[this late update brought to you by a took-longer-than-intended Artifactory upgrade, and I’m including the most entertaining error message from one of the problems we ran into, for anyone else who runs into it. TL/DR: pause federation for the affected repos on both sides, turn it back on, then push the config from A to B]

School Live! Letters

What do you do after saving the human race from a zombie apocalypse? There’s now a final volume of the School Live! manga, following the lives of Our Survivor Schoolgirls, growing up and getting closure in the slowly-recovering world. Very well done.

Metaphor alert!

Illegal aliens kill bald eagle for food.

Illustrated Manual

Well, that’s one way of telling people what the gloves are good for.

Carnival Row season 2

The best news about the two episodes that were released this week is that they’re pruning side-plots by pruning characters. Having Our Half-breed Hallucinating Hero turn into a completely different character as the bodies pile up doesn’t really improve the situation, though, and the words “desperate flailing” pretty much sum up the overall tone of the writing.

Farm Harem episode 10

In which finally!

The bulk of the episode revolves around three conniving schoolgirls and a neglected princess, not that there’s anything wrong with that, but we also add some dark elves to the harem, a new dungeon to the map, a fertility drug for the elf cheerleaders, and Our Voluptuous Vampire Vixen discovers that biting isn’t the only way to breed.

Verdict: okay, that’s one baby on the way.

Twin Peaks episode 10

This week, Our Two Dads abandon The Avengers to join My Three Grandpas, followed by The Attack Of The Insanely Jealous Second Son.

Verdict: still on the right side of the slow-life line.

(Clara’s apples just can’t compete (classical reference))

Nier episode 7

I’m really sick of the robot village, because far too much of the narrative is delivered in heavily-distorted mechanical voices that give me a literal headache. And then a wild A2 appears, but Our Heroes forgot to pack their pokéballs.

Verdict: this is not the hot girl-on-girl action I was looking for.

History Of The World, Part II: The shameless cash grab

Hulu just started airing an original series based on Mel Brooks’ History Of The World, Part I. I couldn’t get through five minutes of the poorly written, unfunny first episode. Clearly Brooks is contributing only his name and voice to this turkey.

(classical reference)

Two months later…

Before this season of anime premiered, I noticed that the official site for Disillusioned Adventurers was completely broken, in an upgraded-to-incompatibility way.

It still is.

Bit of a downer, that…

The smiling bikini-clad young woman who led off my most recent cheesecake post was 17-year-old singer/actress Yukiko Okada. When I went to see what else she’d done, I learned that she’d commited suicide the year after that picture was taken. Management pro tip: when someone has just tried to kill herself two different ways, do not leave her alone in a tall building while you discuss how to manage the scandal.

(it’s hard to find an appropriate picture for something like this, so I’ll take a chance on a bodega cat)

Unicorn chaser

Reborn As a Vending Machine trailer. Airing in July. The light novels were more fun than they had any right to be, but there were only three of them before the author ran out of ideas, so they’ll have to use it all and contrive an ending. Or make it a complete train wreck. A lot is riding on Our Vending Hero’s internal monologue, so the role needs an experienced voice actor.

I’m getting progressively more ruthless as I go along in order to get through an entire month’s downloads in a single post. For this one I used 25%, but by the time I reach the Covid lockdowns, I’ll either have to get that down around 5% or do multiple posts per month.

Breaking things by moving fast

A lot of interactions on Twitter are returning error 467 today, as an apparent attempt to require paid API access for some features backfired horribly.

But who needs Twitter when we’ve got cheesecake?

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The upcoming 20th anniversary Pretty Cure All Stars movie will feature all 77 of them. None of whom I could put a name to.

Panty-Fighter Goddess Maid Café Harem

Based on the fan-service-heavy trailer, The Café Terrace And Its Goddesses will be filled with eye candy, but the guy at the center of the harem will spend half the season being an annoying prick. Or maybe we’ll get lucky and Truck-kun will send him off to another world and the girls will just run the place themselves.

(this is a day for mostly-unrelated pictures)

Why you should carry a Fluffy Bunny Burglar Pillow in .45 Safety Cuddle:

Illinois state rep claims putting “M&P” on the slide makes a gun a weapon of war. Someone should buy this assclown a box of Grape Nuts.

Farm Harem episode 9

In which Our Senior Wolfgirl defends an oppressed minority, a well-fed harem is a happy harem, a merchant lines his pockets after finding dry trousers, Our Topless Snake Girls establish relations-but-not-the-naughty-kind, Our Outplayed Mayor loses his pants, Our Drunken Dragon’s ploy is revealed, and the latest haremette is Our Spinster Dragon Lady. Not necessarily in that order.

