Season 17, 1979, 4 parts, Fourth Doctor (Tom Baker)
Romana regenerates, despite being in perfect health, and she chooses various forms before settling on a doppelganger of Princess Astra (see previous episode). The TARDIS lands on Skaro, home of the daleks, but untold years since last we saw them, and their battle computer is in a stalemate with the battle computer of the robotic Movellans. The daleks last hope is to drill down to find and excavate the body of Davros, creator of the Daleks, who was believed to be dead. Naturally the daleks are using humans as slave labor. The Doctor and Roman run about and get separated multiple times, and The Doctor blinds a dalek by throwing his hat on its ocular extender. Meanhile the Movellans are likewise made inert by removing a very obvious and exposed item from their belt, which causes them to do a weird falling down dance.
Not a particularly fun or interesting episode, sadly. The only remarkable aspect is the interesting look of the Movellans, who are cast largely by non-white actors.
Note: I’m not going to refer to procedurally generated images as “AI art” because by definition, art is “the expression or application of human creative skill and imagination.” I will instead refer to it as PGIs.
1. It’s threatening their livelihood. Artists also have bills to pay.
2. Every piece of art a human artist makes is copyright (mostly owned by the artist and sometimes a publisher that made a contract with the artist to acquire that copyright).
The AI corporations used those artworks without compensating or acquiring permission from the copyright holders (again, usually the artists). This is unethical and probably illegal (we’re figuring that out presently).
3. The proliferation of AI is making it hard to tell what is real and what is fake, an extremely dangerous trend that contributes to conspiracy and scams.
A group of researchers created a first-generation AI worm that can steal data, spread malware, spam others via an email client, and spread through multiple systems. This worm was developed and successfully functions in test environments using popular LLMs.
Elephant Mountain on the East side of Taipei in the Xinyi district, is easily accessible and not too difficult a hike, although there are a lot of stairs at the onset.
Xianghan, one of the Sishou Hills was named for the elephant because of its long-nose shape, is a small mountain with a rich ecology and amazing views of Taipei.
Finding the entrance…
a cute little domicile near the base of the mountain
The starting point. There’s a lot of steps at the beginning! Bring water!
What you’re in for…
Where are we right now?
My god, the foliage!!!
We’re 10 minutes in (really)? and we’ve arrived at the observation deck!
I’M HUGE! The first viewing platform
Culture.
Hope this helps
educational!
I think it means “watch out for snakes”
Now we’re getting somewhere? Where, I don’t know.
Climb the stairway of destiny….
Now where am I?
We have arrived at 北星寶宮 – A small temple with a road on the mountain!
17 minutes according to google…not sure about that!
One day I received this message from a Facebook friend:
To which I agreed, except it wouldn’t be a campaign, it would be a ‘one-shot.’ Primarily because I don’t have time to game regularly and with a group of strangers I didn’t want to make a commitment beyond the ‘test run.’ You know, in case it goes horribly wrong (spoiler alert: it wen’t terribly right)! They would also have to supply the venue since I lack gaming space of my own. (And no, DMing for novices is not annoying.)
“I WOULD NEVER CHARGE TO PLAY D&D. I DO IT FOR FUN”
I play music for fun, I can also get paid for it. I draw for fun, I can also get paid for it. And of course when I DM for my friends and regular gaming group, I don’t charge money. But what was asked of me is a very different context. And context is king.
We decided a rate – $80 for 4 hours. They didn’t ask my bona fides, but I’ll put them here in case it makes a difference to you:
I’ve been GMing since 1985. I co-wrote an award-winning RPG (Spaceship Zero). I’ve organized game conventions. I’ve run tournaments (at my day job) for about 20 different groups – each a mix of experience and novice players.
WHAT DOES A PROFESSIONAL DM PROVIDE, EXACTLY?
The players (3 of them in total) mainly worked out the characters themselves, which I checked and tweaked. In addition to the adventure itself, I provided dice, battle maps, dungeon tiles, player handouts (clues etc), miniatures for the Player Characters and monsters and Non-Player Characters.
BUT PAID DMS ARE RUINING THE OH-SO-PURE HOBBY!
What if I told you DMs have been receiving compensation for decades? Conventions and game shops have been recruiting people to run games for years. Sometimes that compensation is free attendance to the event, or store credit, but sometimes also cold hard cash or a combination of those things.
At your home game, do your players not bring any contributions? Do they not bring snacks or beverages for you to enjoy? Do they not chip in for any new books or peripherals (dice towers, minis, your D&D Beyond subscription)? I mean sure, this probably counts as ‘gifts’ rather than ‘payment’ – but all these things have value, and to my mind the DM does a lot of work for the players. There is a – perhaps unspoken – transaction happening in many (but not all) cases.
THE PERKS OF PAID DMING
One of the banes of group games like D&D is player cancellations can really upend an otherwise perfectly planned game night. Everything I’ve heard from professional DMs is that when the players have put up money, they actually show up and are fully present, rather than showing up 45 minutes late and dicking around on their phone.
For my own experience, when the first session had to be cancelled, they offered to pay me anyway for all the prep time I did. I told them not to worry about it, we’ll just reschedule.
ISN’T BEING A PAID DM LIKE PROSTITUTION?
This is actually a take that I read someone post on a Facebook group. Come on, dude. Somebody wanted to hire me and I accepted. Also, there’s nothing inherently wrong with sex work.
