Halo

Taskmaster NZ is so good - so many classic moments. It's a shame about Jeremy Wells as the Taskmaster, though - he's no-longer entirely dragging down the show but he's still the worst part of an otherwise great show.

Twitch has reduced the price of a subscription from £4.99 to £3.99 as of today:

Bonkers. Mark Watson’s latest book Contacts is 99p on Kindle

This is a weirdly respectable month after years of being terrible.

They’re surprisingly quiet about Sky One’s most iconic show: repeats of The Simpsons

Steam store completely died for anyone else?

I like the idea of overlays but the ones they’re selling are a bit naff. Up on Amazon now: https://www.amazon.co.uk/Elgato-Stream-Deck-MK-2-customisable/dp/B09738CV2G/ Anyone seen it below RRP anywhere?

At an event of Elgato products, I see a major revision of arguably their biggest product the Elgato Stream Deck v2 has been announced today: Does anyone use one of these? I don’t stream but I’ve always liked the idea of one of these for general work stuff and people seem to like them - £140 is a lot of money for something I might not use.

Intent doesn’t matter for obvious reasons. Shall I bring out what the rule book actually says? The idea that punishing a very specific unsafe action - grabbing a player by the collar to pull them back - would result in games ending with a dozen of sending offs is bizarre delusion.

It’s really not. Simple test: Try pulling your shirt collar vs the rest of your shirt to see the clear difference and why it shouldn’t be treated the same. The more I think about it, the more strongly I feel about this. It’s far less about this individual game or decision and more about player safety - pulling people down by the collar is dangerous play and has no place in sport. I’m genuinely surprised anyone is willing to argue against this.

OK, here’s my take: the England squad isn’t good enough and need better players to win major tournaments, and it’s frankly a miracle of good coaching, teamwork, luck and canny selection that they got so close.

Do you really think it’s the padding that makes it unsafe and not suddenly pulling someone down by the neck area? It’s not a typical shirt pull. Can we stop amplifying or pre-empting bigots? I don’t know or care who Darren Grimes is and I don’t see how it benefits anyone spreading nastiness all over the place.

Horse-collar tackles are incredibly unsafe and lead to major injuries. There’s a reason it’s banned in the NFL.

Can’t believe people are already putting the boot into Southgate and calling it a great squad. The mind boggles.

Great tournament for England, penalties are always a crapshoot. Lost against the better team really. Poor Saka

Doing that gets you ejected from an NFL game (horse collar tackle).

Looks like PS5 and Series S/X of FIFA 22 are both £70.

OLED screens usually have significantly worse battery life than the equivalent LCDs, so I assume they must have made some other changes if the battery life is the same on this model.

SMB's Japan twitter is posting levels every day. It bugs me they are making unnecessary changes to things like the soundtrack/sound effects that make the game actually worse rather than just giving it a facelift.

Enhance @enhance_exp The Tetris Effect: Connected Multiplayer Expansion brings Cross-Platform multiplayer, Spectator Mode, and more this Summer! Public Beta Test starts on June 23rd, and all owners on @Xbox, @PlayStation, and @EpicGames are invited! Read more: https://tetriseffect.game/beta

The lack of stickers on the bananas is bothering me a bit.

Decent conference, better than the others As ever, I wish they did more original titles rather than the constant sequels/remakes. Given the cost of ownership, it's somewhat moot anyway, especially with no Nintendo Selects line of discounted titles, as there's no way I'm paying £30-45 for a game.

Game and Watch?

Espgaluda II on the Japanese stream.

Demon is the new chaos.