Seto Kaiba

DanDaDan episode 24 has a bunch of different mecha anime references all crammed together thanks to the focus character being a sci-fi fan who uses nanomachines to create his own giant robot to fight the supernatural monster of the week.

The visual design references a lot of Ultraman, GoLion, and Gundam with the giant robot Buddha having five cockpits and what are very obviously fin funnels.  Some of his Called Attacks reference other mecha anime including Macross, like his Daedalus Attack at about 8 minutes in.

(He even does Dai-Guard's infamously awful rocket punch.)

Summer '25 is wrapping up...

Betrothed to My Sister's Ex had a reasonably satisfying conclusion.  Some good closure for the story after oh-so-much waffling with the evil parents getting their comeuppance for their various crimes.

Secrets of the Silent Witch's penultimate episode is another good one.  I decided to bite the bullet and buy the light novel to get more.

Solo Camping for Two decided to try some actual character development for its penultimate episode, and it honestly fell pretty flat for me.  Mainly because the protagonist has never really had any character traits beyond being an antisocial jerk whose only real interest seems to be driving into the wilderness to drink large amounts of cheap beer and eat canned food like a hobo.

Dan da dan... y'know I've never figured out of it's meant to be DanDaDan or Dan Da Dan... are we really watching an Ultraman monster fight a giant robot Buddha with the Nu Gundam's fin funnels?  You have to admire the audacity, if nothing else, even if it feels increasingly like the series is just throwing random sh*t at the wall to see what sticks.

Welcome to the Outcast's Restaurant had a predictably unremarkable ending.  Not bad, but shockingly bland for a protagonist whose whole schtick is cooking.

The Fall '25 simulcast lineup is being announced now too.  https://www.crunchyroll.com/news/seasonal-lineup/2025/9/17/fall-2025-anime-crunchyroll

Still a LOT of generic-sounding isekai titles in the Fall '25 simulcast season lineup.  A Gatherer's Adventure in Another World, A Wild Last Boss Appeared, Campfire Cooking in Another World S2, Dad is a Hero Mom is a Spirit I'm a Reincarnator, My Status as an Assassin Obviously Exceeds the Hero's, Tales of Wedding Rings S2, The Dark History of the Reincarnated Villainess, and The Fated Magical Princess.

Color me surprised that that hot mess Tales of Wedding Rings got a second season.  That was an open air tire fire of a story.

There are some titles of considerable merit and interest though.  A Mangaka's Weirdly Wonderful Workplace seems to be another case of the manga industry documentarizing itself, albeit with a lot less ecchi than last time.  

Let's Play, a series about a video game developer whose first-ever game release is derailed by a terrible review from a famous streamer.  I really want to see where they go with that one.

One Punch Man season 3 promises to be amusing, if nothing else.

Spy x Family season 3... what can I say except "Yes, please and thank you" and doubtless "Please sir, may I have some more?" at the end of the season.

Tojima Wants to be a Kamen Rider promises to be interesting too.  It's the story of a lifelong Kamen Rider fanboy who, armed with a fairbooth Kamen Rider mask, sets out to fight crime.

Phrasing is dead.  I stopped cold seeing titles like L'il Miss Vampire Can't Suck Right, Pass the Monster Meat, and This Monster Wants to Eat Me.  

Maybe I just have a filthy mind.  Actually, no... I definitely do... but still.  Phrasing.  That first one's description sounds like the center of a Venn diagram of Rosario+Vampire and Actually, I am... and the second sounds like a series about some relatives of Laios from Dungeon Meals with a couple who are connoisseurs of consuming fantasy monsters.

2 minutes ago, renegadeleader1 said:

I called this weeks ago. Now allow me a new prediction...

You did indeed call it... three weeks ago on August 27th, to be precise. 👍

3 minutes ago, renegadeleader1 said:

Spoiler

It's pretty obvious at this point Boy Crapateer is going to have a close encounter with Senor Eyeball, the question is will it be an accident that's going to happen when the two xenomorphs start kung fu fighting, or is this show going to do something stupid like have him download himself into a synth body and give his original body over to the eyeball?

3 minutes ago, renegadeleader1 said:

Spoiler

Then again the xenomorphs might not even fight and just turn on Wendy and the lost morons killing them all.

3 minutes ago, renegadeleader1 said:

Spoiler

I still say the island gets nuked.

That, IMO, is the sucker bet.  Practically guaranteed to happen to prevent an outbreak.

Since Tesla's abominable safety record came up recently, this feels a bit relevant:

https://arstechnica.com/cars/2025/09/tesla-model-y-door-handles-now-under-federal-safety-scrutiny/

The Office of Defects Investigation in the US National Highway Traffic Safety Administration is the latest national regulatory body to take up the question of whether the flush/retractable door handles used on Tesla vehicles (and on select models of other brands) meet vehicle safety standards in the event of a crash or a 12V bus failure.

Similar regulatory probes are already underway in Europe and China, with the latter already floating discussion of a ban.

3 hours ago, Hikuro said:

There hasn't been any suspense, thrill, or chills this entire season. I mean if I were to compare this series to Romulus, Romulus was oscar performing in comparison. 

Yeah, Alien: Earth's showrunners and writers did not understand the assignment.

Xenomorph XX121 has never been less scary.

The mature one spends the first three episodes mugging for the camera before being killed with the cutting arm from an office paper cutter by a girl/synth with no combat experience or training, and the second one is...