Verdict: our one chance to see boobs, and the mayor orders the snake girls to cover up? And this is not a buy-the-bluray-tease sort of show. Related, why the shortage of redheads in this harem? I cry foul!

Twin Peaks episode 9

A Very Special Episode: Dariel’s Daddy Issues. Also, Our Demon General Swimsuit Model nearly gets herself killed by being a total airhead, but fortunately only ends up wetting herself in terror again. Our Lady Hero Lady can sympathize, after discovering what it’s like to get on the wrong side of Our Former Hero. Now, as long as they don’t reveal that Our Mighty Waifu is secretly Our Un-Orphaned Mayor’s half-sister, things should turn out okay. In other news, the demon lord has hidden depths.

Verdict: they’re walking a fine line with the serious bits, but managing to stay on the slow-life-with-giant-boobs side.

(running out of relevant pics for this show, so here’s a good-sized pair… of glasses)

Nier episode 6

In which The Resistance goes viral.

Verdict: they really need to crank out some more copies of those older models. And I like the way they spiced up some of 9S’ exposition by framing it with a closeup of 2B’s boob.

Scrubbing through this period in my archives turned up a number of treats, including two favorites photographed in earlier years, Eri Kamei and Kanori Kadomatsu. Eri retired from idol group Morning Musume in 2010, and is currently happily married to the singer/songwriter from the popular band Bump Of Chicken. Meanwhile, Kanori is still an active anime and game voice actress under another name, and also still quite easy on the eyes at age 49.

“Hey, are you moving again?”

It’s the one-year anniversary of me scheduling a truck and people to help me load it in California and unload it in Ohio. So I got email from both companies, asking me if I was moving again.

Yeah, no. And if I were, they’d have just knocked themselves off my list.

On with the cheesecake!

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Two weeks before I left for Japan, we had a crapton of rain, and I found a huge puddle in the basement. I took a bunch of pictures, sent them to the contractor, and asked him to contact the folks who’d done the crack-sealing a few months earlier.

Three months later, I discover that the reason they never came out to take a look was that they needed to see the wall wet, and the contractor was waiting for me to call them the next time it was actively leaking (a message that never reached me…). Meanwhile the landscapers had completely redone the drainage outside, so even if I’d been told about this requirement, it wasn’t going to be easy to reproduce.

So this morning the contractor brought over a hose and set it to soak the ground in the right area. Pretty soon we had a slow leak and a fast one, to the point that you could hear the water splashing on the floor from twenty feet away. Now they’re going to come out and do something about it.

Spring anime?

Not too promising so far. The first season of Edens Zero was fun, but I know from the source material that it basically turns into an endless series of escalating fight scenes. And I’m not convinced that Megumin and Yunyun can carry a Konosuba prequel. Other than that, lots of Nth seasons of shows I didn’t watch, convoluted plots that require giant expository dumps to setup, the usual variations on isekai cheats, and things that announce that they’re funny by SHOUTING EVERY LINE.

The goofiest 9mm ammo

It’s amazing what you can find in boxes that haven’t been opened in 30 years.

Before I moved to California in the early Nineties, I bought some reloads from a little hole-in-the-wall gun shop in Columbus, Ohio. They were fun to shoot, but only if you had a gun that they worked in. In fact, he wouldn’t even sell them to you unless you told him you owned one of the few guns that could feed them reliably.

My Ruger P-85 (sold off long ago, pity) was on the short list; that gun was a garbagemouth that would feed anything, including empty cases, so it was a natural for these ribbed semi-wadcutters:

I doubt he’s still in business, and I’m quite certain I don’t remember where his shop was.

Carnival Row

I had meant to watch this Amazon series a while back, but just never got into the mood. Then I noticed that they’re in the middle of releasing season two, so I sat down and gave it a shot.

Perhaps the most interesting thing about it is that it’s not based on existing IP, and yet got a fairly large budget, decent casting, and dubbing into quite a few languages; it’s clear that Amazon really wanted it to succeed.

The first season mostly does, although the two major story arcs are almost completely separate, and the secondary one is about as subtle as a brick to the back of the head. Unfortunately, so far, the second season is a kitchen sink to the back of the head, full of political intrigue, secret meetings, a triple helping of fantasy racism allegory, another mystery monster, a ridiculous guillotine, and workers of the world uniting.

Buried Lede

I love how Anime News Network doesn’t feel the need to explain what “ASMR” means, especially in the context of announcing an upcoming release featuring Roxanne from the Dungeon Slave Harem series. But the real news is that they’re also making a Roxanne hug pillow.

