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This seems as good as any other place to bring this.

https://www.politico.com/news/magazine/2022/02/27/russia-weaponizing-food-supply-chains-00012130?cid=apn

Russia's move against the Ukraine could be so that Russia can use Ukraine's grain supply to barter other goods from China, thereby upsetting current trade agreements for food supplies across the globe.

So, yeah, we are screwed on prices rising for everything for the foreseeable future.

This article is from 2010... but somehow, even more relevant today.

To keep all that stuff up and running, the publisher is resorting to what experts call FARTS--Forced ARTificial Scarcity. Or they would call it that, if they were as awesome at naming things as I am.

Mark my words: The future will be ruled by FARTS.

https://www.cracked.com/article_18817_5-reasons-future-will-be-ruled-by-b.s..html

Remember when gas stations had air pumps that you could use for free?

Now it costs like $1.75 to fill your tires!

... That is really the definition of "inflation."

I have an m.2 drive in the Asus laptop.  My main OS drive on this desktop is a Samsung Evo 850, which is getting close to as fast as SATA III can really get.  The Velocriraptor still loads Steam library games fairly well, but it is definitely not an SSD.

I have a third drive, mostly for media, a few overflow games, and sound sample libraries.  That is only a 7200 rpm Baracuda.  That spindle drive is significantly slower than the Velociraptor, even.  You can feel the latency while opening files.  It is strange, but the difference between 7200 rpm and 10k rpm feels bigger than the difference between 10k and SSD.  I mean, the SSD is definitely faster, but dropping back to Velociraptor does not feel so insanely slow as the 7200.

When I get to my next build, it'll be as much m.2 drive as is possible, only using the current SATA drives for backup, if anything.

It looked as though it was standing....  It certainly was not orbiting...  The only option would be gravity pulling it to Earth and vice-versa.  That thing was so big, it would have had its own gravitational field.

But, you know.. physics.. phhh...

I remember the Lynx and the Jaguar, but the only time I played either one, it was on one of BV's consoles!

Also -

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Everyone running in straight line?!  soo....  the droid missed them?

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Nearly that entire scene made me shake my head. Just seemed like they needed to pad things up to fill in time. The plot armor was strong in this episode.

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Yeah, I was talking about plot armor to SpartanEVO concerning the same.  BV, at least they were not running in a straight line while being run over by a giant donut like in Prometheus... guh!

No no, the one in space.

But what was the celestial standing atop? 

I thought about getting a Switch toward the holiday season, but all were sold out by the time I came to that decision.

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The finale seemed like too much was forced into a short time.  That could have easily been a two-episode arc.  There was no tension, no breathing room between the fight scenes.

I am disappointed that a certain bounty hunter died off so quickly.  Those familiar with the Clone Wars would recognize how much of an integral character Cad Bane was.   The interaction with Boba, and even with Fennec, was very out of character for him.

I had to share this video.

Warning: some language & lots of in-game violence.

How did I miss this a few years ago?  Funny how I run biopsy work for that hospital now...

So, I am back to spending time in Skyrim.  The Anniversary Edition is essentially a bunch of creation club content that is already available in the Special Edition.  The Creation Club is basically the Bethesda-endorsed way to install mods.  I already have a ton of mods for extra armors, but the fishing mod (already added for SE owners) is a really nice touch.

After downloading the included Creation Club content for adding armor to war horses, I found the choices of steel and elven armor a bit boring.  I went back to Nexus and got some more horse armor mods, so now have Frost decked out in leather armor and Shadowmere sporting Daedric.

So, Core i7, 16 GB DDR3, and an RTX 2060 and I am running... uh.. 146 active mods outside of the expansion, SE, and AE content.

....ANNNND... Sony is buying Bungie as a follow-up to that gambit.

https://www.gfinityesports.com/gaming-news/sony-bungie-acquisition/?fbclid=IwAR0AHwKW9sqk0mdEsrypQLJhg26uCxADch4pjwG5yuUEuQS67L0Hb5niQ7w

What is harder than "hard" difficulty?