The other four groups of critters really don't seem to be engaged in the story to any significant degree.  The main source of menace seems to be the obligatory Horror Movie Stupidity that most of the cast contracts at one point or another, and that's not exactly scary because you can see it coming a light year away.

4 hours ago, pengbuzz said:

When even McCoy has to ask, maybe it's more than just a "meme"...

McCoy just likes to snark.  It's his main character trait.

One of the very first things we're told about Kirk waaaaaaay back in TOS "Where No Man Has Gone Before" is that the man was a certified workaholic with no time for romance in his life.  Gary Mitchell described him as "a stack of books with legs".  He was such a workaholic that he famously had to be tricked into ordering himself to take shore leave.

We do meet a few of his ex-girlfriends in TOS, but it's clear in almost every case that the relationship was short and ended rather badly.  Most were in his academy days, when he wasn't quite as career-focused.  For instance, the infamously awful villain of the show's final episode Janice Lester, hostile prosecutor Areel Shaw, and hostile baby momma Carol Marcus.  In pretty much every case, Kirk's relationships were short and fell apart because he's Married to the Job.

Most of Kirk's "romances" onscreen are him either under duress, being manipulated, or attempting to manipulate the femme fatale of the week.  Like when he was given a false memory of being in a relationship with an enlisted crewman in "Dagger of the Mind", hooked up with Minamanee under the influence of amnesia in "The Paradise Syndrome", the one-sided crush Miri had on him in "Miri", Kodos's daughter trying to get close to him so she can assassinate him in "The Conscience of the King", the Scalosians attempting to use him and other Enterprise crew as breeding stock in "Wink of an Eye", etc.

The man had a grand total of one functioning relationship, and that's one that happened offscreen after Star Trek VI... a woman named Antonia that he met after retiring. 

Unless you count the shippers (which Kirk makes a meta joke about by calling the mind meld their "first date" in the "New Life and New Civilizations") who see Kirk and Spock as a couple instead of heterosexual life partners.  Then it's two.

Strange New Worlds's Kirk is on-brand with the TOS depiction... a man generally too busy to be interested in romance, and definitely not the kind of guy who goes around hitting on women the way Abramsverse Kirk did.  (The whole introduction of Kirk back in "Charades" was a massive refutation of Chris Pine's dimwitted fratboy arsehole take on Kirk.)

11 hours ago, Thom said:

I appreciate the show runners trying to work around a possible cliff-hanger ending. More shows need to be written as though every season is the last.

Yeah, especially in this era of streaming where a series might have as few as six episodes and may end up wasting a nontrivial percentage of its runtime setting up story hooks for a second season that probably isn't coming.  (e.g. The Acolyte)

11 hours ago, Thom said:

This one though, felt like a return to more serious story telling and, in fact, it could have used more time. This would have been better with more lead-in during previous episodes or as a two-parter. I liked most of the interactions all around, though have Patel turning into the Savior of the universe needed a lot more explanation and history behind it. Having it happen over the course of the season or even the previous season as well, would have been a lot better.

I agree, it would have worked better if there had been more build-up to it.

As it is, it comes out of nowhere and the explanation is hot nonsense.  The writers determination to have a "pure evil" villain is just silly, and there are so many plot holes and highly unscientific arguments in Batel's massive leaps of logic that it sounds more like she's just a crazy person.  It essentially turned into a whole plot reference to the first Doom movie... with the whole "genetically engineered into an angel to defeat demons" schtick.

11 hours ago, Thom said:

As it is though, I am fine with it. Some time-wimey interdimensional explanations about how cause and effect can swap and actually lead to the effect first was fine. Again, it just needed more time to build it up. 

That part was never the problem.  We've had that kind of weird temporal shenanigans before... like TNG "All Good Things" with the anti-time anomaly.

6 hours ago, pengbuzz said:

On the bright side:

  Hide contents

At least Kirk won't be able to hit on Batel during TOS. 

Kirk's womanizing is massively oversold by fans.  I've been rewatching the remastered TOS with friends who've never seen Trek before, and while Kirk has several old girlfriends he's almost never actually hitting on anyone.  I was actually pretty happy SNW acknowledged and then dismissed the meme, with Kirk's concern for Uhura being mistaken for hitting on her and him acknowledging he's in a complicated/messy relationship with his future baby momma Carol Marcus.

(Kirk in the '09 movie is based more on meme Kirk than the actual one in TOS.)

11 hours ago, Thom said:

So, basically the world of Blade Runner...

Assuming that Expanded Universe lore is canon.  In most franchises, it wouldn't be.

Oh boy, "Emergence".  Here things go emerging again.  We've got idiocy, we've got negligence, we've got corporate malice... it's basically the Xenomorph's superbowl.

Seems like they've settled on "Strange Brew" by Cream for their opening reference in the last couple episodes.  Did they run out of money to license music for the sake of one on-the-nose lyric?

I would like to credit Smee with the first actually-believable reaction by a person in this work.

Every story where immortality is a fixture of the plot needs to have that moment where someone is reminded forcibly of the important difference between functional immortality and complete immortality.

It's one thing to be The Ageless, it's quite another to be impervious to physical harm.  The Hybrids are the former, not the latter.

Well, OK then.  In most Human cultures, murder is considered a dick move.

So we have a new narrative problem.

Who do you root for when absolutely everyone is a maximally sh*tty person?  We had a protagonist until a minute ago, now we just have some kind of Villain Battle Royale.

I'm gonna have to say I'm joining Team Horrible Space Monsters.  Somehow, they're the least horrid people in this story.

Time for some unnecessary digressions!

