u/Merus

it starts in season 5 episode 6, but the problem is Lesser Tom's in there all day, so every episode for the rest of the season, there's a task where Lesser Tom's still in the box.

yeah, I agree; this doesn't address any of the most pressing problems we've got, some of which are actually in the Greens' wheelhouse, and that money could be a lot better spent.

For instance, the price of diesel is massively driving up the cost of food production and transport. We could be electrifying our diesel infrastructure, with a targeted program like the solar panels or the home batteries that have shielded us from significant electrical price rises as LNG's gone through the roof. But electric trucks are going into a regulatory nightmare that needs to be cleaned up first.

Yeah, this is what people miss: bracket creep is an intentional part of the system, because it's one of the few ways we have to increase taxes without it being an absolute shitfight, and people don't like it when governments cut services because they're too expensive. That money's gotta come from somewhere.

67 with the weighing hand gesture is a viral meme. Not really a 'popular' meme, because the point of it is that it isn't funny and isn't really a reference to anything.

Tom is also dramatically storming off because he's minorly annoyed that Adam got him, and if he walks all the way off screen, it's a funnier bit

if they'd had more time to think, they might have realised that they needed to go to the other airport instead of just being on autopilot

only real sickos want to trade them

My understanding is that Coke Zero, when first introduced, was popular in Australia but not in the US. The head office decided that this was a sign that Americans could be persuaded, which is why they relaunched it as 'Coke No Sugar', because that was the American branding, and then relented and rebranded it to 'Coke Zero Sugar'.

In any case, the red-and-white branding seems to indicate that they're positioning it as the 'main' product rather than a variant, though I expect a further redesign so that the can still looks like a Coke can but it's easier to tell at a glance that it's the zero-sugar version.

(I've also noticed that the no-caffeine version is starting to be sold in different configurations, which suggests that it's being kept on.)

for me it's Guy flailing at Feliz Navidad, and the one from S3 of the Australian series where Anisa Nandaula spells 'basketball' with a C, takes it back when the audience and Demi Adejuyigbe, her teammate for the round, cannot keep it together, and then spells it the exact same way

Hey, can I read more on how Notion is using personal data, even when opted-out and not using LLM features? I have a database I built in Notion a few years ago, and I was under the impression that any LLM training was opt-in only. Obsidian doesn't support databases, and I don't really look forward to recreating the views I had in a SQLite frontend.

yes, I am! but I'm not the one claiming that Adam is mistaken about his own rules, on a point that they clearly thought about when designing the game. This requires a much higher burden of proof, which you will never meet

either in the rules document you haven't read, or in conversations about edge cases, which you weren't privy to

you do not have access to the full rules, you by necessity understand them worse than the players. Listen to yourself

This is the best way to handle it in a professional setting. Draw attention to the inappropriateness of the remark in neutral language, which frames it as a problem with her rather than you getting offended. If she escalates, then her escalation becomes another problem.

it annoys me that Mark and Nish's song was genuinely good and very creative, and Bob's song was just a lift of his previous "Sunderland's a fucking nightmare" song. It's funny, but it's not better.

For content reasons - it's a better hook to say that they went from one extreme of a country to the other, than between two arbitrary cities that are better for gameplay reasons. The team also far prefer the games to be built around the existing features of a location. They were dissatisfied with how New Zealand's challenges were all at game-specific locations, because there is plenty of drama to be wrung out of the actual experience of travel that adding artificial stress by requiring players to go to a 'pin on a map' feels inelegant.

The distinction between New Zealand and Japanorama, I think, is that most of the locations players have to go to have meaning outside of the game. It's not hard to extend this logic to the start and end locations - but then you have to accept that the game meaningfully ends well before getting to the last station.

I disagree, because of another rule: you can only do one challenge per prefecture. If a team accidentally completes a challenge while they've invested time into setting up another challenge, that time is wasted. If they complete a challenge they invested time into and then the stars align for them to complete a circumstantial challenge, it doesn't count, which would be very frustrating!

I also don't think that the rewards are particularly outliers, because, ultimately, the reward is a better chance of drawing a good card, not multiple good cards. One team drew 6 cards and didn't get very much; one team drew 1 card and got something that devastated the other team. The generosity of the rewards only has a marginal effect on the balance of the game because you only ever get one card out of it.

same reason that people found the start to Arctic Escape so unengaging - for content reasons you want the most extreme start and end points, but often the frequencies are really bad so it makes the gameplay pretty flat in the first episode. Nishi-Oyama happens to be the southernmost station but it's not far from a reasonably-sized city with transport options. If Hokkaido is at the end of the race, then the low frequency of trains is less of a problem because players are much more likely to be separated enough so that frequency is meaningful.

they mentioned this on a Layover - Choo Choo Chew's opening has the chibi Sam and Scotty faces on a cartoony shinkansen, so it's closely tied to the aesthetic of Capture the Flag. They'd have to pay for new motion graphics, and it's funnier, and cheaper, to have Choo Choo Chew be referenced but never appear, to Sam's increasing frustration.

They mentioned they actually considered starting north to south but they thought it'd be difficult for content reasons. Cannot argue with the results.

For everyone (I think Tom would also have some insights here): say you were making a network TV version of Jet Lag, competing against The Amazing Race with something like their budget. What would you accept would need to change, and what would you fight to keep the same? Would you still call it Jet Lag: The Game?

my uncle swore by microwaving the meat pie upside down. You're going to put sauce on the top anyway, after all.

These days I microwave and then air fryer, and that's also what they recommend on the packet.

Thank you for your sacrifice, boys

yeah, chocobo porters are really underrated - in expansion zones, they can fly, which means that if where you need to go is near the flight path, you can dismount mid-trip and skip a bunch of tedious travel. Particularly useful in the Ruby Sea, in Stormblood.

yeah, they've actually mentioned that the US wouldn't meet their threshold for safety when filming, except they're all from there so they've got a better sense of how to avoid danger than a non-American does.

I'm okay with them getting time to decide, because otherwise you encourage teams to check every possible next move before they select a card to put into their hand, and at the time scale the game is played in, there's no real consideration about turn pacing like you would in a board game.

Honestly, I don't know how the last episode is going to go, I imagine it'll be pretty clear who's going to win at the start of the finale, but I think this is the best season they've done. Absolutely gorgeous, interesting challenges, really tight, exciting gameplay, filled with memorable moments.

What a delight this has been, and it's lovely to finally do Japan justice.