dragontology

Reminds me of Doctor Who and how this awesome time-traveling, space-hopping demigod mostly only cares about this one random island (Great Britain).

The Doctor did come to America for a season (with the Eleventh Doctor, Matt Smith) and America has been mentioned a couple times (e.g. “New New York”, though that was an alien city) but for the most part, the series is UK-centric because it’s made in the UK.

Most anime takes place in Japan, if it’s from Japan. The Apothecary Diaries is a recent one that takes place in China. That’s weird. When anime is set in the west — for example, Fullmetal Alchemist and its sequel, Attack on Titan, Saga of Tanya the Evil, and SPYxFAMILY all being set in Germany, and The Promised Neverland taking place in the US (minor spoiler, some of these don’t actually take place there, but you’re led to believe they do) — Japan likes to make a live-action version that IS set in Japan, however ridiculous that ends up being. I guess they’re a bit xenophobic, but so are we, so… not gonna hold it against 'em, but rather, just be thankful for more entertainment options.

So, it happens. Placing the action in another country. It’s not normal, though.

Same word, same pronunciation, different meaning. In other parts of the world, cunt is a derogatory but generally endearing term for a male friend. In the US, it specifically refers to a woman’s genitals — more to the point, saying that’s the only useful thing about her.

Context matters. If you’re copying someone and I say you’re aping them, that’s an acceptable term. However, if they’re Black, you might wanna choose a different word. Associating Black/African-Americans with primates in any way is considered to be extremely racist. Imitating is perfectly acceptable as an alternative.

Back to cunt, it doesn’t even mean the same thing in Europe (English-speaking countries). You want fanny for that, but I’ve never heard of anyone calling someone a fanny to mean that they have one and its use is all they’re good for.

Furthermore, in the US, cunt is a curse. A curse is a kind of insult that goes beyond the surface level. It strikes you in your soul, and if it’s effective, it will stick with you. An insult can be brushed aside, but a curse lingers. The best curse I know isn’t even real, and it’s Hab SoSlI’ Quch, which is Klingon for “your mother has a smooth forehead.” YOUR mother has a smooth forehead (most likely) and so does mine. However, Klingons, from Star Trek, are defined by their bony forehead ridges. But mating across humanoid species is mostly possible in Star Trek, so the claim is that your mother isn’t Klingon. I should also point out that in Klingon society, honor (and dishonor) is hereditary, meaning the virtues and failings of a father are carried by his son. And that Klingon women are stronger than human men, and some Klingon men in fact. Klingon sex is violent, with hitting, kicking, and sometimes cutting. It’s a battle, basically. So for a Klingon man to have a partner with a smooth forehead, it means he’s not man enough for a Klingon woman… and his son probably isn’t, either. Worf, the Klingon on Star Trek: The Next Generation and its movies and spinoffs, portrayed by Michael Dorn, has a son by a human woman… and his honor is rarely questioned. Though I’m sure his son, Alexander, has been teased about it (his forehead ridges are less pronounced than other Klingon children, so it’s kind of obvious). Now that’s a curse that hits low and hard.

I use a Mac. It’s like Linux (UNIX actually, OS X is based on NextStep which was based on UNIX) but with corporate backing. It’s as user friendly as Windows. And the AI has an off switch. Siri can be disabled.

I like it. I feel like Apple is the last real computer company left that makes their own software. I don’t know how “real” the company is, though. The iPhone is straight up jank. Always hallucinating text on the keyboard after you type it. Changing what you say to appease some unseen overlord. But I don’t want to use a phone made by an advertising company either. That’s dystopian AF, topped only by the legions who will defend it. But I’m not sure it’s entirely worse.

Shigaraki Tomura, Boku no Hero Academia.

For starters, he’s this regular emo kid (about 19-20), except he’s got like a dozen disembodied hands grasping him from his torso and arms to his head and face.

The reason for the hands is pretty bizarre. Spoilers for the second half of season 5:

Oh, his super power? “Decay.” Anything he lays all five fingers on turns to ash. It’s as awesome and terrible as it sounds. What’s worse? Final season spoilers:

The author, Horikoshi Kohei, is a huge Star Wars nerd. If Shigaraki Tomura sounds like “anime Darth Vader,” that’s intentional. Except when “anime Luke Skywalker” tried to turn him back to good, final season spoilers:

And the kicker? Minor season 5 spoiler:

Note that all names use the Japanese naming convention of giving the family name before the given name (e.g. “Lincoln Abraham”), and the show is known outside of Japan as My Hero Academia.

Edit: I also like GLaDOS. YSK she’s also in Cyberpunk 2077, if only in spirit. Ellen McLain reprises her role and reuses some lines while voicing a psychotic robotaxi. I assume, with permission from Valve (who probably loved the cameo).

If you don’t do it every day or on a regular basis, you lose the drive.

Also, between AI, fan fiction, and social media, no one from the newer generations is reading original hand written fiction anymore. Some are, I’m sure, but most of, say, Stephen King’s Constant Readers are Boomers, Gen X, and Millennials. Looking at Gen Z and later, they know who Stephen King is, but most of them don’t care. They’ll watch a Stephen King movie, but never care about the book. And that’s Stephen King. One is the world’s biggest and most prolific writers (and my favorite) isn’t getting new readers. So how do you think the little guys are faring?

If you wanna write to write and not get paid and have a few people read it, write fan fiction and publish it on Ao3. If you wanna write original stuff, write fan fiction and convert, like what happened with Fifty Shades (it was originally Twilight fan fiction). Even still, it’s rare that that’s profitable.

I’m Gen X, I don’t.

I might say “that’s pretty fucking funny” though

As opposed to going to regular population and being a target? Yeah, I think they’re good with being alive.

Also, I’m not sure they have solitary confinement like in the movies. Then again, what do I know? Not more than the average wage slave, that’s for sure

My first iPhone, the 6s. I’m sure if I still had it, it would still be kicking ass. After that I got the SE 2, the 13 Pro, and now the 16 Pro Max. I do like having USB-C, but the SE 2 and 13 Pro were unnecessary.

So, an iPhone — but you really have to be careful. Some of them are bested by the next one. A few of them are good to run for a decade or so.

Not dumping on Android. I went through a few of them before I switched, and I liked the Galaxy S3. The others were all trash. I have a Galaxy S10 and I love it. I think these days it really doesn’t matter what you have as long as it has USB-C (for universal charging) and it’s decent or recent. The S10 will run for ten years. A lower-end Galaxy from a few years more recent would probably be fine, too. And that’s the thing with iPhone — none of them are bad, per se, they’re all flagship quality, they just have different compromises. Some Android phones are straight up duds. If you’re fairly tech savvy, this isn’t an issue. So, if you don’t like Apple, get a Galaxy S26, it should last you a long time. If you do, the iPhone 17 is the best deal in tech. It should last you at least a decade if you don’t suffer from FOMO.

MacBook Air. I’ve gone through a few Wintel laptops. None of them are good. No laptops are great for gaming, so you might as well get the MacBook. For a desktop, it’s a harder decision because no Macs are reallly good for gaming; even if you spend a few grand on a Studio, it’s only gonna be mediocre for gaming and you have fewer choices. Spend less on a decent gaming PC and have a better time. If you don’t care about gaming, it’s an easier decision.

Any of the krogan from Mass Effect. They’d just head-butt anyone who disagrees with them. Saving grace: head-butt them first and gain their respect.\

Talking about the really big reptilian dudes who look like they couldn’t exist outside of their armor.

Um… no? It’s considered law enforcement. They would lose their position and any certifications would be suspended first.

Most likely they’d be sent to one where they don’t know anybody. Possibly even transferred out of state. And placed in some kind of protective thing like they do for child molesters and such, since I’d think the state would be responsible for their safety (to some extent/on paper at least).

To put that into context, I’m an iPhone guy who uses Android on the side. My old S10 will never have that issue (it doesn’t get updated anymore), but for my next Android phone, that’s one of the first things I’m doing. Enabling developer settings. Turning off the animation speed entirely. And that. So for 24 hours I won’t be able to sideload. After that: it’s open season forever.

Not sure how it’ll go for existing Android users. I imagine you’ll get an update and your sideloaded apps will be disabled, then you’ll enable sideloading, and after the 24 hours, they’ll be enabled again.

Anime! Anime is to Japanese music now (really, since Attack on Titan and Sword Art Online blew up in 2013) what MTV was to western music in the 1980s. When I hear an opening or ending I like, I Shazam it and add it to a Japanese playlist I have, and if I really like it, I’ll explore other songs by the artist or band.

I know who The Weeknd is (and how to spell his name — it always irks me that it’s missing a letter, but it makes his name more memorable, because it makes one think about how it’s different). I’m not familiar with his music.

There are people in the world who don’t know who a lot of famous people are. Consider someone in Europe who knows quite a bit about association football (called soccer in the US, but they just call it football). In the US, you might know David Beckham was a soccer (sorry, football) player. You might even know what team (sorry, squad) he was on, but you might not know too many more. Someone in Europe might be able to name ten footballers off the top of their head, maybe tell you what position they play and who they play for.

American music and movies are pretty much known everywhere, but it’s also kind of regional. I’ve moved around a lot, and I’ve met people who swear up and down they never heard of bands I grew up listening to. They’re objectively famous, they sold many millions of albums, they were on MTV, but it’s possible to have just missed them. Same with movies and games.

As for The Walking Dead, I agree the show sucks. I haven’t read the comic books. Where it excels is the first two Clementine games. They’re adventure and “Choices Matter” games (much like Life is Strange), so they don’t really appeal to TWD fans who want more action. The first one involves a convict being taken to prison for murder when things go sideways, and he meets a little girl who is expecting her parents to come back Any Time Now. (You can guess what happened to them, and you’d be right.) She becomes the protagonist of the next two games, but I still haven’t played the third one. Despite having a little girl as a main character, the first game is gory enough. In the second game, Clementine is a bit older, maybe 12-13. In the third game, she’s a mother, she has a little boy to protect. Anyway, the games only show Hershel and Glenn from the show, and only briefly. You never meet Rick or the others. It’s strictly a spinoff, and it’s the best TWD media I’ve experienced.

Sorry for the late reply. .hack//SIGN has not aged well. I first watched it in Japanese with fan subs, and I had nothing to base my expectations on. It was bad, but I didn’t know any better. Years later I watched the English dub, and it was borderline unwatchable, so I tried going back to the Japanese version, and it wasn’t any better. I don’t think it was meant to be good (in that way) and I don’t think it can be saved.

The second season of .hack (Legend of the Twilight; also called Legend of the Twilight Bracelet in fansub) went full chibi. This actually started, I believe, with an OVA to SIGN (the first season) called .hack//GIFT, which ended with the boys spying on the girls in the bath. The whole thing was a farce, but the chibi element dominated the second season. .hack tried to take itself way more seriously with the third season, but I couldn’t get into it. I think I got 8 episodes in before throwing in the towel?

.hack is not good, IMO. Maybe there’s a point to be made. SAO, on the other hand, works very hard to make you think it’s cool. And it is cool. As an old guy who grew up with Star Wars, I think it’s a great modern media franchise. Certainly better than any of the last three mainline Star Wars films, and arguably SAO is also better than Phantom Menace, and a case could be made for the other two. It does borrow quite a bit from .hack (or maybe they both just borrow MMO tropes; I never played MMOs), but it expands on those ideas greatly. For example, .hack//Another Story. Another OVA where one of the main girls is telling one of the guys about her first friend in the game, this unbeatable girl warrior and the sacrifice she made. So when the last third or so of SAO season 2 came out, and here comes a similar purple-haired female duelist, I said “oh I bet she’s logged in 24/7.” And I’m not going to spoil it, but while SAO took the story in the same direction, it went way deeper, and was so much more satisfying. I knew how the story was going to end because I’d seen the original. But SAO did it way, way better. Honestly, if the Mother’s Rosary (name of the book it’s based on) section of SAO were a standalone anime, it would probably be my favorite anime of all time.

Everything James Bond has is tailored to him; why wouldn’t his suits be the same? Same with his mundane gadgets having all kinds of secret features? Same with his suit. I just assume it’s a bespoke suit that is cut very well and has secret features like everything else he uses.

Or: he can make video calls on a watch in the 1960s and mobility in a suit is where you draw the line??

How do you milk oats?

I’m not trying to troll the vegans here, though I do feel a sense of sarcasm here. But it’s not because I consume animal products; it’s because I enjoy coffee and I’m wondering what… whatever “oat milk” is …adds to coffee.

For the record, straight up milk is nasty in coffee and I don’t understand why people do it. Creamer mixes milk and cream. Hot coffee does something to milk that just makes the whole cup gross. I think the thicker, heartier cream holds its own against the coffee.

So in my head I’m thinking you juice the oats somehow, but I’m not sure how you get cream without any cow’s milk. Soy?

I go to a local coffee shop and they do oat milk. I’m not vegan but I’m not opposed to vegan solutions. So I am curious about the oat milk. Can anyone explain without getting political, strictly on culinary basis, what oat milk brings to coffee?

Not exactly what you asked, but I think it’s important to note how old protest songs are still so relevant. I listen to a lot of 1980s music (in fact, presently playing my 80s playlist, just went from Tiffany to Belinda Carlisle) and older music.

Listen to the 1971 song Won’t Get Fooled Again by British band The Who. I’m sure most of you have heard it. Listen to what he said 55 years ago and imagine it was written this year, and see how relevant it is.

Mars family is pretty private, not much is known about them. The people behind M&Ms, Dove, Milky Way, 3 Musketeers, Snickers, and a few others. I think they make the best mass marketed chocolate in the US. They’re owned by the Mars family (it’s actually their name) but very little is known about them.

A friend told me about Bad Omens (metal) and I’ve been listening to them. I don’t usually like heavy music these days, but sometimes it can be cool and they have some clever lyrics.