notnotmike

24.10 version

Overall, I'd give the movie a 2/5. I probably would watch it again if someone really wanted to, but I'd definitely use my phone while we did it.

The plot was pretty boring - there was no overarching story or threat like most Christmas movies, it was really just their relationship and relationships with the family. We knew the outcome ahead of time, just based on real events, so there weren't particularly high stakes with the relationship either.

The Taylor Swift references were mid. The characters didn't even represent their real lives very well. The in-movie Taylor's father passed away and she apparently has a rocky relationship with her mother, which is damn near as far away from reality as you can get. The Travis character is on the same team as his brother, which is not accurate but less egregious than the Taylor character issues so it's whatever. The ex-boyfriend is an enigma, because I'm not sure who on Earth it was supposed to portray. The character seemed to be Joe, but behave more like Jake Gyllenhaal (if Jake was a huge douche).

The biggest Taylor references made were just lyrics to songs with no meaning or context. Like a character saying "you know all too well" or "I'm not really a cheerleader type, more like a bleachers type". They had opportunity to actually recreate scenarios from the songs but I think that would have required them to have actually listened to a song in the last decade, rather than apparently only being a fan since Red. I'm almost certain the writer(s) were not actual Taylor fans and were just trying to cash in on her fame.

After all that, somehow I am most upset about the disrespect the movie keeps dishing out to NFL running backs. Making it sound like the Travis character gets no respect just because he's a lowly running back and his brother is the quarterback. I'm not even in to football and some of the most famous football players of all time are running backs or wide receivers, including Travis himself! Whoever wrote the film obviously didn't know Taylor lore or how the NFL works and it shows.

So there is my review of "Christmas in the Spotlight". I'd love to hear your thoughts as well - did anyone else watch it?

I've only just finished part one, so there's room for growth of course.

But, it feels like the author puts in grotesqueness at least once every chapter for no reason. For example, when the priest gets pushed over then kicked in the asshole so he shits his pants (and for those who haven't read, I do not mean he gets his ass kicked, I meant literally foot to asshole then shit comes out) and that's all that happens to him. He was then carried off to safety with no further injury. Why even write that. Sure, it could be some odd metaphor about how he's dirty just like everyone else but there are about a dozen better ways to get that across, surely.

I'm failing to see how such a crass book became an LGTBQ+ powerhouse of a musical. Surely there were other stories with similar narratives and less babies sniffing piss, right?

I suppose I don't want an actual explanation. I'm more ranting, but I'd be interested to hear others' thoughts

EDIT:

Finished the book. It was awful. I cannot fathom how this became one of the biggest movies of 2025, I really can't.

If you want my full review I wrote one on bookwyrm

https://bookwyrm.social/book/100941/s/wicked-the-life-and-times-of-the-wicked-witch-of-the-west

I've become an evangelist for this game in the 24 hours since I learned about it. The fact that this two year old game only has 66 reviews on Steam is criminal. I think it is so much better than that

I first saw the game while watching Ludwig's "rating games that wanted to sponsor me" video, and I was immediately smitten by the concept of the rotating cards. It's similar to a deck builder in many ways but the order of the cards in the deck is predictable and adjustable and it is slightly more fast-paced than Brotato or Vampire Survivors.

The game isn't perfect, it seems like the developer used whatever means necessary to try and market it, including referral codes and asking to sponsor Ludwig, but it hasn't seemed to work. Which is almost a shame because the game deserves to be seen.

So give it a try, it's worth every penny, and then come back and tell me what you think

https://polymarket.com/event/taylor-swift-pregnant-in-2024?tid=1731713186818

I thought there was a fascinating spike in odds on July 3rd so I naturally had to investigate why they would shoot up like that.

I believe I narrowed it down to an interview Kelce did with Jason Sudekis on a skit show around that time

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=19t6ZHlNXW0

Just wanted to share a fascinating insight into how people pick odds on these sites

There's also a pool for whether Mike Tyson will bite off Logan Paul's ear, so they go wild there

Pre-1.0 I had aluminum factories that took the waste water from aluminum scrap and fed it back to the alumina solution refineries. However, in my new 1.0 world I can't seem to get it to flow correctly.

I've tried several solutions, including:

• putting the waste water lower in the junction than the fresh water
• adding a valve to the waste water to prevent backflow
• adding a valve to the waste water to only supply the amount not provided by the fresh water

The only think I have not done yet is decrease the water extractor rates, mostly because I don't recall having to do that before when I used a valve.

Any tips? Anyone else had success in 1.0

Update: I believe I may have found a solution - I've added a fluid buffer just after the waste and fresh water merge.

waste       fresh
    \      /
     buffer
        | 
     refinery

This seems to give the pipeline a little wiggle room to settle, whereas without the buffer the fresh water would slowly fill in whenever the waste water wasn't at full production. The waste water would then back up, which meant production of aluminum scrap would back up, which meant that alumina solution would back up, and then meant the water would back up leading to a sort of deadlock With the buffer there's a little more wiggle room in the pipeline for excess water

My friend and I routinely have conversations about factory design.

His ideal factory ships every ore in its raw state to a single building, which can then move the ore to different floors/sections for processing. He goes further than most and separates each product into its own "room", so all steel bars are made in one room then shipped to the steel beam and steel pipe rooms. Importantly the factory should be designed so that you can "infinitely" expand a room if you need more of that resource.

I prefer what I call "microfactories", where each component is created in a small, independent factory and the result is shipped to a main repository for builder use and for the space elevator construction. If you need modular frames, for example, you would find a group of ores and build a small factory on it and build every sub-component you can in it. Ideally, it would not rely on any other microfactory's outputs, but sometimes that's easier said than done. Often I will have a small cluster of microfactories all dedicated to shipping their output to a final microfactory for processing.

So what do you all use?

Note: He claims his design is more analogous to microservices (from software architecture) than mine, and that mine is something apparently called "pirate architecture". I think he's out of his mind on that one.

For me, it may be that the toilet paper roll needs to have the open end away from the wall. I don't want to reach under the roll to take a piece! That's ludicrous!

That or my recent addiction to correcting people when they use "less" when they should use "fewer"

I love the idea of supporting small business and quality, handcrafted items. But Etsy seems to be more focused on drop shipping and it becomes a hassle to investigate every item I purchase to determine whether it ships from China or not.

Does anyone know of any alternatives with a good reputation?