Scottish Martial Arts wrote on Sep 27, 2021, 19:35:
Does anyone actually like Discovery and Picard? The reactions only seem to range from “I’ve watched it and I didn’t hate it” to “I hated it”.

Picard received lukewarm ratings among my crew but Discovery is watched with enthusiasm. It helps that none of us are 800 year old neckbeards who have to constantly compare all the Star Trek series against one another.

Counterpoint:

I've been in my current gig for 11 years. During the entirety of that 11 years, my department has communicated by messenger far more than face to face. So when we all suddenly shifted to WFH, communication never took a hit. We were still talking, just in a different environment. Collaboration has rarely been done face to face since its a pain in the ass to share data in meatspace when you can just send and receive files instantly via the same messenging service. I know what all my guys are working on at any given time. Right now, monthly status meeting updates are good enough and hearing them via a Wire meeting is no less informative than sitting in a conference room somewhere. If anything, productivity has gone up.

The only people I have found who have issues WFH are social butterflies. The kind of people who just have to flit around and talk your ear off for whatever validation they're missing in their lives. They're a distraction and I am glad they're no longer interrupting our flow. We have two channels labeled "Work" and "Bullshit". "Work" is reserved solely for work related information so it can be found easily by anyone. "Bullshit" is where we talk about shows, movies, games, books, music, whatever. It's very lively and I see more people participating in it than I did face to face pre-pandemic.

I prefer working from home because all I have to do is get up in the morning, get some tea, and grab my laptop on my way out to the front porch. I sit my ass in a rocker, put my feet up on the table, open my laptop, and get to work. I can reach down and rub my dog's ears if I feel like it. Sometimes I even throw the ball for her when she brings it to me. I'm comfortable, there's no traffic to deal with, no commute time, and work starts and stops when I see fit. When work is done, my home is still the same, quiet, serene place it always is. Mrs. Burrito knows not to bug me during work time and respects that there is a boundary there when I am "on the clock". The up side is that by doing WFH, I am not exposing Mrs. Burrito to any pathogens that would otherwise float around in meatspace back at the office. That's a huge bonus in my universe.

My guys are very, very happy to stay WFH forever if we can swing it and I am working diligently on making that a reality. Why be pigeonholed in some antiquated 1950s version of what a workplace is when you can adapt to a healthier and happier work environment? One that has a demonstrable uptick in employee satisfaction, production, and quality of life.

Metacritic ratings are meaningless to show production and you know that.Since all of them are on subscription services, the subs matter most. Paramount/ViacomCBS earlier this year reported a subscriber base of around 30 million. Apple has around 20. I doubt "Foundation" is going to meaningfully improve those numbers for Apple.

You may have had your fill of Star Trek but it's clear others have not. I don't know where to get the numbers but I would wager that any two episodes of " Discovery" and "Picard" had far more streams than "Foundation". "The Expanse" also probably outstreamed "Foundation" as well and it had the bonus of being on cable, as well.

If you like "Foundation", great, but don't expect it to be around for a while if it doesn't at minimum compete with an equal number of eyeballs that those three already have.

"For All Mankind" is also sci-fi. I would describe it as alternate history sci-fi. Last I checked, it's 2021 and we still don't have a base on the moon.

B5 is the show I measure all other sci-fi shows against. Few meet its excellence, none of have surpassed it.

Mrs. Burrito had never seen B5 so we binged them all (even the fifth season) and she was crying during the second to last episode that showed Sheridan's send-off. She had heard my dad and I talk about it but never understood why we thought it was so great. Now she's a total fan.

Babylon 5 is that good almost thirty years later.

RedEye9 wrote on Sep 27, 2021, 13:53:
There are very few that scratch the sci-fi itch. And Foundation does that in spades and then some.

While true, they're competing against Star Trek Discovery, Picard, The Expanse, For All Mankind, and Snowpiercer in this year alone. Discovery, Picard, and The Expanse are far more engaging than Foundation with a larger following. "Scratching a sci-fi itch" isn't enough to ensure a continued run when others are doing it better.

I think they'll be lucky to make this current season. For me, the first two episodes were not engaging in any way. Day was about the only standout character and that was due to being an absolute cunt. Outside of that, everyone else I have seen so far is milquetoast.

That's not going to be engaging enough for an audience that has literally hundreds of shows to choose from across multiple streaming services.

