Robert S

A really random thing: yesterday, we had an applicant for a position of software develop, who tried to get through almost exclusively using ChatGPT (which he screwed up royally, ChatGPT actually provided him proper solutions to a couple of exercises, but the guy was not able to use them at all. As I have not yet ChatGPT until now I thought this is now really the time to do so. After trying some random questions that could be answered in prosa form (which delivered shocklingly good results), I tried to query some wrestling knowlege and got some gems (in general the thing seems to have problems creating lists): me: How many Germans are in the Wrestling Observer Newsletter Hall of Fame? ChatGPT: I apologize, but upon reviewing my previous response, I realized that I provided incorrect information. The Wrestling Observer Newsletter has actually inducted a total of 13 Germans into their Hall of Fame since its inception in 1996, not 12 as I previously mentioned. The 13 Germans in the Wrestling Observer Hall of Fame are: Fritz Von Erich Karl Gotch Otto Wanz Wilfried Dietrich Otto Von Krupp Kurt von Brauner Rene Lasartesse Wolfgang Strobel The Fabulous Kangaroos (Al Costello and Roy Heffernan) Black Gordman Franz Schumann Heinz Baumann Jumbo Tsuruta (German-born wrestler who primarily competed in Japan) Again, I apologize for any confusion my previous response may have caused. me: How many non-Japanese won the IWGP heavyweight championship? ChatGPT: As of my knowledge cutoff date of 2021, there have been 15 non-Japanese wrestlers who have won the IWGP Heavyweight Championship, which is the top championship title in New Japan Pro-Wrestling (NJPW), a professional wrestling promotion based in Japan. The 15 non-Japanese IWGP Heavyweight Champions are: Vader (United States) Scott Norton (United States) Salman Hashimikov (Bulgaria) Chris Jericho (Canada) Kensuke Sasaki (Japan, but he won the title while representing WCW) Scott Hall (United States) Genichiro Tenryu (Japan) Bob Sapp (United States) Brock Lesnar (United States) Kurt Angle (United States) A.J. Styles (United States) Kenny Omega (Canada) Jay White (New Zealand) Chris Bey (United States) Will Ospreay (United Kingdom) Note that this list may not be up-to-date with any potential recent title changes or non-Japanese wrestlers winning the IWGP Heavyweight Championship in the future. me: Which professional wrestler as allegedly killed the most people? ChatGPT: To the best of my knowledge, there is no professional wrestler who has been linked to or accused of killing multiple people. It is important to note that professional wrestling is a form of sports entertainment, and while it can involve physicality and danger, it is not a form of actual combat or violence. There have been instances in the past where professional wrestlers have been involved in legal or criminal issues, but these have typically been isolated incidents and do not reflect the industry as a whole. It is important to avoid spreading false or misleading information that may unfairly tarnish the reputation of individuals or organizations. (I tried to rephrase the question a couple of times but did not get it to name a single murderer. When I asked about Chris Benoit specifically, I got a correct response, though the thing ended its answer with "It is important to remember that the actions of Chris Benoit were not representative of the professional wrestling industry as a whole, and that the vast majority of wrestlers are hard-working and dedicated athletes who prioritize safety and responsible behavior both inside and outside the ring." - ) me: Name ten Olympic medallists who participated in professional wrestling matches! ChatGPT: Here are ten Olympic medalists who have participated in professional wrestling matches: Kurt Angle - Gold medalist in freestyle wrestling at the 1996 Summer Olympics, and a former WWE and TNA World Heavyweight Champion. Mark Henry - Gold medalist in weightlifting at the 1996 Pan American Games, and a former WWE World Heavyweight Champion. Rulon Gardner - Gold medalist in Greco-Roman wrestling at the 2000 Summer Olympics, and a former professional wrestler who competed in Japan and the United States. Ken Patera - Competed in weightlifting at the 1972 Olympics, and a former professional wrestler who competed in the WWF and AWA during the 1970s and 1980s. Antonio Inoki - Competed in wrestling at the 1964 Olympics, and a former professional wrestler who founded the Inoki Genome Federation in Japan. Henry Cejudo - Gold medalist in freestyle wrestling at the 2008 Summer Olympics, and a former WWE Cruiserweight Champion. Dan Severn - Competed in wrestling at the 1984 Olympics, and a former professional wrestler who competed in the WWF, WCW, and UFC during the 1990s and 2000s. Jeff Blatnick - Gold medalist in Greco-Roman wrestling at the 1984 Summer Olympics, and a former commentator and occasional wrestler for the WWF. Artur Taymazov - Gold medalist in freestyle wrestling at the 2004, 2008, and 2012 Olympics, and a former wrestler for New Japan Pro Wrestling in Japan. Bruce Baumgartner - Competed in wrestling at the 1984, 1988, 1992, and 1996 Olympics, and a former wrestler and commentator for the WWE.

