R.I.P. Wonderduck

Well, shit.

Bad spam, no sex toy!

Someone manually posted a spam comment in the wee hours Friday morning. It didn’t accomplish anything, of course, since the comments here don’t get indexed by search engines, and I was able to delete it with a single click when I received the email notification. It was at least thematically appropriate, hawking toys-for-boys on one of my recent cheesecake posts. This is a refreshing change from my email spam, which is almost entirely in Arabic these days.

(fully-operational toys for boys are unrelated)

Speaking of unrelated,

Only one more week to get a $50-$100 rebate on new Smith & Wesson firearms. If you’re near a RangeUSA franchise, they’re doubling the savings with their own gift card through the 27th. Be sure to pick up something in the M&P line, so that you know you’re getting a certified weapon of war (according to an ignorant tool in the Illinois legislature).

(rebate is in the form of a visa gift card, which takes 8-10 weeks to arrive; offer does not apply to Thorn Princess models)

Farm Harem episode 12 (fin)

In which They Never Went There. Ru has her baby, everyone celebrates, and despite all the hints (and the clear thrust of the source material), none of the other haremettes starts working on baby-making (modulo one ambitious but underaged wolf girl who tries to tap into the new village currency). It’s just a feel-good wrap-up to the series, with no hooks for another season.

Verdict: too many panned stills, but the vast oddly-platonic harem was certainly easy on the eyes.

Twin Peaks episode 12 (fin)

The resolution to the big fight was unnecessarily melodramatic, but it ended on the slow-life side, with the family intact. Where Lady Hero Lady’s Tank Girl found a new top in the middle of battle, I have no idea, but it meant that fan-service was muted until the reunion at the end, when Our Mighty Mama welcomed Her Heroic Hubby home with a titty rub and a cracked spine.

Verdict: I’d have been happier if it had stayed entirely on the slow-life side of the line, but at least all the flashy conflicts were resolved by Dariel being A Good Man.

(fan-artists never really embraced this show, so here’s the Actual Best Girl from Immoral Guild and her pre-teen daughter)

…and I’m all out of anime until April 5th, when I’ll give Megumin and Yunyun a chance.

“I used to be a writer like you…”

“…then I took an AI chatbot in the knee.”

(classical reference)

(picture is unrelated, but at least has an arrow in it; honestly, trying to find a decent Skyrim picture on Pixiv is an exercise in frustration. And lizard porn)

curl considered harmful

I’m a wget guy, personally, but for whatever reason, developers seem to prefer curl, especially for doing incredibly insecure things like directly executing a downloaded shell script as root (a common method of installing open-source software).

Right now, I have two upgrade-driven reasons to dislike this developer preference:

1. It doesn’t follow 30x redirects; they have to go through their code (in every branch) and add the -L option everywhere.
2. It has approximately 200 command-line options, which are documented in alphabetic order with no grouping by purpose.

#MeLied

We were instructed to always believe women who make accusations of rape, because who would lie about something like that? In the real world, the answer has always been “lots of people, for all sorts of reasons”.

Anyway, a woman who made up wild accusations against multiple men, sending them to prison on the basis of injuries she deliberately inflicted on herself with a hammer, has been sentenced to 8 years in prison.

Spring anime tryout?

I’m not enthusiastic about the new anime that start airing next week. So far, this is all I’ve got on my list, and I’m not optimistic aout either one:

• Goddess Cafe - harem comedy promising well-drawn, distinctive girls in and out of their clothes. Downside: Our Owner is a jerk.

• Konosuba Explosion! - Konosuba prequel about Megumin and Yunyun. Our Best Girl and Our Bust Girl having school adventures before the character development that happens in the main series, so I’m not expecting much. The trailers have a “shouting is comedy” vibe to them, which if true will put a fast end to my interest.

It looks like anime won’t be providing much couch-potato time for a while…

Tomorrow we’ll discuss water policy…

1. Stop building power plants, for decades.
2. Don’t maintain the grid, for decades.
3. Mandate electric cars, Real Soon Now.
4. Ban gas furnaces and water heaters, Even Sooner.
5. “Mad Max 2: The Road Warrior”

Burying the lead lede

I happened to be perusing the manual for North American Arms’ popular 22-caliber mini-revolvers, and found the following statement:

Any .22 caliber Winchester Magnum RimFire (WMR) ammunition can be used in this Magnum mini-revolver – EXCEPT “PMC” & “ARMSCOR PRECISION” BRANDED .22 CALIBER AMMUNITION (Magnum and/or LR), WHICH HAS RESULTED IN OUT-OF-BATTERY DISCHARGES. WARNING! DO NOT USE ANY “PMC” or “ARMSCOR PRECISION” BRANDED AMMUNITION IN ANY NAA® Mini-Revolver!