We get a closeup of the weapons that the Prodigy troops are carrying.  One looks to be a forerunner or variant of the pulse rifle seen in Alien: Romulus and Alien 2.  Another seems to be the same M134-based minigun seen in Predator.

This was meant to build tension and then deliver a sharp shock, but it falls flat because the outcome was so incredibly obvious and cliched.

You can't do horror effectively if everyone in the story is behaving like an idiot with no sense of self-preservation.  It stops being scary and starts being unintentionally funny.

You can tell that this is a dock by the rusted generic shipping containers just sitting places.  That's a thing that docks have, right?

Do Star Trek-style transporters exist in Alien?  Because this episode has a lot, and I mean a LOT, of people just popping right TF outta nowhere the minute it's dramatic to.

Someone really loves that scene at the end of Goldeneye where Bond and the girl discover the patch of grass they were making out on was like the one patch of grass in eyeshot that WASN'T a dude in a ghilli suit and three helicopters nobody noticed appear as if by magic.

Well... decisions were certainly made.  Not good ones, in my opinion, but decisions nonetheless.

I'm going to go ahead and call it now.

2 hours ago, Tking22 said:

I caught up on the newest season last night, there were some entertaining episodes, and some solid ones overall, but it was another really uneven season IMO. Is Paramount contracted for another or is this potentially it for SNW?

For two more, in fact. 

Paramount announced that the series had been renewed for a 4th and 5th season back in June. The fifth season is slated to be the show's last, similar to what was already done with Lower Decks and Discovery. It has also been indicated that the final season will be shorter, comprising only six episodes instead of ten.

They announced a day or two ago that season 5 is going to be shorter than the others, with just six episodes. Apparently Paramount originally wanted to end on a movie, but showrunners pushed to continue the episodic format. 

There is a little bit of speculation that the short season five is another case of robbing Peter to pay Paul, diverting funding to the Starfleet Academy series.

EDIT: According to the showrunners, the reason season 3 ends the way it does is it was originally written as a potential series finale in case Strange New Worlds was not renewed for another season.

16 hours ago, JB0 said:

More importantly, if you ARE pure distilled evil, you turn into a puddle of metamucil and ink. You don't retain a humanoid form.

Even then, if you think about it, Armus's evil is still subjective.  The species that created him had to decide what traits of theirs were negative and inclining them to destructive behavior and physically removed those aspects of themselves somehow.  It's narratively convenient that their definition of "evil" matched Humanity's.

55 minutes ago, TehPW said:

maybe. What I hope is how they show Pike still grieving into next season...

It'd be nice if they didn't have him get over it too quickly.

Then again, I guess that kind of depends how much of a time skip there is between season 3 and season 4.  If it follows on right away then he should definitely still be broken up about it.  If there's a couple months in the middle, it'd be weird if he were still totally devastated.

On 9/11/2025 at 1:48 PM, Axelay said:

I wonder why Morrow didn't say something during the arbitration hearing about the crash being intentionally caused?

Probably because he wouldn't be able to prove it.

26 minutes ago, TehPW said:

As for the use of nuclear weapons, wasn't the end of the fourth Alien film set on a destroyed land scape (possibly Paris, France, depending on the application of Deleted scenery or not)? likely the home world will be nuked... what would be funny? Someone the Octo-Eye is currently driving is the one that pushes the button.

Yeah, the deleted scene at the end of Alien: Resurrection is set in a post-apocalyptic Paris.

They're not clear on what caused the planet to be so ruined and abandoned in the time between Alien 3 and Alien: Resurrection, but it was apparently already basically abandoned well before the start of the movie.

IMO, it'd be more on brand for the franchise if the reason Earth is a ruin in the late 24th century is because the megacorps that were overthrown by that time simply destroyed the environment through shortsighted pollution and ecological destruction.  Like how Boy Cavalier crashed a starship full of invasive species into his own city simply to deny it to W-Y.

9 minutes ago, Axelay said:

Here's another thing which is bugging the hell out of me - If the Maginot had been out for 65 years, then how are some of the specimens still alive? Assuming that the specimens were collected at roughly the halfway point in the voyage before heading home, then wouldn't that make some of them potentially be 30 years old...? I am not clear on whether the specimens were put into cryo sleep, or even whether or not it would work on them. Seems like a big gamble to collect specimens and not know whether or not they'd make it back home. And do you think that they left Teng to tend to them the whole time when the rest of the crew was in cryo?

The more I think about the writing for this series, the more it bothers me. I wish I could stop trying to analyze.

That is a really good question.  I don't think the writers were expecting anyone to ask that one. 🤔

Xenomorph XX121 eggs seem to last basically forever (based on Alien and Aliens), but the other four species specimens (the flies, ticks, man-eating plant, and eye-ctopus) were all shown being transported live both in the lab and the cargo bay.

It wouldn't make sense to thaw them out at the same time as the crew considering how dangerous they are.  The smart thing to do would be to keep them on ice until after they got back to Earth if they could be frozen rather than risk any escaping.  If we assume the writers didn't simply forget or assume nobody would notice, either these alien lifeforms are very long-lived for insects and a tropical plant or the crew were breeding them to maintain the population.  The latter case might explain why they have a rotating crew that seems to be awake far more regularly in transit than the crews of the Nostromo, Sulaco, etc. instead of simply putting everyone into cryo until the ship got where it's going.

(Teng's human, BTW... he's just weird.) 

1 hour ago, Stampeed Valkyrie said:

if you work in the "industry" as you claim then less talking to people like chat GPT to get your point across.

