Apple My Love (2024) [/] A Thai LGBT romance series of six 45-minute episodes. Kris (Ormsin Supitcha Limsommut) has had a crush on local tv newscaster Karn (Folk Sutima Korkiatvanich) and her dreams come true when Karn comes to work for the Internet media startup that Kris also works at. Romance blossoms but is threatened when a video of them kissing gets out, which damages Karn's celebrity reputation. There's also Karn's former ex-boyfriend who wants her back and has the influence to pressure their small company, though this thread dies quickly. It's a pleasant series with attractive characters though kind of lacks deep emotions.

The Ultimatum: Choices NETFLIX (2024) [-] This is an XO Games production and they also did Single's Inferno which I loved. Based on the Netflix show, a bunch of couples are brought together to see if they're right for each other or not. Everyone has to choose someone else to live with for three weeks and then choose if they want to marry their original partner or their new love. Unfortunately I didn't find any of the other characters appealing. Also this game has some long load times so unlike other XO Games this one seems to be rather server dependent.

On Wargaming (2019) [/] Matthew B Caffrey's paper subtitled "How Wargames Have Shaped History and How They May Shape the Future". The focus is more on wargames used in the military and how wargaming has given militaries an edge historically and how they can help today. It's 400+ pages so a lot of information. I like the history part as he goes from wargaming beginnings and through the various eras and splits them up concentrating on different countries and for the USA our different military branches. Lots of footnotes so a wealth of more material to find if you want to read more.

Tale of the Nine Tailed is a South Korean urban fantasy drama/romance set in modern times.

Lee Yeon (Lee Dong-wook, male lead in Touch Your Heart, 2019) is a nine-tailed fox and a former mountain spirit (there are four powerful mountain spirits each responsible for a fairly large area I assume). He's been around since the Joseon era (Korean kingdom era) and since that time he's been searching for the reincarnation of his lost love.

Lee Yeon is tracked down by reality show producer Nam Ji-ah (Jo Bo-ah, female lead in Military Prosecutor Doberman, 2022, and Destined With You, 2023) who turns out to look exactly like Lee Yeon's lost Yi Ah-eum. Except she's not because Ah-eum has a Fox Marble that he gave her and Ji-ah does not. He did save Ji-ah as a kid and turns out she's been looking for him ever since.

Ji-ah enlists Yeon to find her parents who disappeared 21 years ago. To do that he reveals the hidden fantasy world that co-exists with the human world. And in time Yeon discovers that Ji-ah is Ah-eum but that she also has an evil snake spirit inside her. The snake spirit was banished by Yeon when Ah-eum died but now it's back and wants Yeon's body or lacking it wants to burn the world down...

This is a fairly high end production with good special effects as there is a lot of magic stuff happening. For the most part an interesting story with a couple of subplots -- Lee Yeon's brother Lee Rang (Kim Bum) who kind of wants to kill him for past wrongs; and Lee Yeon's assistant Goo Shin-joo (Hwang Hee) falling in love with Lee Rang's assistant Ki Yu-ri (Kim Yong-ji). I didn't love the ending because it's a bit too deux ex machina.

Overall though, sort of a typical good Korean drama with a lot of romance.

Retro Bowl+ is the Apple Arcade version of the pixel-graphics NFL-like management game Retro Bowl. You have been hired as the new head coach of a (random team) and you're goal is to do well enough to be hired by a better team and so on until you finally get to your (pre-chosen) favorite team and lead it to the Retro Bowl Championship.

You start the new season with a three-round draft. Players have 1 to 5 stars as their current level and you have a dozen-plus scouting actions which you can use to drill into specific players and see their potential stars and max stats. During the draft you can also trade out players for draft picks -- so if I'm drafting a good QB I can trade out my current QB to get another draft pick.

Your team has 10 players (the game notes these are above average players and other positions have average players -- in my experience even a 1-star player is better than average). If you are overstocked in a position then the extras don't play on game day (though you can platoon them and alternate starts). In general it's better to have everyone playing as injuries are not that frequent -- I see one to three (of 1 to 4 weeks each) per season.

Each game can be played manually or in simulation. Two minute quarters and at least in simulation it's relating the 3rd down play and either you move the ball forward for another set of downs or it's 4th down. You might go for it on 4th down, try for a long FG, throw a Hail Mary as time expires, or go for two-point conversions. In simulation your coaches determine that and sometimes it doesn't make sense to me for the situation but I haven't played with good coaches (you have an offensive and defensive coach of 1 to 5 stars). In the end the game scores are fairly in-line with what you see for the NFL.

A win increases fan popularity and a loss decreases it. Winning and losing also affects team and individual happiness (really unhappy players become toxic to the team). There is a news conference after the game where you have two choices to distribute a good or bad event (praise a player or the fans? blame a player or the refs?) Before the next game there is a random event which sometimes gives you a similar choice and sometimes doesn't and is just an effect.

After a game you get a Coaching Credit (CC) or two, more if you win and your fan base is really happy. CC can be used to get free agents, hire new coaches, or improve facilities (re-resigning a player with an expiring contract costs 0 CC, though re-signing a coach does cost CC, maybe because players have a salary and you have a salary cap to manage). For facilities you have stadium (fans are happier and are as unhappy about losing), training facility (XP bonuses to players), and rehab facilities (players don't get hurt as much or if hurt are out less weeks). Facilities go from 0 to 10 and each level costs that many CC.

The league is realistic in that all the NFL cities are there (cities with two teams have an N and an A team, e.g. Los Angeles A for the team in Conference A). Getting into the playoffs is the same as in the NFL and the playoff format is the same too. You can play/sim every playoff game or skip and it tells you who won the Retro Bowl.

I'm finding this to be a very fun game. There is enough complexity for casual play (I've tried one or two PC manager-type games and they are way too complicated for me). A game can be simulated in less then five minutes (or you can hit the skip button four times and finish it in 5 seconds), so a full season is a couple of hours if you're watching the simulated games. And you gradually improve the team year to year which makes drafting important and trading out aging stars important.

Overall a pretty good game and I never played the games manually which I guess it's its own sort of fun. I don't want to do that because I'm afraid you can just play the video game well and the players don't matter much so the coaching infrastructure doesn't matter much.