Ranxerox

3 hours ago, unclevlad said:

Texas isn't as bad.

 

And for the record...California has more than Texas.  Their new case count is far, far below the winter peak...but it's also about 6x higher than a month ago.  Looks like California's per capita rate is slightly higher than Texas.

 

No, California and Texas have roughly the same 7 day moving average for total new covid-19 cases, despite the fact that California has 36% more people.

1 hour ago, Logan.1179 said:

Florida-bound man duct-taped to seat after groping and fighting flight crew

I see what they did there.

1 minute ago, Dr.Device said:

 

I can certainly seeCaptain Marvel's spot in the schedule boosting opening weekend somewhat, but I don't see that holding up long enough to get it to the levels it reached without a lot of fans really liking the movie. The idea that its position nearly doubled its take, but somehow only gave Ant-Man and The Wasp a modest boost, if any, strikes me as grasping at straws.

Agreed.  Movies only break the billion dollar mark if they have legs, and that needs good word of mouth and/or people going to see the movie more than once.

1 hour ago, Greywind said:

There's a good possibility Spider-Man will die in his next movie. After all, there's going to be how many in there?

22 minutes ago, Scott Ruggels said:

 

..and be replaced by Miles Morales. I have no problem with Miles Morales as a character, provided he has a good writer, but, killing off Peter Parker because he4's "Just another white male superhero", will have me boycotting Marvel after that.

With so many different actors playing versions of Spider-Man the chance of one of those Spider-Men dying is pretty good, but it won't be Tom Holland's Spider-Man.

59 minutes ago, Cygnia said:

*Sigh*  Too true. 😟

Bum Flare Man Invades Wembley

This happened a week ago, but I just found out about it today.  I'm feeling a bit disappointed with our British board member.  How could they think that this story wouldn't be of interest to us?  We share our Florida Man stories with them.

44 minutes ago, archer said:

All this recent unrest in the area started a couple of months ago when rockets were shot out of Gaza at Israel's nuclear power plant. (What they thought they'd accomplish if they actually hit the power plant, we'll probably never know.)

 

But that got the Israeli public stirred up enough that they've been OK with the government taking some pretty extreme actions against the Palestinians.

 

(And I can understand that because if someone shot rockets at one of our nuclear power plants, there'd be a significant fraction of the public who'd want the "bad guys", liberally interpreted, to be obliterated. Then obliterated again, just to be sure.) 

The rockets were fired out of Syria not Gaza. The attack was likely by Iranian backed militias rather than Palestinians, and certainly not by the woman praying in the Al-Aqsa Mosque.  But I guess questions of actual guilt aren't important.  

Heads up for those of you who read digital comic books.  Until July 17th, Comixology has essentially every comic book that Black Widow played a lead role in at a steeply discounted price, and if you have Comixology Unlimited you can borrow them for free as long as you like.  I have started with Black Widow Epic Collection: Beware of the Black Widow which begins with her first appearance as a villain in Tale of Suspense  #52 and goes from there.  So far it has been a lot fun.

I fly a flag in the summer.  You aren't suppose to fly the stars and stripes in the dark, and only in the summer is it already light by the time that I have to leave for work.

As for the politics and the meaning of the flag, I refuse to cede either my country or the flag that represents it to racist and fascist.

This story is from 3 days ago, but I haven't seen anything about it here.

Hundreds More Unmarked Graves Found at Former Residential School in Canada

of if that is behind a paywall here is a CNN's version of the story

More than 700 unmarked graves found at a former residential school in Canada, officials say

1 hour ago, drunkonduty said:

Looks like Black Widow has finally gotten its release date here in Australia - 8th July. Woo-hoo!

It opens on July 9th here in the states.  So, with that time travel thing that you Aussies do, you can see it 2 days before us.  😒

6 hours ago, Spence said:

So many great Marvel characters are being left to obscurity just so they can swap everything.  Now that they are openly proud of being discriminatory, I expect we only have a couple more years of cringe worthy movies and TV before the MCU ends. 