Perhaps, in the future, check your facts before attempting to argue and not after so I don't have to explain basic concepts like I'm ChatGPT?  Just a suggestion. 😜

1 hour ago, Stampeed Valkyrie said:

The US is not Europe,  and what works in China and Europe does not work here.

Yes, what works in the US market doesn't necessarily work in Europe or China and vice versa.

When it comes to EVs, the biggest barriers are more in the US's systematic negligence of infrastructure.  Range anxiety is not a wholly separate issue from the fact that the grid is so badly maintained and so far behind in development that it's simply not possible to make EV charging stations as common as gas stations.  All the work being done with ANL and USDoE on "smart grid" applications, DR, rate-conscious "smart" charging, etc. on EVSEs and in-vehicle only goes so far when the grid is a creaking ruin in a lot of states.

A-segment and B-segment small cars are never going to sell here regardless, that's just a fundamental difference in needs.  

1 hour ago, Stampeed Valkyrie said:

Not even going to get into the thermal runaway issues and the fact that China has millions of EVs sitting in fields brand new and rotting.   

Thermal runaway is a nasty topic, the subject of a lot of back-and-forth between the industry and regulators over the last seven or so years.  The EU's latest package of emissions laws and regulations (Euro 7) has some new requirements for OEMs on that front, as do some updates to China's GB/T standards for vehicle-to-cloud regulatory communication.

China's EVs rotting in ports... yeah... they're massively over-exporting in a braindead go at conquering the EV market through sheer volume.  Between the brands being new and suspicions about the connected features spying on you and concerns about good ol' Chinese quality they're not finding an audience as big as they hoped for.  Tesla's having a similar problem now that its CEO is one of the world's most hated men and has alienated the vast majority of his customer base. 😆

Despite the growing pains of EV technology, EV sales are still up 25% globally in 2025... most of that being outside the US though (which only grew 6%).

1 hour ago, Stampeed Valkyrie said:

Is it even safe to drive your Tesla again?  or is some whacko gonna come and vandalize it?   

Considering how badly designed and badly built Teslas are, was it ever safe?

Hardly a quarter goes by without someone suing Tesla for false advertising over their "autopilot" feature that keeps causing high speed crashes because Tesla lied about its actual capabilities.  Their current flagship is a pickup truck held together with glue and wishful thinking that can't go offroad, can't drive on roads in snow, can't carry cargo without risking permanent damage to its tailgate and truck bed, can't tow for sh*t without risking frame damage, can't charge without risking the connector getting stuck in the inlet, can't charge in hot or cold weather, shorts out and fails during basic fording tests, frequently bricks itself, is often mistaken for a skid full of garbage by racoons, and is a writeoff in anything more than the most gentle of fender benders. 😆

What part of that sounds safe to you? 😆

Your lemon being tagged by an irate protester is the least of your worries.  Their safety record is so bad we're starting to see talk of states banning the sale of Tesla vehicles.

9 hours ago, Convectuoso said:

Why is Mikimoto-san drawing Ishtar a child's face now?

Pretty sure he's just drawing her in his more modern style.

IMO, it doesn't look that far off how she actually appears in the animation:

9 hours ago, pengbuzz said:

Alternate title: The Worst of Both Worlds....

Hmm... nah, I wouldn't go quite that far.

It's a real stinker, for sure.  I've seen a lot of fans on Reddit and Facebook saying it's the worst episode of Strange New Worlds to date and I'd be hard pressed to disagree.  I think a lot of them are going too far saying that it's one of the worst episodes in the franchise, though.  It has a nonsense plot that clearly sounded a lot cooler in the writer's head and it's badly acted, but it's not rife with Unfortunate Implications the way most of the franchise's very worst episodes are.  Like the insane sexism of "Turnabout Intruder", the very blatant racism in "Code of Honor", the comedic handling of a sex change in "Profit and Lace", the implicit rape in the nonsense plot of "Threshold", the de facto sexual coercion of "Elogium", the normalization of racism in "Four-and-a-Half Vulcans", etc.

I hope they do better with season four.  I'm still intensely thankful we're getting both a season four and five because this is still hands-down the best of new Trek.

Lookin' good.

The artbook promises to be a bit of a doorstopper.  It's 60% bigger than planned, up to 240 pages from 150.

The Summer 2025 simulcast season's drawing to a close.

A lot of the titles I tried this time were pretty mediocre at best, though there are a few excellent standouts.

I'm definitely hooked on Secrets of the Silent Witch.  Enough that I'm eyeing buying the light novel and I really REALLY want a second season from it.

My Dress-Up Darling is having another excellent season, which makes me wonder why it took so bloody long to get it.  Marin and Gojo are just adorkable and I love them.

Betrothed to My Sister's Ex is recovering a bit in the home stretch now that they've finally decided to sh*t or get off the pot when it comes to the sister thing and is finally getting some proper closure.  I wouldn't call it great, but it's head and shoulders above a lot of the rest of the season.

Ruri Rocks is still great edutainment... though it has one of the thirstiest fanbases I have ever seen and it doesn't even have much fanservice.

Cultural Exchange with a Game Centre Girl remains cute and inoffensive to the end.  I kind of wish they did more with the Lily's comically overprotective dad.

The Water Magician is worth watching.  Not because it's good, but because it's genuinely impressive how indistinct it is.  It is isekai at almost maximum possible genericness, to the extent that its most distinctive point is how little it has to distinguish itself from the rest of its genre.  It's a fascinating paradox.

