Whatever happened to _____?
News items come and go fast these days, which means we often see something as its happening, in the thick of things. So much of what we see stops there, and we don't get the full story later, once the dust has settled, because resolution is a lot less newsworthy.
This is a chance to ask about old news items (or other events) and get updates on how things have panned out from people in the know. Also, interpret "news" very loosely here. This topic is open to, well, ANYTHING people want updates about. It could be about headline stuff, or something in, I don't know, the Stardew Valley modding scene, for example.
For organization's sake, please limit each top-level comment to ONE topic. If you'd like to ask about multiple things, feel free! Just please make them as separate comments so that individual threads aren't a mix of different answers to different prompts.
Whatever happened to Wizards of the Coast and their attempt to change tabletop game licensing?
I'm not a big tabletop gamer, so I know there was a big hubbub about this a while ago, but I have no idea how it panned out. What ended up happening?
They back tracked and actually ended up releasing the base rules ("SRD") under a Creative Commons license.
https://www.pcgamer.com/wizards-of-the-coast-fully-retreats-from-dandd-license-changes-after-community-outrage/
Despite the backtracking, they showed their hand. I know of several tables (mine included, after my current campaign ends) that will not be purchasing any new DnD materials and have taken the opportunity to check out other game systems.
It solidified my groups switching away. Now we're pretty much Paizo (Pathfinder/Starfinder) and really old Shadowrun books, plus a sprinkling of out of print games.
I really like the direction Paizo is going in, with explicit inclusivity and an honest attempt to balance character classes. Supposedly you can play without a cleric!
There are a lot more game sources out there than I think most people are aware of. My eyes were really opened to this when I started digging into Foundry vtt, software for running tabletop games online that is completely usable in Linux.
Foundry is so cool! I have it set up for my groups too and there are SO MANY resource packs for random tabletop rulesets.
I really like it. They’re so incredibly supportive of plugin devs, too. Fantastic community.
In addition to the backtrack (which is indeed the primary point but I, too, do not trust Wizards anymore), it led to a ton of publicity and proliferation of other creative commons licenses for different systems, which I loved to see.
Most notable (to me at least):
Paizo (Pathfinder etc): https://paizo.com/licenses
MCDM (Draw Steel): https://www.mcdmproductions.com/draw-steel-creator-license
IIRC the Paizo ORC license in particular got picked up by a bunch of companies and creators that make DnD content.
Add-on: what happened to MTG collabs of a whole bunch of other media? Are people happy? New fans joining?
Tempted to try getting a (specific) Chocobo card, but with my luck that'll be crazy expensive.
DFDanger's post is a succinct, good answer. But since you left, you missed a particularly and hilariously colossal fuck-up.
First off, I held a draft of the Final Fantasy set. It was a great experience! Good draft set first and foremost. And as very slim flavor example, their Tonberry felt, mechanically, exactly what a Tonberry would do on a Magic board. 2/1, doesn't untap for two turns, but it has First Strike and Deathtouch for only one black mana. So you can cheese it with a kill spell or better strategy, but mashing a typical fight against it will get you killed. Perfect! The rest of the set does this with other iconic FF stuff to great effect.
I adored it. Good Magic product, good Final Fantasy product. R&D is capable of making a Universes Beyond set that can tell a flavorful narrative of their featured IPs through Magic gameplay.
ANYWAY, that aside:
Standard has been expanded to three years per cycle, because Standard was kind of unpopular and that doesn't make any sense for the main competitive format.
A Spider-Man set got announced and was ramping up for release. Keep in mind that these sets have potential multiple-year cook times, so it's been in the oven for a while. Additionally, WotC has multiple Marvel sets planned.
Before Spider-Man came out, there was a set called March of the Machines: Aftermath, which was a "micro" set of 50 cards for the giant Phyrexian multiplanar invasion story thing that happened. This set got leaked, which caused the whole Pinkertons thing.
By the way, if you didn't know about the Pinkertons thing, seriously, read that. It's sitting under all this and is such hilariously bad PR that I've gotta separate this out into a bullet point for a second. Jesus fuckin' christ. Anyway.
Aftermath sucks! It was the lowest-rated randomized set they've ever put out and ended a huge story with a wet fart. They decide they are never doing that again.
Standard, in addition to getting expanded, is also going to now officially include all sets that come out which aren't specifically oriented towards legacy formats like Vintage, Legacy, Commander, etc. Yes, that means competitive Magic is now a metaverse thing with Dr. Doom fighting Chocobos.
Suddenly, there were a bunch of problems mixed together:
Snag #1: Spider-Man is designed as a "micro" set. So they expand it out to a whole set.
Snag #2: Uh oh, now it's a full set and the draft experience isn't good. So they insist that there's this whole new way to play draft called Pick Two that this is oriented around.
Okay, at least it's a set, right? Ship it, move on.
Snag #3: Whoops, Marvel Snap is a digital Marvel card game product. Snap has legally-binding exclusivity to Marvel character likeness on a digital card platform. Y'know, MTG Arena is a digital card platform! Apparently someone on the legal team of either company, or both... Completely forgor?? 💀
Snag #4: Wait, MTGA is a premier product for competitive MTG! You can't just have an entirely different Standard format there without Spider-Man, it needs to be the same. So, what do they do? They rework the entire aesthetic of the Spider-Man set, such that everything is happening in different planes. Here's the set. It's ugly as shit.
