I can’t remember exactly when I first watched it. Within a year or two of the pandemic though. I was solidly an adult.

It was not my first anime, but I still would not call myself an experienced anime watcher or anything. I watched it because I really liked Kill La Kill, looked up the history of studios Trigger and Gainax, and saw that this was one of their core franchises. And I saw Evangelion’s cultural impact on Japan being compared to Star Wars in America, so I figured I shohkd watch it.

I think its great. It starts off with relatively high-budget episodes, showing off smooth animation, cool and unique-looking mechs and great sound design (I watched the Netflix English dub, which had a bigger budget than the original). The kaiju they fight are pretty unqiue looking too. I’m also a sucker for other cultures appropriating western culture, so I love all random christian imagery they toss in unattached to any of its original meaning, just to appear “foreign” to their Japanese audience. It hits a lot of the mech anime tropes, complete with an animal mascot side character for comic relief. The 14 year old girls are a bit too sexualized for me, but I kind of get they were trying to sell this to 14 year old boys so… Eh. And even though its 14 year olds, they don’t spend a whole lot of time lingering on school life which is nice.

After the first few episodes it slowly shifts to the point where calling it a mech anime is an inside joke. The pacing is incredible and refreshing, and I think has aged even better when compared against most modern media that is edited extremely quickly to hold people’s attention. Beyond that… Well I could make a wall of spoiler text but I just recommend watching it yourself. I will say that this is a rare case where the sexualization of young girls is an actual artistic choice with meaning to it beyond just creepy horniness. Although I still think that’s mixed with an element of marketing that is a bit gross… Its complicated.

I also feel like I need to say I don’t take it too seriously. The psychological aspects are largely based on Freudian theories that were debunked decades or centuries before. I also often see Shinji used to represent introverted people, and I disagree. There’s a common trope of characters like him, who I would categorize as either extroverts who are bad at being extroverts or introverts written by extroverts trying to imagine what introversion is like. For reasons, I think Shinji is the latter.

Since then I’ve watched it a handful of times again. I showed it to my wife and it became her favorite anime, and she even got a tattoo based on it. We have watched the rebuilds a couple times, and they’re… Okay. I don’t think they stand up on their own, but they are more accessible for people who don’t have the attention span to watch the original.

If you cannot do it legally then it’s not legally ownership. You are talking about de facto ownership, which is another thing entirely.

I can totally bequeath in my will a safety deposit box with notes containing all if the credentials required to access all of my accounts and devices, functionally giving away my Gog account. However, if Gog or any of the publishers involved find out that I am legally dead they can totally ban that account and pursue legal action against anyone else who accessed it, violating terns of service

Kind of depends on what definition of ownership you want to use.

Can you re-sell it? No.

Can you give it away? No.

Can you bequeath it in your will? No.

So no, I don’t think so. Personally I prefer Steam’s more recent approach of just very clearly telling you that what you are paying for is a license for use. I find Gog’s redefinition of the word “own” distasteful.

1. It has gotten bigger. More active. More posts, more new content. When i first came over i would check the All page, sorted by eitber Active or Hot, and only find a couple of new posts per day. It is still nowhere near as active as Reddit was back then (probably a goos thing), but it has enough content to help me procrastinate at work now.

2. LemmyNSFW died and has been replaced by FediNSFW recently. I am sure that it will be better in the long-term, but it still doesn’t seem to be back to where it was yet. I think a lot of the old posters were bots, largely re-posting from Reddit, and not all of those have been rebuilt yet. I have mixed feelings about that.

3. The Connect app has gotten better and better. Love it.

4. For the past year or so, Lemmy has been of a size big enougj for patterns to ripple and promulgate through it bht small enough to notice them. For example, almost immediately after New Years several different communities on different instances started to see a drastix influx of webcomic posts. Usually 4-panel ones. Usually low-fidelity ones (XKCD-style, not Girl Genius for example). And usually oned with some sort of error or controversy. Rage bait to get the comments going, but nothing controversial enough to get banned or removed.

There would be new accounts made that just posted a handful of these comics quickly, and sometimes argue with people in the comments. Once people like me started pointing out the pattern they started deleting the posts and accounts after a couple days. I’m not sure when it stopped, but i have not noticed one for probably a month.

Whatever is the most appropriate for the task at hand. Sometimes it makes sense to make your own.