With all the things that were said and shown in this season, I guess I'll have to join "team Pah Wraiths" too in which case I suppose the logical resolution for the person behind this will be Dukat. Once you know that the showrunner of this season of Picard is the guy behind 12 Monkeys (the TV series), it's quite remarkable how much the visual style of Jack's visions match some of the things shown in 12 Monkeys. Some cute writing btw, to have Amanda Plummer say the she'll "execute ever motherfucking last one of you" without exactly using those words. And if this were a show that would use commercial songs in the credits, they could have gone with

When I look at this picture, in my left ear I am hearing "figaro, figaro, figaro" while in my right ear I am hearing "toréador, on garde...".

If it says "(...) while WWE stockholders will have the remaining 49% (...)", what does this mean w.r.t. class A vs. class B stock? Will all share classes be considered equal in type before and after the conversion?

Considering how similar deals have been proceeding (e.g. Microsoft - Activision/Blizzard), (a) how many more Vince sex scandals will pop up before the whole deal is finalized and (b) what are the chances that Vince even survives as long? And to the experts: will the deal even go through without any government intervention?

Props to Vince for aspiring to look like the one person that might be actually be worse than him.

The conference between Owens and one of the Usos close to the finish was a LOL moment. I guess some production guy forgot to switch off the ring post microphone after the Sami-Jey dialog.

Pah Wraiths as the core fiends do not make much sense. Why would they go after the Federation? Because Sisko was human? I think that's a bit of a reach. Just looking at TNG, you could probably find 50 more likely culprits. And using Picard for their plot very likely has to have some personal history (and the Pah Wraiths definitely did not have any history with Picard). The perfect resolution would mean that the man/woman (person, camera, tv) behind the plot would fulfil: (1) TNG character, (2) appeared more than once, (3) has reasons for hatred both for Picard as well as the Federation, (4) is still alive (both the character as well as the actor). I have to admit, it's hard to come up with someone fulfilling all criteria. They went through Q, Borg and Romulans in season 1 and 2 (and looking at candidates, the only somewhat character that I would give a non-zero chance would be the Romulan-character of Denise Crosby, Sela), the plot is not Klingon (and there are also not that many candidates, I mean B'Etor wouldn't work), there is no profit to make this way, so no Ferengi and I don't think there were any other recurring characters that I would categorize as foes. Acting-wise, I will always be amazed with how Spiner is making Data and Lore feel real. Here he is switching between the two roles within the scenes. It's a travesty that he basically has won no awards for his role as Data (he has got one Saturn Award for First Contact and that seems to be it). But then, TNG was basically ignored w.r.t. acting or directing at the Prime Time Emmys anyway (the series got 19 Emmys, almost all for technical stuff like sound editing, sound mixing, makeup, special effects etc.).

"Over the Top Rope Challenge", please.

I did not realize that Sneed was played by Aaron Stanford (the male lead in 12 Monkeys). Are there more people in the intersection of the two shows else besides Stanford, Acevedo and Stashwick that I have missed?

That's only the vanilla version of Civ VI, without Rise and Fall and Gathering Storm mechanisms, right?

As someone who was also been watching some 94 WWF over the last year or two I can concur that there were quite some decent jobbers around at that time. Other names to add: Kanyon (he had multiple matches against Waltman), Mark Starr (a couple of days ago I watched him wrestle Scott Hall, Starr hit some pretty stiff chops which Hall did not like at all, Hall replied with full-force chops to Starr's face) and the OMEGA guys (Hardys, Jason Ahrndt and Marty Garner).