Snag #5 is that all of this is so much easier to scuttle than to put a modicum of effort into, of course. Who wants to be in the middle of a tournament and be reporting on Chizak, Apex Arachnosaur the inexplicable Spider Dinosaur Hero? And what if any of these cards are good? They have to keep thinking about them for the next two - no, three years?
Turns out the last one isn't a snag, it's the fucking solution. So it comes out kneecapped, and the set is ugly, split, and shit.
Oldheads hate this, and even with the Spider-Man coat of paint
it's just ass game design. (A good article I can't find the link to points out that comic books are about heroes; Magic is about summoning creatures, and using the characters as color. Spider-Man just doesn't work having ninety legendary creatures vying for attention.) Draft players also fuckin hate all this. Marvel fans get a shit product that they can't even play online, and interest in a Marvel set gets absolutely jettisoned. No one is happy about this. A survey goes out, is flooded with a movement to communicate how awful this set is, and is immediately closed.
As this is going on, Vivi Orniter's card is terrorizing standard for multiple months, eventually getting banned. This was after The One Ring was an auto-include in every Modern deck for over a year before getting banned, having people cry foul about financial conflict with partners. Then a Monster Hunter Secret Lair gets announced, released for pre-order, and is immediately canceled and rescheduled because it was awful.
Also, this.
Magic is fuckin washed. But at least The Office fans are happy, if they can get their hands on the limited-release FOMO Secret Lairs! (They can't.)
labunny's answer provides a lot of good details yet completely ignores the existence of Fleem so can you really trust them?
Not even joking - I wrote this, was looking for the draft stats thing, found Fleem in my chat history, and immediately regretted not mentioning Fleem.
Appreciate you taking the time, man am I glad I stopped when I did. I played MTG in card shops since the late 90's/early 2000's, left for a time and came back when Commander started being a bigger thing. When it started to be clear they'd be blending franchises I sold all my cards, downloaded Forge and never looked back.
It's kinda funny the Spiderman set was lame, because my only experience of that until reading your post was saying to myself "wtf? No, disabled, the hell is this shit". Now that I know, the hell that is, I'm glad I disabled it.
There's a bit of this flavour going on these days. It's
not as bad as this image impliesdifferently bad from this image (it's just a picture of a bunch of different characters from a bunch of different IPs, probably originally Fortnite related).I think that some entrenched players saw it as "the final straw", and moved to almost entirely proxying magic cards. I have certainly moved in that direction, and now I'm cataloguing my collection to sell because I no longer care at all about the value in the cards themselves. Some of the collaborations are better than others; the Final Fantasy and ATLA releases have a lot of great, well designed cards, whereas something like the Princess Bride release is just cards with different branding. I actually put together a deck that plays with this, though I'm going to have to update it: Everyone Hates This where you want to do things like use Buttercup (Princess Bride) to find Gandalf (LotR) to equip Ghal Maraz (Warhammer 40k) to Negan (Walking Dead) so that he and The Meep (Dr. Who) can crew the ECTO-1 (Ghostbusters). There are a variety of other IPs thrown in (Stranger Things, Marvel, Evil Dead, Lara Croft, Jurassic Park, Fallout, and more).
What it really speaks to is that Wizards of the Coast is just churning out set after set after set, and the content is not all great. They are introducing mechanics that never get support and go away, and cards are feeling all over the place. Prices have gone up, and everything feels pretty cash-grabby.
Financially they've been wildly successful.
Lead Designer Mark Rosewater talks on his blog about how it is a very effective pipeline to get new players into the game.
Sentiment online from entrenched players is somewhat split. I quit the game but I check the subreddit once in a blue moon and still see negative threads about it. But there are also people posting about how excited they are about certain IPs or cards.
That card (Sazh's Chocobo) is $0.43.
I was never deep into MTG, mainly doing some prerelease and casual games with friends and guys in my fraternity, but I always enjoyed it having its own lore and flavor to things. I actually started reading some of the MTG lore books with one of my friends and it got me interested in playing again after I had sold my cards before my international move since I wasn't playing very often.
I thought building a budget standard deck would be fun and help me meet new people in this country since I'm moving to a more densely urban area which would mean more gamestores and people playing MTG. Seeing the new cards made me lose interest, playing against someone where they're playing a blue deck and having them play Mr. Krabs isn't something I'm interested in doing.
Honestly, it seems petty when I type it out, but I'm not the target market for these cards, and it's easier to just not play and go do something else with my limited free time/money. I do wish I hadn't sold my cards since I had plenty of space on our pallet, but downsizing and getting rid of things we weren't using was a big thing.
Thanks for the link! Didn't occur to me but of course there are places to buy just one card online.
Whatever happened to TheMeerkat's 2024 Tildes Demographic Survey? I looked for the results for months and fired off a dm, but never saw anything.
iirc @jackson has the information for the data visualization and everything?
oh hi, that’s my bad. life got real busy and I had loftier ambitions than I probably should have with that project (was trying to create custom visualizations from scratch in d3 that didn’t really seem to have an analogue anywhere).
got a few things on the docket at the moment- I’ll add this one back (with more reasonable goals), just no promises on a delivery date 😅
cc @anthonyb if you aren’t following the tree :)
is there a way for us to get the raw data or anything? since the original survey taker hasn't been active and it's already almost 2026!
I do have the raw data, unfortunately they seemed pretty concerned about posting it publicly as it does include open-ended responses. I think I’d be comfortable with releasing just the radio/checkbox answers (maybe each as a separate dataset) to avoid personally identifying anyone.
