Jacen123

10 hours ago, Darth Krawlie said:

I don't doubt it's great, but there was absolutely nothing about the trailers or advertising that made me want to see it. I'll probably get to it once it's on a streaming service eventually, but then again, I said that about Tenet too and haven't gotten around to it

I am more or less feeling the same way.  I have enjoyed every one of Nolan’s films that I have seen, so I am sure it is extremely well made, if nothing else.  The subject just doesn’t pull me into wanting to watch a movie about it.  I’d be much more likely to read about it, though. The Manhattan project is quite fascinating from a scientific and engineering point of view.

I am sure some of my own feelings about the movie are also just that I rarely watch movies anymore, too, and even less often in the theater.  Given that, though, there are very few things being released or that have been releases in recent times that I feel like I am missing out by not seeing in one.

I am glad to hear that it is doing well and that people like it, though. 

That also makes sense for it to be setting up Captain America, too!

I also agree that it makes no sense for Rhodey to have been replaced that early.

On 7/27/2023 at 2:02 PM, Darth Krawlie said:

Yeah, I get that, but it’s still crazy to brand ALL of worlders as enemies of the state. Does that mean Thor can’t come back?

It’s comical how much of an overreaction it is, but making the public biased against mutants, given the popularity of the avengers in-universe really requires something over the top to make any sense.

It was somewhat clumsily done since the buildup made it seem like this president was a reasonable guy (or at least it seems that way to me), but they really never said too much about him really, did they? 

Even with all the messed up stuff that has happened in their world, I’d imagine that knowing shapeshifting aliens are among you would super mess with people and could make regular people start to distrust new groups of powered people showing up more.  Of course, this could also just be yet another one of the storylines opened up post-Endgame that just won’t really go anywhere useful, too.

On 5/12/2023 at 1:21 PM, Jacen123 said:

You all should just get a bout of complicated diverticulitis.  With two rounds of hospital visits, some days of liquid diets, and some other complications, i’ve lost over 30 pounds since March.

Or you could do it healthily in a not horrifying way.

I gained some of that weight back, but fortunately not most of it.  I’m heading into surgery this coming Wednesday to get the most affected part of my colon removed.

I’ve been waiting since March to get this done,  but it feels so different with it now imminent.  Fortunately, I’ve got a great surgeon to do the procedure and I know it needs to be done so I avoid a repeat of the hell that was this past spring, but I’ve still got a bit of anxiety creeping up.  I just need to keep that from acting up more than it currently is.

I guess this should help me lose even more weight, though. 

8 hours ago, Darth Krawlie said:

Nah we’re good I’ve been calling Leif an asshole since he spoiled a WWE return by the rock for me back in like 2004. I still haven’t forgiven him and I never will.

8 hours ago, Darth Krawlie said:

Why do we care about google calendar what am I missing

I get the criticisms, but I liked the episode and loved the show, overall.

it definitely wasn’t Secret Invasion from the comic, for both good and bad, but as a showcase for Fury, it was fantastic. I still would have enjoyed it if the Skrull Invasion was a lingering plot point for a whole phase, similar to the comic build up to the event, but clearly that wasn’t part of the plan here.

My favorite bit of the finale may actually be the ending with the president.  His reaction to the skrulls sure seems like buildup to the government and people having similar reaction to mutants once they start showing up.

I don’t know.

I put locks on all the lower cabinets and corner guards on a lot of sharp corners. The sockets are all covered up, too.   I think we have most things pretty well protected for now.

6 hours ago, Tank said:

Especially when you jam a thick piece of chocolate into it.

This isn’t your relationships thread.

The little guy is both crawling now and constantly pulling himself up onto his feet on anything he can find. There goes being able to put him down in one spot.

Overall, I liked it, though part of me was secretly hoping that Jacob said nice things about it here just to lure me into the disappointment I helped bring him with Crystal Skull.

I think I liked the characters in it much more than the Overall story and/or many of the set pieces.  There were too many  chase sequences in city streets for my liking, unfortunately.  I enjoyed the opening sequence and many of the ideas brought into the movie.  Mikkelsen is always a great inclusion in my book and Waller-Bridges was very enjoyable. I had heard for her before, but hadn’t seen any of her work.

it was also my first time in a theater since TROS, I think, so it was a welcome trip back to it for me.  I’d also be lying if I said Indy’s theme kicking in didn’t bring some big feelings with it.

When it really gets caked in there, you get a bantha poo-do.

You can’t have a conversation about this Kennedy without talking about vaccines and the fact that he knows only surface level information about vaccines and clinical trials.  The fact that he knows just that surface level information is why he is so dangerous with his claims about them; he knows just enough to sounds like he knows what he is talking about, but he doesn’t understand the details and nuances.  That makes the rhetoric that he spews extremely dangerous.

I am very sorry to hear about what your father experienced with the vaccine.  From what I have read in the journal articles about myocarditis and severe inflammatory responses to the Covid vaccines, the prevailing understanding is that individuals who experienced them typically have proteins present that result in an immune overreaction to the vaccine.  There is also ample evidence that the rates of myocarditis and similar reactions are even more prevalent in those who got Covid but did not receive the vaccines (https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC9467278/#:~:text=Conclusion,those who received the vaccine.) Unfortunately, it is impractical to test everyone for such proteins ahead of vaccination. That is why governments started advising a much bigger block of individuals than likely actually has that protein response to consider alternative vaccines.