That’s a surprisingly direct statement about the quality control of two well-known ammunition companies. As a general rule, red ink in product manuals is the direct result of a lawsuit, but to include one that could itself cause a lawsuit suggests that they’ve documented some serious problems.

(they also tell you to avoid using ammunition labeled as “varmint”, warning that it’s usually loaded hot and designed for rifles, but it’s not clear if they mean that varmint ammo exceeds SAAMI specs and is effectively +P)

Carnival Row season 2, fin

TL/DR: they threw the kitchen sink into a blender. For one brief shining moment they rose above the muck and stated quite clearly that socialism is built on equal parts tyranny and murder, but then they remembered that the show was set in a city-state run by racist colonizers, and the only thing that makes them better than socialists is that they’re more into strained allegory than mass slaughter.

The one thing that surprised me is that throughout both seasons, they managed to not call anyone a “filthy son of a critch”, even though Our Half-Blood PrinceInspector literally is one (seriously, they spend a lot of time covering Orlando Bloom with mud and blood). Speaking of which, I don’t think they ever explained how “critch” came to be the catchall term for all the races of the fae and anyone who had (coughcough) “one drop of blood”.

(picture is unrelated, but hey, how often do we get something new from Sukabu)?

Farm Harem episode 11

A Day In The Life With A Pregnant Wife. You know what this means, don’t you? Monologing! Our Hero literally walks us through his routine from waking to sleeping, with random village encounters and lots of panned stills of the cheesecake. Surprisingly, it’s implied that they’re not all taking turns riding the divine tool to put buns in ovens. Disappointing, that.

Verdict: really slow-playing the birds and bees, still; it’s like they’re pretending only Ru and Tia are getting any action, and Our Power-Tool Hero spends most nights alone. This is not the way the source material tells it.

Twin Peaks episode 11

In which I could’ve done without a giant fight episode, but at least everyone stayed in character, which made for some lighter moments, mostly delivered by Our Demon General Swimsuit Model, and a bit of mild fan-service delivered by Lady Hero Lady’s Tank Girl, who goes toe to toe with a dragon and only loses her outer layer of clothing.

Verdict: wrap it up quick, please, and get back to the slow life.

NieR episode 8

Okay, so Our Chipper Hacker In Short Pants is walking into a trap while Our Floral-Breasted Battle Maiden is being out-serviced by Our Bikini-clad Jackass Jackass, and Our Dominant Beefcake Robot has disappeared while His Effiminate Brother finally does what he’s told, and it doesn’t matter anyway because we’ll forget all this shit by the time the rest of the season finally airs, after the sweatshop spread Covid and delayed production. Again.

Verdict: thank goodness for less robot-voice.

(er, wait, that’s “upgrade fallout”, in which we’ve been scrambling to fix all the swept-under-the-rug tech debt that’s been exposed by our weekend upgrade work)

Why we can’t have nice things, part 58008

New Ghibli Park plagued by naughty selfies.

Immoral Guild licensed by HiDive

This is the heavily-censored buy-the-bluray edition, but honestly, as ridiculous as most of the boobs are, seeing them in greater detail wouldn’t really add anything to the experience. It’s more harem comedy than hentai, despite the frequent non-consensual nuzzling and nipple-sucking, and, surprisingly, it passes Steven’s rule of the guy in the center getting a grip.

Our Would-Be-Horndog Hero just wants to get out of the adventuring business and go to college to bang coeds, but he’s ultimately a decent guy who cares about His Hapless Harem. He’s pretty much given up on preventing the monsters from molesting them, but he does intervene when they prove unable to solve the problem themselves (after the fan-service closeups, of course).

The world-building is crap, the production is cheap, and the ending adds a new character to deliver a crapton of exposition that’s a mix of overdue and unnecessary, but it’s more watchable than all the shows I dropped this season. Despite, not because of the giant jello-boobs.

Only amusing because nobody got killed…

Police trainer shoots recruit during training

Anyone who’s ever watched police shoot at public ranges knows that the average cop is a terrible shot, with at best a vague grasp of safety rules. For some, it’s because the gun is just one of many things on their belt that they have to regularly re-qualify with, and they practice just enough to pass. For some, ego gets in the way of learning. And for many, it’s learned carelessness: their instructors didn’t follow safety rules and taught by example.

That’s the most likely explanation here, because actual gun accidents are extremely rare, and caused by mechanical failure; almost always, someone negligently puts their finger on the trigger and pulls it while it’s pointed at a human being. See also Baldwin, Alec.

(and, yes, it isn’t an “accident” even when the trigger-puller is a small child, because the (criminal) negligence is on the part of the person who didn’t secure it)

[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?

more...

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.