This is great + well-deserved, plus it has the side benefit of making some of the world’s worst people really, really mad.

The tourist-y parts of it are pretty much all newly rebuilt anyway; there’s not much of the original wall left at Mutianyu or Simatai or wherever.

I mean that was more-or-less Werner Herzog’s natural delivery, they just had him go in and read a buncha lines; somebody decided that Basically Werner Herzog was the right fit for that character and then they went out and got him to do it.

(I imagine this is how Stephen Tobolowsky gets many of his acting jobs too)

I wouldn’t discount Harris’ innate advantages there too; he was 10 years older than Gambon, aged more poorly (having been an alcoholic hellraiser in his younger years), and his natural delivery - even when he was much younger - had that sort-of wizened wheezing sound to it; “old and physically frail but with incredible magic power” was sort of baked in even before he added any actual acting to the mix.

But I don’t know if there’s an alternative who would have been better in that regard; the three I’m aware of them talking about were Christopher Lee, Ian McKellen, and Peter O’Toole, but the latter two would have played him very much like Gambon did, and I’m not sure if Lee could have pulled off “frail” either given his voice + physical stature.

One of the few non-Avengers in the list of all-time highest grossing actors.

One of Chief O’Brien’s more elaborate holodeck simulations

With him, Richard Harris, Robbie Coltrane, and Alan Rickman all gone, the only members of the Hogwarts Professor Tontine left are Maggie Smith and Warwick Davis.

The good news is that Iceland won’t have to go around apologizing for its name anymore.

Ah, the blissful-but-brief interval between when a Texas district judge issues a sensible ruling and the 5th Circuit overturns it with a concurrence by Judge Ho saying that if it were up to him people attending drag shows would be rounded up in internment camps.

And because they’re 3D printed you can make as many as you want, so you have many ducks to give

This is wonderful. Churches are one place where the 1st Amendment is so mighty that even the current Supreme Court would be reluctant to weaken it for the sake of politics; they can teach whatever they like and Ron DeSantis can’t do a damn thing about it, and I hope they take full advantage of that.

(Perhaps some progressive white churches might join them in teaching about Black history and gender issues and other stuff students are no longer allowed to learn about in school)

He literally Googled how much a kilogram of gold is worth

It’s about ads. The great thing about putting videos on YouTube is that Google does the work of selling ad slots for you, the not-so-great thing is that because those advertisers are actually Google’s customers, if they think they might be upset to see their ad running in your video, they’ll err on the side of pulling it.

But I daresay if Russell Brand had advertisers working with him directly, most of them would also be suspending their relationships with him right now; nobody wants anything to do with this sort of allegation.

“Hammerskins” sounds like a bunch of guys who hang around smashing each other’s genitals with hammers

I don’t work for anybody, and I don’t know what list of talking points you think I’m repeating other than the specific assertion that Germany shouldn’t have shut down its nuclear plants.

I could just as well accuse you of astroturfing for the coal power lobby.

But since you’re accusing me of being a shill anyway: yes, nuclear power is clean and safe and our refusal to embrace it has cost us decades of progress in reducing carbon emissions + is continuing to do so now. The anti-nuclear lobby has a tremendous amount of blood on its hands and I’m not the least bit ashamed to be on the opposing side to them.

Sure, but nevertheless they’re burning a lot more coal than they would be if they hadn’t pointlessly shut down their nuclear plants.

“We were able to grow enough soybeans to replace half of the whale meat we were eating, but we can’t replace the other half yet because even though we have plenty of lentils, we hate lentils and don’t want to eat them anymore”

Nuclear output 12.2021: 5599.8 GWh
Brown coal output 8.2023: 5422.0 GWh
Black coal output 8.2023: 2049.2 GWh

So if you, y’know, hadn’t shut down those nuclear plants, you’d be burning 1/4 as much coal as you actually are.

Germany of course is the country that recently shut down a bunch of nuclear plants + temporarily (we hope) replaced them with coal.

It may have been more like:

Unity: “We love money and hate our customers, who can we hire to realize that vision?”

EA CEO: “Finally, a job that understands me”

They thought they were getting a Charlie Baker and instead they got a mini-DeSantis. (and it’s not the first time a Republican has pulled this stunt - Mike Pence for example famously ran as a non-boat-rocking moderate successor to Mitch Daniels before promptly going all cuckoo once elected)