The Acolyte s1 (2024) [+] Set kind of far back from the main timeline. Jedi are being murdered and Jedi Master Sol's (Lee Jung-jae) former apprentice (and expelled from the Order) Osha (Amandla Stenberg) is the prime suspect. Sol eventually teams up with Osha to hunt down her twin sister who may be the acolyte of a dark Jedi (the Sith being so unknown it's not the first thought of any of the Jedis)… A high budget series and it shows with some great CGI and fight scenes. Gets a bit dark in the end but seems like it would have been interesting if the series had been renewed for a second season.

Tales of the Jedi (2022) [/] Six shorts taking place before the Clone Wars. 1, 5, 6 center on Ahsoka Tano (Ashley Eckstein) as a baby, training with Anakin Skywalker, and during/after the Padmé Amidala's funeral. The other three are about how Dooku (Corey Burton) became disenchanted with the Jedi Order and turned to the Dark Side.

Tales of the Empire (2024) [/] Another six shorts this time taking place after the Galactic Empire is established. The first three deal with Morgan Elsbeth (Diana Lee Inosanto) as her clan is destroyed and once she establishes herself on Corvus before The Mandalorian and Ahsoka arrived to overthrow her rule. The other three shorts tell what happened to Jedi Apprentice Barriss Offee (Meredith Salenger) after she betrayed the Jedi Order and was imprisoned just in time to survive Order 66.

Mai (2024) [-] Vietnamese romantic drama. Mai (Phương Anh Đào) is an attractive almost-40 single mother who attracts the romantic attention of a ladies man pianist from a rich family. Their romance is nice but their economic differences and her dark past threaten to tear them apart. Ironically in the end it's her decision to split up that ends it leading to a Bad Ending.

Monarch: Legacy of Monsters is an Apple TV+ series set in the Monsterverse universe (i.e. Godzilla and King Kong).

After their father disappears Cate Randa (Anna Sawai) finds her half-brother Kentaro (Ren Watabe) and together with Kentaro's ex-gf May (Kiersey Clemons) they go in search of him and run into an elder Lee Shaw (Kurt Russell) who is willing to help them but has plans of his own.

Meanwhile a secondary storyline set in the 1950's involves Keiko (Mari Yamamoto), a younger Lee Shaw (Wyatt) — who was a major character in Kong: Skull Island — and a younger Lee Shaw (Wyatt) as they form the nucleus of Monarch, which is the government entity tasked with researching and battling giant monsters — called Titans or MUTOs (Massive Unidentified Terrestrial Organisms).

I've watched Skull Island and maybe Godzilla (2014) so not that familiar with the universe. The series is still fairly interesting with a globe-trotting find the McGuffin story and the occasional monster is pretty cool. The characters are interesting and they have their secrets. There are also a couple of plot twists I didn't see so that was nice.

There will be a second season which is good since the first ends in a bit of a cliffhanger.

Kagi is a search engine started in 2018 that is subscription based with no ads and trying to surface less spammy results. There is a good interview with the founder at The Talk Show.

Orion started in 2020 as an alternative Mac/iOS web browser based on Web Kit. They want it to be privacy focused, include ad-blocking, support Chrome/Firefox extensions, and be integrated with Apple services. Still in beta I guess so when I tried it not ready for prime time.

Current issues

• YouTube videos might not play, stuck forever loading.
• If you select some text, tab out and back, it's no longer selected. Turns out I use this a lot to mark where I left off.
• Passwords integration is a bit more cumbersome since you have to login to Passwords, though I guess this is not their fault. Also doesn't support Passwords verification codes but I guess that's also not their fault and it's Apple APIs.

(BTW I named it "Spot Reviews" after Chaosium's Basic Roleplaying use of "Spot Rules" to denote optional rules. Although now that I try to look for an example I don't find any so either I'm misremembering or it's archaic enough that I don't have PDF rules that have it.)

