MelodiousFunk

Off-topic, but wow. That cookie permission pop-up is pure cancer.

So, it took a lot of effort, but I cut it down quite a bit to what I think are the most important parts.

I related to this on a visceral level. Brevity is hard.

Agreed on like 90% of your takes. The “real”-feeling near-future sci-fi was excellent. And the thought put towards the physics was very much appreciated. Where we diverge a bit is on the romance track. I didn’t have an issue with the direction, and was actively rooting for them. Their affection felt organic and natural. But as you said, it derailed a bit and, combined with career choices, left me disappointed at the very end. But the good was so freaking good.

I’ve had a hankering to re-watch lately. I’ve got the DVDs, and they will do in a pinch, but it’s hard to go back to SD anymore. Last I checked the show was in rights purgatory, with no discs in print or a way to stream it. Maybe I’ll finally get around to reading the manga.

Congrats! It’s good to see some Zelda II love. It took me years to beat this as a kid, and you bet your ass I got some tips from Nintendo Power lol. To this day it’s still one of my favorite NES games.

I worked in a “datacenter” where the humidifier function for the HVAC unit was turned off because it leaked under the floor into an adjoining office when it was trying to humidify. Management refused to fix the unit due to the cost, and saw no issue with running the room with relative humidity in the teens all winter. Madness.

…TIL that Anime Corner Store is still around. Haven’t bought from them in over 20 years. It’s been almost all Right Stuf since then. Which means I don’t really have any other leads that aren’t the obvious big corps (Crunchy, Amazon, etc.), sorry.

I love that show. It hits all the feels, and the opening still gives me chills. I’ve had the manga on my shelf for quite a few years at this point. I should probably get around to reading it.

Having pushed Earth to the brink of environmental disaster and overpopulation, the central government segregates the populace. The wealthy and well-connected get to remain as they are, but billions of everyday working folks get forced into artificial, self-contained living spaces over the course of several decades. Some of those spaces remain relatively comfortable. Many are densely populated, and some of the most isolated don’t even get natural sunlight. None of them have any say in how they are governed. This breeds unrest.

In the most remote communities, there is a growing push towards being self-governed. In tandem, the idea that their half-century plus of environmental isolation is pushing a new evolutionary path for humans starts taking hold. The champion of this ideal is a charismatic politician, who uses the notion of a higher-evolved humanity as justification for independence. Amid tensions with the corrupt, complacent central government, the politician dies suddenly. Both movements are then co-opted by populist fascists, whose leading family has effectively complete control of the local military. This leads to the deadliest, most brutal war humanity has ever seen.

This is the setup for Mobile Suit Gundam (1979), and yeah, I’d say that’s still pretty relevant.

I got bit by this earlier in the year. I needed a smaller TV for the bedroom. I narrowed down the line I wanted. Target and Best Buy were the only two local stores to carry it. BB had the 2023 model, Target had a 2022 model with a sub-designation that was $50 cheaper. I went with Target because I didn’t care if it was an older model, just needed something good enough. Well, it wasn’t good enough, not even close. The color accuracy was so bad that the tint adjustment was useless — it was both too pink and too green no matter what. I dug out my old calibration disk and tried to adjust the color by isolating red/green/blue channels. The best-effort adjustments made it better, but still awful. I even connected it to the network (hardwire only, fuck “smart” appliances) just in case a firmware update helped. It did not, so back it went. Had to wait, multiple times in line and for someone to pull from the back, for like 45 minutes because they “don’t do exchanges” so I needed to do a song and dance to get the sale price on a replacement purchase. Got the replacement home, same deal. At that point I suspected it was leftover Black Friday junk.

Took it back and went to Best Buy. Spent the extra $50. Perfect color out of the box. Lesson(s) learned.

I am in Edo Japan surrounded by samurai and Amanto. Everyone is calling me Madao and, well… they’re not wrong.

No thank you, I just ate.

I think TotK put my jaw on the floor more times than BotW overall. And the mechanics are amazingly well thought out. But yeah, BotW has something TotK doesn’t. And that’s okay.

Breath of the Wild on Switch. It had been a long long time since a game felt that immersive. I’d start a session, say to myself, “I’m gonna head towards this objective,” and four hours later I’d be in a completely different direction yet still entirely satisfied. Even the tutorial felt huge and weighty… at least until I was dumped into the wider world with only a suggestion and a general direction in which to go. I loved the hands-off approach. Everything felt organic. I remember being giddy playing Wind Waker at release, excited to get to explore the map once it opened… only to find that the first few far-off places I visited were locked behind items I didn’t have yet. With BotW, it felt like that decades-old disappointment was finally righted.

The same reason anyone takes a USB stick anywhere: to inconspicuously drop in a conspicuous place in hopes that some rube will find it, put it in their PC, and get pwnd.

Me before reading the article: It’s got to be dates. Excel thinks everything is a date.

Me after reading the article: Even the workaround is halfhearted. Jeebus.

All of the design talent and experience has been purged from their ranks in the last 10-12 years. They are a trash tier developer and have burned all the nostalgic goodwill of their past successes.

What’s crazy amongst all this madness is whatever skeleton crew they stuck in a closet to tend to the corpse of D3 has been knocking it out of the park lately. It’s like they got a green light to do whatever and started ticking features from the community wishlist. It won’t last much longer as after next season it’ll just be cycling through previous content. But at least for now, someone over there appears to care.

Netflix, what are you trying to do? I can’t cancel my subscription in protest if it’s still cancelled from the last time you did something boneheaded.

IMO, HDR makes a bigger difference than 1080 vs 4K.

They killed Archer Blu-ray releases after 6 seasons. Stranger Things, 2. Bojack Horseman, one. Haunting of Hill House and Good Omens only got standard HD, not 4K (at least initially, haven’t checked recently).

I’m more than happy to buy media for things that I enjoy. Much more likely than I am to keep streaming subscriptions active.

Indeed. In my case, I fought through managerial malaise and turned the entire process on its ear. But even after the approach proved its worth, they refused to put a dev resource on it. It became my problem 24/7.

Remember kids, being good at something outside of your job description means it’s now your job. If the boss refuses to compensate you for it, slap it on your resume and find someone who will.