But does it come with peanut butter jelly time?

I am going to put my response in a secret tag to avoid spoilers since I will be talking plot points.

You keep trying to draw parallels with the real world.

But that doesn't work because "Midnight Mass" is a self-contained story. A self-contained story that is not internally consistent with the set pieces it tries to use as the vehicle to tell its implausible story. Let's set aside Pruitt for a moment and focus on Dr. Gunning. She is a doctor. Her mother starts magically recovering and de-aging. Does she take her to the mainland to figure out what the fuck is going on? Nope! We'll just set petri dishes on the window sill and sit around with our thumb jammed up our ass. We won't take her to the mainland to discover why she is recovering from Alzheimer's/dementia because surely that wouldn't be medically significant at all and of great value to medical researchers. I mean, it happens every day, right?

As I said previously, all the characters make the dumbest decisions possible in the most irrational ways possible to try and tell a story that is mindbogglingly stupid. It's just bad and Flanagan doesn't get a free pass for whiffing this one because he did the outstanding "House on Haunted Hill" and "Bly Manor". If it didn't try to be so earnest, I would be a bit more charitable to it. But it does and at no point does it earn the right to be that earnest. It's badly constructed and doesn't survive even the slightest scrutiny.

You're right. It's not mind numbingly stupid. It's mindbogglingly stupid. It's almost insultingly stupid.

Let's take the usage of the title "monsignor". To be a monsignor, you really have to know your shit. It's a papal award based upon a recommendation by a bishop and you have to survive the scrutiny of the Holy See. Now, add to that that the title was stopped in 2013 for anyone outside of the diplomatic service. So there's no way in Hell this guy who looks like he's barely out of his twenties is going to be walking around with that honorific.

But, given the plot, none of that matters except when it does because said monsignor should very much know what he's seeing. At no point does anything in apocryphal or Biblical lore even remotely suggest that what he's seeing is actually what he's claiming it to be. We're not talking about some backwoods Southern Baptist or Jehovah's Witness loser who interpret whatever they Hell they want to fit their own twisted agenda. The monsignor isn't a Marian, that's clear, and he gets a trip to the Holy Land which suggests that he's either Franciscan, Dominican, or Jesuit. From my own experience, those gentlemen tend to be highly educated with multiple Ph.D.s under their belt. There are zealots, every organization has them, but the ones I have met tend to be rational, logical people. Given Pruitt's length of service, it would seem likely that he would as well. Ergo, he would need to completely abandon everything he knows and has learned to make his belief in the thing even remotely plausible.

And it doesn't work. Nothing about the whole setup works at all. It's shallow wish fulfillment in the pursuit of a mediocre, at best, plot. A plot hampered by threads that go nowhere for the sole purpose of using up time.

I'm glad you liked it. I did not. Neither of us will change our opinions.

"Midnight Mass"

Easily the worst of Flanagan's efforts. It's plodding, predictable, and about as eerie as a bright spring day. Moreover, its mythology is mind numbingly stupid to anyone who has even the most remote knowledge of Judaeo-Christian mythology.

Spoilers:
The "angel" is a fucking vampire. How a priest would fail to know that on the first fucking glance is beyond the pale of plausibility. At no point in the Old Testament or New Testament does an angel decide to suck the blood out of someone. Not even in an allegorical sense. Everyone makes the dumbest decisions possible and they even managed to waste the talents of Kate Siegal. You root for nothing except your own death to escape the giant vortex of failure that is "Midnight Mass". It's not "cerebral". It's 40 minutes of "does this go anywhere" with 20 minutes of "Uh, I guess we forgot to advance the plot. We should probably do that." If you stripped out all the filler bullshit, you'd have maybe three episodes worth of decent content

//--\\

Sportsball

In general, I am not a football fan. I am a Raiders fan. It's good to see them actually winning games for a change. It's been a tough 12 years to be a Raiders fan. Mrs. Burrito, on the other hand, is a football fan and watched all the games that were playing in our market today. Her Jets got roflstomped hard today. I caught the end of the ChargersRams-Buccaneers game and it was worth watching just to see Brady pout like a little bitch.

This comment was edited on Sep 27, 2021, 01:12.

Influencers are like the least productive member of your family that shows up to family holidays and all they talk about is how great they are.

You're never disappointed when they die.