An interesting theory, but I think the key question that needs to be answered is: why would OpenAI stakeholders be prepared to tank the company for Microsoft?

I’m not saying it’s impossible. There could be some sort of tie between Altman and Microsoft, or the high level executives or shareholders of OpenAI.

And who would be left holding the bag? NVIDIA? Is this a scheme to get them to make a ton of AI-centered GPU’s, so that when OpenAI goes down Microsoft would be able to buy that hardware super cheap? Maybe, but then again someone else could too, which would be easier if OpenAI’s assets were on the open market.

I’m not buying this theory yet, but it’s kntriguing enough to keep an eye on at least.

I think these thoughts are healthy and necessary, and exactly the kind of thoughts I like to have in the shower. It’s great to, as you’re waking up, reflect on the day before with a little bit of distance.

We all fuck up. Sometimes it takes another person pointing it out for us to realize it and apologize. But I find apologies are even more meaningful when the wrongdoer realizes it and apologizes on their own.

Lol this is a good one

Some of these are real stretches involving band names getting swapped around.

The original band called “Judas Priest” broke up entirely. KK Downing, and Ian Hill were in a band called Freight together. Al Atkins of the now-defunct Judas Priest joined Freight, and they decided the now-available name of Judas Priest was cooler. It was not the same band. Furthermore, before their first album was recorded Atkins was replaced with Halford, and Tipton also joined. So I would count Ian Hill, Rob Halford, and Glenn Tipton all as founding members.

Opeth is similar. The first Opeth before Ackerfeldt broke up without recording any albums.

I have some confounding factors.

First of all, my house was built in 1921 so is not designed around a big screen. We have a 70" TV in our living room, but it’s over the fireplace and rough 12’ away from our faces. Experts recommend something larger for that distance, but that is the biggest thing that fits between the mantle and ceiling. We could look into one of those fancy moving TV mounts for fireplaces, but they’re quite expensive too and seem like a pain.

The second piece is that I had my retina re-attached a few years ago. Even with a strong prescription I still find it harder to see details from far away ever since.

So I prefer smaller screens closer to my face in general. I do a lot of my gaming on the Steam Deck. I watch a lot of stuff on my phone, and I have a 10" tablet I use sometimes too.

Sound is another thing. I find good quality headphones best anyone’s fancy expensive home theater setup consistently, but the tradeoff is that headphones are usually less convenient and get uncomfortable to wear after a while. Bluetooth means less battery life for my phone, wires means I’m tethered (I have an Xperia so I have a headphone jack at least).

Ah yes. Elections are fascist and true leftism is… Let me guess… A dictatorship of the proletariat?

EnLiGhTeNeD cEnTrIsM

Geese

I have had issues in the past with bad SD cards on my pi-hole that cause it to stop working after a few minutes. I know you said it works fine without Mullvad, but was that just a quick verification or an extended long-term test with traffic?

I would disagree with this quite strongly. Most brands have several different tiers of products. Often, especially for the budget-level options like Squiers, the manufacturing is outsourced. For example, my first electric guitar was from Cort, a South Korean company whose main business at the time was doing contract manufacturing for Ibanez, Squier, PRS, and G&L, Kramer, Honer, and more. Literally the same wood and parts, just with slightly different shapes and branding.

The highest-end, elitist guitars would be small shops that focus on handmade custom work. Stuff like Dunable or what PRS used to be. Jackson is now owned by Fender, but it used to be a more premium brand. Custom shop stuff is always going to be premium regardless of brand- Schecter, Ibanez, Dean, Gibson, Fender, doesn’t matter.

To compare this to OP’s prompt, it would be like if Hershey did custom high-quality chocolate options, also sold good quality chocolate, and also sold a decent value option in grocery stores, and also sold the plastic brown goop they sell today as a budget option.

For breakfast I like egg cups. Take a muffin tin, spritz with cooking spray, and line each depression with a slice of ham, basically acting like a cupcake wrapper would. Crack an egg in each one. Add some salt, other seasonings, cheese, veggies, whatever else. Bake at 350F, usually for 20-30 minutes but I would recommend checking every 10 to start. Put them in a container and refrigerated for a week or two. Every morning I take 1 or 2 out, microwave them for 30-40 seconds, and put some hot sauce or ranch on them.

