JNLister

Had completely forgotten this thread, so hopefully nobody minds a cross-post from the cricket thread;

My favourite Lance Russel thing is that he made a point once a year for a big angle to tell the audience "If you only come to one show this year, make it this one" and it usually sold out. And it worked because he only did it once a year.

Remember the meme with the made up baseball names?

It's partly the prestige/legacy, and partly the idea that you hate your partner/opponent so much that you'd risk your own hair or mask for the chance of taking his.

I remember somebody told me about UKFF at a show in Coventry in late 2000. From what I remember, it was the result of a "merger" of sorts between several existing forums.

Total brain fart - fixed now thanks!

Dopper (who has lost his login) has noted that today is 25 years since the current incarnation of UKFF started. It had been running for a couple of years before that, but 18 September 2001 was when the database was relaunched, people had to reregister their accounts, and the current post counts/database history started that day. No doubt we'll all talk about our wrestling/non-wrestling chat/nonsense in this thread, but don't let's overlook the technical impressiveness of a forum database surviving for a quarter of a century.

https://www.youtube.com/@RoyLucierWrestlingTerritories/playlists Playlists for 80 Memphis TV. Some of the early years are incomplete, but there's about 460 of the 520 or so weeks. There's a few other episodes floating about but this is pretty close to everything that was available on the trading circuit. The actual original recordings are a complete mess in who legally owns the rights, who physically has the tapes and how much survives. Most of what was on the trading circuit comes from Jim Cornette recording everything on his VCR in Louisville, which is why it's only 60 minutes (the 90 minute slot was only the live broadcast in Memphis).

Somewhat less horrifically, this is a really good explainer on how large language models actually work: https://freedium-mirror.cfd/https://medium.com/lets-code-future/20-most-important-ai-concepts-explained-in-just-20-minute-b7dd3ad2b506

Sitcom written by an alleged human but video created entirely by AI, which earned a 0 star rating in The Guardian. Notable really for being a perfect example of AI being a 90% solution where in some ways it's amazing how close to real you can make stuff, but also amazing just how important the remaining 10% it can't get right is. But I genuinely don't think we're far off the point where a wrestling promotion decides it's viable to make shows using this and not have to bother with silly stuff like real arenas and wrestlers.

TizenTube is also great (though you'll need to enable developer mode/untrusted sources etc). It doesn't just cut out the actual YouTube ads, but you can set it to automatically detect and cut out bits where the video itself has promotional spots for VPNs or whatever. You can even have it remove self-promotion (guys, don't forget to like and subscribe) or irrelevant tangents, or long outros where it's just a static screen trying to get you to click to watch another of their videos. (Obviously you will in the long term cause the video creators to lose their income and be unable to produce new content, but that's a future you problem.)

I mentioned this over on the WrestleMe Patreon, but Triple X wrestling did this back in 2008. In that case there were envelopes taped around the building and you had to pin your opponent against the envelope, at which point you could open it to see if the pin counted. It's a bit of a trivia note because it was the undercard of the first Zack Sabre Jr-Bryan Danielsen match.

Not strictly a new game, but I played Viticulture with the Tuscany expansion for the first time. For those who know the game, it adds: * You can take actions in all four seasons rather than Spring and Winter just being admin steps. * There's no fixed order for deciding turn order/bonuses for the next year. Instead, whenever you pass in Winter you get to choose your slot for next year. Also, the only way to get the guaranteed first place slot is to have picked the guaranteed last place slot the year before. * There's a new type of card which is additional structures, each which give you a particular bonus. As normal, you need to pay to build them and building them is an action. * There's a mini-game where, as an action, you can place a star in a region of a map. When you place in a region you get a specific bonus (you can also move an already placed star between regions but don't get a bonus). If you have the most stars in a region at the end of the game, you get points. It's definitely a good expansion if everyone has played the base game a lot as it makes it a bit more strategic and gives you more options. It does take you a bit further towards the "you can win the game without spending much time actually making and selling wine" route, which is OK if you are into wider gameplay but is less thematic. It's definitely not for first time players as it would just be too many options and takes away the normal helpful advice that if you are uncertain what to do, it's a decent starting strategy to just follow through the winemaking process logically (get vines and orders, plant vines, harvest grapes, make wine, age wine, fulfill order).

In the past year, during which the various funding scandals have come to light, Reform have dropped in the polls from 30%/10 point lead/on course for majority to 23%/level with Labour/on course for about 100-150 seats. There's probably about 15% of the country who will always go for a right wing populist/"anti-establishment"/anti-immigration/anti-Europe party associated with Farage, but it's the next 10-15% of people who make the difference between them getting a handful of seats and them running the country.

Shocking news as it turns out Reform UK are a bit dodgy: tl;dw: They got some foreign donors to pay for and commission opinion polls, deliberate hiding both the fact that they got funding from abroad and that the polls were being done on Reform's behalf, both of which legally have to be declared. Reform's head of policy told the donors they need foreign money because nobody in the UK will donate to them, that they would cover it all up, and they'd get away with it because the Electoral Commission was useless. He suggested the donors give them more money, with one of the foreign donors routing it through their British son to make it look legit. Farage is on film saying how great the polls were and it was well worth the money. They didn't know the "donors" were actually undercover reporters. (edit/corrections: it's actually flat out illegal to take donations from outside the UK.)

With a large family group this week and somebody brought The Traitors: The Card Game. My review is that it's Werewolf.

Alternative alternative is go to Marylebone and then Wembley Stadium station (10-15 minutes walk) is one stop on the overground train.