Dial S For Santa (2023) [+] A nice little Hallmark channel Christmas romance movie. Insurance investigator Lana (Sarah Dugdale) visits her hometown in time to get embroiled in a mystery as there have been several recent robberies. Her help is unwelcome by the new police detective Nick (Julian Haig) but he eventually gives in and lets her help him. Romance ensues. It's a safe and charming story.

Prospect (2018) [/] Small science fiction film. Teenager Cee (Sophie Thatcher) and her father are independent miners that go to a planet to mine for this liquid you get from certain plants. While there Ezra (Pedro Pascal) and his companion try to rob the two and after a shootout only Cee and Ezra survive. They are forced to work together to find a way off the inhospitable planet (humans can't breathe the atmosphere) and as they make their trek they run into a cult that wants to "buy" Cee and then mercenaries who have a sudden need of miners… It's a character drama about Ezra and Cee and their interactions. Though Ezra caused Cee's father's death he regrets the necessity and is a rather practical rogue who by the end is a bit of a new father figure.

Splash (1984) [/] Allen (Tom Hanks) meets a mysterious woman, Madison (Daryl Hannah), who can't speak English until she spends a day watching television and who apparently loves him out of the blue. But she's secretly a mermaid who saved his life when he was a young boy and apparently fell in love with him then. After her secret is revealed to the world and she's taken by the government to be studied and dissected Allen has to search within himself whether he can love a fish-girl… This is an ok film. I contrast this film with Mannequin (1987) which I think is better because there both of the leads have significant characterization. In Splash though Madison is not that well developed as a character so she pales compared to Allen. Although that just means Splash is more a story about Allen than Allen and Madison.

All Purpose Cultural Cat Girl Nuku Nuku (1998) [-] Half hour episodic Japanese anime. Nuku Nuku (Allison Keith) is an android with the brain of a cat who is trying to assimilate as a normal high school girl whilst battling the machinations of the megacorp Mishima Industries. Each episode is hijinks usually ending in Nuku Nuku battling some giant machine or monster and it's nice that Mishima Industries is trying to conquer the world by building great and gigantic consumer products that unfortunately tend to go haywire and go on destructive rampages. I watched the first 8 episodes on Amazon Prime Video which shows them in a converted size so that the top and bottom are cut off — tall people's heads are cut off and there's often writing at the bottom introducing characters and that also gets cut off and is not translated in any case. The viewing experience in APV is quite bad and the show is a bit too kids-only humor. Animation is not that good considering it's 1998 but maybe that's APV not the original animation.

Fly Me to the Moon is an Apple TV+ movie taking place in the months before Apollo 11 landed on the moon.

Ad executive Kelly Jones (Scarlett Johansson) is "hired" by Richard Nixon's representative Moe Berkus (Woody Harrelson) to make NASA glamorous and get the American public behind the upcoming moon landing. Kelly has to tangle with Cole Davis (Channing Tatum), head launch director at the Kennedy Space Center. He's very by the book and doesn't want Kelly's publicity stunts from interfering with operations.

Kelly does have a way of getting her way and she brings in a lot of money by bringing in a lot of advertisements. From car sponsorships to Tang the drink of astronauts to Omega watches. Meanwhile Kelly and Cole have a developing romance and everything is going great.

Which brings us to the plot twist. Moe is afraid that the moon landing will fail or that the astronauts will not do the right thing so he has Kelly organize a secret film project to film a fake moon landing just in case. This goes from having a pre-filmed video just in case to shooting it live and replacing the video feed (not audio) feed with the fake feed during the moon landing. Eventually Cole finds out and Kelly agrees to help him somehow stop the fake moon landing project (which leads to some heist-like tense sequences during the moon landing and film set)…

It's a charming movie with two great actors. Like Wolfs, this is another theater-quality film on Apple TV+. Unlike Wolfs this one probably needed more CGI and props to recreate 1969 and the moon landing (though I think archival footage is also used) but it looks great. It's a good film.