What happened with ffmpeg being pissed at Google for spamming then with AI slop CVEs?
What happened to the young students (5-10 y/o) that remotely attended school during the first couple years of the COVID pandemic? I know they were behind in social development after returning to in-person schooling, was that a temporary speed bump? Can we tell if there’s been long term effects yet? Are there major differences in impact between countries that took full measures vs half measures?
I think the reading crisis has been attributed to those initial COVID years. Middle and high school students have poor reading levels on average and don’t actually comprehend a lot of what they’re reading.
This is a very good question that unfortunately I don't think we will see real answers for until at least another decade or two, once they are able to calculate things like college acceptance rates and test scores. Though there's probably some preliminary research going on now since it's been ~5 years or so.
Probably a lot of anecdotal evidence though! Like my wife was a kindergarten teacher at the time and had to quickly adapt to teaching them remotely, which is about as difficult as you can imagine. I'm sure it worked well enough for older kids, but for young kids it was damn near impossible. The issue that I don't think a lot of people realize is that those real early years of school do so much towards integrating you into society and the school system in general. Basic things that we don't really associate with education, like participating in a group, being respectful of others, personal space, following a line, holding a pencil/scissors/tools, etc. are all that much harder to teach virtually.
And from what I've heard from some teachers of older kids, things are rough. Not sure about every county/state/country, but in my area there was a huge push from the school district not to fail any kids. They were scrambling with this brand new situation that they had never experienced and didn't know what to do, and seemingly everyone was unhappy and voicing their concerns, and I think they didn't want to add more fuel to this one-in-a-lifetime fire, and so just said fuck it, every kid passes to the next grade. My wife was told that she could not fail any child during that first year or two of covid, I'm assuming because it would just cause more headaches for the district and school administrators. But now that it's been a few years, I'm hearing stories from teacher friends about kids who are WAY below grade level, but there's nothing they can do because holding them back would mean they'd have to hold back way too many kids, so the situation is... well not great.
Tildes has a few teachers, from what I can remember, so I'm sure some of them might be able to chime in with their own accounts.
I take it your wife no longer teaches kindergarten?
Also, to piggyback off your comment in response to @ogre, it's not just the kids who missed school that were affected. I worked with younger kids over the past few years, kids born between 2018 and 2022, and they were significantly impacted as well. Like you, I don't have any hard numbers in front of me, but going off of personal experience and conversations with colleagues, administrators, specialists, and regulators, those pandemic babies' early development was hit hard. Not just in early literacy and social-emotional development, but across the board. Physical development, attention and self-regulation, cognition and problem solving - you name it, it's lower than pre-pandemic levels. Our IEP and therapy numbers were way up.
I'm on a bit of a hiatus right now, so I don't know how the most recent batch is doing, but the hope was that we would start to see a turnaround sometime this year or next year. My texts to my former colleagues have yielded mixed opinions, and my agency is still sorting through the first set of data for the year, but a lot of us (myself included) think that the pandemic did a number on society as a whole and that we won't see any improvement until we collectively sort our shit out. I guess time will tell.
Also purely anecdotal but my nephew was born in 2020 and he’s developmentally delayed, my sister was told he was closer to a 3 year old in terms of speech, doesn’t really understand conversations around him, doesn’t know how to read at all.
Perhaps I’m biased since I knew how to read by the time I was 4, but it is surreal to see a child so behind and he’s not catching up.
I can't believe I forgot to highlight speech! That was a huge issue for us. About 2/3 of my students were experiencing delays, with 1/3 facing delays similar to your nephew. Granted, most of the more serious cases were with children who were facing additional developmental hurdles, but their language delays were definitely exacerbated by the pandemic. I remember coming across this story last year, which highlighted everything we were experiencing on the other side of the country. When the problem is that widespread in the classroom, it forces you to change the entire curriculum, which impacts the typically developing children as well.
In fact, I got so used to being around children with speech delays, it actually reset my expectations for a preschooler's speech. When I met my friend's daughter last summer I had to remind myself that she wasn't a genius, she just spoke like a typical four year old.
I'm worried that's where we won't go back to normal. The impact of the stress, trauma, and isolation caused by the pandemic is expected to get better, but we still have to address the way it changed our social interaction and media consumption. A lot of young children are growing up in quieter, lonelier households with screentime filling that void. Pair that with the financial strain and the continued decimation of the social safety net and education system, and, well...yikes.
Yes yes, I recently saw a child someone brought to my workplace and they were the same age as my nephew but they spoke in complete sentences and you were able to have a conversation with them. I don’t interact with children much if at all outside of my nephew and that shook me.
Part of the difficulty with catching up is that the world doesn't slow down its academic, social, physical, emotional demands: there's a deluge of new info other 5yo are learning daily, meanwhile.
It can be done: I've seen kids whose parents take them out of public education stream to do focused remedial homeschooling. (public educators might see the reverse, where a previously "unschooled" child finally gets help).
Kids that age range look super different every year, and it's hard emotionally for a big kid to have the wherewithal to be okay with slowing down, be kind to themselves, and still work hard to catch up by doing little kids stuff he'd seen already.
This honestly could be other developmental stuff. My youngest son was born in April 2020 and he's doing great; ahead of his class as far as work goes, his Kindergarten teacher actually asked us if she could give him harder things to do, because he's often done with his work before she's done passing it out.
He's smart, funny, clever and a little emotionally volatile, but that's due to the genes between his Mom and I than anything to do with being a COVID baby. I also don't know a single kid who could read by 4, so you were definitely ahead of the curve there.
