MaartenVC

Castlevania Advance Collection is out on PC! - Castlevania: Circle of the Moon - Castlevania: Harmony of Dissonance - Castlevania: Aria of Sorrow - Castlevania: Dracula X Used to play these on emulator on my phone, but now I can finally legally buy them. All great 2D-Action-Role-Playing / Metroidvania games.

Apparently Diablo 2 Resurrected launched today. It looks pretty good.

SpaceX Inspiration4: first low-earth-orbital spaceflight with only private citizens / non-scientist crew. Specs: - Altitude: 585 km = 364 miles high - Duration: 3 days - Period: 96.2 minutes per orbit - Rocket: Falcon 9 Block 5 - Ship: Crew Dragon Resilience Question: So, any watmmers here going to buy a ticket for the next flight? Idea: Also, I think we should open a bar / club in low-earth-orbit. Maybe a copy of the Flux Nightclub or Chora's Den from the Citadel from Mass Effect 1.

Neutron Stars

Never played it, but I'm gonna try it out. I heard it's like a harder dark souls in a Japanese setting. Maybe I'll first look up some recommended weapons. Dunno yet.

Gonna check it out for sure. Thanks for the recommendation.

Nioh (Difficult Action-RPG / Souls-like) is free on the Epic Games Store: https://www.epicgames.com/store/en-US/p/nioh-the-complete-edition "In the age of samurai, a lone traveler lands on the shores of Japan. He must fight his way through the vicious warriors and supernatural Yokai that infest the land in order to find that which he seeks."

We saw this yesterday-evening: Might be the same one.

"Hidden in the microverse all around you, there is a merciless war being fought by the true rulers of this planet, microorganisms. Amoebae, protists, bacteria, archaea and fungi compete for resources and space. And then there are the strange horrors that are viruses, hunting everyone else. Not even being alive, they are the tiniest, most abundant and deadliest beings on earth, killing trillions every day. Not interested in resources, only in living things to take over. Or so we thought. It turns out that there are giant viruses (giruses) that blur the line between life and death – and other viruses hunting them (virophages)."

Just watched it. Really good informative docu. Thanks for sharing. Turning Point: 9/11 and the War on Terror (2021) (5 episodes) What a total clusterfuck it has been, and still is, maybe now even more then ever. One can't imagine all the misery, loss, hopelessness and anger the Afghan people had to go through. And now just to reach a point of total abandonment by their so-called allies. Plus the utter fear for what's to come. An ever-returning disaster. Also, the next terrorist attack is probably already planned, and set in motion. That's just great. A big middle-finger to the USA, more specifically its power-hungry war-mongering government, their blinded irrational followers, and their profiteering military-industrial complex. All blood on their hands. I'm gonna stop ranting.

NASA Perseverance rover has achieved its goal of successfully coring a Mars rock. https://www.nasa.gov/feature/jpl/nasa-s-perseverance-rover-successfully-cores-its-first-rock

Some more DMCA news: Take-Two Interactive has sued the programmers behind the popular re3 and reVC Grand Theft Auto fan projects. They reverse-engineered GTA 3 and GTA Vice City to make these old games compatible with more hardware devices, fixing bugs and making all sorts of mods. https://torrentfreak.com/take-two-sues-enthusiasts-behind-gta-fan-projects-re3-revc-210903/

The Green Knight (2021) "A fantasy re-telling of the medieval story of Sir Gawain and the Green Knight." I had been looking forward to watch this film in theaters, but I didn't because of the many many harsh user reviews I read on imdb. Now I wish I did, and maybe I still will. Great cinematography, imagery, music and sound design. Slow pace. Surreal and dark fantastical. Raw. I think some watmmers might like this movie. But be warned though, this is not the glorious tale of King Arthur & co. It's barely an adaptation. Very different from the usual heroic medieval-fantasy action-adventure movies. This is almost opposite to First Knight (1995). It's really something else. A lot of people seem to really dislike the movie because of this, for its near-anti-heroism, and for it being rather slow? Dunno. Anyways, I liked it actually. With all of its weirdness and unconventional ways. It intrigued me. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ Watch at your own discretion I guess.

