I thought Fallout on Amazon Prime was spectacular. Binged the whole thing last weekend. Quirky and different, visually appealing and has a great soundtrack that really fits the mood. I liked it so much I am considering watching the whole thing again and I almost never rewatch tv shows. Can't wait for the next season.

"okie dokie!"

Finished last season of Curb.

Even though the style got repetitive over the years, I’m going to miss this show

Curb had run its course imo. I still got some laughs out of it, but the show was a shell of its former self, and the characters definitely started to grate on me more and more as time went on.

Watched Ripley, which I thought was pretty good. It had a few logical inconsistencies, and I'm not really sure the b&w was really necessary. It also had one of the most absurd casting decisions I've ever seen, but overall I enjoyed it.

Seen mixed things about Ripley. Will probably give it a decent shot anyway just on Andrew Scott being in it.

I'm not familiar with him, but he was good in the role. Most of the cast is fine, but they literally cast a woman to play Freddie lol. And not like a gender swap thing...she is actually supposed to be a man, and looks nothing like one. And she's a terrible actress to boot. Apparently it's Sting's daughter, so I kinda get it, but still...

Thankfully she isn't in it that much so it's not too distracting, but it's pretty wtf when she/he first shows up.

This guy was so damn good

I am enjoying Sugar on Apple TV. LA noir detective show starring Colin Farrell. Kind of a slow burn, lots of atmosphere and the primary mystery is really who the hell is Farrell's character. I'm a sucker for noir and for LA so this is right up my alley.

Conan Must Go is pretty damn good if you're a fan of his. Only 4 eps.

I'll watch that if Triumph is on. I love Triumph too much.

Not a fan of his at all, and I enjoyed the show quite a bit. Handful of actual LoLs. A couple of skippable moments with the "guests" in their home countries.

So good.
But talk about a dying art. In 50 years, most people won't ever handle playing cards except for a small percentage who hang onto poker or bridge.

Probably one of my favorite comedy bits ever is when Triumph went to the Bon Jovi concert

This one always gets me.

We finally finished Shogun. It was quite disappointing and we barely made it through the whole thing. Kinda boring really.

it really dragged at the end

mariko started off a cute character but by the end i just found her so annoying

first few episodes were great and then just kind of dragged and was a lot of stuff i didn't really find any interest in nor care about

also do not like how they fetishsize things and dive into tropes about japan which in reality are a bunch of outliers which they present as the norm

japanese were not these group of zealots who would happily kill themselves over the slightest issue, it sometimes happened, but was not the norm by any means, and in times it did happen was often "you kill yourself now or we'll kill your entire family" kind of situation





ie japan was always very big on gunpowder weapons and bordering china, they were very early adopters of them

when the mongols attempted to invade japan a good 300 years prior to the events of shogun, they brought bombs, grenades, rockets and very early versions of muskets and cannons - we know this because we've recovered these things from the mongol shipwrecks

however something that did happen was that gunpowder weapons were rapidly improving during that time because Europe was in a constant state of war whereas asia was relatively stable

as a result of this, when the europeans arrived, they had significantly more advanced cannons and muskets than the locals - this did have a very big impact - but they soon adapted and began making cannon in that manner

is asia, they always built massively thick city walls with an earthen interior and brick outer layer and they were the size of city streets

as a result, these were wholly impervious to cannon fire, despite that many of those city walls were used defensively in WWII vs modern artillery, they still stood at the end of the war and survived WWII

you can blast at it all day, you'll destroy the exterior stone, blow up the towers and gates, but the earthen core will remain no matter how many times you shoot with cannon

the only reason why most Chinese cities no longer have walls is because they were torn down because of the traffic congestion they caused in the modern world

compare that to Europe which always had thinly built stone walls that were possible to be taken down with cannon

this led to a great divergence of gunpowder armament philosophies in the east vs west

in the east they focused on things for anti-personnel

such as rockets, grenades, bombs, & spread fire anti personnel devices

here is a 3 barrel cannon from the ming dynasty


here's another


they still have the design papers of many of the old cannons and they are always of the shotgun style variety


like a shotgun today, this meant limited range & terrible accuracy so their uses were limited


meanwhile, since in Europe gunpowder took on more of a siege role, designs began favoring accuracy, power, & distance

the result was that asian cannons stagnated, they filled their niche and thus remained the same, whereas over time, the europeans were able to innovate and develop their cannons so much that eventually, they even exceeded the anti-personnel capabilities of asian shotgun style cannons by simply firing grape shot or chained ammunition

those developments also spurred on to creating powerful muskets which could be used from a distance


shogun is incredibly lazy, what should be depicted as fighting forces with a diverse armanent which includes local cannons and muskets is shown as one of sword, spear, & bow

they also rapidly began copying the European innovations when they came into contact with the portugese

ie they occasionally reference an invasion of Korea in the show, that invasion force irl was 1/4 musketmen

so it really annoys me that it takes the last samurai route and pretends a country which fully embraced gunpowder weapons instead did not





what keeps me watching is the main character is really charismatic and has a really good presence, he also sounds exactly like jeremy irons and I've always loved the sound of that man's voice, also really like yabushige - he's one of the only people who acts genuine and looks out for his own best interests instead of "according to tradition i must kill myself right now"




but all those historical inaccuracies aside, this is what really gets me