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    1. What have you been watching / reading this week? (Anime/Manga)

      What have you been watching and reading this week? You don't need to give us a whole essay if you don't want to, but please write something! Feel free to talk about something you saw that was...

      What have you been watching and reading this week? You don't need to give us a whole essay if you don't want to, but please write something! Feel free to talk about something you saw that was cool, something that was bad, ask for recommendations, or anything else you can think of.

      If you want to, feel free to find the thing you're talking about and link to its pages on Anilist, MAL, or any other database you use!

      2 votes
    2. What programming/technical projects have you been working on?

      This is a recurring post to discuss programming or other technical projects that we've been working on. Tell us about one of your recent projects, either at work or personal projects. What's...

      This is a recurring post to discuss programming or other technical projects that we've been working on. Tell us about one of your recent projects, either at work or personal projects. What's interesting about it? Are you having trouble with anything?

      3 votes
    3. Midweek Movie Free Talk

      Have you watched any movies recently you want to discuss? Any films you want to recommend or are hyped about? Feel free to discuss anything here. Please just try to provide fair warning of...

      Have you watched any movies recently you want to discuss? Any films you want to recommend or are hyped about? Feel free to discuss anything here.

      Please just try to provide fair warning of spoilers if you can.

      3 votes
    4. Final 2023 Golden Globes predictions

      Golden Globe nominations come out mid-December. I don’t really see anything changing from here to the end of the year. The only movies left to premiere are Avatar and Babylon. Both of which are...

      Golden Globe nominations come out mid-December. I don’t really see anything changing from here to the end of the year. The only movies left to premiere are Avatar and Babylon. Both of which are almost guaranteed to be good, at the very least. And Avatar is guaranteed to be a huge hit.

      Here are my previous predictions for the Globes, and it’s crazy how much things have changed.

      The Globes usually have a couple of weird choices and I don’t think many of these will end up with Oscar nominations.

      But here’s where I think the winds are blowing.

      Motion Picture - Drama:

      1. The Fabelmans
      2. Women Talking
      3. Avatar: The Way of Water
      4. Top Gun: Maverick
      5. TÁR

      Motion Picture - Musical or Comedy:

      1. Babylon
      2. The Banshees of Inisherin
      3. Everything Everywhere All At Once
      4. Glass Onion: A Knives Out Mystery
      5. Spirited

      Director:

      1. Steven Spielberg - The Fabelmans
      2. Damien Chazelle - Babylon
      3. James Cameron - Avatar: The Way of Water
      4. Martin McDonagh - The Banshees of Inisherin
      5. Sarah Polley - Women Talking

      Screenplay:

      1. The Banshees of Inisherin
      2. Babylon
      3. The Fabelmans
      4. Women Talking
      5. Everything Everywhere All At Once

      Lead Actor - Drama:

      1. Brendan Fraser - The Whale
      2. Austin Butler - Elvis
      3. Bill Nighy - Living
      4. Gabriel LaBelle - The Fabelmans
      5. Tom Cruise - Top Gun: Maverick

      Lead Actress - Drama:

      1. Danielle Deadwyler - Till
      2. Naomi Ackie - I Wanna Dance With Somebody
      3. Cate Blanchett - TÁR
      4. Michelle Williams - The Fabelmans
      5. Jennifer Lawrence - Causeway

      Lead Actor - Musical or Comedy:

      1. Colin Farrell - The Banshees of Inisherin
      2. Diego Calva - Babylon
      3. Daniel Craig - Glass Onion: A Knives Out Mystery
      4. Will Ferrell - Spirited
      5. George Clooney - Ticket to Paradise

      Lead Actress - Musical or Comedy:

      1. Margot Robbie - Babylon
      2. Michelle Yeoh - Everything Everywhere All At Once
      3. Julia Roberts - Ticket to Paradise
      4. Sandra Bullock - The Lost City
      5. Lesley Manville - Mrs. Harris Goes to Paris

      Supporting Actor:

      1. Ke Huy Quan - Everything Everywhere All At Once
      2. Brendan Gleeson - The Banshees of Inisherin
      3. Brad Pitt - Babylon
      4. Paul Dano - The Fabelmans
      5. Eddie Redmayne - The Good Nurse

      Supporting Actress:

      1. Jean Smart - Babylon
      2. Claire Foy - Women Talking
      3. Kerry Condon - The Banshees of Inisherin
      4. Janelle Monae - Glass Onion: A Knives Out Mystery
      5. Hong Chau - The Whale

      Original Score:

      1. The Fabelmans
      2. Babylon
      3. Avatar: The Way of Water
      4. Women Talking
      5. Pinocchio

      Original Song:

      1. “Hold My Hand” from Top Gun: Maverick
      2. “Carolina” from Where the Crawdads Sing
      3. “Lift Me Up” from Black Panther: Wakanda Forever
      4. “Ciao Papa” from Pinocchio
      5. “Do A Little Good" from Spirited

      Animated Feature

      1. Pinocchio
      2. Turning Red
      3. Strange World
      4. My Father’s Dragon
      5. Puss in Boots: The Last Wish
      7 votes
    5. Fortnightly Programming Q&A Thread

      General Programming Q&A thread! Ask any questions about programming, answer the questions of other users, or post suggestions for future threads. Don't forget to format your code using the triple...

