The teaser trailer for Thor: Ragnarok was cool, but—having seen the other movies—I was worried that the finished product would be nothing like it. Now that I’ve seen the comic-con trailer, I hope that the movie will be nothing like this one.

On the DC side of the fence, everything looks solid in the Justice League trailer except for Flash, who seems to be woefully miscast, as well as cursed with terrible dialogue and a clunky costume. However, since the only current-generation DC movie I liked was Wonder Woman, I’m not getting my hopes up. There’s still plenty of ways for them to screw the pooch.

Auto-rendering emoticons in a bug-tracker is dumb (because of course someone who pastes 50 lines of log output into a ticket wants to see smiley faces, blue stars, and thumbs-down icons, and SQL always looks better with broken hearts). Repeatedly closing support tickets asking for a way to turn it off is dumber. Forcing your customers to remember to manually comment out this misfeature in an XML file every time they upgrade Jira: priceless.

I petted Scrawny last night. I won’t say she was happy about it, but consent was sought and received, without bloodshed.

She wasn’t up for it this morning, though. The fact that her response was silently scooting away from me on the bench rather than hissing or running away can be considered progress.

The lesson to be drawn from this is that in The Glorious Future, we should be careful not to let catgirls go feral.

If I open Google Maps and search for “gyro”, results that include Burger King, Chuck E Cheese, Jack In The Box, wine bars, taco joints, sushi, and chinese restaurants are not useful.

Sadly, it’s one of the prizes in Yomeishu’s summer campaign, not for sale (unless you want to buy it used in a few months…).

(via)

I was really kind of rooting for Hayley Atwell as the next Doctor, but while I’ve never seen Jodie Whittaker in anything, she seems like a sound choice. At least she has a good relationship with the new show-runner, which was apparently one of the (many) problems with Capaldi’s tenure.

What I find tiresome is the nitwits on social media who are treating it as a victory over The Patriarchy. Reminder: when you hate half the population, you’re the bigot.

Update

Naturally, Those Lovable Leftists hate her because she’s white. Of course, much like the deafening silence regarding the gender imbalance in the field of sewer-cleaning, I’m not seeing a lot of demands for Women Of Color to win the coveted Nazi roles in WWII movies and games. What kind of world denies a black Muslim lesbian her right to be Hitler?

Wither, BBC

(not a typo)

“One in six of all on-screen BBC roles must go to lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender or disabled people by 2020, the corporation’s new diversity targets state.”

…

“The BBC’s royal charter, due to expire this year, is currently under Government review.”

(not a coincidence)

I’m guessing the disabled activists will be getting the short end of the stick on this one.

(via)

The company’s having an “international potluck lunch” with foods from our “native countries” on Wednesday. I don’t have time to order Cassano’s Pizza, and the nearest White Castle is in Vegas, so I can’t decide between corn on the cob, Johnny Marzetti, Cincinatti Chili, or just stopping at Wendy’s and buying a bunch of Frosties.

The (completely predictable) story about a Berkeley student who had previously claimed to be the victim of racial profiling—now under arrest for mass vandalism and hate crimes—included a small photo of the “illegal spring-loaded knife” that he was caught with.

It looked like a pretty normal liner-lock pocket knife to me, and the article specifically noted that the blade was only 2.5 inches, so I followed the link to the Berkeley Municipal Code:

13.68.010 Dangerous weapon—Defined.

As used in this chapter, “dangerous weapon” means and includes, but is not limited to:

A. Any knife having a blade three inches or more in length, or any snap-blade or spring-blade knife regardless of the length of the blade;
B. Any ice pick or similar sharp stabbing tool;
C. Any straight edge razor or any razor blade fitted to a handle;
D. Any cutting, stabbing or bludgeoning weapon or device capable of inflicting grievous bodily harm;
E. Any dirk or dagger or bludgeon;
F. Any “taser public defender” or other similar electronic immobilizer which causes, by means of an electrical current, a person to experience muscle spasms and extreme pain, followed by unconsciousness.

Forget about the “spring-blade” nonsense (which is much more vague than the corresponding state law), the sections I’ve italicized make it clear that Berkeley cops have the discretion to arrest you for carrying anything at all. Which makes you wonder why they’ve showed such remarkable restraint when dealing with “activists”…

Blowing up the picture from the article revealed his tire-slasher to be a “Tac-Force Speedster” (yes, with spring assist), and it’s probably the least-hideous design they sell, so at least he has good taste in discount tacticool knives ($6-8 online). That should serve him well in jail.