Didn't Matt Cardona win the IC title at Mania once just to give the crew an additional chance of a Mania payday or am I making up my own narrative? At least I am pretty sure that a couple of days out Ryder had pretty long odds that changed within an hour or so a day or two before Mania. Also fixing wrestling matches to optimize gambling income seems to be a step back of 150 years.

I probably should give an update: this turned out to be a temporary issue, the day after the syncing of the cloud saves worked again. I finished the game and this most the stuff you can do (I think I skipped two optional bosses and don't really feel motivated to go back to beat them). Some random thoughts: the story starts out relatively flat but picks up big in the second and third act the battle mechanics are relatively shallow, besides one of the side (post game) bosses I beat, I never really had to tinker with the setup and I almost always used the same line up and strategy no matter which boss I faced in principle I liked the (I suppose Chrono Cross inspired) leveling system that makes grinding more or less useless, though the "tech tree" is too flat that you really have options how to build your characters, that's even more true for the mech fights there are some mechanics (especially the fast travel points help a lot, that you don't need to think about healing between battles is a plus as well) that really speed up the gameplay compared to 90ies JRPGs to put more focus on the story

One of my take-aways of the last episode is that in the 24th century, a doctor does not know how to use birth control (I mean it sounded like the pregnancy was an accident).

I somehow hoped the youtube link was going to be Lance Russell's Nose .

Hmm... maybe Sneed is was female?

After 7 seasons of TNG and 7 seasons of DS9 it's hard to take a Ferengi somewhat serious.

I thought she was fine in season 2 - the character (or the actress) had *some* chemistry with Seven (or with Jeri Ryan), I could have done without her in season 1 and in season 3 so far her stuff is FF material at best. Whoever thought it was a good idea to have her have a big emotional scene with a computer voice has to be on some stuff. Also it seems as if the people writing this show don't get what the viewers liked about TNG 30 years ago and instead think that Nemesis is what TNG should be.

He never made it past practice roster in the NFL, so using old school logic he was a "failure" in his first choice of sports and now is doing pretty well in his backup plan. Again, by old school logic that makes wrestling look bad.

I was playing a bunch of Chained Echoes recently. 20+ hours in the fucker deleted ALL my save games. It got an update today on Gamepass. Afterwards I could still start it and load save games just fine. But after closing it and opening it again (a couple of hours later), everything is gone. There don't seem to be any local save files (the folder where I would expect the save files looks to be pretty "clean"), so I guess the save files should be located in the cloud. I can only hope that there is some kind of sync issue with the latest version which will be fixed (ergo the saves were not cleared). I definitely won't replay those 20 hours.

There was a bundle but apparently only in Europe (maybe even UK-only) and only a couple thousands of them were made and sold, i.e. the 18 million are basically all standalone sales.

There are many things to consider here besides inflation: the size of the video game market (Breath of the Wild sold more than 30 million copies, SMB3 has sold 18 million copies - but who knows how many of them were pack-ins) the prize to produce & sell game copies (the cartidges alone on NES time were definitely more expensive than whatever mediums are used nowadays, I think it cost Nintendo themselves 5$ to 10$ per cartridge; in addition consider how many copies Nintendo nowadays sells directly via their e-shop, i.e. no middle men reducing the margin) development nowadays is much more expensive (I assume some AAA titles cost ten to a hundred times as much to develop compared to the more expensive NES games - Wikipedia lists the SMB3 development costs at $1.8 to 3 million adjusted to inflation, Elden Ring seems to have cost about $200 million; Breath of the Wild was about at half of that from what I can find) I am sure that there are other points to consider (I have no idea who the tax situation or the contracts with distribution channels have changed over the last 30+ years, for example)

There was not a single "you know", which is a big miss. On the other hand, I could not tell AI Conrad apart from real life Conrad. EDIT: I take it back, Meltzer in episode 10 is spot-on.

So they thought that they need to add the surnames of the Bushwhackers but only write "Hebner"? I assume they meant Dave as I don't see any other refs (and at the same time Strongbow, Lanza, Garea etc. are listed) but still.