Such reactions were not caught in the clinical trials due to the extremely small probability of individuals having those reactions.  Clinical trials are designed first and foremost with safety in mind.  That is why they start with small sample sizes during stage 1 to test for safety issues.  In stage 2, the sample size is chosen very carefully to then check for evidence of, in this case, immune response (development of antibodies), while still keeping the sample size low enough that if there are adverse reactions in a size of the sample that would not have been caught in stage 1 due to rarity of those reactions, the number of people potentially harmed would still be extremely low.  Moving on to stage 3, the samples are the largest they will be in a controlled experiment to test if the end goals for the study are met. In this case, that means the modulation or prevention of Covid in patients receiving the vaccine.  However, once again the sample sizes cannot reasonably capture the most extremely rare events that may occur in less than 1 in several hundred thousand individuals.  That is why every single medicinal product is monitored by regulatory groups after they hit market to watch for extremely rare adverse reactions to offer subsequent guidance.   In fact, the first several years after a product is released is referred to as Stage 4 of a clinical trial.

 In normal circumstances, the general public hears very little about any of these stages or the process, only typically that it takes years to go through.  That time frame is usually due entirely to a lack of funding and resources to handle the manufacturing, logistics, and recruiting aspects of the trials in a short period of time.  With the whole world throwing resources and money agh the problem at the same time, those challenges were mitigated and allowed for all of this to happen in a time frame that saved and/or greatly helped a tremendous number of people.

Kennedy and his ilk do not understand how these things work, nor the way that the field of statistics provides context to the numbers that they throw out there as evidence of wrongdoing.  

…he said, with rancor.

Uteeny!

Ewokka wokka wokka

I am so sorry to hear that.

Shit, really sorry to hear that, man.  Glad you avoided getting that abscess drained, at least.

You all should just get a bout of complicated diverticulitis.  With two rounds of hospital visits, some days of liquid diets, and some other complications, i’ve lost over 30 pounds since March.

Or you could do it healthily in a not horrifying way.

6 hours ago, Tank said:

I have pretty top tier Hollywood douche insurance…

But what about for the rest of your health needs?

22 hours ago, Destiny Skywalker said:

Jacen how is your recovery going?

Thanks for asking.  After getting out of the hospital the second time, things have been good so far.  I was clearly not feeling well still after getting out the first time in retrospect.  Hopefully, I am able to keep from flaring up again so I can get a nice, planned surgery in June.

we are also adjusting to not having my father in law here.  We have hired some part time help to get us over the jump to get used to not having a third set of hands at the house 24 hours per day.  With me feeling better now, we are going to start cutting back on how much the babysitter is here.  We’ve been taking notes on how she does things, though, because she has a lot more experience with a baby this age than we do.  

I never took you both as such dinosaur haters.

Thanks for the thoughts, Destiny!

Fortunately, I think my wife has calmed down about this some, at least for now.  The concerns about the night have largely been about uncertainty about our baby sleeping well at night. We unfortunately got pulled into a routine where her dad helped us get the baby to sleep at night because he suddenly didn’t want to sleep in the crib in our room, but would fall asleep in our guest room very easily. I carefully studied how her dad did it and could get our son down, too, but I’m not sure that my wife replicated it yet. That’s what I think mainly worries her.  We have some ideas to get him to sleep still, but we just have to see whether they will work. At the moment, he got through the 4 month sleep regression, so he is back to waking up usually once or twice at night, which is far better than it had been for a few weeks.

Our baby is breastfed still, only using a bottle at daycare most of the time now. We have a lot of frozen milk, but we want to save that for daycare since my wife would still need to get up to pump anyway.

We normally have shared nighttime duties, with her feeding him and me changing his diapers and calming him down to get him ready to feed, and taking turns trying to get him back to sleep if he is fussy.  I think the last part is the other big concern at night because I know feeding takes a lot out of my wife.

I suspect she is also worried about caring for me. It would be nice to get a nurse for me at first since I imagine that will be the hardest part.  We don’t know how the recovery will go yet and I guess a lot of the need for dressing changes will depend on whether it can be done laparoscopically or not, which ties into it being emergency or elective, I think.  My parents may be able to come out for that part, too, though, but they can’t stay for 6 weeks unfortunately.

Now, though, we had everything lined up nicely for help to make the transition with her dad leaving easier, but it looks like our son picked up hand foot and mouth at daycare, so he can’t go back for at least the next two days while I am still in the hospital.  Fortunately, we found a friend from work who is willing to help and come over to our house to stay and help my wife since I can’t be there.  I was so relieved when I got this lined up.  We just h have way too many changes to our situation happening at once right now otherwise.

Hopefully, we will get through these changes alright.

Yeah, I loved Kamala in the show and enjoyed the show a lot too.  The character is great anyway, but the actress is just so perfect for the role and captivating.

She is awesome in the trailer here, too.  It looks like they are having Carol be a bit more fun here, also. The movie looks like it could be fun.