Down in California there was a multiple murder plus a kidnapping. A married couple who had three daughters, plus a family friend, were killed. The oldest daughter, 17, was taken. Their younger girls, ages 6 and 9, were left alone and the 6 year old called the police.

Two men have been captured and arrested and the oldest daughter was unharmed. She might be implicated in the crime.

So what's strange about that? All the adults were furries, as was the 17 year old. That just seems astoundingly out of character. Furries are odd people, of course, but I don't think of them as being particularly violent.

Posted by: Steven Den Beste in Weird World at 06:46 PM | Comments (1) | Add Comment
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The pollsters are all reporting that Trump is rising, and even in the lead all over the place. I think they're doing it on purpose.

Pollsters can to some extent adjust the results by controlling who they call, and I think that they're deliberately trying to pump up Trump's numbers, so that they can depress them tomorrow and announce "See these polls? Hillary won the debate".

But I think they're wasting their time. The Democrats and their pet media are trying to make Trump the issue, "Sexist racist bigot" and "Totally unsuited to be President", but after tonight's debate Hillary's health is going to be the issue.

I don't think she'll make it through the debate. She's going to have another seizure, or brain freeze, or it will be impossible to avoid her problem with her eyes, or she may outright pass out.

UPDATE: Looks like I was wrong: she made it all the way.

Posted by: Steven Den Beste in Weird World at 11:04 AM | No Comments | Add Comment
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So the last episode came out, and you're probably (not) wondering what the series was about. I didn't watch it all but I watched enough to get a pretty good idea.

Good: Lots of super powered girls flying around tossing energy bolts all over the place.

Good: The girls are cute and nicely shaped.

Good: No lolis.

Good: Bathing scenes. LOTS of bathing scenes. Ep 12 was the only one that didn't have a bathing scene. I expected that they'd toss one in at the very end as a nudity curtain call, but they surprised me. Anyway, ep 12 had several girls getting MCSA'ed so there were still Buy the BD shots. I swear this show has more screen minutes in the bath than any other series I can think of. (Even more than Popotan!) In fact, more total screen minutes than any three other series I can think of, combined.

Good: Tamura Yukari did the voice of Amane. It sounded enough like Nanoha that I recognized her instantly but not so much as to make the character unbelievable. (There were plenty enough other reasons to disbelieve the character.) I really like her work and she hasn't been getting enough in recent years. It's nice that she's managing to break out of being typecast.

Good: The enemy is so abstract that there's no trace of guilt when seeing the girls shooting and destroying them. It's not even clear that the enemy is alive, so it may not even be killing.

Bad: The real story. At the beginning it would be easy enough to think that the story is about alien invasion, but it's actually about shoujo angst. Waah! I'm lonely! I'm not special and people ignore me! I wanna be a star and have people worship me! Waah! All six major characters go through that, and in particular they express their resentment towards Amane (the alpha driver for the team) because they are low ranked and they don't think she's feeding them enough power to be stars. So then Amane crashes and gets captured and isn't around any more, and we get ten episodes of the other five coming to realize just how much they like and trust and need Amane -- and then in the last episode all that comes together and their newly positive feelings save her, and the six working together again, finally clear of all the resentment and angst, kick the butt of the enemy.

Man, I tell you: if it weren't for the copious fan service I'd think this show was targetted at grade school girls. The only thing that can save five universes is our friendship with each other!

Anyway, it's apparent that the characterization and the story are simply a coat rack onto which they are hanging lots of fan service and it only had to be elaborate enough so that it didn't seem to be TOTALLY pandering -- even though it is.

It's the first series directing job for the director. He has a long track record in production, doing character designs and episode directing but this is his first series. I can't claim it's a success but it's clear he did what he was told to do so I can't say it's a bad job. The massive flaws with the series aren't his fault. Anyway, everyone has to start somewhere and I think it's good enough so he'll get other chances, and maybe next time he'll be able to do something better.

I'm not sure I believe that the BDs will sell well. The first will, but they give away the store in the first episode (EVERY major character has a bath scene) and it's not clear that customers will shell out to see all the same girls naked again, five more times. Oh, they'll sell some, but the first one will sell the most.

Verdict: Completely forgettable -- until the first BD comes out.

Rewatch? Surely you jest; it wasn't even worth watching the first time. (And I didn't watch it all.)

