chronovore | Recent Entries

It feels like the world is on fire right now. ICE efforts in Los Angeles are being supported by LAPD who appear to be blind-firing "less lethal" rounds into crowds.
The rule of law guarantees due process as a right to everyone on American soil. Not just citizens, not just residents, but everyone. I can't think of a reason anyone should visit the USA right now. There is too little accountabily and responsibility, paired with the unfettered exercise in dominance and misuse of power.
Provided the USA survives this, regains its balance, the number of lawsuits which will come from the gross injustices that have happened will be overwhelming.
Things are going to get worse before they get better.

An intriguing analysis has been circulating online regarding the psychological aspects of Zelensky’s meeting with Trump and Vance, conducted using ChatGPT.

From this analysis, it becomes evident that we have witnessed a true masterclass in gaslighting, manipulation, and coercion on the part of Trump and his entourage. Let’s break down the key points:

Blaming the victim for their own situation

Trump explicitly tells Zelensky: “You have allowed yourself to be in a very bad position.” This is classic abuser rhetoric—blaming the victim for their suffering. The implication is that Ukraine itself is responsible for being occupied by Russia and for the deaths of its people.

Pressure and coercion into ‘gratitude’

Vance demands that Zelensky say “thank you.” This is an extremely toxic tactic—forcing the victim to express gratitude for the help they desperately need, only to later accuse them of ingratitude if they attempt to assert their rights.

Manipulating the concept of ‘peace’

Trump claims that Zelensky is “not ready for peace.” However, what he actually means is Ukraine’s capitulation. This is a classic manipulation technique—substituting the idea of a just peace with the notion of surrender.

Refusing to acknowledge the reality of war

Trump repeatedly insists that Zelensky has “no cards to play” and that “without us, you have nothing.” This is yet another abusive tactic—undermining the victim’s efforts by asserting that they are powerless without the mercy of their ‘saviour.’

Devaluing the victims of war

“If you get a ceasefire, you must accept it so that bullets stop flying and your people stop dying,” Trump says. Yet, he ignores the fact that a ceasefire without guarantees is merely an opportunity for Russia to regroup and strike again.

Dominance tactics

Trump constantly interrupts Zelensky, cutting him off: “No, no, you’ve already said enough,” and “You’re not in a position to dictate to us.” This is deliberate psychological pressure designed to establish a hierarchy in which Zelensky is the subordinate.

Forcing capitulation under the guise of ‘diplomacy’

Vance asserts that “the path to peace lies through diplomacy.” This is a classic strategy where the aggressor is given the opportunity to continue their aggression unchallenged.

Projection and distortion of reality

Trump declares: “You are playing with the lives of millions of people.” Yet, in reality, it is he who is doing exactly that—shifting responsibility onto Zelensky.

Creating the illusion that Ukraine ‘owes’ the US

Yes, the US is assisting Ukraine, but presenting this aid as “you must obey, or you will receive nothing” is not a partnership—it is financial and military coercion.

Undermining Ukraine’s resistance

Trump states that “if it weren’t for our weapons, this war would have ended in two weeks.” This is an attempt to erase Ukraine’s achievements and portray its efforts as entirely dependent on US support.

Conclusion

Trump and his team employed the full spectrum of abusive tactics: gaslighting, victim-blaming, coercion into gratitude, and manipulation of the concepts of peace and diplomacy. This was not a negotiation—it was an attempt to force Zelensky into accepting terms beneficial to the US but potentially fatal for Ukraine.

It doesn't even have to start that close to home, with nepotistic deals. The socialized systems which support buliding roads, policing a safe city, emergency response management like fire departments, LET ALONE public education (if not theirs, then their employees) are all part of a social contract. Bezos having workers who are not able to take piss breaks, or are on food stamps… all of this. It breaks the agreements under which we all operate as civil society.

As a society, we hate cheaters, we hate shirks.