I never read the extended Star Wars books and media.  Coming from growing up on the movies in the eighties is my reference point.  It would not surprise me if most people watching the show started watching Star Wars when Disney Plus started showing the various series.

https://stealthoptional.com/crypto/gpu-prices-drop-crypto-fall/

If you want a great story of a Mandolorian (outside of Din Djarin and Boba Fett), Bo Katan's backstory in The Clone Wars and Star Wars: Rebels, before she appears in The Mandolorian is pretty great.

The Clone Wars series goes pretty deep into world building the culture and history of Mandolore.  I was pretty excited that they were able to use the same actress (Katie Sackoff) for both live action and voice acting the character of Bo Katan.

Finished the 4th episode.. I am very much enjoying this.

Of course it is not the "Boba Fett from the original trilogy"; that rendition of Boba died in the Sarlac pit back in Return of the Jedi.  However, if you followed Boba from Attack of the Clones when Jango Fett dies and in The Clone Wars as he survives as a young bounty hunter, you see character development.  This Boba has faced death and survived beyond Jabba the Hutt.

For those who were disappointed in anything in the first episode, by the time you get to the 4th episode, many of those complaints will be addressed in the storyline.  I thoroughly enjoyed what I have seen of this so far.  Also, casting Temuera Morrison, the same actor who played Jango Fett and Commander Cody (and all of the other clones), along with Ming-Na Wen (Fennec in Clone Wars: The Bad Batch and Melinda "The Cavalry" May in Marvel's Agents of Shield) is paying off quite well!

This is the first MCU movie that I thought was outright boring. 

In a series format, they could have taken time introducing the characters, the antagonists, the motivations.  In the movie format, so many characters were introduced with no time to develop.  There was no real tie-in to the rest of the MCU short of the dinner conversation about the Avengers.  No real attachment to any of the characters was felt.  No real care about their fates developed.

I rarely tear down a movie like this, but for the length of the film, I got nothing out of it.  It was far beyond sub-par for the expectations the rest of the MCU has set.  As a standalone movie, it was little more than background action and random scenes that hinted at subtext without exploring any of the deeper themes.

A grade of C- would be gracious.

And second batch..

I am still kinda thinking of buying some games on steam... but my backlog of unbeaten games has not gone down at all this year.  I have played some games, but do not think that I have actually finished an incomplete game over the last year.

I didn't really get any video games, but did get some good Japanese whisky and some Castlevania-themed items!

Monster system.. I get it... PS4 compatible.. I get it..

It really sounds like, at this point, it is a pretty big upgrade from a PS4.  As someone who does not have a PS4, it really is not ticking a lot of boxes for me to try really hard to get one.  Maybe next year if prices stabilize.  I cannot even see having four controllers for it.  It was rare that Renee or I ever use more than two controllers on the PS3.  Even with Tekken Tag Tournament 2, having four people willing to play at a time was rare.

So what good games does PS5 have?  I only get responses of, "Yeah, there are some solid games." But, with exception of Ratchet and Clank's new title, I have yet to hear of any killer apps or system exclusive games that are going to seal the deal.

I mean, the system looks cool, it has PS4 backwards compatibility, can play 4k streaming or blu ray movies (depending on digital or disc version of the console), but what GAMES make it worth buying?

GameStop in Brownsburg, Indiana has a few on hand, but they are all $800 bundle systems.  That is of today (12/19/21).  I cannot afford $800 for one though.

Let's see...

I did finish the McCree, I mean, Cole Cassidy Overwatch challenge this week. 

Last weekend I played a bit of Super Mario World on my SNES and Sony WEGA 27" CRT TV.  I followed that with a bit of Gradius IV on the PS2.

The only other game I have been playing is Skyrim Special Edition, that is mostly for the fishing quests added in the 10 year anniversary update.

Blizzard and Steam have a TON of sales right now.  I am strongly considering Doom: Eternal and Jedi: Fallen Order for PC since I can run those with my Core i7 now.

Is anyone planning on hitting some serious game time this holiday weekend?

On a related note:

I was wondering how the MCU would make this movie tie in with the rest of the MCU.  Starting with Iron Man, the rest of the collection created an investment in the characters.  Fortunately, this one did not disappoint.  I agree with Rectro that it did feel like MCU meets kung-fu in all the best ways!