king of the hill (!!!) returns (!!!!!!) on aug 4.

you know... alien earth...



in terms of world building and just a general sense of sophistication this might be better than westworld's last 2 seasons. i mean it probably wont because nothing good ever happens but it might.

guys seriously alien earth looks fucking better and better. https://gizmodo.com/the-latest-alien...ers-2000630723

https://gizmodo.com/alien-earth-prev...ulu-2000630897


some interesting tidbits about the alien:earth series.

im into it still dont get me wrong but i find myself wondering how much of the extrapolation is going to play as world building vs filler. its definitely giving westworld a little around the edges; apparently the hybrid humans experience a lot of similar moral arcs to the synths in westworld, but where the latter approached everything from a very polarized, very binary perspective (synth future vs human future) this series is leaning into the issues that come with bridging both worlds.

which can be very beautiful if they pull it off, shout out to pk dick etc.

started three body problem last night and its fucking chefs kiss through the roof. soooooo good. like actually legitimately scary so far.


also apparently season 2 starts filming in august, which is very fucking nice.

so i finished 3 body problem season 1 and it definitely starts to do a bit of shark jumping in the 2nd half, starting with chekhov's nano wires. like its weak points are significant plot holes and pretty dated effects.

but the plot is so fucking good that i just dont care, im sold on it all.

just ordered the 4 book set from the author, fuck it.

some interesting tidbits i just stumbled across.. its not a coincidence there is a lot of GoT talent attached, as apparently this is a Benioff / Weiss project. also the budget is fucking 20m an episode and excuse me what the fuck. where is that money going. how much cocaine is in the catering budget. its absolutely bizarre to me that they managed to burn through 160m. the effects are dogshit (with the notable exception of the ship being dismantled, which reallllly didnt make sense btw considering how desperate they were to protect the data they wanted aka the point of assaulting the ship). they literally look like they belong in a mid 2000's neil degrasse tyson special on pbs. there is simply no fucking way i saw 160m worth of project here, im sorry.

also to make matters even more unsettling, netflix / showrunners have apparently decided to film season 2 and season 3 back to back. which makes the whole postproduction process for season 2 rather complicated because how are showrunners going to be involved if they are busy filming season 3.. and if they are going to bang out both seasons and then hit the studios for postproduction, that literally means season 2 might not air until 2028, which is fucking insane.

also the reviews for this series were _not great_, and its hard to fault that.

I came over here to see a vast warehouse of stock trading knowledge and find a message board dedicated to upcoming TV shows.

I mean this is valuable in its own way, just not what I was expecting.

i kinda fucked everything up by switching to futures 100% and had little to add anymore about stocks. also to be totally honest doing development for vb5 was an absolute cluster of fuck.

plus we all love us some good tv.


SPEAKING OF WHICH

that said you know what, i bet claude.ai and pals can help me get through a lot of the hoops i couldnt before... mayhaps a renaissance is in order.

the thing that so profoundly stupid about vb5 is that if you step outside their Very Shitty Ecosystem for modifying the forums behavior, all the changes will almost certainly get reverted during the next patch.

also their code is so convoluted and obtuse that the highest paid tier of claude.ai has no idea what tf is going on under the hood.

ive been thinking lately about switching back to something like the chan board formats...

spent like 30 minutes watching the wandering earth and was struck by how truly fucking awful chinese film industry is at scifi. its like starship troopers without the humor.

but i decided to pick up the box set of Liu Cixin's works and was pleasantly surprised by his writing. really enjoying this so far.

also apparently there was a chinese adaptation of 3 body problem as well called "three-bodies" which has 30 (!!!!) episodes and is available subbed on Prime, Peacock among others.

​and honestly im so smitten with it that im not sure where to go next. they havent even started filming season 2 for netflix and it wont wrap production until mid 2027 so im clearly not going to sit around and wait.

ok did some research; the 30 ep chinese series only covers the first book, and the netflix series already covered the first half of the first book. i think im going to dip a toe in the chinese series and see how disappointed i am in it and then make the hard life choices.

about a 3rd done with 3 body problem book 1 and im actually sorta impressed with the work the showrunners did to adapt it.

jesus fucking christ i just finished book 1 of 3 body and god...damned....

SPOILER

there is something i really dont understand and im not trying to pull this thread too hard but it kinda chips away at the source material... why dont the aliens just exterminate us? they could set off nukes... reprogram biolabs.. blot out the sun and kill photosynthesis.. i really and truly dont understand. im hoping its addressed in the next 2 books.

not sure how good a writer liu is but im a fan of his vision. a lot of great scifi writers were kinda hacks from a literary perspective so im not depriving him of credit where due, but like.. maybe its the translators fault but the brother is no william gibson.

also within 20 seconds of starting the trisolarian perspective chapters i imagined these two fuckers performing the dialog



and literally from that moment on it felt kinda camp.

also just on a broader note, weiss and benioff worked fucking miracles with both the character development and especially the casting.

also their decision to turn the trisolarians from these mirror image space humans into something much more Fucking Scary And Weird was a masterstroke. their take on them was so much more satisfying, and the rift between Evans and them really carried a lot of weight. im giving them the nod there.

so yeah its nice that ill be able to find out how this wraps up before 2028 but its also bittersweet because im guessing B & W are really going to give us something special that will probably be a lot more interesting/impactful than the source material.