Well, that is a theory.

However, based upon what we know as opposed to what we fear, I don't think that theory is well supported.  Long time Marvel character and Cap partner, Sam Wilson has been promoted to Captain America in a story that feels organic to the MCU.  Spectrum has been introduced to the MCU and appears set to become a member of Avengers 2.0.  Fan favorite character Kamala Khan is getting her own Disney+ show, and while she has the name Ms Marvel, she is definitely her own character.  America Chavez is set to appear in Dr Strange 2, and whatever else you might say about her, she is an original character that is not a swapped version of anyone else.  Black Panther had a movie and it was huge.  Shang Chi has a movie coming out in September.  Isiah Bradley has been introduced in the MCU.  

IOW, Marvel has continued to take existing great minority characters and introduce them to the MCU rather than leaving them to languish in obscurity or simply race swap white characters. 

I've seen the first episode and thought it showed promise.  As Pattern Ghost indicated it is going to depend heavily on where they go from here.

As for the whole predestination thing, that not really how it works.  The Timekeepers selected a timeline to be the one that they keep and defend.  They didn't create the timeline.  The people in the timeline all got to make their choices, to be heroic or villainous.  It is only from the standpoint of the Timekeepers that the decisions are already prescribed.  Just as we can look back on the past and say what happened, but that does not mean that people at the time weren't making decisions, and taking chances and making sacrifices with which they would have to live.

Still, it has already been strongly foreshadowed, that Loki is going to try to break the Timekeepers and their organization.  So, that is likely to be a big part of the series going forward.

52 minutes ago, Christopher R Taylor said:

I find it hilarious that people quote rotten tomatoes ratings any more for quality of anything LOL

My point was more that people who had seen two episodes had a better opinion of it than people who had only seen.  However, since you have not seen any episodes at all, you don't really have any grounds to have an opinion one way or another.

9 minutes ago, Christopher R Taylor said:

Hearing some meh buzz about Loki.  Hiddlestone good actor but bleh boring and sort of confusingly pointless story: everything is predetermined so there's no heroism and no choices.

There has been only one episode to far that has been seen by the general public.  Currently, it is running 96% on Rotten among critics (who have seen 2 episodes) and 84% among the general audience who have seen only the first episode.

59 minutes ago, Christopher R Taylor said:

That scene never made sense to me.  He threw his hammer near her and so she's great now?  The Thor endorsement based on her not going "eek" when a magical hammer goes by her head?

Thor respects courage.

7 hours ago, Spence said:

But back to Captain Marvel, I really can't say if the personality and character of the character Carol Danvers followed the comic closely or not, but they had her glomp on to every bad stereotype of a military pilot and then never even tried to have her become the Hero in the end. 

Captain Marvel isn't trying to realistically portray military pilots; it is very deliberately evoking the action movies of nineties including and especially Top Gun.  

By the end of the movie, she has regrounded herself by renewing her connection to those closest to her, has claimed her full power, has seen through the lies told to her, overcome her hatred of Skrulls and has set out to rescue the Skrull species from extermination.   That sounds like a Hero to me.

3 hours ago, Christopher R Taylor said:

 

It wasn't confidence that was the problem.  It was a humorless lack of charisma and likability.  It was a lack of any challenge and treating everyone and everything like they were dirt beneath her fingernails.  Except women, who she was generally nice to (other than the Skrull woman).

 

Charisma and likability are subjective.  I found her likable enough and a number of female movie critics whose reviews I read found her more likable and relatable than Wonder Woman.

As treating everyone except women like dirt, no.  The character that she forms the strongest bond with is Samuel Jackson's Nick Fury, who is very definitely male.  The people that she "treats like dirt" are those who try to push her around or take advantage of her.

2 hours ago, Spence said:

Well there you have.  We are not talking about actual superHero comics.  Those ended in the mid 90s.

 

Anything after was only disjointed and feeble attempts to resurrect a long dead industry. 

