly 'cos I didn't think of the app, but then I wouldn't be able to change speed (enable that function, people!).

I did eventually work out how to get it to work. I won't say I solved it, because this shouldn't be a thing, and yet...

Because DisneyPlus incorporates Starz, it had adult material, so you can a) set the level of material you can see, and b) put on parental controls, which is basically a four digit pin, to stop the kiddies viewing it. I recently had a pin, but disabled it because... it's just me here, why should I need a pin and have to enter in whenever I go there. The hell? No, I'm lazy! Removed!

...as you can probably guess, when I reinstated the pin, I could watch the episodes! Somehow, DisneyPlus thought I shouldn't be watching the episodes or something unless I could prove I could enter a four digit number???

So yes, I can now watch the episodes at whatever speed I want, but I'm back to being annoyed by the pin. Clearly this is the worst problem anyone has ever faced!

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Secret Dumpire

Secret Empire was a big Marvel comic project, where Steve Rogers/Captain America became an agent of Hydra due to a sentient cosmic cube named Kobik (don't ask: COMICS!) being swayed by the Red Skull's ideas and changing the past of Steve to always being Hydra.

This is a Big Idea(tm), where you go "what if the big good guy was in fact one of the big bad guys?" But the big problem with this idea is... everyone knows what's going on. Every other hero knows that Kobik changed Steve and he is now Stevil (this is an in-canon name for him). There are a few heroes that side with Stevil (either mercenaries, or a small handful of otherwise corrupted heroes), but it is essentially Stevil versus everyone else.

(I'm going to ignore the fact that changing the past would have changed everyone's interactions with Steve, so they wouldn't know that Kobik due it, but, again, COMICS!)

What would have been more interesting is that if Kobik changed other heroes to also be on the side of Hydra. Make it an actual battle where several heroes do believe in the ideals of Hydra that Stevil espouses, so there is an actual discussion of ideas.

But that way lies the concept of Civil War (of which there are two). Only this one would have a better reason for happening and a clearer view of which side is actually right (and there actually being a right side). BOOM! Civil War roasted!

As it stands: One person, who is essentially an obvious villain, versus all the heroes. It wasn't really going to be that exciting to play out, was it?

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Science Versus

Urban Fantasy is becoming a bigger genre at the moment, with the basic underlying premise of "there is magic around, but only a few people know about it"... and there is also another rider that is variably emphasised "and science can't deal with it". Which is currently catching me in the mood of pissing me off.

The magic is seen as something special, so come enter this special world that only a few people know about. Become one of a special ones. [Yes, this is can be seen as a metaphor for teens becoming aware of more of the world, but this isn't just teen focused.]

The problem I have is that if it's so pervasive then every day people should be encountering it. I don't care if it is rare, it is still a phenomena happening in the world. And yet, it really feels like "haha! here's this special thing that science doesn't know about, because Up Yours Science, you can't deal with this!"

But no, science is an approach, and any "magic" is as open to that approach of testing and hypothesis as anything else. Nope, magic is special that science doesn't know about, only an exclusive few people do... be one of the exclusive special few!

Now, if you do treat is as pervasive, then yeah, you are dealing with a rather different world state that "our world + secret stuff," but that would be more realistic to how such a world would operate.

And now I'll go a further step in my rant: before it was the case that religion was the dominant way of thinking, with science slowly discovering things. Religion was squeezed into "God of the Gaps", but science closed those gaps. However, people still want something out there that isn't science... and so magic! Science doesn't know about magic! And so, in the desire for supernatural, we have magic and such, taking over the religion-space that science doesn't deal with.

You can say "it's dangerous to interact with magic" and "magic corrupts electronics" (see The Peter Grant series and the Laundry Case Files), but you are still dealing with "magic has a tangible effect," and the scientific approach is still applicable. The Peter Grant series does try to address a scientific approach, but hampered by the small fact that there isn't actual magic so Ben Aaronovitch needs to develop a whole new set up to deal with it.

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Nabu PC

So the Nabu PC is an interesting piece of history. It's from the 1980s US, and while it is a computer, it links directly to cable TV and downloads programs from there. A lot of them were made available recently, and people got interested.

One small problem... while the computer runs, there is no longer any cable network for it to connect to. But does that stop people these days? Heck no! DJ Sures talked with Leo, a technician who worked on the Nabu, and put together code to talk to the Nabu and to link up to a repository of the cable programming. Great stuff!

(He has a lot of other videos about how to hook all this up.)

If you get a Nabu, go to https://nabu.ca/.

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Kai-UP-cycle

Kaicycle is an urban farming, composting and community activation charity in Newtown, Te Whanganui-a-tara Wellington. They are looking to expand their facilities, and are running a Give-A-Little funding campaign. If I recall correct, I supported them when they started, so why not again? Although the deadline is very close. (It looks like they get whatever money is raised.)

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Classic at any scale

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