Dandara: Trials of Fear+ is the Apple Arcade version of Dandara. This is a side-view platformer where you play Dandara who can only step on lighted platforms which might be vertical or horizontal or diagonal so you can be zooming around upside down or whatever.

You wander around avoiding hazards, flipping switches, and talking to people. Explore areas and open up new areas. You are trying to free the people of Salt (an underground city) and the various map areas are areas of Salt though you really can't tell except the areas have names.

It's a fairly polished game. I played it for an hour and maybe not for me. This game is somewhat like Shantae and the Seven Sirens but I that game had good dialogue and was humorous. Dandara is more somber with its dialogue. Still, a good game that doesn't quite make the cut as a keeper.

Love 911 (2012) [/] South Korean romantic drama film. In order to defeat a lawsuit, Doctor Mi-soo (Han Hyo-joo) has to convince firefighter Kang-il (Go Too) to file a complaint against the guy to ruin his credibility. When Kang-il reacts poorly and refuses Mi-soo becomes a volunteer medic and instead tries to seduce him. All the pretend and closeness and shared danger starts to bond the two together… It's a nice enough film, entertaining but not great.

To Your Last Death (2019) [/] Animated horror film. Terminally ill industrialist Cyrus (Ray Wise) lures his three wayward children to his high rise offices intent on killing them through various means. Miriam (Dani Lennon) is the sole survivor but is arrested by police. The Gamemaster (Morena Baccarin) offers to send Miriam back to redo it with her current knowledge but she has to be entertaining or the game will keep changing… It's very low budget with Adobe Flash-level animation. The story has a good premise though it is rather confusing. On the plus side it's very gory and has good voice acting. Overall I wouldn't recommend.

The Alamo: 13 Days to Glory (1987) [-] An old tv movie on The Alamo starring James Arness as Jim Bowie, Brian Keith as Davy Crockett, Alec Baldwin as Bill Travis, and Raul Julia as Santa Anna. Lots of character moments and subplots, probably all fictionalized. Battle scenes are ok — good action but hard to tell the various phases of the final battle. For the time it's not that bad but today it's rather dated.

Trader Joe's Root Vegetable Fries [/] This is sweet potatoes, carrots, beets, parsnips. Tastes just fine (i.e. can't tell it's carrots or beets). The bag I got had been thawed and refrozen so the fries were clumped together making it harder to cook right. I got four snack-sized servings and once it was perfect, three times ok.

Apple gave Apple TV+ subscribers free remainder of season MLS Season Pass so I watched the last three months or so (archives only go back a month and a half, though it's number of games not time-based), basically all of Leagues Cup and onwards though I did have to watch quickly so that games didn't fall off the Past Matches page. So I guess that's my one big criticism in that you can't even watch from the beginning of the season if you are so inclined.

Initial VOD includes breaks and commercial time (commercials are blacked out so you just get "we'll return soon" type of message for a few minutes which you can skip over). Two or three days afterwards there is a clean VOD that skips commercials but pretty much only has the actual game (plus a minute or two of the intro before game starts) no halftime talk or post-game coverage so if you want that you need to watch it live or the VOD before it's updated (though if you're in the middle of watching a VOD when it's switched out you might resume and it's 20 minutes further on which is annoying).

I like that almost every clean VOD is about an hour and 45 minutes. Two halves each 45 minutes plus a few minutes of extra time then it's over. If tied it's tied. Only in the playoffs or Leagues Cup you might get an extra period and/or penalty kicks. I'm also fine that penalty kicks are playoffs only as they make playoffs a bit more exciting.

I didn't watch any of the special segments or the MLS sports talk show they have. I think they also have MLS Next Pro (a league that's a tier down and also used for training a la MLB Minor Leagues or NBA Developmental League) but I don't see those games available so I guess they take them down at the end of the Next Pro season.