Here's the thing, most of the world has now recognized that DLC was not the transformational tool it was expected to be when it was introduced. Increased costs of development had to be paid from by some method, they thought. Let's get incremental bumps, long-tail money, coming from DLC! Let's have a Season Pass! Let's do a Collectors' Edition of a goddamned digital game which literally cannot be collected!

Plus, though many games ship with a Day 1 patch, Ubisoft has become synonymous with shipping broken games consistently which take weeks or months to be fixed and tuned. This is a direct result of letting Marketing dictate launch dates, enforcing them whether the game is ready or not, and launching full price games that are broken as shit, then lowering the price and declaring failure, before finally fixing the game and showing people too late what they should have had at launch. It's fucking Marketing, protecting themselves, executives who don't know better listening to them, and both groups throwing dev under the bus.

Ubisoft has enough money to put together good, reasonable sized games which can be the basis for exploration, but they're putting massive games together without the ability to finish them before shipping, and without the will to revise their timelines and estimates.

It is possible to deplete the first island of materials needed to make it to any other island — before the tutorial catches up to impatient exploring players —forcing the player to sit and wait a full day for things to replenish, before being able to proceed.

Stamina deplenishes automatically, and can only be restored by food, also a limite resource which can be accidentally consumed directly rather than stored for later use.

It is possible to craft both starter weapons and diminish EACH of them to 0 durability (break) them against an early common animal, doing less than 20% health damage to it. Players would need at least 5 each of sling and spear to defeat the animal, as well as having expert dodging ability.

I made three attempts to enjoy the game. I probably will not try again.

Current Mood: disappointed

In retrospect, I was looking for trouble, but: I tried two things in the last few days that I should not have attempted at the same time.

One is feeling like I should understand more about Linux, so installing it on my iMac, which I am not using for anything. I chose Ubuntu, and worked out downloading the iOS, making a bootable USB drive, and installing from there. Somehow, I thought it would be able to find everything it needed without connecting to the Internet, so my first attempt was pretty abysmal.

After installing the OS, it hadn’t found the built-in Wi-Fi adapter, and even though the driver was installed, it didn’t show up properly. I connected a cable and encouraged it to go out and find updates.

In the end, I chose to reinstall everything, giving the wired connection from the beginning. Things are going much better now.

It still doesn’t entirely feel like a finished OS to be used by marginally technically competent people like myself.

The other thing I did was order a new Wacom tablet for my MacBook. I had thought I could use my iPad Pro to shore up the gap, and even use it as a CINTIQ. But using it in Sidecar mode didn’t do the things I was expecting. So: simple tablet. Ha. Whatever is going on with Wacom’s tablet, driver team, they are not keeping up with enough clarity in macOS.

It has one of those granular installers that requires an app to run to install it, then requires very specific permissions throughout settings, and a separate app to manage it. Seriously, there has got to be a simpler way to do this. It is obfuscated by apples own system preferences having same or similar named items in different areas.

For that one, I ended up running the installer driver twice, going online to webpage, and finding the specific preferences settings that needed to change under accessibility, privacy and security, etc. Also had to unplug and plug it back in, and restart my entire computer.

For a pointer device.

‘The only reason normal people don't post MORE about gun control is we are genuinely afraid of the lunatics with assault weapons coming after us as we exercise the freedom of speech protected by the same constitution they claim gives them the right to own an war weapon.

"WOW, we need serious gun control" just gets you flooded with DMs from some 24 year old societal casualty with 0 pictures of him with any actual friends on his profile, or worse, that mistake's dad in wrap arounds telling me l'm delusional and I am "free to live somewhere else" which is something a total sane person says when presented with facts about children being shot in school.

Just wondering if like... now? Is the time to politicize gun control or if it's still too sensitive a subject…’

I finally finished Licorice Pizza; it took me a while to warm to it. It’s fantastic, and I can feel it takes place in a neighboring headspace to Boogie Nights, definitely “of an era” in Los Angeles.

