Lugal

I didn't think she was sniffing them, but looking them in the eye with her peripheral vision (due to the macular degeneration) which I thought was hilarious. What if it's a Nat Tate situation and "Rose Cooper" never existed.

This one was even better than the first. I didn't recognize Shirley MacLaine at first, but she's just as good as ever. I also agree on the Big Bunny nickname. I'm indifferent to Cara Delevigne. I think she's improved over the other things I've seen her in. I think she's the red herring, but a little too obvious to be the murderer. I wonder if she's involved in some art fraud scheme completely unrealted to the case, similar to the Dimas last season. And it was a nice touch they showed up at the memorial with Dimas dip. Amy Schumer got more screentime than in the first ep.😟 Maybe they're setting it up that she's actually super-annoying and all the characters want to get away from her. Favorite line with Oliver and Mabel: "That's a great line. I wish I was recording!" "I was...Oh god, I'm turning into you." I would agree about Rose. And it reminds me of that old artists' joke: What's the best thing an artist can do for their career? Die.

Our favorite podcasters are back! I loved all the callbacks (the real ones as well as Oliver's attempts) I agree with everyone else, Amy Schumer is the weak point. I almost skipped her scene, but didn't in case there was an important clue.

Supposedly, "high pockets" was a nickname from the WWII era when men wore pants very high and it was a slang term for someone raised to a high position who in completely unqualified to be in that position.

In the simulator when Isaac showed up she said something about the fun ending or something. Which is not as bad as previous incidents was still kind of being an asshole. However in previous episodes we've seen her openly complain about Isaac while she's on duty, which is just unprofessional. As a counterpoint, see how Data dealt with Worf making an offhand remark in TNG:

This one was better than the previous ones, and it didn't feel stretched, like the earlier eps. Always fun to see the Admirals, and Victor Garber had more to do in this one as well which is always fun. I also thought the Ozymandias line worked against Krill hubris. They think they don't need the Union and that they can take on the Union and the Kaelons at the same time and win. We did see the beggars in the public square. But I'm sure it's the "will of Avis" The Krill: the galaxy's biggest spiritual bypassers. I get the feeling it was a little of all the options. The Chancellor did not think he could lose and then when he did he prepared to contest the results which seemed to be the standard procedure. Then Teleya pronounced him guilty of treason and executed him right there. Well Bruce Boxleitner was in this ep and 80's Tron. My first reaction was: seriously, that was him under the makeup? I can see both sides there. If they aren't by his side at the moment he won, he could see it as they doubt him, and thus endanger the treaty. And if they were by his side when he won, well, we saw how that worked out for them. I have nothing against Anne Winters, but yeah, she does come off one note. For someone who's such a spatial genius, when it come to Isaac her thinking is pretty one dimensional (that he is Kaelon, therefore evil) and leaves no room for nuance. If we see her thinking in unusual ways or contributing something it'd be one thing, but she's mostly there to snarl at Isaac and fly the ship.

Is Lex Luthor Jeff Bezos a zaddy? Is zaddy another word for supervillain? "People who think that investments deserve more respect than basic human needs." Pretty much. Rich-on-Poor violence is Standard Operating Procedure while Poor-on-Rich violence is the worst abomination in the history of the world. All these people like the world's worst Rush fan can throw away people thinking it's never going to effect them. And maybe it won't, they may live out their days without the consequences touching them. But when you exclude people, they're still here. A bunch of people with nowhere to go. That usually doesn't end well, even for those who think they're on the top. Housing IS a human right and it's time we recognize it. Oh, and for all those candidates that are so riled up about the Big Lie/election fraud, I'll just point out that in the last 20 years, there's been two presidents that lost the popular vote.

Moriah's Lighthouse had the Breton scenery going for it, but it was kind of less than the sum of its parts. The accents weren't what we think of as "typical French" but French accents can be kind of hard to pin down anyway. I have no idea if they were accurate or not. I assume they had more of a Breton accent than Parisian. Although Rachelle's accent was, shall we say, inconsistent. Rachelle, a beautiful woman, tried to go for a French Girl aesthetic but could not pull it off. And this particularly annoyed me: who does woodworking in an off the shoulder top? And if that's what she wears for woodworking, she must have some really nice clothes in her closet.

Warning! Historical linguistics deep dive! Hungarian is of the Uralic family, specifically the Ugric branch. Its closest relatives are east of the Ural mountains. The Magyars (Hungarians) migrated from there about a thousand years ago. As for the language of the Huns, there's a pretty lively debate about that. The usual theory is that they spoke some kind of Altaic language (usually Turkic, sometimes, Mongolic), but even that is a guess. Attila, the most famous Hun, had a Gothic name (meaning "little father") and Gothic was probably a lingua franca in the Hun empire (the Huns were probably pretty multi-ethnic). There was only like three words of Hunnic recorded by the Romans, and they sound vaguely Slavic. All of these theories can still be cast into doubt. Like Attila was a Hunnic word that sounded like "little father" in Gothic or the informant that those three words came from was a Slavic speaker. Another theory is that Hunnic was Yeniseian. And this comes from the idea that the Huns split off from the Xiongnu confederation who lived north of China, who did seem to have a Yeniseian element in their language (they also seem to have been multi-ethnic). Yeniseian is only spoken by the Ket people of Siberia now, but did at one point range much further. There is one sentence recorded by the Chinese that has been analyzed by different scholars as variously Turkic or Yenisseian. And finally there are theories that Hunnic was an isolate, unrelated to any other language. So what it comes down to is that in the end, we don't really know. TL;DR Hungarian is not related to Hunnic. What was Hunnic? Your guess was as good as mine.