Portrait of a Lady on Fire (2019) "On an isolated island in Brittany at the end of the eighteenth century, a female painter is obliged to paint a wedding portrait of a young woman." French Drama-Romance movie. I didn't like this one, but it has really really high ratings on imdb and from critics, so... I dunno. I don't mind slow movies but with this one I was kinda bored. My dog and my cats provided me with some entertainment in front of the screen. Warm palette and nice framing though. As I read the user reviews now, most people seem to think it's a masterpiece. I guess I'm just not getting it. Lucky (2017) "Lucky follows the spiritual journey of a 90-year-old atheist and the quirky characters that inhabit his off the map desert town." Harry Dean Stanton, now a very old man, is faced with the reality of mortality. Also, David Lynch is looking for his turtle, I mean Tortoise. I thought I would like this movie because of its connection and likeliness to The Straight Story (1999). However I wasn't really into this one. Though it has some interesting ideas. Ever After: A Cinderella Story (1998) "The Brothers Grimm arrive at the home of a wealthy Grande Dame who speaks of the many legends surrounding the fable of the cinder girl before telling the true story of her ancestor." I think I read somewhere Drew Barrymore's favorite movie she did. Saint Maud (2019) "Follows a pious nurse who becomes dangerously obsessed with saving the soul of her dying patient." Didn't grab me unfortunately. Children of Heaven (1997) "After a boy loses his sister's pair of shoes, he goes on a series of adventures in order to find them. When he can't, he tries a new way to win a new pair." An Iranian Drama movie. Quite touching. And well made. Pure. I can recommend this one. Give it a watch. American Psycho (2000) "A wealthy New York City investment banking executive, Patrick Bateman, hides his alternate psychopathic ego from his co-workers and friends as he delves deeper into his violent, hedonistic fantasies." Rewatched this one because gf read the book. Fame (1980) "A chronicle of the lives of several teenagers who attend a New York high school for students gifted in the performing arts." Weird movie. About artistic potential. Incoherent plot with some musical bits in between. Feels a bit like a school project itself. lol. Raya and the Last Dragon (2021) "In a realm known as Kumandra, a re-imagined Earth inhabited by an ancient civilization, a warrior named Raya is determined to find the last dragon." Very mediocre and hollow in my opinion. Ok for kids and Disney addicts I guess. Philadelphia (1993) "When a man with HIV is fired by his law firm because of his condition, he hires a homophobic small time lawyer as the only willing advocate for a wrongful dismissal suit." Good movie with Tom Hanks and Denzel Washington. A bit predictable but compelling and real. I recommend this one. As Good as It Gets (1997) "A single mother and waitress, a misanthropic author, and a gay artist form an unlikely friendship after the artist is assaulted in a robbery." Unusual fun movie with Jack Nicholson, Helen Hunt, Greg Kinnear and Cuba Gooding Jr. Great acting, good chemistry, charming curious plot. To be a better fellow human being. I recommend this one too.

"The Battle of Salamis was one of the decisive battles of world history, in which the small city-states of ancient Greece joined forces to take on the mighty Persian Empire. After the defeat and death of the Spartan King Leonidas at Thermopylae, the Persians burned Athens, and the Greek alliance seemed close to collapse. But thanks to the foresight of Athenian general Themistocles and the heroism of the Greek fleet, the Persians would meet with disaster in the narrow straits of Salamis."

Blasphemous: Wounds of Eventide is a free DLC/update for the main game, coming 09 December 2021. Sunshine Animation Studio Madrid made the awesome 2D animation for the trailer. Pretty, pretty, pretty good. Stuff like this makes me want to go into 2D animation. It seems they also made a trailer for Temtem (a Pokemon-like game on pc). The devs also announced Blasphemous II. Oooh yeah! Coming in 2023. I have unwavering faith in this. It's going to be miraculous. "Suscipe, Pater Retortus, orationem nostram. Fac ut frons sine nomine culpabilissima convertur nobiscumque ibit. Quoniam Miracolus recreatus est."

a giant "laser" on the moon? ^^

88,49% of all adult citizens in Flanders (the Dutch-speaking region in Belgium) are now fully vaccinated. (73,94% for all ages) Really good job! Slow but steady does it. Two thumbs up. Brussels (the capitol of Belgium) is doing way less good unfortunately. 58% of all its adult citizens are fully vaccinated. (47,73% for all ages) Don't know the reason why the city has such a low vaccination-rate. Some say it's mostly people with a low income who have a problem getting vaccinated or don't want to get vaccinated. That's a bit of a problem. Of all covid-19-patients now in hospitals 97% is not vaccinated or not fully vaccinated. The vaccines really seem to suppress the severity of the disease. Total confirmed covid-19-infections are slowly going back up again though. Mostly the delta-variant. Also probably due to people going on holiday and the easing of covid-19 measures. Feeling optimistic.

Some sort of illusion. Some common misconceptions: