cerebralhawks

I’m not sure. There have been times where I thought, this would be the perfect place for an ad break. And lo and behold… ad break. Sometimes they get cut off mid sentence and I think, either it’s automated, or maybe you’re right and they got a say but didn’t specify enough ad breaks so one was inserted semi randomly…

Yeah, I think it was meant to. Maybe the origins are same/similar.

Fun trivia: Isekai is a Japanese genre that means "trapped in another world." Sword Art Online made it popular but it wasn't the first, even in Japan. The idea of being trapped in a video game goes at least back to Tron in the 1980s. SAO was itself a revamp/remake of an older anime called .hack//SIGN — not officially, but it shared way too many details with that decade-older show. (The books were written around the time it was airing, but the show would have been green-lit almost a decade later, knowing there was a very similar show already out. And the same people worked on it, made the music, made the games, so yeah, similar DNA in both.) But the first isekai may have actually been Alice's Adventures in Wonderland. Isekai has western origins, Japan just gave it a simple name. And now it seems like there are dozens of isekai (word is the same singularly and plurally) coming out every year, and most of them suck. But isekai is everywhere. Stephen King has written isekai — The Dark Tower, The Talisman, 11/22/63, Fairy Tale, and probably more.

Yes, her and Eddie both (and Oy). His only companion is Jake.

No, no, Dennis Haysbert was good in it as the father Roland never forgot the face of, though I don't remember his father being in the books. Seeing President Palmer teach Luther the gunslinger creed was awesome to me.

Yeah, I know about Telegram's limitations. Been using it for ages, just to chat with my wife since she uses Android and I'm on an iPhone, and I don't do social media. It was the best way for us to message back and forth and we haven't moved off of it.

I have Matrix, Signal, and Session as well. Nobody chats me up on them but I keep them as options because why not? My phone has 512GB. Most is music and video. Apps are nothing to me.

Didn't hear that but it doesn't surprise me it's a honey pot or something.

It was a fictional assault on a show full of fictional assaults. The very first season (one of the early episodes) had a similar scene, involving a girl who was 11/12 in the books (but made a bit older for the show, but still implied to be underage). Talking about Daenerys Targaryen and Khal Drogo. I think that was worse as her character really had no idea what she was getting into, her brother was basically calling all the shots at that point and she was going along with it because he'd beat her (and worse) if she didn't play along. So she's playing house marrying this Mongolian dude, and it's all fun and games until he takes her out and ravages her, holding nothing back. Never mind that he turned out to be a good dude, more or less, that was still pretty brutal.

But honestly, you kinda know what you're getting with that show. You don't watch Walking Dead if blood and gore makes you squeamish. Neither of them are cultural classics that really need to be seen by anybody.

This is the future of game development. Games cost more to make, so they're going to pass the costs on to the consumer.

Right now games basically go for $70. There is a push for $80 and some developers are getting it (e.g. Nintendo with Mario Kart World). However, DLC will invariably push the game's cost closer to $100. To stick with MKW, it's not hard to see that not all the racers are in the game, who were in the last one. So the thinking there is they will probably be sold down the road for around $20 to get that game up to $100 total.

For a lot of gamers, the extra cost isn't that big of a deal. Gaming is still a cheap hobby, and all three console makers are seeing good numbers with their more expensive consoles. The PS5 and Xbox Series X weren't even improved, they just had their prices jacked up 10-20%. The Switch 2 is arguably just a minor uptick from the first model (and partially a downgrade from the OLED model) but it's something like 30-50% more? And it's selling like hotcakes, proving that gamers can afford to pay more, and will pay more. Not enough people are willing to put their foot down and declare that enough is enough when it comes to corporate greed. And with the costs of everything going up, it's not 100% greed driving the price increases. Developers gotta eat too.

I liked the Rockband model. You bought the base game for like $60 (or more like $200-250, whatever it was with the drums, guitar, and mic, but those were reasonable hardware costs) and then you bought the songs you wanted for $2 apiece. With the first two, the on-disc songs were mostly great. With the third one, it was more questionable, but since you could export the previous games' songs, it wasn't as bad. The fourth one's soundtrack mostly stunk, but then they gave us the ability to hide songs from certain sources, and by then we had over 150 songs from the previous 3 games (plus whatever DLC). Fun fact: Rockband is partially why console mods exist. Rockband 3 was the pilot program on Xbox 360, and to this day, you can load custom songs in it. It was never the intention to be able to do it for free, but the developers never cared that people were doing it. You could get uncensored songs, and you could get songs from other countries — there's a whole "J-Rockband" scene of people playing Japanese music on it — that the developers were never going to chart/sell. Not only were the developers all musicians, many of whom made customs for the paid market, but they have been "caught" playing the free customs as well. (The developer, Harmonix, is now part of Epic Games and is responsible for Fortnite Festival, which is free to play, but you can't use instrument controllers, and it's a revolving selection of songs.)

YouTube is trash. I was watching a cooking video, and I swear, after 60 seconds of ads, the YouTuber talked for maybe one whole minute before it went to ads again with a 60 second timer.

That while they judge themselves by their best intentions, they invariably, and subconsciously judge others by their actions.

Once you realise most people are just trying to get through the day and most people aren't trying to make things worse for others, it's easier to forgive perceived slights, and that will make your own day better, and make you less likely to subconsciously slight someone else.

Try it and see?

If it's the soda I'm thinking of, it's sickeningly sweet, with something like 130% of your recommended sugar intake in a 20 ounce bottle — roughly 600mL to those outside the US.

These days I can't drink soda (or anything carbonated, like champagne and beer) but I believe I have had Fanta Strawberry before. I know it was one strawberry brand.

But honestly, what olden days? The only strawberry soda I remember from back in "my" day (the 80s and early 90s) was Safeway Select. We didn't have Fanta back then where I was. I remember Sunkist and maybe one other brand had orange and grape soda, but only Safeway had strawberry soda IIRC. And it wasn't nearly as sweet!

"Woman"? Probably. "Human female"? Most likely.

Girls figure out from a much earlier age, on average, that most guys are comfortable knowing, that vibrations in that area feel good. So even without thinking about sex or pursuing orgasm, they will seek out things they can straddle that move in a way that feels good. One of those things, if you're around enough girls or a girl long enough you learn but maybe wish ya didn't.