Yeah could be, even though it’s hard to tell what’s what and perhaps COVID’s isolation just made things worse. My sister’s baby daddy unfortunately has a lot of issues that seem to be present in the child. Learning disabilities, pretty severe autism, I’m sure there’s other stuff unfortunately.
Fortunately not. The school system here sucks. I'll always vividly remember a school board meeting sometime around mid 2020 where just before they opened the meeting up for public questions and concerns, they announced that the recently hired superintendent was receiving a $27k raise via a unanimous vote from the school board, from like $120k/y to $147k/y for 'having to navigate such a turbulent time'. Lol you can imagine how the comments went after that, especially since the teachers who were at this meeting were there specifically to ask for more support and funding for things like laptops, software, and virtual trainings to adapt to this new virtual world of teaching that we were entering.
It's sad really, how little support the teachers get from the district, yet how much blame is placed upon them by pretty much everyone. I work in an unrelated field but happen to have 3 coworkers with spouses that are/were teachers in this system. One left teaching a little while back, just like my wife, and another one is actively looking to leave to a different field. My wife left this district to teach remotely for a different state, since she enjoyed teaching remotely, but eventually got pregnant and her contract suspiciously wasn't renewed for the following school year. At that point she became disillusioned with the entire educational system, and I don't blame her one bit. So we opened up an at-home daycare so she could stay home and take care of our kid with another 2-4 other kids. That worked out great (though stressful) for another year or so and then finally we were able to transition her to being a stay-at-home mom.
YES. This is the part that I had no clue of before my wife got a degree in early childhood development. I (foolishly) assumed that kindergarten and those first early years of school were mostly babysitting and teaching kids basic letters and numbers. But hearing from her experiences, I was shocked to find out just how incredibly important those first few years of education are for things that aren't just letter and numbers. Things that have rippling effects throughout the kids' lives, like how they handle their emotions, and how they interact with others.
I'm nowhere near an expert on the subject to be able to say what should or could have been done differently, but I envision some really interesting behavioral economics research papers coming out in the next decade about this subject and all the ramifications of covid on young schoolchildren at the time.
I remember going to the zoo a few years in. We were at the lion enclosure, and there was a daily with an older child and a ~3 year old. The younger one was fascinated by the lions, the older one was bored and restless. Finally, the mother said, "Go ahead with your dad. I want to give him more time because he's never seen them before."
Totally blew my mind.
Fwiw that would have been me at 3, or 7... We didn't have lions at the local zoo and I love big cats.
Not having seen them by the age of 3 isn't that unusual. Kids get to experience firsts all the time like that!
I'm kind of confused by this as well. The first time I saw a lion in person I was in my early 20s.
For someone who lives in the same city as a zoo with lions it can be easy to assume everyone else does too. And maybe that family was local but due to the pandemic wasn't going to the zoo. (Because wrangling two young kids is hard, one or both parents were working weird or long hours, someone was high risk for health complications, money was an issue, etc. )
But everyone has a first time!
I hope the long term research paints a relieving picture, because the anecdotes in this thread are saddening. I just want the kids to be alright
To chime in with the other posters, my own child has a speech impediment. They entered Kindergarden after the mask mandates dropped during pre-K in 2022. They had been put off almost two years though, because their case was not nearly as bad as many other peers, the system had been flooded.
Parents of young children, in isolation with mostly just those children, adapt to the voice of their child and speech development levels off.
More ancedotal evidence from teachers I've met suggests a huge backslide, not just delay, in proficiencies across the board. Like 6th graders no longer reading at 6th grade level in 8th, but at a 4th or 5th. As well as an acceleration of sociopathic behavior in teens (though social media is likely leading that particular charge).
Generative AI is not helping at the 6th grade or higher level.
Anecdotally, I have two nephews, a niece and a family friend that all had to do this, roughly ages 7-10 at the time and they're all doing pretty well. They're all smart kids, involved in various clubs in school, well spoken and not particularly different than I remember during my time as a teenager 25+ years ago.
Online school looked absolutely miserable (one nephew and my sister in law lived with us at the time) and completely useless, but the kids I know seem to have come out pretty alright.
Actually, I also know some other family friends who were between 15-18 at the time and they also seem to be doing very well. One is an active duty military member and other has worked odd jobs (not unusual for someone their age) and is now working on starting their own hair stylist business.
Whatever happened to John Deere being sued for GPL violations? I haven't heard any updates since then. Is the lawsuit still ongoing?
To pose and answer a question at the same time, one thing I noticed was the effective death of cherry as a key switch manufacturer and brand.
I remember when I was first introduced to mechanical keyboard, cherry switches were the switches to have. Every keyboard manufacturer would proudly list having cherry switches.
Today, they seem completely and utterly outcompeted. They are more expensive, and substantially worse, than their Chinese competitors. And few keyboards have their switches anymore. Certainly it’s no longer a feature.
Cherry is now looking to sell its manufacturing divisions as its financials worsen. https://www.heise.de/en/news/Cherry-gives-up-German-production-and-wants-to-sell-core-division-11092713.html
I'd think part of the thing is the popularity of hot swap switches after more people got into mechanical keyboards. When I got into the hobby, Cherry was also the big brand to beat, but Gateron was up and coming at the time. It was really hard to buy standalone switches from Cherry and then once the whole market blew up with hot swap and more hardcore self wiring and stuff, people just wanted ones that were more specific.
