They aren’t bad movies, just not great. Better than Lost World, but not so good that I would be lamenting the terrible sequels if it weren’t for the far superior installments.

All I’m saying is that there isn’t a hell of a lot of difference between being disappointed in the terrible sequels that came after the first movie vs the terrible sequels that came after the second movie, especially when you aren’t all that attached to the first movie.

It’s all a matter of perspective anyway. Yes, Jurassic Park never got a good sequel but then it never really needed one. It was a complete story that did not call for any kind of follow up. To me, that makes the sequels less disappointing, because I don’t expect anything more.

Aliens ends with unanswered questions and lots of obvious potential for follow up stories. Star Wars gave us an entire universe full of potential stories to tell, whether it followed directly from the original trilogy or did something new in the same world. That the potential is wasted by making terrible movies makes them so much worse to me.

Personally, I’d argue that Alien and Terminator weren’t amazing either, and it’s only Aliens and Terminator 2 that were actually great movies. They’re still franchises with one really awesome installment followed by utter trash. And honestly, I think I’d take Jurassic Park 3 and Jurassic World over anything else the Aliens franchise has produced since.

I’m not saying they are definitely worse than the JP franchise, just that they’re close enough that reasonable people could disagree.

Alien and Terminator have both had nothing but shit since their second installments.

If you look at only the movies, Star Wars is at least as bad after the original trilogy. Rise of Skywalker is bad enough to make me wonder if there was intentional sabotage going on.

But for my money, the best example of a franchise that starts strong and then turns to absolute garbage in the sequels is Highlander. The original is a classic that was never meant to have a sequel. Then it got a bunch of sequels, the majority of which have been frequently cited as among the worst movies ever made.

• Highlander 2 is a ridiculous betrayal of the original that wanted to be cyberpunk and retconned the immortals to being aliens, which just gets dumber the longer you think about it,
• Highlander 3 is an apology that erases 2, but also negates the original’s ending for no reason other than to do the exact same plot over again… poorly.
• Highlander 4 erases all the movies and instead follows the TV show, killing the hero of the first movie as a poorly realized attempt to pass the torch, butchering the lore of both the movie and the show, and just being so awful that they chose to spend their time and money making deceptive ads with stuff that was never going to be in the movie instead of finishing the movie. Seriously, they released it with unfinished effects shots and missing scenes that were vital to understanding the plot.
• And then there’s Highlander 5, which was a straight to Syfy channel movie that actually makes all the previous ones look good by comparison, Listing everything wrong with it would just be describing the entire movie.

Hell, the anime is the most faithful movie follow up, and it doesn’t have any of the characters, takes place in a post apocalyptic wasteland, and introduces God, destiny, reincarnation, ghosts, druid magic, cyborgs, giant robot spiders, etc.

I have no faith in Amazon to handle this well, but it’s not impossible for them to hand it off to someone competent either. At the same time, everything I know about the way the previous stewards of the franchise handled things makes me glad to see them go.

Call Little Mac

Is he in IT? Just noticing the cat 9 tails he’s got there.

Only it’s not an accident.

At this point, I’m not sure if he’d lose even 1% in the polls if a recording came out showing him with Epstein, explicitly stating he’ll take the 12 year old girl, then dropping his pants. Most of his supporters would claim it was fake, some would claim it was out of context because they didn’t release any footage of actual sex, and at least a few would argue that there’s nothing wrong with sex with 12 year olds.

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I think the most reasonable interpretation is that the law doesn’t currently recognize the undead as being people, let alone being the same person they were in life. It would need to be shown to be a reliable source of evidence, similar to any new technology that claims to offer insight into a case. A random judge might allow it, but it would be easy grounds for an appeal if it can’t be shown to do exactly what it claims to do.

DNA evidence was new once, but so was the polygraph. Only one of these is admissible, and for good reason.

4x games tend to be functionally infinitely repayable, since a single game often takes an eternity and there are usually many factions to play.

I particularly like sword of the stars 1 & 2. Honestly don’t remember which I preferred but I know I got an insane amount of time sunk into both of them.

France on Sunday took a step closer to delivering what was once seen as an unthinkable nightmare: a far-right government taking power in Paris for the first time.

Well… the first time in a while. And just as the last time was exiting living memory.

It now has a bonus against evil outsiders and undead.

They want to oppose Trump, but also know that endorsing a Democrat would hurt their future careers in politics.

And honestly, they might actually have more of an impact this way since other Republicans will be more open to the idea that it’s OK to simply not support Trump. Many of those same voters would probably dismiss them as traitors if they actually said they were voting for Biden.

Wait, I remember this one…

I’m talking about this in terms of jurisprudence. Judges are supposed to rule based on law and precedent, not just on their personal preferences and political views. It’s an essential element of the rule of law. There’s very little point in having a constitution or laws if judges just ignore them and do whatever they want. I mean, I think most people here would agree that they do not approve of this Court defying precedent and most reasonable interpretations of the law in order to impose their will on the country.

Obviously, the Court can, has, and sometimes should overturn precedent, and potentially throw out decades or centuries of previously settled law. But generally speaking, that ruling should make a very compelling case for such an action. They would essentially be saying that everyone writing and interpreting the laws for all that time had gotten it wrong (intentionally or otherwise), including potentially the people who wrote the very sections of the constitution that the ruling is based on.

The more specific point I was making was that Roberts had ruled that the government could use the tax power alone to tax “not having insurance” and that it wouldn’t run afoul of the constitution as long as it wasn’t just a head tax applied to everyone indiscriminately, as that would be a direct tax which must be apportioned among the states.* That’s the same clause that is being invoked in this case as a reason why wealth taxes shouldn’t be allowed.

A ruling against taxes on unrealized gains would not only require the Court to assert that we’ve been doing it wrong this whole time and that we only just now figured that out, but Roberts in particular would be doing a complete 180 on the issue. Jumping from one extreme end of the spectrum to the other would be a rather remarkable change, one that would be hard to reconcile without concluding that one decision or the other was dishonest and politically motivated.

* And because it had a regulatory intent, aimed at compelling people to buy insurance, it had to also not be so crippling a burden that it’s effects would need to go through police or regulatory powers.

A ruling against wealth taxes would be insane and would essentially overturn our entire history of tax law. But it would be especially nuts in light of the ruling in NFIB v Sebelius that the government can hit you with a tax for doing nothing. That seems utterly incompatible with the idea that the government doesn’t have the power to tax owning things and/or amassing wealth.

I guess that would mean you can tax not buying something, but you can’t tax not selling something.

I wonder if he also wants the absolute immunity that Trump claims to have to this day to also apply to Biden?

Trump can do no wrong. Therefore, any action taken against him must be unjustified. So it can only ever be political, and therefore, it’s only fair that we do the same to Biden.

The best part is, they recognize that this is terrible for democracy, that this being normalized would be a disaster, and then say they are going to do it anyway. They are admitting that rather than accept the outcome of the legal process for settling these kinds of situations, and respecting the rule of law, they would rather damage our society to get their victory by any means necessary.

Which is pretty much how we got here in the first place, when Trump couldn’t accept an election or dozens of court cases all telling him he lost.

The really frustrating part is that cheap generic stuff skyrocketed too. Walmart embraced inflation enthusiastically, and their knockoff mountain dew went from $0.62 to $1.70. Supply chain issues I’m sure…

I used to get that stuff 10 bottles at a time, and it was one of the few things that made it worth going there. Now I just get whatever is on sale at the local employee owned grocery chain. The price difference is negligible, almost everything else is cheaper, and I get to support some place that isn’t evil.