I had high-ish hopes for Detectives These Days Are Crazy!, but its humor ran out of utility pretty fast and ended up being less a detective parody and more just pratfalls and jokes about how Mashiro's stupid.

Dan da dan started out pretty interesting, but it's honestly not doing anything for me after the Evil Eye got introduced.

I was pretty shocked that See You Tomorrow at the Food Court ended up being just six episodes long.  It was fun in sort of Azumanga Daioh way.  It feels like it should have been a full season.

4 hours ago, Stampeed Valkyrie said:

No its not...  maybe its the failure to grasp this that makes the point.    Dodge is an American Brand.. its not European..  putting EVs aside attempting to sell Alfa Romeo's as Dodge is doomed for failure.   I don't see alot of Hornet's..  why is that?

First, a quick reality check.  Most OEMs develop a common platform for multiple markets and rebadge as necessary for different trim levels.

Second, another reality check.  Brand "nationality" is mostly BS.  Pretty much every large OEM is using parts developed and manufactured all over the world and the only thing that makes that brand belong to a specific nation is where final assembly takes place.  The era of an automaker's development being localized to a single country is long since over and most cars are as multinational under the hood as your average Star Trek cast.

Third, a point of fact I can't really blame you for not knowing.  The Hornet/Tonale program was not brand-specific or region-specific during development.  It was a single program developed as a common platform for multiple markets and brands.  It's quite inaccurate to say that's "attempting to sell an Alfa Romeo as a Dodge".

As to why we don't see more of them... well... they made the mistake of having the Hornets built at Pomigliano d'Arco alongside the Tonale version. 🙃

4 hours ago, Stampeed Valkyrie said:

And most people know its not an american car.

Only in the sense that final assembly does not occur in the US, to be frank.

4 hours ago, Stampeed Valkyrie said:

The hurricane,  is an engine that stellantis has had some major issues with,  and on top of the fact that putting a European motor in an American Muscle car.. is another fail.   

It's only really a "European" engine in the sense that initial production was in Termoli.

That's not where it was designed, and it's not even the only place it's built.

4 hours ago, Stampeed Valkyrie said:

And finally onto EVs the market in the US is already saturated at this point,  maybe its all the rage in Europe but that is not natural.   EVs will live and now die because the only way to push EVs is to force mandatory compliance with unelected bureaucrats making arbitrary rules.   Thank god for Cheveron deference and Trump torpedoing Cafe standards..  but that is another topic.      Count me in on the Luddite team if it means we can get vehicles that act more like cars and trucks,  and less like smartphones.. 

This also contains a lot of inaccuracies.

The main factor slowing adoption of EVs in the US is a lack of charging infrastructure and the woefully neglected state of the US electrical grid.  Western Europe and China's more cosmopolitan provinces don't really have that problem, which is why EVs have been much more readily adopted there.  EV adoption is only accelerating in developed nations, and the US's temporary regression is not going to have a substantial impact on the growth of the EV market because pretty much every OEM is by default developing for global sales and that means still having to comply with emissions regulations in South America, Europe, Asia, etc.  It just means a temporary reduction in the number of EV options on offer in the US.  Those emissions regs will get tightened again, and we'll see more electrification because that's the most effective way to improve the efficiency of these systems.

4 hours ago, Stampeed Valkyrie said:

   I think you might need to lower the gas on your gaslighting..    I also don't need an explanation on what a Technical standard is.   so pulling this right out of the weeds.. again..  

Bro, I think you may want to dial the arrogance down to a more reasonable level and recognize you are attempting to BS someone in the industry. 😜

Clearly you DO need the explanation, because almost nothing of what you've said has been correct thus far.

4 hours ago, Stampeed Valkyrie said:

I didn't think I needed to explain that Chevrolet and Dodge are different companies each manufacturing a product that is the same but also different.  Outside the commonality of a combustion engine (ie runs on gas)  they each do their own things their own way.   But what I can explain is that these cars are 56 years old and still on the road.   

You missed my point completely, I'm afraid.

As I explained previously, there are company standards that are internal to a single OEM, but there are also government standards and international standards for which compliance is not always optional.  Every OEM selling in America has to comply with FMVSS, for instance, or they will be prohibited from selling their cars in the US.  It doesn't matter if your car was made by Chevrolet or Dodge or Ferrari or whoever there are hundreds upon hundreds of applicable standards (many of which are non-optional and government enforced) in its design.  They do not "each do things their own way" in most things.  

Standards governing things like the pitch and depth of screw threads have been a part of the industry since the 1910s.  Every conceivable part of the car has at least one, and often far more than one, applicable government or international standard involved in its design.  

They're still on the road because, well, combustion engines are a mature technology that hasn't really changed much in the last sixty or so years and older models from before the advent of computerized control are a lot simpler at the cost of being a lot less efficient and safe.

4 hours ago, Stampeed Valkyrie said:

Here is some homework for you..  EVs..  take one from outside of your City and drive anywhere to another state that involves rural anything. 

See the above about a lack of infrastructure... which is more a government problem than an EV problem if we're being honest with each other.

There is a very definite problem in that it does take quite a bit longer to recharge an EV with a 480V or 800V battery than it does to just pop a nozzle in your fill door and pour out some 87 octane.  That's one reason why electric vehicle standards are evolving as fast as they are.  The search for a better, faster charging system to get that time down to around the same level as just hitting up the gas station.