Anecdotally, I had Cherry Browns when I first got the Ergodox EZ I'm typing on right now and HATED them, basically felt like a slightly bumpier Red. I grabbed some Boba U4T's and never looked back.
Off topic, but the second to last time I repaired one of our 2 old Bosch washing machines I was surprised to find that the micro switch for the overflow floaty thingy had cherry written on it.
Not sure if it's the same cherry, but how many companies named cherry can there be in the switch industry
Companies known to the public for one thing often have entire tangentially related product lines!
Texas Instruments makes calculators and non-electronics people think they're a calculator company, but among electronics people they're more known for their chips made to be used in your own products. I use their power management bits a lot.
Not too surprised to learn that Cherry are trying to sell their manufacturing division but sad to see. It's kind of crazy to see just how much the mechanical switch market changed over the last 10 years or so. I got my first mechanical keyboard in 2017 just as the Chinese brands were coming along. Similar to your anecdote, Cherry were still on top and the prime choice.
What happened to sequels /
expansionsspin-offs (Edit: forgot English word) of a few pieces of very popular media? Looking for super quick synopsis along the lines of "yeah it sucked, pass / surprisingly watchable / watch this super condensed fan edit that's actually good instead / you missed the very fantastic season X". Under a rock out of loop gnat here.Lord of the Rings after the Hobbits trilogy (Ring of Power)?
Star Wars, after Rogue One?
TV version of Game of Thrones after the very messy ending where Bran Storyteller becomes king? The books?
Star Trek after Picard first season?
Rick and Morty after Pickle Rick -- is Rick and everyone else less horrible / redeemed?
Marvel MCU after ShangChi / Antman quantum / Dr Strange Multiverse ?
Dr Who after Rory / Amy / Melody?
Breaking Bad after series original ending?
AI Yazawa's Nana, last heard author is determined to finish after 15 years hiatus. Did she?
The Good Place spin-off?
Other inquiries of series welcome .
Better call Saul in my opinion was every bit as good as Breaking Bad.
New Marvel movies are OK but not great. Thunderbolt was pretty good.
I still really like Rick and Morty but most people think its generally fallen off with a few especially good or bad episodes.
Tackling the Star Trek point.
Discovery continued to be pretty lame throughout its entire run. After season two it switched from prequel to far-flung future story, but still mostly just dealing with giant galaxy-threatening plots that don't make a lot of sense and leave little room for anything else.
Picard spent its first two seasons doing stories filled with plot holes and shoddy pacing, with mostly new characters. The third season relented and gave into the fan cries for TNG nostalgia, giving an equally questionable plot but with the characters we all grew up loving so it got much better reviews.
Lower Decks was the first new animated series, and is fantastic. A lighthearted, lampshade filled take on Trek, following the plucky losers on an unimportant ship. Filled with references to obscure bits of lore, but as my non-Trekkie wife can attest it's great even without getting them. Went for five seasons but we all want more.
Prodigy I haven't watched myself so can't say much of, but it's an animated series aimed at a slightly younger audience. By all accounts I've seen it's pretty good.
Strange New Worlds is a prequel following the Enterprise under Captain Pike. It's great. If you've been missing the character focused, optimistic, episodic storytelling of classic trek, this is where to look. A good balance of references to older stories and new ones. Three seasons done so far, with two more planned. Season three is the weakest so far, but still pretty good.
Section 31 managed to dethrone Final Frontier as the worst Trek film by a wide margin. It's a mediocre edgy action flick with a coat of Trek paint. Avoid.
Starfleet Academy is a new series coming early next year. Not much to say yet.
As a long-time Star Trek fan who's seen everything at least once, I wholeheartedly concur with the analysis. Discovery is a hot mess for 3 seasons; season 4 is watchable but still doesn't feel like optimistic Star Trek to me. I'm not a fan of Picard despite the fan service; you can't just bring back old characters, you have to tell good stories too.
Prodigy was great. I'm very confused as to why it was cancelled so abruptly.
Strange New Worlds is what old fans like me have been looking for. It's a great show worthy of the name Star Trek. I hope they will pick up this recipe and do another show like it but set in the 24th century instead of being a prequel.
What my parent commenter didn't mention is Star Trek: Shorts. I'm in two minds on this one. On the one hand, it's a refreshing new idea/format. On the other hand, it kinda references all of the new Trek shows, so it's not super engaging unless you've already seen Discovery, Picard and Lower Decks.
Doctor Who is enjoyable all the way through season 10. Peter Capaldi is an amazing actor, and while there are some lows (as with all Doctor Who seasons) there are more highs than lows, and those highs more than make up for the lows. Capaldi's run also features some of my favourite Doctor Who episodes of all time, like Heaven Sent. Definitely recommend watching.
As for Jodie Whittaker, she's also a great actress but her run is unfortunately brought down by a significant decline in the quality of the writing. I barely made it through season 11 and stopped watching sometime in season 12. You won't miss much if you stop after season 10.
They made a movie called El Camino that showed Jesse after the show. It was pretty good I thought.
I haven't seen the spinoff show about the lawyer.
Better Call Saul is just as good, if not better. I can't recommend it enough.
For anyone who is a fan of DotA or LoL, they both came out with animated shows in the last few years:
Dota: Dragons's Blood I really enjoyed, but most likely because I really loved Dota back in the day. Confusing as fuck for me though. Have watched it a total of like three times and I still don't really understand everything that's going on, lol.