We're basically in a post-creativity era because Hollywood doesn't make movies for under $100 million anymore (or over $10 million). Then they need to make double that budget to be considered profitable. Because of the money involved, it needs to be a blockbuster so they don't want to take a risk on an unknown property and go with something that's already a proven hit, as they squeeze as much money from it as they can regardless of declining quality, believing people will still come and see it. And people not having many other options, do still come and see it. Most of the writers of mid-budget movies have fled to TV and streaming. People are also less likely to go to a theater unless it's for something they can't get on TV (the pandemic played a part, but the trend was starting before COVID). I personally and several other people I know had the attitude that if we're going to go through the work of going to the theater, it better be for something we can't get on TV. So Hollywood competed in the only way it can, with $100 million spectacles.

I seem to recall he took a selfie with her in her casket.

Yup, we've been splitting infinitives since the 13th century. It works with the inherent rhythm of English much better. Old English poetry followed a similar meter. To bold-ly go. If you use: To go bold-ly or Bold-ly to go, you end up with two stressed or two unstressed syllables together and it doesn't sound as good. It's modifying the verb gone.

Completely agree with everything you said, and I want to be clear and I'm not defending her. If her father was the Mossad agent everyone seemed to think he was, I can see how her worldview would be as skewed as it is. I've known people who had parents (supposedly) in the CIA and they were some of the most fucked up people I've ever met. So I can see how she would have had a difficult childhood, but she's a grown woman when she made her choices, so fuck you Ghislaine, when you lay down with wolves...

This one makes me think of the more mindfuck-style Star Trek episodes like TOS "Spectre of the Gun" or TNG "The Royale" and "Frame of Mind" but I can definitely see the Twilight Zone comparisons. I thought it was a pretty well done and I especially like the visual of the time frozen Kaelon ship as it collides with the Orville. This felt more like the Orville I enjoyed before. My quibble was at the end when Ed talks authoritatively about death meaning oblivion, when any honest person would admit we just don't know what happens. This one clocked in at around an hour so it didn't feel as draggy as the previous two. That didn't bother me as much as it felt like he realized they weren't learning anything new down there, and no point in risking the second landing party any longer. When the aliens are a good 50000 years ahead of us and have the ability to make people see whatever they want them to see, it makes more sense to me. So was I! I also expected the other kids to get up and leave when they found out Malloy was the one that owed Randall money. Although my favorite exchange was: "Are you High?" "That's what I'm trying to figure out!"

And we're all left wondering what crime has that guy committed or is about to commit. Because he's clearly up to some shady shit. And that looked like a pickup that people in the suburbs drive. Another Arizonan here and...yeah. We already have Paul Gosar and Wendy Rogers. Isn't that enough crazy?

And the Orville is based of TNG where Riker would lead away teams and Picard would stay on the ship.

I'm waiting for the Mr. Ed twist that the horse can actually talk. And that he's made a fortune by listening to all the conversations in the horse cabin. I mean who else would renovate a stable like that? As for Zelda Whatsername making Britt her personal mission. Are you going to help her find love or are you going to brainwash her and keep her in your lair? Because her demeanor kinda said option number 2.

No one other than the admiral who seems to be one of their top diplomats. Oops! But the show gets a little too much with the atheism sometimes. Given how dedicated to science they are, they should know that most religious taboos have mundane and practical origins rather than any inherent sense of evil. I kinda hope not. The Borg (in their early appearances at least) were genuinely frightening enough that they didn't need to jump out of the shadows.

I've never been much of a horror fan, so this one didn't appeal to me as much. Admiral Victor Garber was right, if it feels like a horror movie, you should stay out of the house. Not only did they wander over to the alien ship (that looked like a spider no less) but they have no protection, and they have not only the captain and commander, but an admiral as well. Once none of the main cast was transformed, I figured there was no going back for any of the unfortunates. Admiral Victor Garber was also right that the Krill live in the area, maybe you should listen to them, even if they did filter the experience through their religion. Doesn't invalidate what they're saying. Hadn't thought about it at the time, but yeah, it's pretty obvious now. Clearly the years away from Trek have not recharged his creative batteries.

Hacking scenes always make me think of Saturday Morning Breakfast Cereal: http://smbc-comics.com/comic/2012-02-20

Listening to the Hu again, I branched out and explored other Mongolian bands, and found Suld, from Inner Mongolia.

It's actually a meme that's been around for years (all the images are usually political so I won't post them here), highlighting the absurdity of allowing organizations to investigate themselves. Spoiler alert: it's never their fault.

Ouch. They're really butchering the ergative case there.

"We've investigated ourselves and found we did nothing wrong."

I think it's probably over-correction. How many of us remember back in elementary school when we would say things like "me and my friend went to--" only to be corrected mid-sentence by the teacher with "My friend and I". Then we grow up thinking it's always "...and I."