The acting is stellar across the board; Cooper Hoffman really nails the awkwardness of a teen who is trying desperately to punch outside his weight class. Alana is so believable; accustomed to The two of them in a complex relationship that isn’t really love, isn’t really friendship, and occasionally approaches romance through animosity.

It’s also great to see the accuracy of the production design. This is ‘80s drab browns and avocado, desaturated ochre, and coupled with the streetlights at night, and the glaring sun of Southern California.

It's not clear where it's going to end. Several times I thought it would draw to a close, end without a solid resolution, as there doesn't seem to be a real story arc to the movie. It's about the passing of time, about a specific era, and a whole bunch of stuff to which young people today probably can't relate.

“Sometimes people use ‘respect’ to mean ‘treating someone like a person,’ and sometimes they use ‘respect’ to mean ‘treating someone like an authority.’

And sometimes people who are used to being treated like an authority say, ‘If you won’t respect me I won’t respect you.’ And they mean, ‘If you won't treat me like an authority I won’t treat you like a person.’

And they think they’re being fair but they aren’t, and it’s not okay.”

"Ladies and gentlmen, I'd like to introduce you to the man who hands me my water and towels on stage…Mr. Charlie Haj!"

I like Star Wars a bunch. I like a few bits of it a lot less than others, and really don't like Rise of Skywalker at all. I'm nearly as unhappy with Attack of the Clones but, meh, I don't ever have to watch either of them again. I liked Ahsoka a bunch, love REBELS, and am enjoying The Acolyte just fine, TYVM. I fucking loved The Last Jedi. Deal with it.

I recently learned GRRM complained about "anti-fans," and it's lent me an understanding of how I interact with my own fan feelings. I thought I hated "gamers," but really I hate entitled, whiny know-nothings who complain that the game they spent US$3 to US$70 on and played for 200+ hours didn't meet their imagined expectations.

There are SW fans who have made it their religion, which is fairly cargo-culty for a knockoff of Flash Gordon. When the new shipment arrives, they think it's because they did their abaisance, and are upset that the cargo doesn't contain exactly the same stuff.

Not entirely sure what is wrong with me, but I went back to Watch_Dogs: Legion, which I rage-quit 2 years ago after the final mission gave me no way to re-spec out of my non-lethal stealth loadout in a final mission which was unabashedly guns blazing. Tried finishing the last boss 20 times or so, couldn't manage it.

After struggling through Immortals: Rise of Fenyx and making sure I finished it, I realized I liked that game less than Legion, so determined to re-play and complete Legion to settle my ongoing compulsive issues.

It is a good game on its own. Following WD2, which I love-love-love, it is a harsh and frustrating pill to swallow, but on its own it is a satisfying experience. The biggest problem I am noticing this time around is the lack of a central character. If the game was just gameplay, I'd be OK with that, but the story is heaped on through the villains, making everything feel purely reactive. Even when the player's DedSec group goes after any of the three antagonists' group, it is a reactive stance, not something they're working to put in place. WD2 may have that as well, but it's also about Marcus relationship with other strong characters. Legion leaves aside all of the character interactions for generic, poorly voiced, AI-modulated lines which have been called out in essentially every review of it.

In contrast, the gameplay is actually pretty fun. Because they are legion, the various NPCs-turned-PCs in the game have unique abilities, the most powerful of which is uniformed camoflage. Being able to avoid triggering the alarm --just by being in the right outfit and acting "normal" (no running, crouching, climbing) and maintaining a little distance-- increases tension and deepens the experience. People say you can penetrate many defenses just by holding a clipboard and marching forward like you're meant to be there. This feels like that.

Kicked off a mission that had a warning attached to it, turned out to be the final mission. It's long-ish but not nearly as difficult as Saints Row 1 or 2, or any of the GTA III, VC, SA, or IV missions were. Those were maddening, and I'm grateful for games that put something I can finish as the final story mission. Shit, just save the hard stuff for the side missions, let regular joes finish the fucking game.

Watching the SR2022 staff roll, it starts with a dedication to two devs who died during the making of the game, both younger than I am. Then it moves to a long set of credits with lots of pictures of the devs teams at all kinds of events and settings, it looks like they tried to get a picture of everyone in there. Thinking about players pissing on the game when these are the people who put everything into the game, only to have it come out, get trashed, and then Embracer shutters the studio -- well, it hurts. They deserved better.

Though I finished the game, I am going to keep playing through the activities, maybe try for platinum, though I usually don't care about trophies. A lot of heart went into this game.

Pros
It's a SAINTS ROW GAME. It's a return to more grounded SR 1-3 era gameplay, with an emphasis on Activities.
Boss customization is wild, though not as nuts as SR2's, which caused heaps of problems with cinematics. I played the final mission as Mystique from the first X-Men movie.
Heaps of stuff to do in the open-world.
Heaps of unlocks - almost every side-gig or Activity unlocks a weapon, clothes, or material for customization

Cons
Base/HQ customization is limited compared to previous games. There's one HQ, and items around the map can be found, snapped with the camera, and then set up in alcoves or pedestals at the base. It's an OK concept, with limited visual effect. They could have assigned materials to the building, like they have with the clothes and vehicles.
Visual language in-game is inconsistent. Placing a business on the map brings the player to the business' location, but doesn't clearly state that THAT LOCATION is not where the player carries out that business' operations. There are new pips on the map showing where the Activity is, but there are SO MANY icons on-map at that point, it's not clear. Once arriving at the location, finding the EXACT spot to launch the Activity is not clear. Sometimes there's a consistent prop, but it's not highlighted and can be mistaken for the regular landscape. More often than that, there's NOTHING. I just use the mini-map to move close to the icon's center, and then meander until a prompt appears on the main screen. Like I said, lack-of-polish. It wouldn't surprise me if some Art Director fought with the Designers about having an "immersion breaking" highlight on the screen.
Gunplay feels stiff, and the default haptic triggers are ridiculous. Sometimes there's lock-on, most times not.
Perks, skills, power-ups are almost an afterthought. It's like they started making a load-out focus, then abandoned it, but not entirely.

Fast and Furious Nine
Agressively dumb. The kind of dumb that walks up, gets in your face, and dares you to disagree with it, like a jock cutting line in the school cafeteria. This should only be watched by people who wished they still played with Hot Wheels, and maybe thought GI Joe would have been cooler if everyone was based out of East Los Angeles. What is the goddamned lore here? Former street racers and VCR thiefs are now the go-to special operatives despite a history of destroying just about any city their op places them in?

Some other Dumb Movie (edit: it was THE MEG)
There was another film that was just about as over-the-top as F&F9, but it was more coherent and felt like they were embracing a near Greek pantheon approach to the heroes simply having realms where they cannot be bested. Hopefully I remember it soon; it was a welcome contrast.

Strays
This movie about talking dogs made more sense than F&F9. Crass, gross, crude, and somehow both predictable and surprising in turns, this quest to bite the dick off an abandoned dog's bad owner made me laugh out loud repeatedly.

Mission Impossible: Dead Reckoning Part One
Saw this in theaters and was disappointed. The re-watch was more enjoyable, as I was able to tie things together better in my head this time around. It's still not as good as III through VI. It"s a disjointed attempt to string together action sequences, with a near-mythically-powered bad guy.

“Remind yourself these are your only three options: remove yourself from the situation, change it, or accept it. These acts create happiness; holding onto bitterness never does.”

I'm pretty sure I've posted this before, but:

I saw Star Wars in its opening month in 1977. It became an immediate obsession. I was so crazy in love with the movie, it was just amazing. Close to a religious experience, for my young mind.