And speaking of LoL, Arcane was/is absolutely incredible. It's a travesty that they cancelled it after just two seasons. Incredible animations, story, and characters, and I never even played League so I know there's no nostalgia influencing my opinions like there is with Dragon's Blood.
I wouldn't say that Arcane is canceled. They just told the story they wanted to for Zaun/Piltover and they have released a teaser with Vladimir/Leblanc indicating that they are likely going to visiting Noxus for the next animated series.
If you haven't seen the teaser I'll see if I can link you it.
Please!
So it turns out it isn't explicitly mentioned to be another animated series, but the 2025 season 1 cinematic (tied in to the actual game ranked season) at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mSoGkTxu_FY was animated by Fortiche who animated arcane. That is why there was speculation this would be a teaser for the next series, but it's not confirmed.
The video has the same black rose as in arcane, and they are talking about losing their host (Mel).
oh very cool!!
fwiw I'm pretty detached from League world these days but I absolutely love the cinematics, I'd love if you or someone else posted these to ~gaming when they come out! (no obligation of course but after recent threads wondering whether people are interested in seeing content I want to indicate interest that I am!)
I did not know about the other upcoming series before posting on this thread. I'll look up the teaser later, thanks!
? It wasn’t cancelled.
Hmm I definitely remember being disappointed a while back when I heard there wouldn't be a season 3. And I double checked the wikipedia article before posting my comment just to be sure, and it stated "In June 2024, it was announced that the second season would be the series' last".
But after digging in some more it seems like they will be making more LoL-related content/shows in the future? Possibly a spin-off? I guess we'll have to wait and see but it doesn't sound like it'll be a direct continuation in the form of a third season. Regardless, if the quality is any bit as good as Arcane then I can't wait.
There won’t be a season 3 of the Jinx story, but that’s mainly because that’s just the end of the story the creators wanted to tell. Wasn’t a cancellation, stories do have endings.
Fortiche, the studio, is working with Riot on more animated series in the league universe and I haven’t seen any reporting to the contrary.
Thank you for the additional context. It definitely felt to me like season 2 was building up to something more on the political/worldbuilding side of things, which is why I might have felt like it was cancelled rather than just ended. But I am not familiar with League lore so I have no clue if that is the case or not. I'll await those other series then.
What I recall them saying when season two can out was that it resolved the Piltover/Jinx/etc stories and was the end of Arcane. But they fully intend to make other League of Legends shows, TBA, set in other regions. They'll just have different titles.
IIRC it's already confirmed that the other shows will cover Noxus, Ionia and Demacia. Arcane already spent a bit of time setting up Noxus, so presumably it's next.
I don't play League of Legends, but I'm a big fan of Arcane.
Same here. Maybe cancelled might have been the wrong word to choose, but it definitely felt like there was more. Season 1 set up Season 2 beautifully, and then Season 2 expanded upon the world and politics and everything, so it really felt (to me) like it was about to take off and go somewhere, so to hear that there wouldn't be any more seasons felt like a cancellation to me. But idk any of the lore beyond the show, so I look forward to seeing what those other shows have to offer. If anything, at least I'm pretty sure the animation will be top notch!
I think that it's a bit nitpicky to say it wasn't cancelled. It's concluded, and there won't be more seasons; the conclusion matches what the showrunners apparently wanted, it was not unceremoniously cancelled.
Unless you're a die-hard Tolkien lore fanatic, I think Rings of Power is pretty enjoyable. As is the animated War of the Rohirrim movie. If you are a lore fanatic, or otherwise inclined to be upset by things that contradict the books, then I'd skip 'em both. Personally for me I just enjoy seeing new media in that setting and we're not exactly overflowing with traditional fantasy content :/
imo, the only "absolutely can't miss" Star Wars thing after R1 is Andor. Mandalorian, Book of Boba, Kenobi, etc. all have their moments but are less universally loved. Mandalorian in particular started off REALLY strongly and then took a wrong turn and just got kind of mediocre. It's not at all bad, it's just very mid-tier after the first couple of seasons. Mandalorian is getting a movie for some reason. And speaking of movies now that we know the sequel trilogy went absolutely no where, you can safely just ignore those films entirely!
I would classify myself as a pretty die-hard Tolkien lore nerd - I'd be comfortable at a LotR Trivia Night to face off against Brennan Lee Mulligan and Stephen Colbert - but that's not the reason that I think that the shows are only okay.
I think there are a lot of things in the show that are very well done, and they've made some very good changes from the books, that make the story much more reasonable. For example, you can't tell the full story of the Rings of Power and the Second Age in TV form very well as the stories are written, because it takes place over thousands of years, so it was super important to compress it into something much more reasonable. And some of the character additions are fantastic - Disa, Adar, and Arondir for example are pretty great. I'm very in favour of changes to the source material that are done in service to making a better show or telling a better story in a different medium. But some of the changes seem to have been done in a way that do not serve the medium or telling of a better story, and some of the story lines or plot points aren't even internally consistent within the universe of Rings of Power.
Spoilers for the show
I could go on (and on and on) about how I feel about a lot of things on this show, but I guess what really gets me is that each of the three things I listed above feel like they were decided by a committee, and done to reduce cost, oversimplify, or link to the movies. It's this feeling of story-by-committee that I think is actually the big problem with the show.
Edit: there's one more that I was going to hold off on, but got me.
Spoiler for end of RoP Season 1
The creation of Mordor showed a fundamental misunderstanding of a specific aspect of Tolkien's writing, which is the connection between Masters and their Demesnes. The end of season one ends with a very sudden transformation of one entire area into Mordor, because water was diverted into Mount Doom which caused an eruption, but that misses a very important element of the writing.
