They dropped them on to the platform

Off topic, but: Can I just say I continue to find the use of the verb "drop" to interchangeably mean both cancel and release immensely confusing. Every time I read the word I need to think carefully about what is actually being said.

I really enjoy this opener. Martha's introduction feels a lot more fleshed out than Rose's. We know more about the Doctor, so its a bit easier as we're only introducing one new character. I like that Martha feels a bit more clued in than Rose/Donna from the get go. It fits with what 10 seems to be doing, which is somewhere between an interview for a companion and being in denial about needing company. Martha's justification for wanting to leave, having a lot of domestic trouble, is a lot more compelling than Rose's who seemed just a bit bored with life. One thing that did bug me was the Doctor-Martha kiss, while I understand the logic of 10's plan there were obviously better ways of transferring DNA which would be less invasive, and in a modern context this didn't age well.

Throughout this there's quite a high energy, mostly quick movement from scene to scene, and the threats feel genuine. The straw bit is a funny joke, and is probably peak dark humour in this episode. There's also comedy in the curmudgeony old timer handing out the old "I'm just about to retire and relax with my grandkids", shortly before he gets offed. Time lords needing 2-heart CPR is a fun idea as long as you don't think too hard about it. There's plenty of references as well. Mr Saxon. Ronald Biggs, a fugitive of the great train robbery is mentioned. Continuity around Martha's cousin as gets thrown in.

On the sci-fi side, I enjoyed the idea of a vampire that uses shapeshifting to hide their insides rather than their outsides. Overriding an MRI scanner to output 50 KiloTeslas is a bit of a reach, considering the hospital is probably running off of emergency generators. Wikipedia tells me that's somewhere around the equivalent of a neutron star. ACAB applies to the space police as well, I guess, though it's a bit unclear exactly what their status as mercenaries is. I enjoyed the mask design of the judoon - space rhinos is a monster design I've never seen anywhere else. The whole Judoon "we're going to do whatever we want" and the ship designs feels reminiscent of the Vogons from Hitchiker's.

There's a lot going on in this one and I enjoyed it.

Observation: Another hospital series opener. Rose's second series, Martha's, Donna's is medical-adjacent, Amy's climaxes in a village hospital, and Clara's in the Dalek Asylum. Hospitals make for an interesting setting because there's lots that can go wrong, and they can feel like very liminal spaces with all the closeness to death and white antiseptic spaces.

This is a real pet annoyance of mine, and I have seeing apologist posts on the internet about it.

If the actors cant enunciate properly except when they're shouting, that's not adding realism, they're doing bad acting.

If the sound engineers can't get a good audio balance for anything except the loudest moment in a film, that's not a limitation of technology/sound physics, they're bad at mixing.

If the director can't keep all of this in check and make a film that people can actually enjoy, that's not artistic choice, they've made a bad film.

French and Portuguese at the convention, their arms open.

The article is saying the petition is targeting steam, but the actual linked petition is addressing credit card companies. The text of the petition doesn't mention steam or valve. I don't know what the author of the article thinks is happening here, and they've explained it very badly.

They haven't blocked the windows feature, they're using DRM to interfere with it. Microsoft could easily change how the DRM works any time they want, rendering all these hacks useless.

Answer wrong. The more of us humans that answer wrong, the less accurate we need to be to get past these stupid things. If google want me to do work for them, they can pay me.

Sugars and additives are in nearly all foods, maybe we should stop asking manufacturers to disclose it on the ingredients list.

I\ don\'t\ know\ what\ you\ mean,\ I\'ve\ never\ encountered\ any\ annoyances.

You can't misgender a brand. You can't deadname a brand. You can't befriend a brand.

Japan has 3 writing systems and this comic seems to be conflating Katakana and Kanji together as "stabby", leaving Hiragana as "adorable". All of them are (long ago) derived from chinese, but only the Kanji still look similar.

I would have introduced Chinese first, and then in the Japanese panel present the stabby and adorable ones both being attacked by flying contraptions. (And a few floating around the korean one, too)

Absolutely all foreigners - https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cly67j35y99o

There's something I'm really struggling to understand when talking about things like Taler, and the "Digital euro" idea which has come up recently as well: What is it actually doing that's new?

Money is distributed digitally already. When you get a paycheck, no-one is actually moving physical paper and metal cash from a business account bank vault to a customer account bank vault, it's just numbers in a spreadsheet. So what's actually new when we're talking about digital currency like this post?

There must be something I'm missing here.

Human infested cities. Cat infested cafés. Cattle infested farms.

I take issue with this article using the language "lagging behind in the use of generative AI". That language seems to imply there is something wrong in this behaviour.

I first read this as MPEG and thought they were talking about the video encoding.

I wish they were talking about the video encoding.

Can I get paid a billion dollars to do nothing?

Tendi just wanting to play in the sand is cute.

Boimler being completely fed up with the assignment is great - he knew exactly what he was walking into, but did it anyway (I'm glad it actually had payoff at the end).

Rutherford has finally resolved badgey, and seemingly learnt nothing.

I didn't feel like mariner had a whole lot to do in this episode, she just kind of tagged along.

Maybe if he wans to be able to make games for longer, he needs to dial it back and get a manager that can plan to reduce the amount o crunch needed, ideally to zero. The attitude that crunch should be normal in creative projects is atrocious and needs to go.

This is one of the points that a French MEP brought up during the meeting. If this is pursued it could as a side effect open up space for digital "orphaned works" which would be fantastic.