Does kbin have a negative reputation (or any kind of collective reputation, really) like Facebook/Meta and Hexbear? Or are you just mentioning it because it bridges the gap between micro-blogging and the "threadiverse"?
I'm a kbin user and I can't say I'm aware of what its reputation is in general. But I also just don't tend to get into the inter-instance politics all that much.
I don't know if it's perhaps a regional thing but, in the UK, "being patronising" is used pretty much exclusively in the pejorative sense, with a similar meaning to "condescending". I don't think I've ever heard (in actual conversation) "being patronising" used to mean someone is giving patronage, in fact - we would say someone is "giving patronage" or "is a patron" instead. We also pronounce "patronise" differently, for whatever reason: "patron" is "pay-trun", "patronage" is "pay-trun-idge" but "patronise" is "pah-trun-ise".
It seems the pejorative use of the word dates back to at least 1755, too, so it's not exactly a new development.
It's Tom Cruise. It just comes out of the Mission Impossible budget. And he insists on driving the train himself.
In all seriousness, though: this was the small scale test - the nuclear bombs designed for wars have much higher payloads. It's not the sort of thing that can be tested in labs.
BBC/HBO did a TV adaptation of the full series, aptly called "His Dark Materials". I didn't enjoy it quite as much as I did the books, but it was a good adaptation (and much better than The Golden Compass).
The books won a bunch of awards and were very well received when they released. The first one, Northern Lights (The Golden Compass in the US) came out in 1995 so it was fairly popular for a few years as the "premier" young adult novel, but it ended up being dwarfed in popularity by Harry Potter once that released (as did, well, everything else on the planet).
I think the books were a little less popular and well-received in America. In part because Philip Pullman is a British author, so obviously he got more attention here in the UK. But also, quite a few Christian groups - particularly in America because, let's be honest, most evangelical Christian groups are American - took issue with His Dark Materials' world and themes. It doesn't paint the church in a good light at all, and the series' God analogue, The Authority, is pretty tyrannical. Although, funnily enough, a former Archbishop of Canterbury, Rowan Williams, was one of the biggest supporters of the series - he felt it basically highlighted the dangers of dogmatism and attacked the ways religion could be used to oppress rather than Christianity itself - so obviously not all Christians were offended by the series.
Anyway, yes! Not only is the world fantastic (and it only gets more interesting and wild as the series goes on) but it also handles the characters really well. The way it handles the main characters - children who age into teenagers throughout the series - developing feelings for each other and discovering sexuality was done in a really thoughtful and age-appropriate way (for the characters and the audience). It addresses some interesting philosophical concepts, too, including some religious ones - I'd say the spirit, the body and the soul is a pretty key theme throughout, albeit not necessarily in the same way Christianity approaches it
I'd start by reading the books - Northern Lights/The Golden Compass, The Subtle Knife and The Amber Spyglass - and then watch the TV series. He's also written other books in the world - some novellas, and (currently) two out of three books in a second trilogy called "The Book Of Dust".
If they're just doing it for money, I agree that it feels pretty desperate. But I get the impression that a lot of them do Cameo because it's a fun way for them to interact with fans, and because it's nice for the fans to be able to get something like that.
Regardless of their reasoning, it sucks that people abuse it. Expected, of course, but it still sucks.
Yeah, it has real "Orphan-Crushing Machine" vibes to me.
Nowadays, you have to assume your personal data being used to train an AI model is the cost of signing up to any free website unless they explicitly tell you otherwise.
So am I!
However, I can't say I listen to or follow Billie Eilish - I only found out about her coming out from reading this, in fact - but even as someone who's just mildly aware of her, I will say I've never assumed her to be straight. My gaydar's probably better tuned than the average person's but even so, I feel like her being some flavour of queer was fairly obvious and I wouldn't be at all surprised if that's influenced / shaped the kind of audience she has.
Unfortunately, I suspect an artist who's less obviously queer would lose a larger following for coming out. But yes, Billie Eilish only losing 100K followers is really encouraging still!
Well Rupert Murdoch's still alive, so probably him.
I'd play the hell out of a Remnant-like Warhammer 40K game. The Remnant blueprint is perfect for a 40K game.
I prefer real poo, personally.
The last thing I saw regarding him was him being unable to comprehend how secret rooms in Metroid work. It was painful.