Is it worth $100 a year ($80 if you have Apple TV+ subscription)? If you're really into MLS then definitely as the broadcasts are good and the commentators are good (and all games have an English commentary team and a Spanish commentary team with some games having a French commentary team). If you want to watch every game it's a lot but I guess doable if you don't watch anything else or have a hell of a lot of free time like I do. I guess still sort of worth it if you only follow one team since it's going to be like 30+ games.

One great thing is that you do get to see every MLS game, there is only one tier to subscribe to, and all games are available worldwide.

NFL+ ($50 per season) gives you some games, NFL+ Premium ($100 per season) gives you all games, though sometimes not live due to local tv contracts I assume.

NBA League Pass ($110) you can also watch every game but your local team's games delayed 3 days.

MLB Network ($7 per month) has blackouts for regular and post-season games so a much lesser offering than the others.

NHL does not seem to have a service that offers all games, or any games really — you're supposed to watch ESPN+ or other tv/cable channels.

Resident Evil 2 was just released for Mac and iOS. This is the remastered 2019 version of the 1998 game, ported over to Mac. On Mac you need an Apple Silicon Mac with macOS 13+ and it's a 22 GB download. The first 30 minutes is free and then you have to in-app $40 ($10 on sale until Jan 08 2025) for the full game.

In RE2 you play Leon Kennedy and Claire Redfield, although one at a time. There is a part A and part B to the story and each part you can play Leon or Claire and I assume they keep meeting up and getting split apart, though you also can have other companions. Raccoon City has fallen to a zombie virus so the characters enter an overrun city and have to somehow escape.

On first start it was in window mode and I could full screen with maximize button. Turns out mouse mode does not work well. The cursor is visible and won't move past window boundary which means when you're turning you'll stop when the cursor hits a boundary. Then you have to jiggle the mouse around to temporarily get full range of motion back. I feel it would be unworkable during a zombie attack.

I switched to my Xbox controller and that works fine.

Graphics are less good than I expected. Game play is 3rd person perspective, wander around, pickup and interact with objects, solve puzzles, shoot or stab zombies. It's not meant to be an FPS rapid movement shooter.

The demo part you start with Leon an do the tutorial in a gas station mini-mart (where you meet Claire for a bit though only as cut-scenes) then a section where you explore part of the police station and get attacked by zombies. It was 45 minutes including configuring and figuring out the controls and switching to a controller.

Even at $10 I'm not sure I'd buy it. A bit too horror for me. And I do have a lot of games I've never played.

Inside Out 2 (2024) [+] In this sequel the four emotions have to deal with Riley (Kensington Tallman) entering puberty which causes new emotions to join the team. When crisis comes newcomer Anxiety (Maya Hawke) has a plan for Riley by ditching her old friends and hanging out with the older ice hockey team girls. Anxiety jettisons the old emotions into the wilds and now Joy (Amy Poehler) has to lead them back and save Riley… For a sequel this film is quite good though not quite as good as the original. A bit weird that most of the character growth is Riley and the new emotions rather than the old emotions.

Starstruck (2010) [/] Disney Channel movie. On a family vacation Jessica Olson (Danielle Campbell) has a run-in with pop star Christopher Wilde (Sterling Knight) and ends up hiding out from the paparazzi with him. She starts falling for his good looks while he likes that she’s genuine and not a fangirl. The turn comes when the media finally find out about the two and he has to throw her under the bus to protect his reputation. Can he make it up to her?… A perfectly fine Disney Channel teen romance movie.

Real Madrid: Until the End (2023) [-] Apple TV+ documentary about the Real Madrid (European football) club's 2021-2022 season when, after a few disappointing seasons, they won their 14th Champions League title. It's three episodes and each episode highlights a couple of the players whilst going through the regular La Liga season and the Champions League tournament (in soccer there are tournaments that coincide with the regular season so some teams or players have these extra games that count). I did find this documentary a bit boring since I'm not familiar with Real Madrid and I have no interest in European football (America's Major League Soccer is entertaining enough for me). I felt this documentary is more for fans of Real Madrid.