With Teslas, of course, your main problem is going to be that goofy J3400 connector that only works with Tesla-branded chargers.  Unless you're bringing one of their adapters (a device that bears an unsettling resemblance to a bit of equine anatomy), you're kind of hosed in a lot of places where Tesla doesn't have a presence since most public chargers are the older J1772 design that isn't compatible with Tesla's charging inlet.  If you're stuck using the Level 1 wall-wart... yeah you're going to spend a small eternity charging your car's battery because that's sub-2kW charging.

Believe you me, I am intimately familiar with the technical limitations of EVs... I am literally spending my workdays inventing ways to overcome them. 😜

3 hours ago, Stampeed Valkyrie said:

As for Cracker Barrel.. the CEO decided to tune out the core audience.   The "Most People" argument does not hold water,  Most people were knocking the company for being bone headed.

That doesn't tally with the facts at all, though.  The "tuning out the core audience" nonsense is pure BS from a handful of loudmouth incel culture warriors on Twitter. 😆

Cracker Barrel tried to rebrand and modernize its trade dress to appeal to a younger and wider consumer demographic because revenues were in freefall.  Why?  Because their #1 repeat customer demographic is people over 65 and nearly half of all customers are over 55.  Folks on fixed incomes are feeling the economic downturn most strongly of all, and having large parts of your primary customer base checking out to join the choir invisible is bad for business long-term.  They underestimated how much of their brand identity is tied up in that kitschy trade dress rather than their admittedly pretty mediocre menu. 😆

3 hours ago, Stampeed Valkyrie said:

I don't see how this is any different with Stellantis and Dodge..    European company tuning out its core customer,   pushing EVs to a muscle car crowd.. fail.   With the fall back being the Hurricane engine,  which is also European in an American Muscle car brand..   double fail.   

It's quite a bit different.

This wasn't driven by slipping sales or the target demographic literally f***ing dying off, for example. 😆

Stellantis is a multinational, not a European company.  The development flagship is still in Michigan, as it has been since before Fiat got involved.  As Fiat-Chrysler, some European development activities were actually moved to the US because the engineering expertise was concentrated there.  (That's why the museum on the HQ grounds closed, it ended up converted into office space for the newly US-based Alfa Romeo and Maserati staff.)

Pushing a performance EV to the muscle car crowd was risky, they knew that going in.  That's why we had things like that "Fratzonic sound" system added.  I've explained the other reasons behind it in previous posts.  Ultimately, yeah... kind of a forlorn hope.  Like I said, we were peddling new technology to a pack of borderline Luddites.  That was never going to end well. 😆

3 hours ago, Stampeed Valkyrie said:

And as for industry standards.. yes and no.    A standard in theory should aid in pricing as well as build and repair issues.   However..  even with standards these cars will still NOT last.   in my example the only shared standard that the 69 Caprice, and 69 Charger have are they run on gasoline..    and yet they are still here.    

That's not at all correct I'm afraid.

A technical standard is nothing more or less than a rather wordy document that tells you in precise and exacting detail how to do the thing.  The goal is to ensure that everyone who is working on a specific technology has a shared understanding of how it's supposed to work so that it will function with things built by other people.  In theory, a standard ought to drive prices down by making development easier (since you're not reinventing the wheel) but in practice not s'much because a huge amount of effort goes into staying on top of all those applicable government, industry, and internal standards.  (And I say this as someone who sits on four SAE J-standard committees currently.)

Your belief that that '69 Caprice and '69 Charger share no standard beyond "runs on gas" is entertainingly wrong.  Practically every aspect of those cars construction is governed by manufacturer-specific corporate standards, industry standards, and/or government standards.  Those cars were built after FMVSS was put into place, so they absolutely comply with the Federal Motor Vehicle Safety Standards of the era they were built in.  Everything from the pitch of the screw threads to the thickness of the sheet metal to voltage tolerances of the spark plugs and battery to the thickness and material of brake hoses to the presence of seat belts is dictated by multiple standards documents at multiple levels.  There are whole layers of corporate bureaucracy at the OEMs devoted to developing, maintaining, updating, and ensuring compliance with all these standards in every aspect of development and manufacturing.

The stories I could tell you... and probably put you to sleep with because they're boring AF...😆

I don't disagree that these early generations of EVs will not have a century-long lifespan in the hands of collectors.  That's because the technology behind these early generations of EVs is evolving so fast and everyone is pivoting as fast as they can to new features, use-cases, and standards that a part may only be in production for a few years before it ends up being redesigned, upgraded, and repackaged for a new generation of vehicles with more powerful motors, new transmission concepts, and new energy storage tech.  Once EV tech matures and the pace of development is less frantic, we'll see machines with substantially longer lifespans.

Strange New Worlds season 3 finale is out... "New Life and New Civilizations".

We're telegraphing this outcome so hard that Samuel Morse is demanding a writing credit.

On the plus side, Scotty is the latest victim of the dress uniform prank and came fully kitted out in his kilt.  

It's even, quite appropriately, Scott clan tartan.  The same pattern that the TOS producers deliberately sought out for Scotty's dress uniform in "The Savage Curtain".

In all honesty, this is supposed to be the season's Big Bad and I am absolutely failing to take it the slightest bit seriously.

This is some of the worst wardrobe work since Praetor Shinzon's oil-sheen pleather onesie in Star Trek: Nemesis. 

This was supposed to be a serious dramatic moment.  Like, it even comes with its own musical sting to emphasize the drama... but I am on the f***ing floor busting a gut laughing because this MFer's out here dressing like its first free act was to hit up a tailor shop and say "What can you do to make me look more like a Power Rangers villain?"  This costume doesn't say "I am an existential threat to the galaxy".  It says "I'm going to get my *ss beat by five teenagers with attitude".