I collected every series of Topps Star Wars Cards, and when the "Darth Vader's TIE Fighter" card mentioned "next year's model," I took it to mean there would be a sequel. I was overjoyed.

ESB came out in 1980, and it was even more enthralling and engaging than the first movie had been. Lucas talked about making 9 movies total. I was giddy.

ROTJ played in theaters in 1983. I was working in a comic book store at the time, and Marvel accidentally sent out the comic adaptation a week or two early. I grabbed my copy from the store's stash, and read it that very day. It seemed... okay. The movie came out, there were teddy bears beating up stormtroopers. Han Solo didn't seem cool anymore. Vader is redeemed by tossing the Emperor down a hole, though he has killed billions of people. This all seems overly simplistic and childish.

GL stops making Star Wars movies.

Fast forward to 1999, Episode I is released. I stay up to watch a 1AM showing on its launch. On the way home, I wonder what the fuck I have watched. Home Alone in space? This was not great. The Prequels, on the whole, are entirely disappointing. GL shows us just how much he doesn't want to work with actors. Episode II is worse than I. Episode III is the least bad, but still confusing, ham-handed, overly-reliant on its CG budget. The best thing that can be said is it makes Return of the Jedi seem to make a little more sense by humanizing Anakin.

When Episode VII: The Force Awakens finally appears, it looks like someone has remembered how to make a Star Wars movie. Practical effects, practical sets, some mystery, and a sense of the familiar among everything that's alien. It's good fun.

I know it's contentious, but Rian Johnson's Episode VIII: The Last Jedi is my third favorite starwars work. Listen to the dialog. Hear what he's saying. Rian did his best to take the story from one of hereditary greatness, divine right, the right of kings, to instead democratize the Force. Rey is NO ONE. Her temptation is to join in the service of the selfish, sociopathic hereditary heir, or to risk death and die as a talented nobody. She risks death rather than submit to serving as nihilism's partner. Kylo himself has a point: sometimes you have to tear down the past in order to build the future. Leave it behind. It's fucking great.

But the butthurt fanbois of the world couldn't take a girl hero, couldn't take that their incel champion was simping after this "Mary Sue" character, and so JJ Abrams went back and undid all the democratization of the Force, reintegrated Rey as a member of a heroic bloodline, and erased everything that is interesting in Episode IX.

If you told me in 1977 that all nine films would eventually be made, but that the last one would be so utterly horrible that it would diminish my love for the work as a whole, I would not have believed you. But there it is. Episode IX is irredeemable. åç

Weird memory: I remember going to an anime club when I was in HS. It was in a gym or community center, and they were watching laserdiscs imported from Japan by the senior members of the club, and VHS decks were daisy-chained from the LD player, with the "junior" members of the club having their VHS decks on cable splitters, further generations away from the source. I enjoyed the anime, but there was clearly some geek hierarchy they were trying to enforce, so I never went back.

So I've been off-and-on watching Star Wars again, with an emphasis on recent TV shows. The Mandalorian I absolutely loved from the beginning to end. The Ugnaut who worked his way out of servitude. The Ewoks being disgusting in new ways. ~~Raylan Givens Seth Bullock~~ Cade Vanth as a marshall in a lawless town. And a near-silent Mandalorian steeped in mystery.

So it's not surprising that The Book of Boba Fett had to find some new ground to cover, since The Mandalorian had covered most of what I'd expected. TBoBF is a flawed show, mainly because it can't commit to who or what Boba Fett is. Is he a villain? Is he the underdog crime lord staking his claim? Is the guy who got accidentally knocked into the Sarlacc Pit by Han Solo secretly as incompetent as he appeared to be? Is he a hero, or an anti-hero? Oddly, if they'd simply called it Star Wars: Mos Espa, and role-switched Fennec and Boba, it may have been better. Fans would clamor for any scrap of Boba, like before, and no-one would have had expectations for Fennec's personality or role. The creators could tell other crime stories set in the city, switching perspectives to other syndicates.