Kajiken, San Mateo [/] Kajiken is a Japanese restaurant specializing in Aburasoba which is dry ramen (no soup but has sauces). I had Homura Aburasoba (spicy minced pork and poached egg). Tastes fine though I guess I'd rather have a good soup to go with my ramen.

Marriage, Not Dating is a South Korean romance drama.

Gong Gi-tae (Yeon Woo-jin) is a plastic surgeon who just wants to live alone in this specific house but mom Shin Bong-hyang (the veteran Kim Have-sook who I've seen in multiple K-Dramas) keeps setting him up on blind dates and badgering him for money.

Gi-tae helps his best friend Lee Hoon-dong (Hey Jung-min) break up with his girlfriend Joo Jang-mi (Han Groo) who was about to propose marriage. This leads to Gi-tae and Jang-mi not liking each other — well, she doesn't like him and he feels a bit sorry that she got dumped the way she did.

Gi-tae convinces Jang-mi to pose as his girlfriend — both in order to keep his mom away and to make Hong-dong jealous. Being forced to pretend starts to become more and more real especially for Jang-mi who is much more out there and shows her emotions. Gi-tae might feel the same but he's very introverted and instead treats her badly in order to keep her attention.

Complication is that Jang-mi moves on from Hoon-dong and pursues the handsome Han Yeo-reum (Jeong Jin-woon) who also likes her so Gi-tae is constantly interrupting their romance. Meanwhile Gi-tae's ex-fiancee Kang Se-ah (Han Sun-hwa) is back. She is also a doctor and they had an amicable breakup but she is secretly still in love with Jang-mi and a much more suitable match from Bong-hyang's perspective.

A side romance involves Jang-mi's friend and co-worker Nam Hyun-hee (Yoon So-hee) who pursues Hoon-dong after he dumps Jang-mi, though once he gets jealous Hong-dong pursues Jang-mi again (and she's moved on to Yeo-reum)…

Took a bit but I ended up liking this series. At first I thought Han Groo was over-acting but I think the character is more of a Lucille Ball physical comedy as Jang-mi is constantly accidentally hitting things or when she's "acting" she takes it way over the top. In contrast Gi-tae is a rather subdued character who likes Jang-mi but can't show his affections other than being mean to her which is off-putting.

Overall it's a good series.

The Struggle for Taiwan: A History America, China, and the Island Caught Between by Sulmaan Wasif Khan, Denison Chair in History and International Relations at the Fletcher School, Tufts University.

It's a political history starting from the end of the last Chinese Dynasty, when the KMT party was created and ending I guess late 2023 or early 2024 (book was published May 2024 so I guess published quickly to make it trendy).

The main part is Taiwan's political history from the KMT takeover through their dictatorship which ended in the 1970's and then democracy. Meanwhile you get things that the USA did or mainland China did as they evolve their relationship with Taiwan as a key bone of contention.

A lot of four on internal politics in Taiwan and USA since I guess there are more documents available whereas PRC (People's Republic of China) coverage is less and more guesswork.

The tone is rather 20-20 hindsight. The author points out a lot of mistakes each side makes without really going into "this is how these guys saw it so it makes sense from their POV".

My sense is that the bias is that the author would like to avoid war — several times he strings together a string of unlike what-if's that might have resulted in armed conflict and portraying it as a horror to be avoided. And maybe because of that I get the feeling the author would be just fine if the PRC took over Taiwan (without war, not necessarily peacefully though) and therefore ended that possible flashpoint.

This is my first book on Taiwan and the political history side seems ok. Did not appreciate the tone nor bias (I wouldn't say pro-PRC but more like pro-this problem should go away and if the price is Taiwan's current independence then that's fine).