Posted by: Steven Den Beste in General Anime at 03:25 PM | No Comments | Add Comment
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More and more people are doing their shopping online and relying on package delivery to get their goods. This is causing much grief and anguish among the top management of stores that rely on their presence in big shopping malls.

There are a bunch of reasons for this. One has to do with sale taxes. But I think another, which will become more and more influential as time goes on (unless something changes radically) is that no one ever died when a swarthy young man with a gun tried to shoot up a web site.

Posted by: Steven Den Beste in Weird World at 09:45 PM | Comments (14) | Add Comment
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Some of them really need it!

Posted by: Steven Den Beste in Rants at 05:57 PM | Comments (2) | Add Comment
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Here it is.

Posted by: Steven Den Beste in linky at 05:53 PM | Comments (1) | Add Comment
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Part of the "Girls in combat machines" genre is that the weapon systems they use should be accurate and based on existing equipment (unless it's mechas, in which case blah).

So the tanks in Girls und Panzer are actual tanks which fought in WWII or were deployed but didn't see combat. And in High School Fleet the ships we see are all actual designs from the era (or modern ships).

Haifuri is an alternate timeline. For one thing, Japan didn't participate in WWII. For another, in that timeline heavier-than-air aircraft were never developed. There are blimps, but no airplanes and no helicopters. Which leads in some cases to anachronisms (like why Musashi has anti-aircraft batteries) but let that pass.

A lot of the ships in the series actually did exist. Harekaze is completely fictional; there never was such a ship. But it's based on the Kagerou-class which really did exist, and were excellent ships. Like most destroyers their best weapon was their torpedoes, and like most Japanese destroyers the Kagerou's carried the Long Lance, the best torpedo of the early war.

The Blue Mermaids use ships which are based on the American Independence-class littoral combat ships. Modern Japan doesn't have anything like that, but they look really cool and really modern so I'm not surprised that the director decided to poach them. Trimarans are awesome.

And there's these things, which they call "skippers". I want to call them "water motorcycles" but of course they aren't. I don't recognize them. It looks like they're hydrofoils, and it looks like they're propelled by a pair of baby jet engines. Given that everything else in the show is realistic, are these based on something real?

Posted by: Steven Den Beste in General Anime at 12:13 PM | Comments (6) | Add Comment
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I've been trying to stay clear of "social media" but it's difficult. I eventually had to open a Facebook account because it made it a lot easier to leave comments on sites like Instapundit. But I don't use it for anything else, and I don't have any "friends" there. I don't have a Twitter account and I visit LiveJournal about once every three years. (The only reason I signed up for LiveJournal was so that I could comment on Pete's posts there before he moved elsewhere.)

This morning Twitter suspended Instapundit's account, and the result inevitably was a firestorm. They turned it back on again with a face-saving demand, but Glenn says he isn't going to keep using it.

Another one of those comment systems where you have to be a member is Disqus. I actually joined that one something like ten years ago, but I had to do some searching to figure out what password I used. And it turns out that you can "follow" people on Disqus. I just noticed a couple of days ago that I had 1 follower.

I'm not sure if this is a good thing or not.

Which brings this up: Severtember!

UPDATE: And more.

Posted by: Steven Den Beste in Computers at 06:40 AM | No Comments | Add Comment
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There was a Python sketch where they were announcing vote results for some national election or other, and one of the competitors was the Loony Party.

America seems to have its own Loony Party now. They call themselves the Greens. These are the people who think we can run the country entirely on solar power and wind power if only they can manage to force people to stop using fossil fuels. (And I'm not going to go into why that's idiocy. I really hate writing about "renewable energy".)

Today their candidate for President, Jill Stein, said that no one should be permitted to run for President unless they've spent time in prison.

Ummm...

You don't suppose we could get going on letting Hillary get her qualifications in, do you?

Posted by: Steven Den Beste in General Anime at 05:24 PM | Comments (2) | Add Comment
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Comcast's local infrastructure is unstable this evening. It's not enough of a failure to be completely unusuable, but enough to make some pages not load properly or not load at all. I hope they get it cleaned up by tomorrow; there better be someone out there working on it.

Posted by: Steven Den Beste in Computers at 08:49 PM | Comments (7) | Add Comment
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