Similarly, I'm interested in both the animated series Clone Wars and The Bad Batch. The painted textures are an interesting choice, but the earliest episodes suffer from horrible lighting, shot composition, and animation. Very cheesy. Watching the updated look of Bad Batch shows just how far that look has evolved. It's pretty.

Pixar’s Coco - Moving and beautiful. I get soppy when watching family drama on airplanes, and this one really did me in. I loved it.

Justice League - fell asleep the first time I watched it, woke up at different places in the story, didn’t care that I had missed stuff. Went back after a snooze and watched the parts I missed. There’s some decent Whedonesque dialog in there, the the effects are OK except for Steppenwolf and Cavill’s missing mustachio. Ezra Miller's Flash is cute. I still like Batfleck. I will watch Gal Gadot do whatever she wants for as long as she wants. Cyborg was moody and poorly CG-animated. Boozy bro Aquamauri didn't work for me, tonally.

The Temple - I like slow burn suspense films, and I like j-horror, but this is just a lethargic mishmash of Japanese horror tropes and mid-2000s creepypasta image-editing “spoooooooky” visuals. The lack of coherence or any explanation of its goals is as complete as it is irresponsible.

The Cloverfield Paradox - Had to unplug my brain with extreme prejudice to enjoy this. It’s filled with so much “That’s not how that works. That’s not how ANY of that works!” that I was eventually able to just shut off my meager physics awareness and go with it. Chris O’Dowd was funny in it. I watched the first ⅓ without English closed-captions, and assumed they were treating Xing Ziying like Chewbacca, and that everyone’s responses were what made her Chinese utterances contextually clear to the audience. Turns out, no, they just relied on subtitles that were not automatically enabled. :lol Having an international crew who speak some Chinese to the one Chinese crewmember, despite having a Russian and a German who never speak their language natively seemed tone-deaf. Cloverfield license was tacked on clumsily, but the whole movie does everything so clumsily, it's part of its "charm."

I should also admit to seeing Daddy's Home 2, which was more of what the first one was, but fewer surprises, no weirdo side characters like Hannibal Buress and Thomas Hayden Church. I guess that was supposed to be Lithgow (underused) and Gibson (under-punished).

Lastly, The Kingsman: Golden Circle was trashed by reviews, but it's a worthy sequel to the first movie. It's nonsensical, humorous, action-packed, with an oddball villain. If NOTHING ELSE, the scenes with Elton John make the movie worth seeing. There's plenty more to enjoy though. Channing Tatum's role is practically a cameo. Part of me wonders if he wasn't supposed to be Agent Whiskey, but then had a scheduling conflict.

Watched Ben Wheatley's '70s gun deal gone wrong flick. The ambiance was good, the dialog audio levels were too low, the performances were uneven but largely appropriate to the tone: somewhere between comedy and drama.

One of those movies where everything goes wrong, but it's okay because everyone is unlikable.

Probably my least-favorite Cilian Murphy performance, which is to say, he was still good but had no real reason to be there. Brie Larson does nothing to show why she previously won an Oscar. Armie Hammer is a big, dopey fixer who doesn't really seem like he fits in any of the scenes. Probably the best performances were Sharlto Copley and Michael Smiley, who sell the movie's tone more effectively than anyone else.

A solid 7/10.

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Page generated Jun. 12th, 2025 05:45 am

rebootied

Journal for Kids Who Don't Read Good

Recent Entries

los angeles in turmoil

Someone else's Zelenskyy insight

on self-made billionaires starting with key help from their parents

game dev and shipping broken games

Windbound

technical challenges

quote from Iliza Schlesinger's IG

Licorice Pizza

"find out what it means to me"

tortelvis

cargo cult

Watch Dogs: Legion

Saints Row 2022 reboot finished

movies watched on a 12-hour transpacific 777 flight

something for me to remember

Star Wars

anime club