In Middle Earth, vast areas are linked to the master of that area. Rivendell is under the control of Elrond, Lorien is linked to Galadriel, Isengard to Saruman, Fangorn to Treebeard / Fangorn, Mordor to Sauron. All of the lands are a reflection of their Master. This is not an immediate process; silver flowers do not spring under Galadriel's feet, nor do healing waters follow Elrond. It takes time and years for the power of the Master to sink into the Land. A great example of this is Mirkwood; for many years it was mostly under the control of Thranduil and was beautiful if uninviting, but when Sauron moved into Dol Guldur as the Necromancer (around 1050), then over a period of a thousand or so years the place became Mirkwood; dark and moldy and filled with spiders. As Sauron exerted his control, the place became worse and worse, and after he was driven out, it started to rebound as the elves exerted their control.
Morder is not barren and dead because of some gotcha with water going into Mount Doom, it is barren and dead because it is an outward reflection of Sauron's terrible nature. It's one of the main reasons to fight against Sauron; if he ever wins, then the Morder-ness will spread to every place he has mastery over.
There's no indication of this in the show at all; Mordor is made because of the actions of Adar, which is a fundamental misstep; it cuts out an important part of the darkness and terror of Sauron, so that they could have a cool scene and people can go "oooh, it's MORDOR".
As another Tolkien lore nerd, I personally thought that War of the Rohirrim was good outside of two things early on, both in the same scene.
mild spoiler
I didn't think the mumakil or the watcher in the water should have been included at all. It's unlikely that Rohan would have encountered either, as the mumakil were from a far-off land and the Watcher should be a one-off creature imo. Both just felt like fanservice rather than good plot devices.The story expands upon a single major event in Rohan's history that gets a paragraph and a half total in the appendices of RotK. This is how additional Tolkien media should be done - find places where an event is mentioned but never expanded upon. There's so many stories to be told that don't require major changes to the existing canon (looking at The Wizard in RoP as an example of breaking canon), and even things that aren't mentioned but alluded to. War of the Rohirrim did a pretty good job of that, so for me it gets an 8/10.
Lord of the Rings post Hobbit: Rings of Power is okayish, but not particularly good. There's some discussion of it on Tildes in the Season 2 Trailer post. It's a travesty that this is continuing but Wheel of Time was cancelled. IMDb rating has it as 6.9/10 which I think is pretty accurate; it's not great, but it's not as terrible as the people who are likely to talk about it make it out to be. War of the Rohirrim is an anime that was released and is in a similar sort of "not great not bad" sort of spot. Neither of these are "must watch" sort of things.
Star Wars after Rogue One: there is a lot of stuff here. If you are into Star Wars at all, then most of it is pretty watchable.
Books for A Song of Ice and Fire - I am conflicted while writing this, but my current plan is to not ever read anything else George RR Martin ever writes. I started reading this series when I was a goddamned teenager and I'm at a point in my life where my age rounds up to FIFTY. Martin is not an author that writes for the love of the game, or for the love of his audience, and having spent more than one decade long wait for one of his books has broken my love for his style and content. I fully recommend avoiding reading his works or watching his shows. Similarly, Patrick Rothfuss, full avoid. I haven't watched House of the Dragon - I also didn't watch Game of Thrones past the first couple of seasons - but everyone I know that has watched it has enjoyed it a lot.
Star Trek after Picard season one. I didn't make it through Picard, but Lower Decks is surprisingly good. Strange New Worlds looks pretty good, but I haven't gotten around to watching it yet. Section 31 was bad though.
Rick and Morty - I didn't even make it as far as you.
Marvel MCU after Multiverse of Madness: Love and Thunder was about as good as Dark World. Wakanda Forever was good. Guardians of the Galaxy 3 is of similar quality to the other GotG movies, it's quite good. The Marvels had some problems finishing the movie, but it's not as bad as the reviews made it out to be - a decent story with all female main characters, and Ms Marvel was one of my family's favourite Marvel series if you haven't seen it. Deadpool & Wolverine you can actually see if you go to the dictionary and look up "Fan Service" - the whole move is actually there in the definition (it's still a lot of fun). Captain America: Brave New World was pretty meh, as much as I love Harrison Ford and Anthony Mackie, and Thunderbolts was underwhelming. If you're picking and choosing, Wakanda Forever, Guardians 3, Deadpool & Wolverine are the ones to watch. I haven't yet seen the Fantastic Four movie.
Dr Who, Breaking Bad, Al Yazawa's Nana, I have no particular info, other than that I've heard that Better Call Saul is as good as Breaking Bad.
The Good Place spin-off - as far as I know, there is no good place spin-off, unless you're talking about "Man on the Inside" which is just a show made by the same people. It's quite good, I'm really enjoying season 2.
Rings of Power is well made, but a bit messy at times. It seems to get a lot of hate on reddit. I enjoy it more than the Hobbit movies, but less than the main movies.
Pretty bleak and I've given up. But I've heard (from people I trust) that Andor is some of the best Star Wars content ever made after the original trilogy, so probably worth a try especially if you liked Rogue One
...