Oh for pity's sake, now we have space ley lines...

Can someone please remind the writers this is neither Hellraiser nor Event Horizon, and that regardless of the euphemisms the crew might use there is no reason for this alien to be speaking (bad) Church Latin on an alien world.

Does Clara see the dooms?  I don't know, let's ask her.

"Do you believe in destiny?"

Let's get Cher in here and find out if you believe in life after love, doc.  Or better yet, do you believe in confirmation bias?

Our gimmick is a space door that generates random fortune cookie dialog specific to the person standing next to it.

What is it with Star Trek: Strange New Worlds's writing team and the desire to make an alien race that is capital emphasis Pure Evil?

Seriously.  That's not a thing in Star Trek.  "Good" and "Evil" are relative.  They depend on subjective morality.  One culture's Good is another culture's Evil.  There's no such thing as a universal definition of "Evil", never mind a universal origin of "Evil".  This is turning into the plot of the 2005 Doom movie with The Rock and Karl Urban.

25 minutes exactly in this mess, and I am ready to be done.

I should not have to pause an episode this many times to vent my dismay at the quality of the writing.

Now now, perfectly symmetrical violence never solved anything.

It wouldn't be an end-of-season episode if we didn't dick around with Pike's predestination paradox a bit more, would it?

Was this episode a product of the writers strike?  Seriously.  That was awful.  No one aspect of it is truly horrible on its own, but somehow a series of bad decisions came together to make an audiovisual mess worse than the sum of its parts.

1 hour ago, Big s said:

That’s oddly been common even before the ev stuff started becoming common. A lot of the Gas engines have been silent for over a decade, even rather quiet in the muscle cars. I remember a long time ago when the Mustang’s were getting 💩as soon as people realized that the noise was a speaker thing rather than an engine thing.

Not silent, but quieter... mainly as a product of more efficient engine designs driven by tighter regulations on tailpipe emissions and fuel economy.

That's a pure vanity feature introduced in the early 2010s intended to replicate the driving experience of older cars with worse sound insulation.  Those systems either amplify the existing engine noise or generate fake engine noise and mainly pipe it into the cabin.

1 hour ago, Big s said:

Some people even argue that the fake noise is a safety feature to warn pedestrians and cyclists.

The fake engine noise isn't... but I can understand how people might make that connection.

EVs are required to have an Acoustic Vehicle Alert System that plays an audible tone at around ~70dBA in low speed operation so that pedestrians can hear the otherwise actually silent EV coming.  Similar versions of the same requirement all came into effect in the 2010s around the same time that the purely-for-vanity's-sake fake engine notes were being added to cars with combustion engines.

1 hour ago, Big s said:

That’s one of the stupid issues I have with this changeover. The companies aren’t on the same page with the standardization and it’s stalling the industry. If they’d standardize things, it would make the vehicles much less expensive and easier to maintain over time. Most of the charging stations seem to be Tesla and if someone has a different type of car, then they have to hope for an adapter to work. And that issue sometimes goes the other way as well.

It's not the companies... or perhaps it might be more accurate to say that it's not just the companies.

The issue is that there are many different governmental and non-governmental bodies developing, publishing, and enforcing/certifying standards.  Those organizations which are developing those standards are often (but not always) independent of the corporations that are using those standards in their products.  Those standards are usually developed by committee, and the committee can be made up of representatives from multiple rival OEMs, suppliers, research institutions, government regulators, etc.  These organizations that develop the standards are often localized to one country or region and don't necessarily come to the same conclusion as another standards body in another country or region.

To give an example, there are nominally five different major electric vehicle charging standards in play, maintained by four different organizations:

• SAE J1772, the main/oldest US-based charging standard developed by the Society of Automotive Engineers
• SAE J3400, the newest US-based charging standard developed by Tesla and formalized by the Society of Automotive Engineers because nobody trusts or likes Tesla
• IEC 62196, the European Union's charging standard developed by the International Electrotechnical Commission
• GB/T 20234, the People's Republic of China's charging standard developed by the Standardization Administration of China
• CHAdeMO, Japan's domestic charging standard developed by the CHAdeMO Association

None of them are compatible with each other at the hardware level, and there is at least some degree of incompatibility at the software/protocol level too.

As the comic suggests, any attempt to create one standard that covers everyone's use cases just means you have another competing standard in the wild with all the others you were trying to get rid of.  Most of the manufacturers would love to converge on a single standard so we can stop pissing about with having to develop half a dozen variants of a single function or have half a dozen different port hardware variants.  It's just that nobody can agree what standard to converge on.  

2 minutes ago, Stampeed Valkyrie said:

The long and skinny on the EV charger is that Stellantis/Dodge attempted to sell a car that its core market openly ridiculed and made fun of.

Like I said, those on the dev team absolutely were torn between "Is this crazy enough to work?" and "Is this just plain crazy?".  

On paper, it sort of made sense.  A properly calibrated emotor can deliver as much or more power than a combustion engine and has no RPM restrictions on when it can deliver its maximum rated torque.  All other things being equal, an EV could handily blow a regular muscle car into the weeds.  Most EVs have to have their motors derated to avoid burnouts and tire damage from anyone who puts their foot down too hard.

The intended market, however... eech.  Muscle car aficionados are infamously puritanical and winning them over was always going to be a massive uphill battle if not a full-on Sisyphean task.