 

I have multiple long boxes of comic books about heroes with super powers from that period that beg to differ.  

10 hours ago, Ragitsu said:

All I heard was "mutant".

 

Are we going to become mutants?

No, you weren't reading closely enough.  We are going to become "double mutants".  So everyone is going to get to make two rolls on the Gamma World mutation chart!

3 hours ago, zslane said:

 

I would argue that what makes them interesting is their personalities, and maybe their personal histories, not the costume they wear or the superhero name they have. They could have, and should have, been given new costumes, names, and maybe even powers. In other words, entirely new characters. The only reason to call them Blue Beetle, Spider-Man, and the Atom is to cash in on their recognition factor and existing fan base. But, like I said, that is lazy and creatively empty; it happens only to hedge bets and exploit a known "name". These characters, if they are really any good, deserve to be their own superheroes, and not just inherit the name/mantle of an already popular one.

If the characters are interesting and feel fresh, that is a good indicator that they are not creatively empty.  Writers and artist are putting thought and effort into crafting these legacy characters.  The fact that they are legacy characters is because the major comic book companies are risk adverse, and because legacy characters tend to sell better than other new characters.  There have been plenty of new, non-legacy characters that have come out in the last 20 years and most people can't name even one of them.

Being risk adverse and wanting to sell as many issues as possible is not the same as being lazy and creatively empty.  Different adjectives are required.

52 minutes ago, zslane said:

Hollywood is loathe to take a chance on anything new and unproven. So they hedge their bets by making a movie with a black superhero in the title role, and calling him Superman in order to create fan interest that wouldn't otherwise be there. From what I can see, every race-bent or gender-bent version of an iconic character is a lazy, creatively bankrupt way to add diversity and representation while claiming it is a "fresh, new take" on the character.

People love Jaime Reyes and Miles Morales, and Ryan Choi is not just my favorite Atom but one of my favorite characters period.  All of these characters IMHO are fresh and interesting.  So obviously our mileage varies.

24 minutes ago, TrickstaPriest said:

Pretty much a reiteration of why this whole counter-conversation about the pandemic is dooming the future of our country (pretty much a doomer mood today):
 

You might want to edit this post.  Perhaps you could refer to video without actually linking to it.

7 hours ago, Pattern Ghost said:

 

I'd say that's a big stretch. Gunshot residue testing involves looking for traces of primer components. The whole point is to determine whether someone fired a gun. We're not talking about gunpowder residue from the blast.

 

Adam Toledo was with a 21 year old named Ruben Roman.  Roman has been arrested and charged with felony reckless discharge, unlawful weapon use of a weapon and child endangerment.  So it could have been residue from Roman's gun that was found on Adam Toledo, or maybe both of them were shooting.  Perhaps the pattern of the gunshot residue will shed some light on the subject.

1 hour ago, zslane said:

WB put that movie on the path to failure from the very start. Firing Snyder and bringing on Whedon out of desperation only made matters worse. But rather than pulling up his big boy pants and just getting through the crappy situation with as much grace as possible, Fisher went the route of passive aggressive resentment, and has turned this into the cross he has chosen to bear for what will probably be the rest of his rather brief career in Hollywood.

 

Since Ray Fisher came out with his complaints, numerous other people have come forward to say that Josh Whedon is an abusive ***hole.  People always putting up with "crappy situations with as much grace as possible" is a good way to ensure that crappy situations never get any better.  As Whedon's choice of victims has  shown, crappy situations have a way being even crappier for women and minorities.  So, while keeping his head down and not complaining might have been the smart thing to do for his own career, he wouldn't have been doing black actors that follow him any favors.

IMHO, Ray Fisher handled the whole thing with grace and dignity.  Having seen Zack Snyder's cut, Ray Fisher has talent that wasn't on display in the theatrical release.  He has a strong voice and screen presence.  I am confident that has a great career ahead of him, though that may play out on stage and indie productions instead of in big studio blockbusters.