For lunch: protein smoothie. Orange juice, vanilla protein powder, peanut butter, ice. Optionally, a banana. I typically make one batch real quick and split it between my wife and I for lunch. Basically add them in and blend until smooth, and I would recommend starting with 1 serving of each basically (8oz OJ, 1 scoop protein, 2tbsp peanut butter, and as much ice as you need for texture). It’s like an orange creamsicle- the peanut butter adds a lot of texture but not a ton of peanut flavor that might be weird with orange.

My wife and I are on a low-carb diet, so we use low-sugar OJ and only 4oz. 2 scoops of low-cabe whey protein. Considering switching from peanut to almond butter, or just a bit of peanut oil instead.

For dinner is the real serious meal prep: chicken breast/tenders and vegetables. Put 5lbs of chicken in a casserole dish. Add whatever seasonings you like: pickled jalapeno, soy sauce, rosemary + thyme, Dijon mustard, ranch seasoning, etc. Chicken is an incredible canvas for pretty much any seasoning across the world. Bake at 350F for… At least an hour, probably more like 90 minutes. Get some decent re-usable sectioned containers (microwave + freezer safe required, dishwasher safe is required for me personally too). If you have whole breasts you might want to cut them into portions before cooking (halves or thirds usually. You could cut it into bite-sized pieces if you’re ambitious). Or you could cut after cooking, just let it cool off a bit first.

For sides, I like frozen bags of broccoli and cauliflower. Carrots, squash, and peas are good when I’m less concerned about carbs. Some things are better fresh, like mushrooms (with soy sauce), cucumbers (with soy sauce), or other local seasonal stuff. Brussel sprouts are good frozen, better fresh. Artichoke hearts are great. Stuff like onions and bell peppers can be good additions, but j typically need them to be mixed either with each other or something else to work.

The idea is you can put all those containers in a freezer and then microwave them for roughly 3-5 minutes depending on how much is in them. We have a dedicated freezer in our basement for this. It’s nice that my wife and I can independently choose whatever flavor we are in the mood for that night.

When the price of chicken has been really high, it’s easy enough to switch to another meat. Sausages are good. Pork loin cut into medallions.

All our friends have so many conflicting diets and dietary restrictions that are a certain point we are better off having sinners that are Being Your Own Meal, so those frozen dinners are really nice.

To make these vegetarian… If eggs are alright then you could probably remove the ham from the egg cups, but the egg might stick to the muffin pan. Maybe you could find some other sort of liner. My mom uses canned crescent roll dough in a similar way to make miniature quiches, so maybe something like that would work?

Protein smoothie does not require any animal products. Could be vegan pretty easily as long as you check the ingredients. The big issue is cost, especially for protein powder.

Frozen dinners might be trickier to make vegetarian just because I’m not sure what protein sources would do well frozen and microwaved. Maybe tofu? Or noodles?

Here are some things that I’m not eating on my current diet, but are great for saving money.

Oatmeal for breakfast (make steel-cut oats in a slow cooker,you can add milk, egg, peanut butter, maple syrup, brown sugar, butter, salt, spices, frozen or fresh fruit, protein powder, whatever).

Chilli. If you want ground meat, brown it and season it first (if you aren’t familiar with seasonings, start by grabbing a chilli powder mix from the store, look at the ingredients, then buy those things and experiment with proportions). Then add it to a slow cooker. Add at least 1 can of tomato paste, crushed tomatoes, and beans (I like black beans, but kidney is good too). Add more tomatoes and/or beans, or if you really want to save money add rice (might need a bit of water too). Cook on low- it’ll probably be ready after 4 hours but will be fine for 8 hours. From there you can dip tortilla chips in it, make some cornbread, pour over rice, make sandwiches like Sloppy Joes, etc.

Rice, bread, noodles, and potatoes are all great cheap fillers.

Eh even before the Internet people had other tools to help with this. Physical books with people’s addresses and phone numbers. Specialized holders for various business cards. Yellow pages and white pages. I suppose a lot of incidental memorization is lost but I don’t think it’s really a skill lost so much as the tool changed.

And those tools pre-date the invention of the telephone, so it’s not like people spent hundreds of years memorizing phone numbers before writing was invented.

Started with guitar 21 years ago. Don’t remember the exact timelines, but I picked up bass and piano within a couple years. Then drums and singing. Dabbled in mandolin, banjo, cello. Most stringed instruments, especially those in western music, are pretty similar so they’re pretty easy to switch between. I even dabbled in clarinet because my older sister left it with my parents when she moved out, but I never put that much time into it.

