Hi, friends!
Hope your weekend went well and that you’re ready for the week to kick off.
Topic of the NOT is random shit you’re disappointed in. It doesn’t have to be important things, like the American healthcare system.
I’ve been streaming Star Trek Discovery on Paramount Plus. I own seasons 1 and 2 on bluray, but since I’m rewatching and have to watch the later seasons there anyway, felt like fuck it, just stream it all.
Y’all, Paramount Plus is a piece of shit. I don’t understand how they’re willing to put that code in prod. It intermittently just skips the sections of content between the commercial breaks. Like I had moments of wait this segment doesn’t make sense after the commercial. Another time it replayed the same section twice!
Paramount+ is a shitty bit of software that gets by on an excellent catalog. Part of the reason, in my opinion, is the same Executive Brain disease that led to studio notes and today’s Twitter – the need to have their “signature” on things. Can’t have a functionality similar to Netflix, even if this version of different is also the opposite of improved. A term I read elsewhere that I’ve started using in regular business calls is that the execs needed to pee on the product to mark his scent. Works great in preempting death by 1000 tweaks.
They have an ad tier, right?
I think one of the original sins of the internet was falling for the promise of hyper-individualized ad delivery. It made the code far too complex and dependent on external servers, and it screwed up experiences for users, content providers, and ultimately advertisers. Nobody is happy with it except for the ad brokers, and nobody seems willing to figure out a different approach.
It’s kind of horrifying how bad local TV stations’ (I suppose they’re all now corporately owned and sharing content) websites are. I have a huge monitor and an adblocker and every time I get gulled into clicking onto a local TV station link all hell breaks loose. First the push video of the fluff-laden broadcast, which is not what I wanted, then banner ads, pop-up ads, streaming ads, my server seizing up, and if I’m lucky I can close the browser window and not have to reboot. I can just imagine what people ten and twenty years my senior go through when they try to access their favorite broadcaster from WKFU in Schitts Creek through their AOL accounts.
I had a similar problem just this weekend with P+ which has inconsistent streams (should be P-)
I also find their catalog underwhelming if I dislike the Transformer movies, Mission Impossible movies and crappy CBS shows and I do.
That’s funny. My wife uses that exact same peeing reference for stuff like that.
I bought some Yasso Ice Cream sandwiches a few days ago and they are terrible. I don’t usually eat ice cream but had a hankering for something sweet. I don’t know if they suck because they’re a low cal Greek yogurt ice cream substitute or just because I don’t really care much for ice cream. Reading that sentence I think I answered my own question, lol.
Paramount+ drives me fucking nuts. I have to sign in via a third party to run it. I have a Samsung “smart” tv but it can’t figure P+ out without Roku or Amazon fire stick. For months the last episode of Evil and The Good Fight were corrupted and wouldn’t stream. Something about how I turned off the TV mid switch over from commercial to program broke it.
When I first started watching Murdoch Mysteries, because I am apparently elderly beyond my years and it’s the Canadian version of McMillan & Wife reimagined as a gentle L&O /Murder He/She Wrote hybrid—anyway, however it was shown in Canada had obvious commercial breaks built in. Hulu, in its infinite wisdom, must have just designed some program where ads were inserted at regular intervals, regardless of context. And the same ads. I find the Progressive Insurance ads charming, although I know Flo is a divisive figure. When I descend to Hell the soundtrack will be “Liberty, Liberty, Liberty,” from those horrid ads.
So you’d be watching along, and one of the characters would say to another something like, “But that can’t be possible because [suspect X] was known to be—” “Liberty, Liberty, Liberty.” And then two minutes later there’d be a scene at the stationhouse, then a slight pause, where the ads really should have gone, then Detective Murdoch and someone else would be walking in a park or roaming a forest or utilizing their electric torches in a dark, menacing locale.
On the other hand, I consume a lot of classic BritTV (my own generic term for it) and when there were ads they’re cut out entirely. I would like to see those ads. What was being hawked in a witty way in 1996 or 1982? Nescafé? A beer brand? Candy? Personal grooming products? I’ll never know.
Sometimes you can find old shows uploaded to Youtube from VCR recordings, complete with commercials, and they’re definitely odd and interesting to watch. I think the Star Wars Holiday Special recordings you could find are an example of that kind of time capsule effect, although I don’t know if they have now any which escaped the copyright cops.
The Paramount Plus commercials I’ve seen are definitely… unexpected.
It’s like they go hmm she’s a late 30s woman. This Venus Razor ad with a weird song all about pubic hair is totally a good idea.
Mrs Butcher’s father finally kicked the bucket this morning so we drove up to support the rest of the family. The last time we were up here I booked the first hotel that had an available room for the Christmas weekend and it sucked mightily. So we checked out other hotels in the area for when we needed to come back.
So here we are in a different hotel that is a Queen bed room. Um, they are taking serious liberties with what they call a queen bed. At best it’s a full. When we come back next weekend for the funeral I’ll have to be sure to book a king size bed just so we can be sure to have a queen.
Ugh I hate when hotels pull that shit.
I’m sorry for Mrs Butcher’s loss.
I’m sorry for your loss. Condolences to Mrs Butcher and family.
I’m not. He was a bastard.
Condolences to Mrs. B.