      General Programming Q&A thread! Ask any questions about programming, answer the questions of other users, or post suggestions for future threads.

      Don't forget to format your code using the triple backticks or tildes:

      Here is my schema:
      
      ```sql
      CREATE TABLE article_to_warehouse (
        article_id   INTEGER
      , warehouse_id INTEGER
      )
      ;
      ```
      
      How do I add a `UNIQUE` constraint?
      
      3 votes
    6. TV Tuesdays Free Talk

      Have you watched any TV shows recently you want to discuss? Any shows you want to recommend or are hyped about? Feel free to discuss anything here. Please just try to provide fair warning of...

      Have you watched any TV shows recently you want to discuss? Any shows you want to recommend or are hyped about? Feel free to discuss anything here.

      Please just try to provide fair warning of spoilers if you can.

      6 votes
    7. Racing / driving games: What do they get right? What do they miss?

      I was playing Mario Kart 8 Deluxe with my kid the other day and it was a blast. Nintendo have really nailed this game, especially in the balance of accessible enough for beginners to have fun but...

      I was playing Mario Kart 8 Deluxe with my kid the other day and it was a blast. Nintendo have really nailed this game, especially in the balance of accessible enough for beginners to have fun but hard enough for people to have a challenge too.

      My other favourite game (although I haven't played it for a while) is Sega Rally Championship on Sega Saturn. This game has 4 tracks (one of which needs to be unlocked) and 3 cars (and again, one of these needs to be unlocked). The tiny number of cars and tracks means that you get to do the same corners over and over. This might sound tedious, but when you hit the corner just right you know it. You can get a sense of mastery over it. I've spent many hours playing games in the Gran Turismo series, and I really enjoy them, but fair play some of the tracks and cars are just shovelled into the game and you don't spend much time with them

      In the first Gran Turismo the licensing tests were properly hard. They weren't messing around. Getting bronze requires people to read the manual and understand what the point of the test is. Getting all gold is an actual challenge for experienced players. I feel like the tests (at least, the bronze levels) got easier in later games. The UK soundtrack was small but pretty good.

      My final mention is the Burnout series. I loved the crash junctions. I'm not sure the open world of Paradise was fun - it meant spending a lot of time driving across a map to get to the start line of various events. I feel the same way about many games - I'd rather just have a menu of levels and what I need to do to complete them (GoldenEye, SNES PilotWings, BlastCorps are all good examples) than have this stuff obscured by the open world. Burnout on the Nintendo DS was a genuinely awful game. I think Burnout Dominator was my favourite in the series.

      So, what do driving games get right? What do they miss? What interesting game mechanics do you enjoy?

      7 votes
    8. Weekly US politics news and updates thread - week of November 7

      This thread is posted weekly - please try to post all relevant US political content in here, such as news, updates, opinion articles, etc. Extremely significant events may warrant a separate...

      This thread is posted weekly - please try to post all relevant US political content in here, such as news, updates, opinion articles, etc. Extremely significant events may warrant a separate topic, but almost all should be posted in here.

      This is an inherently political thread; please try to avoid antagonistic arguments and bickering matches. Comment threads that devolve into unproductive arguments may be removed so that the overall topic is able to continue.

      15 votes
    9. Weekly coronavirus-related chat, questions, and minor updates - week of November 7

      This thread is posted weekly, and is intended as a place for more-casual discussion of the coronavirus and questions/updates that may not warrant their own dedicated topics. Tell us about what the...

      This thread is posted weekly, and is intended as a place for more-casual discussion of the coronavirus and questions/updates that may not warrant their own dedicated topics. Tell us about what the situation is like where you live!

      2 votes
    10. The Banshees of Inisherin

      I saw The Banshees of Inisherin in theaters yesterday and greatly enjoyed myself. I recommend it highly! Starring Colin Farrell and Brendan Gleeson (among others), the film takes place in a...

      I saw The Banshees of Inisherin in theaters yesterday and greatly enjoyed myself. I recommend it highly! Starring Colin Farrell and Brendan Gleeson (among others), the film takes place in a remote, pastoral part of Ireland with the Irish Civil War as a backdrop. But it's really about the people living on this island; their relationships, their lifestyle, and their internal conflicts. It's character-driven, personal, intimate, funny, surreal, shocking, troubling, and thought-provoking. The dialogue is fantastic and the narrative dramatic. You could do a lot of interesting thematic analysis about the plot and setting, but I don't want to spoil anything.

      If you're the kind of person who likes movie trailers, you can watch the official one on YouTube. However, I think contemporary trailers take away from the natural revelations of a story. It's more interesting to go into this one more or less blind.

      5 votes