Moe Lane's Blog, page 671
September 9, 2021
The MARVEL’S SPIDER-MAN 2 reveal trailer.
This may be the one, folks. SPIDER-MAN 2 may be the one that makes people upgrade to the PS5. Assuming the price comes down, mind you. I ain’t spending that kind of money on a new console.
As ComingSoon notes, there’s gonna be Venom; but the voiceover also suggests Kraven the Hunter. Maybe. I’m not entirely checked out on the latest lore. Still, looks cool!
Some mildly interesting news: they’re remaking KOTOR for PS5/PC.
Alternate title: OH, [EXXXXPLETTTIVVVVVE DEEEELEEEETED]. And note the use of the word ‘remake.’ No gameplay yet, but the year is… almost over, actually.
Via GeekTyrant.
09/09/21 Snippet, ETERNAL NIGHT OF THE MOON-BEASTS.
Nah, this isn’t ominous at all.
Patreon!There was only one real issue that had to come up in today’s meeting.
Unfortunately, it was a big issue. Mali was the first one to bring it up. “Commander? Is there any news on the Jetshaft mining facility? I know that their communications are still offline.”
Tobias shook his head. “No. And it’s been a full lunar night since their last report, too. They’re not communicating with us at all, even on the emergency bands, and they’re still not drawing power from the communal solar grids.”
Asenath chimed in. “I calculate that the facility’s personal energy storage batteries would have a 95% likelihood of being exhausted, as of two days ago. If there are any survivors, they would be only a fraction of the original crew roster.”
The other two remained silent, until Tobias carefully did not sigh before speaking again. “The computer says they’re out of juice, and probably all dead.”
The annoyingly alluring MATRIX 4 RESURRECTIONS trailer.
Crap, that looks a lot less sucky than I expected. And I fully understand why that’s a dangerous foolishness on my part. So noted. I even agree, it’s more than likely to blow chunks.
Still…
Tweet of the Day, Submitted Without Context edition.
I make no guarantees for the rest of this person’s content. Haven’t even looked. But this thread? This thread is gold.
"IT DOESN' MADDA WHEDDA THEY'RE IN DA MATRIX OR NOT; CONSCIOUSNESS IS ITS OWN PRISON, AN' DA FIVE SENSES AH' ITS WARDENS! DA TRUTH IS, YEH JUST AFRAID *WE'RE* IN DA MATRIX, AN' EVEN IN A BOUNDLESS DIGITAL WONDAHLAND YEH LIVIN A COWAHD'S LIFE, LIKE A DOG!" pic.twitter.com/2HuEp7oQZ0
— Gretchen Felker-Martin (@scumbelievable) September 7, 2021
Via @EsotericCD.
September 8, 2021
Yeah, I’m tapped out.
Long day today of various kinds of tech support and I should just go right to sleep after I type this out. Well, first I have to put up the music video. Then load the dishwasher. Then sleep.
Lemme start up on that.
09/08/21 Snippet, ETERNAL NIGHT OF THE MOON-BEASTS.
Council of three! Or four!
Patreon!There were technically only three people at the meeting: Tobias himself, as senior USN officer and Acting Commandant of Heinlein station; Dr. Hu Mali, formerly head of South China’s Lunar base, and by now effectively in charge of all of the Chinese successor states’ based; and Lt. Colonel Lorenzo Bruno, who very possibly was the highest-ranking European Union Space Force officer still alive. They all had aides and assistants, but it was those three who actually talked. Well, and Asenath, too. Although the other two had a bad habit of only taking her information seriously after Tobias himself had confirmed it. It was annoying, but Asenath didn’t seem to care.
In deference to the American, all three of them spoke English. “We found another vein of subsurface ice,” Mali told them with her usual slight smile. Tobias had noticed how she always liked to start these meetings with as good news as possible, and more water certainly qualified. “After we fill our working tanks, we can extract enough for ten hopper loads, if you can supply the hoppers.”
Asenath was already whispering in his ear. Four hoppers would be most cost-effective for us. Let the Euros have the other six.
The MATRIX 4 RESURRECTIONS teaser trailer.
I hate to say it, because the second and third movies sucked so much, but: MATRIX 4 RESSURECTIONS doesn’t look entirely awful. And, yeah, that worries me, too. The franchise’s rapid decay into uselessness has been a constant in my life — so what is reality, if bedrock is really this malleable?
Via GeekTyrant.
Group Seed: Society for the Advancement of Linear Time (SALT).
Just because.
Society for the Advancement of Linear Time (SALT)
The Society for the Advancement of Linear Time is the anti-time travel organization of its particular game world, very possibly because SALT is an easy acronym to remember. The first iteration of SALT existed under a different, less memorable name (the Chronodynamic Interdisciplinary Working Group), and was a collection of engineers and scientists thrown together during one iteration of the typical temporal chaos that always shows up after the ‘discovery’ of time travel. They were looking for a way to protect the timeline from being casually overwritten: they found it, and even managed to get it up and running. Somehow.
This is actually extremely rare — time travellers are excellent at wiping out stabilization efforts before they can even technically start — but an infinity of timelines implies an infinity of low-probability outcomes. In this universe, SALT’s created a ‘bubble’ around their True Present that protects against artificial changes of the past (and, technically, the future). It’s not perfect, but it does prevent the largest, most disruptive alterations to history, and mitigates heavily most of the other ones. As long as the Bubble exists, so does the SALT timeline.
SALT is organized as a private regulatory agency with an extremely broad agenda. It claims veto power over any and all acts of time travel; both the United Nations and the European Union recognize that claim. The USA, PRC, UK, and Russian Federation do not, but SALT has privileged relationships with all major nation-states. The group is largely funded by ‘licenses’ offered to official government time travel programs, which then in turn enjoy near-exclusive access to potentially profitable sections of history.
These relationships are widely criticized, but rarely actively opposed. Most people find the status quo acceptable — and SALT ruthlessly protects it with a combination of legal action, corporate espionage, and (very occasionally) mercenary work. It is absolutely ready to come down with a heavy hand on rogue time-traveling operations, and is generally not interested in trying to recruit them, first. There are applications online, if people are that interested.
SALT personnel self-select for fanaticism about protecting the timeline, to the point where there’s considerable internal discussion over whether time travel should be permitted at all. The primary reason why the group does allow time travel is simple: money. Without government funding, SALT can’t maintain the reality stabilizers for very long. And the government funding will dry up if nation-states aren’t allowed to travel through time at all. As it is, SALT is remarkably ascetic and thrifty, for a group with its level of power and influence.
The situation is such that some of SALT’s regional offices and personnel have been known to supplement local budgets via inappropriate means. For example: the past is an excellent place to hide illegal drugs until the heat is off. And if they’re brought back (or just dug up), then what’s the harm to the timeline? Particularly if every dime of the payoff goes to keeping the lights on. Eggs, omelets, greater good, and all that.