My talents in each have waxed and wanted over the years. Guitar was always my primary preference.

The problem is that everyone and their mother can play guitar. It makes sense- tons of households have guitars lying around. Acoustics are a really cheap and easy entry point- any college student can pick one up and learn a few chords and start trying get attention. It fits in your dorm or in the car you’re halfway living out of. There’s also plenty of cheap box kits of really low-quality electric guitars + small practice amps that are affordable for parents, with the added benefit of making kids use headphones so you don’t disturb the neighbors. Drum kits, by contrast, are expensive, big, difficult to move around (band practice pretty much always has to be at the drummer’s place), and loud. So drummers are usually hard to find.

So I spent time in bands as a bassist and keyboardist. Two separate times I had wealthier friends who played guitar and had younger brothers whose parents purchased a drum kit, but those brothers never learned to play, so I ended up behind the kit even though I couldn’t really practice on my own time. For a while I was the basisst in a band where the left-handed drummer didn’t have room in his house, but there was room in my basement so I ended up messing around and learning to drum left-handed a bit too. I’ve been the lead guitarist, but only rarely outside of my solo stuff.

Bass is very similar to guitar. Different style, and I do think it’s important to change your approach and technique (I don’t use picks on bass), but a lot still translates. With keyboard I was never classically trained or anything- I mostly just learned guitar, bass, and vocals parts on keyboard. I put a lot of time into programming software synths. Often I would just match what those instruments were playing with a different texture, or just play chords underneath. As a keyboardist I would also be in charge of like, punctuation and sound effects. The kind of little extra things you don’t notice on an album and often gets cut out of live shows.

I think I’ve been a decent singer. I initially took lessons with the intention of just being a background vocalist and maybe doing some acoustic open mic nights. I joined the choir in college and got selected as the best Bass to represent the school at an event one year. I kind of accidentally ended up as the lead singer of a few bands just by being the best singer in the band. Never just the lead singer though - always play drums or bass or guitar too. Singing is a lot of work- I needed to stay in shape, watch what I ate and drank (especially on the nights of practice or performance). It’s easy to identify mistakes as you’re playing an instrument, but for singing I would have to record myself and listen back to it a ton. I learned from my choir director all the little details to listen for- pitch drift, sloppy pronunciation, breathing issues, etc. And Satan forbid I catch a cold before a show. Right now I’m out of practice, so while I could totally rock out a karaoke night at a bar I would need a couple of months notice before playing a real show.

Most bad games aren’t really a terrible experience. Usually, it takes a few minutes, maybe an hour max, to realize “wow this game is bad and not worth putting any more time into”.

I think the worst games are the ones that can suck you in with the promise of being good. For me, that was Catherine.

The game has 3 main phases. The main “gameplay” is 3D block pushing puzzles that are presented as dream sequences for the main character. They start off simple, but add mechanics and complexity as you would expect from any good puzzle game. Then there is the time you spend with the main character awake hanging out at a bar, talking to other characters as a social sim game. The characters seem varies and like they could be interesting. Finally, there are animated cutscenes that are pretty good looking that show what your main character does throughout the day, between waking up and ending up at the bar every evening.

The biggest problem is the writing. The main character starts off as a pretty shitty, selfish asshole. At first I played hoping to see him learn and grow as a character. When it became clear that wasn’t going to happen I instead started to hope that he at least suffered some consequences for his actions. But… No, he doesn’t. He just stays an asshole the whole time. None of the other characters really go anywhere either. And while the gameplay started off good, it quickly burns through all of the block pushing mechanics they thought of and turns into a repetitive slog. It really felt like they only made the first 1/3rd of a complete game and decided to just copy and paste that to pad out time instead of actually finishing the game.

You can find critics of its use that are almost as old as its use. Oddly, for some reason critics of its use don’t seem to show up… Until it started being used.

Poets and authors have been artistically butchering, changing, and shaping language for as long as language has existed. This is neither an argument for nor against any particular change. Just look at the nonsense that James Joyce did.

I have a non-binary partner and I respect their pronouns, but personally if I cared enough to change my pronouns I would be more comfortable with “it” to avoid any confusion when discussing a mixture of singular and plural nouns. Heck, if I was going to make my own language from scratch singular vs plural pronouns would be much more commonly used while gendered pronouns would be reserved for specific scenarios where gender is relevant.