Raiders are terrorizing the wasteland, mainly on motorcycles with spikey bits. A hardened and independent Harmony (Deborah Rennard) flees a victimized town and meets Anderson, a reformed raider recovering from a wound. He convinces her they should travel together to find a hidden paradise, but all they find are cannibals, plague victims, and a man with a puppy who speaks like a Ren Fair employee (Orland). The two are captured by the raiders but before the lisping mask-wearing maniac leader can dispatch them, Orland and his flamethrower sew chaos allowing them all to escape. The raiders are defeated but paradise is neither found nor mentioned.
This movie makes me angry. It’s not the acting or the production value, or even the rote direction. This is the kind of movie where the characters act in direct conflict to their interests and statements, and nothing makes sense. Harmony states she doesn’t want a crippled companion slowing her down, then she continues to travel with Anderson despite him slowing her down and his constant leading them into life-threatening situations. She reacts with extreme violence to the slightest innocent touch from a history of assault and rape, then moments later doesn’t blink at being touched. Harmony is cold and bloodthirsty, while Anderson touts empathy and altruism, but when they see a settlers being massacred Anderson stops Harmony from helping. Not to mention they both have range weapons but do all their fighting with knives and fisticuffs.
Tropes: bad guys have spikes; man shoots a snake to save a lady; cannibals, things explode for no reason; bickering during a car (bike) chase; little people in robes (jawas)
1000 years after the Neutron Wars, nomadic ranger guide manly Kas Oshay and sexy blonde Deneer hang out in the wasteland riding horses, until captured by riders on their Death Machines (AKA dirt bikes with spacey-looking consoles) and brought back to the walled city of Helix. Tortured by the mad and dying Lord Zirpolo, and forced to partake in Deathsport (AKA a dirt bike track), they somehow break free and escape back into the wasteland, with former ranger guide and Zirpola lieutenant Ankar Moor in hot pursuit. After a brief encounter with cannibalistic cave mutants Kas and Ankar have a duel with clear plastic swords.
Apparently a sort-of sequel to Death Race 2000, this movie is a lot of riding around on bikes with obnoxious sound effects while explosions happen close by, punctuated with some T&A courtesy of playmate Claudia Jennings. The only cast member with any charisma is Richard Lynch. Oh yeah there’s a kid that is thankfully relegated to the beginning and end of the film.
TROPES: vehicles explode for no reason; futuristic jargon; lights flash when torture is happening; exposition about what’s happening on screen; blowing on a gun; mutants only grunt
Season 16, 1979, 6 parts, Fourth Doctor (Tom Baker)
The Doctor and Romana land on the planet Atrios and meet Princess Astra, her lover Merak, and The Marshall, the latter of which is war-mad about defeating neighboring planet Zeos in their ages-long war. Secretly Zeos is run by an AI, which is secretly run by a guy in a skull mask (The Shadow – he hates light) who also is secretly advising the Marshall through a black mirror. The Shadow is an agent of the Black Guardian and is hunting for the sixth segment to the Key to Time, which (spoiler) is Princess Astra. K9 is captured by The Shadow and reprogrammed, while Astra is likewise corrupted and transforms herself into the puzzle segment. The Shadow gains entry to the TARDIS while The Doctor is miniaturized by friendly Time Lord Drax (found in the bowels of The Shadow’s space base). The Shadow puts the Time Key together and starts monologuing so The Doctor returns to size, grabs the macguffin and our heroes get away.
The Doctor practically turns to the camera and says the name of the episode out loud, which is always fun. This is the final chapter in the Key of Time story arc which spans the entire 16th season. Overall, a disappointing climax to a fun season. This could easily have been 4 episodes, there’s a lot of chaff in the first 3. It only gets interesting when K9 becomes a servant of The Shadow and The Doctor bumps into Drax. Given how overpowered K9 is as an ally, he should be more of a threat to The Doctor, but he’s defeated easily and stupidly. Also it occurs to me that K9’s eyes are always red, so how can we tell when he’s good or evil? In a rare twist Romana upstages The Doctor when she clues him into the fact that the White Guardian is the evil Black Guardian because he’s unwilling to restore Astra to human form. This leads to the question, was there ever a White Guardian, or was it the Black one all this time?
Took the high speed rail from Kaohsiung to Taipei (a 2 hour 20 minute trip) where I saw the mountains and farmland of Taiwan
We arrived and walked around the neighborhood of our hostel, and visited the National Sun Yat Sen Memorial Hall
Creepy
I wanted to try Britshake, the British-themed restaurant, to see how it was in Taiwan. Unfortunately, not super memorable. So I won’t bother with pics. Anyway – here’s an interesting chart showing the ethnographics of Taiwan
A little park/mosquito breeding ground
Check out the space age 7-11. What happens in there? I don’t know
It’s a gas station just for scooters. They’re ubiquitous!
Your average Taipei commuter train station
We met up with two of Erica’s old friends, Frankie and Andy, at Kokoro izakaya (Japanese bar with food) where I had a cute little cumquat, deep fried bitter melon (yummy) and some nuts of some kind!
After that we went to a lesbian karaoke bar that I believe was called 7 Plus, but I couldn’t find it on google. It was…interesting, because the lesbians will try to chat you up for tips, which I found to be awkward, because although they were very nice and tried hard to make me feel welcome – I don’t really drink, and we don’t speak the same language. But there was some karaoke so not too bad!
I wanted to go to the poo-themed restaurant I had heard about years prior, but sadly they had permanently closed 🙁
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