AI Love You (2022) [/] Thai rom com set in a near future where every building has a building AI that runs everything and interacts with residents/workers using the building. Lana (Pimchanok Leuwisetpaiboon) is a marketing specialist who is work obsessed such that her only friend is her work building AI Dob who in turn has fallen in love with her. An accident leaves Dob in the body Bobby (Mario Maurer) of an AI tech who was trying to fix him.

Dob decides to become Lana's boyfriend so that she can be happy but the company that makes building AIs knows about this "bug" and their procedure is to send a fixer to capture Bobby, flush out Dob and kill it, or failing that kill Bobby... This was an ok romantic comedy film not very emotional or deep. I do like the building AIs and frequent shots of buildings where the top of the building is like a giant robot head that moves and is sort of the building AIs persona.

The Battle of Polytopia+ (2024) [/] Apple Arcade version which comes with all factions unlocked. This is an excellent medium complexity 4X game where a game takes an hour or two. I had played it a lot before and playing it again makes me realize it's lost its luster. There are about a dozen standard factions and they only differ in looks, which tech they start with, and how much gold they start with. Tech and gold is fairly significant in a short game but does a fairly same-y feel to each game. The four extra factions each have unique powers and units so that's some variety.

But I guess what this game lacks is some sort of campaign mode or more unique factions. I reflect back on Sid Meier's Alpha Centauri where each faction needs to be played a certain way or they'll just lose (e.g. since the Believers are bad at tech and good at supporting big armies you need to go conquer early and steal tech because sitting back you'll fall behind and never recover since a large army is kind of useless when you're vastly out-tech'ed).

Hello, Love, Again (2024) [-] Philippine romantic drama. Set a couple of years after COVID shut down the world. Joy Marie (Kathryn Bernardo) is a health care assistant in Canada saving money for nursing school. Coming back into her life is her old love Ethan (Alden Richards) who is trying to emigrate from Hong Kong. In order to help him she agrees to be his pretend domestic partner so that he can get Permanent Residency. Love follows except for their past wherein flashbacks we see they tried Canada before but then COVID hit and he couldn't take it and eventually left her...

Just watching this movie, it's pretty meh and I don't feel it for the characters. Turns out though this is a sequel to Hello, Love, Goodbye (2019) which, note the date, was made before COVID and I assume goes much more into their first romance.

Beecher's "World's Best" Mac & Cheese [+] This is pretty good frozen mac & cheese, with penne pasta and their homemade cheddar and jack cheeses. Various package sizes. I had the 46 oz one which takes about an hour to cook, has 6-9 servings, and is 2800 calories. Fairly rich and cheesy.