2 minutes ago, Stampeed Valkyrie said:

The removal of the Hemi is the death knell for this brand,  and the scramble to include"Six Pack" ICE option will not cut it.

The BGE is a beautiful engine family, but she's not the most efficient thing on the planet, and CAFE and emissions targets were a priority for all of the Big 3. 😵‍💫

Almost nobody in America is buying A-segment or B-segment small cars.  Even D-segment and E-segment mid-size and full-size cars have been in sharp decline for years.  To the point that a bunch of product lines in those segments from the Big 3 have been axed over the last ten years.  Those car lines were key to meeting emissions targets, since the big trucks and SUVs that Americans love are nowhere near as efficient.  Something had to give somewhere, which is why all of the Big 3 made a push toward electrification of trucks and SUVs and scaled back production of less efficient engine designs.

I wasn't a fly on that particular wall, but it's a sucker bet that the decision to discontinue the HEMI was an attempt to drag corporate average emissions back into line with the low sales of the Fiat 500, 500e, and 500x, and the discontinuation of the 200 and 300.  Esp. with all of the Big 3 overdependent on purchased carbon credits.

2 minutes ago, Stampeed Valkyrie said:

An example of a European company not understanding the US car market,  and totally missing the mark with its core audience..    See Cracker Barrel for similar results.

From my own personal experience... sort of?  Not really?  It's not that the understanding wasn't there.  It's more like that the people with that understanding were marginalized by incoming leadership who assumed the market can't be that different and then end up backpedaling.

It's actually kind of funny how predictable it is the second time around.

Cracker Barrel's situation is a different kind of corporate idiocy, trying to water down a brand with a modern-minimalist aesthetic to make it more appealing to venture capital.

2 minutes ago, Stampeed Valkyrie said:

As someone who enjoys classic cars,  and I have a preference for the V8.   I have 2 cars from 1969 both are fully working and road legal.  

I challenge any current EV to be in that shape in what.. 2081?   not happening.. 

And the main reason for that is this:

I'm not joking even a little.  One of the biggest stumbling blocks for EVs of all types is standards.  Every OEM has their own proprietary network architectures, connector pinouts, etc. and in some cases there are multiple national-level competing standards for things like charging interfaces and regulation of energy storage devices.  They try to harmonize, but intercompatibility is such a nightmare that Argonne National Laboratory has a facility and annual industry events devoted to trying to get everyone on the same page just with vehicle charging and smart grid integration.

It's 100% possible right now to hot-swap EV battery packs in minutes as long as the pack's set up for it.  The problem is there's no standardization of pack form factors, mounting points, etc. even within a single OEM, never mind across OEMs.  If we could sort out the standards problem, you could keep an EV in service forever with much cheaper generic replacement packs even if battery chemistry changed.

8 hours ago, Big s said:

Spoiler

I can’t defend much in this show, but I kinda get the feeling that that was no accident.

My first thought goes to Kirsh. I think he may have sabotaged it to make himself look better than the new toys. Kinda like why he hasn’t said anything about the traitor bot.

But I also think that eye guy might be up to some shenanigans. He was there when a certain hatch was left open on that canister before and now there’s another hatch somehow left open to one of these enclosures.

On 9/7/2025 at 5:00 PM, pengbuzz said:

Are you telling me Xenomorphs are blue-collar?  

Well, if you think about it, they do pretty much always have a working class single parent... 🤔

"The Fly"

Kirsh and Wendy's brother finally address the elephant in the room vis a vis lifespan...

Well, that bodes ill...

Wait... waiiiiiit... hold on a ding-dang minute here...

There's optimistic, and then there's that.

I guess it's fair given that these characters obviously do not have the perspective on these things that we do, but come the f*** on...

I really, really cannot wait for Boy Cavalier to end up as Xenomorph chow.  

The writers have done one thing well in this series, and that is making this character incredibly incredibly easy to hate.  I suppose that it helps that the person he's modeled on is one of the most hated men in the world right now.

Almost as if they're reading this thread...

You know that Alien: Earth is really set in the future because even the robots are inventing new ways to be racist to other robots.

Smooth move, Dame Sylvia.  You just removed one kind of incipient psychosis and opened up the door for a completely different kind of mental illness.

OK, I am prepared to say with confidence that Noah Hawley has an oral fetish.

There are so many protracted closeups of Sydney Chandler's mouth.  It's like if Quentin Tarantino wanted to get a Doctor of Dental Surgery degree.

I know I say this a lot, but it's not effective horror (or even scary) if your characters in a horror movie die by being maximally stupid.

There seems to be a lot of that going around.

Honestly, at this point it really feels like the writers are taking the piss.

22 hours ago, pengbuzz said:

Now I picture a Xenomorph version of Gordon Ramsay doing the following to one of the dumb crew members:

NGL, the more I think about it the more I think Guy Fieri over Gordon Ramsay for that...

After all, the Xenomorph isn't usually found dining on fresh high-quality white collar executives in a posh and spotlessly clean establishment.  It's frequenting the grungy, grimy, hasn't-seen-a-mop-and-bucket-in-living-memory working spaceships and factories and enthusiastically consuming a diet of cheap, greasy, frozen-and-reheated blue collar working stiffs.

Alien movies from the creature's perspective aren't Master Chef or even Kitchen Nightmares... it's Diners, Drive-Ins, and Dives. 😆

4 hours ago, pengbuzz said:

Guess Titan Comics and HG aren't the only ones who can rip off artwork...

Traced artwork is pretty darn common in western comics.

Most of the ships in those panels are obviously traced, even the Federation starships.