Amusing:

My employer’s Facilities department just asked me about my seat assignment in their consolidated Mountain View offices. I was delighted to tell them I don’t need a dedicated space in a building 2,000 miles away. 😁

(in fact, I’m happy to have had no reason to set foot in California since last April, since the state gov really, really tries to keep collecting taxes after you move away, insisting that you’re still a resident for tax purposes)

Not Amusing:

Today I Learned that Doctor Sue was such a mess that they brought back all the worst elements of the convoluted Weeping Angel stories and made them even worse.

Annoying:

A representative from the power company showed up early Friday afternoon to install a new smartmeter. The online documentation for this “upgrade” very casually mentions that it enables a “self-healing grid” capability that involves remotely cutting off your power. In conditions that it is very careful not to clearly define or limit.

Anyway, he knocked first, which allowed me time to shut down the gear that isn’t on the UPS, like the wireless APs. Still, my personal Mac took forever to reconnect to wireless, even while my work Mac was already back into a Zoom meeting. I had to shut off wireless completely and then re-select the correct network from System Preferences. Doing those same operations from the menubar simply didn’t work.

Farm Harem episode 8

In which Our Senior Wolfgirl better start shaking her tail, because there’s already new competition from the dragon and demon camps, with Our Headstrong Pettanko Dragongirl and Our Overconfident Demon Schoolgirl entering the picture. Still no relief for the divine tool, though, as Our Dwarven Brewmasters aren’t interested in any woman who can’t grow a beard.

(the dragon and demon girls don’t know they’re waifu material yet, but it’s no accident that their parents sent virgin sacrifices to appease Our Hoetown Mayor)

Verdict: way past time to stop being coy and get on with the baby-making. Among other things, Tia doesn’t officially become a wife (as opposed to a Willing Waifu) until Ru’s firstborn comes along, and they haven’t even shown her swelling up yet.

NieR episode 5

In which a visit to a peaceful robot village is bookended by the underdressed robot beefcake, first in tighty-whities, then in pants, something I could have done without. Fortunately, in between, the camera continues to linger over 2B’s well-packed cleavage and creamy thighs, while the story meanders along.

Verdict: 2B-service.

Twin Peaks episode 8

In which we learn the answer to the question, “just how many times in one day can a Demon General Swimsuit Model wet herself in fear?”. Also, pity the poor demons serving under this wench, who must be constantly filing worker’s comp claims for whiplash, both physical and emotional. Also, Dariel achieves the rare double squeeze play, inevitably followed by the double smackdown.

Verdict: the kid knows what’s important in life. And the plot doesn’t thicken so much as it bounces, enough so I’m not terribly worried about next week’s thickening.

(in retrospect, Our Appreciative Hero had no idea the danger he was in when he first arrived in the village and consulted her breasts for every decision)

How Clarkesworld should respond…

Pixy linked to an SF magazine that’s had to stop accepting submissions due to the flood of “AI”-generated slush.

I think the thing to do is pick one that’s short and not completely horrible, and just announce their intention to publish it without any attribution or payment. There’s no author, so there’s no copyright holder.

Stick to coffee, dude

James Hoffmann is entertaining and informative on the subject of coffee, in print and video. Sadly, his latest video leads off with several minutes of Why We Must Stop Using Natural Gas And Electrify Everything To Save The World.

I have no idea how the rest of the video went.

Next on “America’s Dumbest Criminals”…

When your profile on a dating site includes the string “MAP4-10” (that’s “minor-attracted-person” for those not up on the latest euphemisms), and includes the phrase “when I say I want kids, I mean it”, and your gmail account is “pedozack82”, you just might be supplying probable cause for a search of your home.

TL/DR: pled guilty to 313 counts of possession, 8 counts of distributing, 2 counts of promoting, and 1 count of procuring child pornography; the only real surprise is that he wasn’t an elected official, who most likely would have gotten less than 70 years.

Many of the commenters aren’t happy with this being considered probable cause, with some of them hung up on the judge relying on a detective using his “training and experience” to identify the meaning of “MAP4-10”. Some also insisted that it was incredibly unlikely that a pedo would advertise on social media for kids to molest. Never mind that the whole thing was started by a referral from the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children, which has some experience in this area.

Read The Fine Print

Nespresso is big on being green, with their fully-recyclable pods (and free shipping to their recycling centers), but a lot of it is marketing bullshit. Such as their recent deal that offered an upcycled throw blanket if you ordered N sleeves of pods, calling it out as made with materials from the pod-recycling program. Specifically, the coffee grounds; using aluminum from the pods themselves would make for a rather stiff blanket.

The fine print (contrast significantly enhanced by my phone; I could barely make out the text on the actual box):

So, 4 pods worth of coffee grounds is about 18-20 grams, and only 19% of the mostly-polyester blend is recycled plastic. This is about as significant as Kiss adding their blood to the printing ink of their first Marvel graphic novel. (yes, I have a copy somewhere…)