I don't think I know the history on this one... i didn't start watching until a few years ago and binged the old seasons . I've enjoyed the recent seasons, though I'm not sure if Rick ever sustains being "less horrible" at any point in the show
Eh, no. Outside of crazy team-up spectacle and nostalgia (Deadpool and Wolverine), there isn't much going on. I've seen a lot of the recent movies, and some are fine, but just kind of dull and forgettable. There's supposed to be an Avengers movie coming out next year and there's really no build up at all. Oh, and not MCU but X-Men 97 is worth a watch if you have any love for the old cartoon or X-Men in general.
What happened with the Nordstream pipeline?
Ukrainians did it, most likely.
https://www.theguardian.com/world/article/2024/aug/15/ukrainian-team-blew-up-nord-stream-pipeline-claims-report
https://www.wsj.com/world/europe/nord-stream-pipeline-explosion-real-story-da24839c
https://www.theguardian.com/business/2025/nov/03/the-nord-stream-riddle-echoes-of-mistrust-ripple-through-europe
Whatever happened to the stunning, research-based, and wholly credible HHS conclusion that autism is caused by Tylenol? Surely the entire scientific and medical world has been flipped upside-down by this revelation?
Whatever happened to Panama being controlled by China? Or Trump's bid for Greenland?
These people are epistemological nihilists.
I don't believe it's even the true correlation. Pregnant women can pretty much only take Tylenol as an over-the-counter painkiller. It would be surprising to find someone who didn't take Tylenol at some point during their pregnancy.
What I mean is that I expect a correlation to show increased Tylenol usage among folks also having an increased rate of autism diagnosis. You know, like how ice cream sales increase at the same time shark attacks do. In that case there's no causation but the incidences spike at the same time.
I don't expect something like 65% of pregnant people take acetaminophen and autism rates are 3.2%. (personally I suspect even that high-end number of Tylenol usage is underreporting.)
As a reminder, the claim isn't that taking Tylenol makes you autistic but that taking it during pregnancy makes a fetus autistic. RFKJr also walked it back quietly after their stupid press conference. A swedish 2024 study found no link at all.
So I don't think it makes sense to try to find a charitable claim when there's not actually any demonstrable correlation, much less causation.
I don't want to speak for @DefinitelyNotAFae but I do agree that the claims that there is a correlation are almost spurious. I think the easiest way to describe the issue is to consider another example. Take "people who breathe air" and "people who pick their nose and eat it". Is there a correlation between these? I mean 100% of people who pick their nose and eat it breathe air! But ultimately, this isn't a meaningful correlation, because everyone has to breathe.
In the same vein, pregnant people can pretty much only take Tylenol for whatever ails them. "Pregnant people who take Tylenol" is not an exact match to "people who breathe air" from the example - that was an example to illustrate a point, not a perfect 1:1. But it is close enough that it makes any correlation that one draws from the group to be incredibly difficult to derive any meaning from.
Or to put it yet another way - and forgive me because I don't recall the exact numbers - the "study" that they have quoted has said something like "75% of women who have children with ASD used Tylenol while pregnant" which is probably true. But they gloss over the fact that it also says something like "75% of women who have children without ASD used Tylenol while pregnant". For this to be a meaningful correlation, there would actually have to be a significant difference between those figures. The data would have to be meaningfully statistically different between the two groups.
Without some kind of data change over usage, it is not a meaningful correlation, it's just a factoid.
I wasn't questioning that at all, I was just responding to the "not sure what you mean by true correlation" bit.
My post there was after the major press conference on the issue that raised a ton of concern from medical communities, women's health organization, autistic advocacy groups, disability rights groups and autistic folks in general.
If anything it proves how little attention is paid for women's health as I noted in the post it's people finding out about an event from my parenthetical statement in a random thread.
Afaik this is based on one study that is not substantiated. The "more recent" study was done last year, long before the press conference. This is simply a lie by the administration in September that they have since "softened" significantly over a month ago.
There's no more relevance in the timing between the news cycle and the research. And honestly if you aren't aware of it, I encourage you to read some articles that break it down rather than trying to steelman harmful falsehoods.
What happened to Steel Sticks for N64 controllers?
https://steelsticks64.com/
The guy that was making them has had "all gone but making more" for the joystick components for years. I haven't seen any updates anywhere.
Sounds like a business opportunity
I think there is a business opportunity but with two caveats:
Predictability? The milkman, the paper boy, and evening tv?
So sorry, fellow Tildenoids. It was right there.
(Edit: newsman - milkman, thank you @AnthonyB)
For younger folks, this was the opening lyrics of the sitcom Full House (1987-1995)
It may have ended in 1995, but they were playing reruns on Nick@Night well into the 2000's
phew thank you asking this so I didn't have to!! To answer though....
The milkman, much like the newsman is probably dishonest still, breaking up marriages left and right... and bought and paid for by Big Milk. (I don't know all the facts, but I do hear that most milk farms are terrible for the cows...)
We have a local milk delivery company that's fantastic. The only source of cottage cheese I've ever found that doesn't get watery after you open it.
I grew up w my house getting milk delivered, and you're right, it really is the best kind. The chocolate milk they brought was by far the best I've ever had, but then again, I was a lil squeak.
It probably was better, certainly fresher.
Thank you. I had to circle back twice to make sure someone did it. However, I believe it's the "milkman" and not the "newsman."
Shame! big Shame. You're right. Editing now lol
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dQw4w9WgXcQ
"Whatever Happened to Mr. Garibaldi?"
I'm only in season 2 on my current B5 rewatch, but I'll let you know once I get there.
Rubbly flaps behind the rear wheels of cars.
Can consider a few possibilities here (likely a combination of some or all):