People often make stupid decisions, film at 11.

There's no liquor?

<jeremyclarkson-ohnoanyway.jpg>

Dev:

I understand where you are coming from and that is why I pushed back. I have the power and ability to do so as the department head so I used it. There is zero reason to manage people by surveillance. For whatever benefit a company thinks they are getting by using it, they are losing more than double that in the human cost. No one likes being treated like an errant child.

Beamer:

I 100% agree with you. I manage by milestones and quality reviews and that's it. My people are adults and I treat them as such. Work-life balance is very important to me so I make sure I apply that fairly to everyone who reports to me. Sometimes life gets in the way. Organizations and managers need to be flexible to handle that without making a big deal about it. Managers, in particular, also need to understand upfront that sometimes you're also going to be a therapist, guidance counselor, coach, and cheerleader in different measures. You have to create an environment where your people feel absolutely comfortable coming to you to talk about anything that may impact their ability to work well. You also have to create the system and tools necessary to help your people through those issues once they do come to you. Sometimes it's as simple as encouraging them to take advantage of their EAP benefits and assuring them that there will be no judgement or repercussions for using those benefits.

In the end, I don't care how an employee hits their milestone so long as they do.

Work tried that at the beginning of the pandemic. I replied with the following:

"Although you may not be aware, the entirety of the department I supervise is currently using their own equipment to work remotely. This includes their own PCs or laptops, their own internet connection, their own mobile phones, and their own software. None of which has been paid for, or is being paid for, by <REDACTED>.

Moreover, we do not have 'productivity tracking' software installed on the machines in the office nor will we ever while I am the head of this department. We do not manage productivity in that way and, in fact, doing so goes against the policies set forth here <hyperlink to internal management training>.

If you trust your employees to be productive on-site where no-one is looking over their shoulder at their screen every second of their work day, why do you trust them less off-site when they are doing the exact same work? Bear in mind that I will be sharing your response to that question with my entire department because they, too, would like that answered so I am asking it on their behalf."

I was one of several department heads that pushed back hard against that Orwellian attempt. It was dropped very, very quickly and no more was said of it.

Just say no to corporate surveillance and enforce that no.

RedEye9 wrote on Sep 24, 2021, 12:09:

Leahi84 wrote on Sep 24, 2021, 12:05:
This is the dumbest thing I've ever heard. Good luck wiping that from the internet. Also, it basically validates the listing for their games, otherwise they wouldn't care.

Every generation has to relearn the Streisand Effect. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Streisand_effect

Ubi needs to learn it badly, too. Put it the entire list on PrivateBin or CryptPad and when Ubi whines, tell them their DMCA doesn't mean shit and to go eat a bowl of dicks.

jdreyer wrote on Sep 24, 2021, 13:46:
RE: Foundation, would you say "Not great, not terrible?"

Haha! Yes!

jdreyer wrote on Sep 24, 2021, 13:53:
If only Texans would actually hold their elected officials responsible.

Here's the thing. ERCOT is a private company. So starting in early March, the politicians did their usual dog and pony show saying it wasn't their fault. Then the entire ERCOT board resigned meaning that holding them accountable would result in nothing more than a pyrrhic victory. You already knew that Abbott and Costello Inc weren't going to do anything because the large majority of mouthbreathing Texans are too fucking stupid to understand that regulations are a good thing. Instead, all they hear is "Regulation is gonna kill yer jerbs and green energy caused all this".

You need to understand that Texas is a fundamentally retarded (in the scientific sense, not the pejorative sense although that fits, too) state with the emotional intelligence of a spoiled four year old. A four year old that was raised in the most batshit, racist, fundie household your worst nightmares couldn't possibly conjure up.

Mr. Tact wrote on Sep 24, 2021, 12:26:
Sounds like it follows the novels! It isn't a swashbuckling story for the most part and even saying that you could still add it starts off slowly.

I knew going in that I wasn't getting "The Expanse".

Even so, not even Jared Harris can really seem to move the needle for me and I really like Jared Harris as an actor. He was absolutely awesome in "Chernobyl", for example.

Watched the first two episodes of "Foundation" last night. I would sum it up as pretty but dull.

ForgedReality wrote on Sep 23, 2021, 18:53:
Still won't install Epic Malware.

Yet you undoubtedly still use Windows and likely services offered by Google.

Irony isn't a supplement.