CerebralHawks

Smiley Face was made by Greg Araki, who has made some really dark, depressing, and generally fucked-up shit. I mean, he has a movie called “Totally Fucked Up.” If not Smiley Face, he may be best known for The Doom Generation. He also made a few movies with James Duval, who was the crop duster’s son in Independence Day (his first big film IIRC) and Frank the Bunny in Donnie Darko.

Araki made Smiley Face because his last few movies were so depressing, so he wanted to do something a little brighter. That’s why it has “basically no plot,” it’s a feel-good (ish?) movie.

FWIW, the honmoon isn’t powered by music. It’s powered by the consciousness/mood of the populace, which is influenced with music. The demons are trying to steal souls so they can attack it directly. Ostensibly, what they’ve been trying before — such as terrorist attacks on planes as shown in the beginning — hasn’t been as effective. So they’re trying something else.

It’s supposed to be about how music brings people together.

Now, how the demons take souls by getting people to listen to this other band… that’s not as clear. I’d think Soda Pop bringing people together would have the exact same effect on the honmoon as Golden bringing people together, but what do I know?

I think whether KPDH has a stupid/ridiculous premise depends on how well it fits with the Korean stuff it’s based on. I’m not Korean, I don’t know anything about that stuff, so I just accept it at face value and it’s fine.

None of them were ever good.

I don’t trust them.

The better question is: how do you know it isn’t a scam? Or funding the opposition? You don’t.

Who cares? They officially support child predators. Not pedophiles who have never offended — those who actively prey upon children and have done so. Reddit says they’re a protected group now, you can’t even call for them to receive longer prison sentences. That’s what they banned me for. AI, maybe, but upheld by a person upon appeal.

I recognise it as being used by Pink Floyd, but I don’t recognise it as a symbol of Pink Floyd fandom — that’s more commonly the prism, or any of the album covers.

Could just be a symbol they thought looked cool without any real meaning behind it. Something like that, I’d just ask. And play dumb in case they’re dangerous. Like “isn’t that from Pink Floyd or something?” If they shy away from the question or say something like “nah it means something else” it’s probably exactly what you think it is. Then again, if it is Pink Floyd, expect a lecture. Just tell them A Momentary Lapse of Reason was better than Dark Side of the Moon and see if they write you off as crazy rather than try to correct you. (I do personally think Momentary Lapse was the better album, but I’m not about to tell a Pink Floyd fan that. The hot take I will share with one is that the one with the stupidly long title on Ummagumma (they’ll tell you the whole name) is one of their most ambitious tracks. That, I think, might at least get some respect. (The title is something like “Several Species of Small Furry Animals Grooving With a Pict.” But I think there’s more to it.)

Define “stock.” You mean what comes on a phone? Or raw AOSP?

I’ve ran CyanogenMod back when that was as close as most people were ever gonna get to AOSP. I’ve also run the “Google Play Edition” version of Android that was only available outside the US for whatever reason back in the day. I remember we had to flash the firmware, then flash something else to use CDMA on it (when that was a thing). Otherwise you got no signal because out of the box it was GSM only.

Right now, my Android phone runs whatever the latest version of OneUI is available for the Galaxy S10, because that’s what I have. My main phone is an iPhone, but I do like running the S10 for a few things. Like if I’m gonna be doing any typing. Gboard on Android kicks the crap outta any keyboard on iPhone. Anyway, I’m running “stock” — what is stock for that phone. I have no real interest in modding it. I would not mind running an AOSP-like on the S10, but I don’t really need to be fancy about it, and since I want Gboard, I need Google Play Services, so something privacy-oriented isn’t going to work. Not on the S10, anyway.

Some teachers want to make students’ lives better. A few teach because they failed at something. Without knowing a thing about you and assuming your story is fact, it’s possible your teacher is jealous of you and invented some slights to hold against you and it went too far.

I once embarrassed a computer teacher and he made up lies about me. Nothing sexual though. I did have to deal with him on his terms. It wasn’t fair but being a kid usually isn’t. I won though. I graduated, I moved on.

A Nintendo Switch running Animal Crossing. Assume it has some kind of perpetual battery, and they can figure out how to operate it/play the game, and read our modern English.

I’m thinking they figure modern civilisation is about (or back to) fishing and farming… and that animals are intelligent. Like validating TF outta the Egyptian pantheon. You’re a human but you have a dog for a neighbor, here’s a koala, a gorilla, an eagle… and they all talk and wear clothes.

(Of course, if we wanna blow their minds with a game AND we can assume they can play it, why not just go straight to Cyberpunk?)

Good, but I feel like they let PG&E off with a slap on the wrist. I’m not 100% sure they were 100% responsible for that fire, but I do believe they were more negligent than they were fined for. Nothing “personal” against PG&E or anything like that but I feel like they could have had better safety regulations that may or may not have prevented that one big fire a few years back.

Don’t have one anymore.

For the longest time, it was an Amiga game that my brother played more than me. The bitch of it was, I wasn’t even good at the game. But I remembered it and I wanted to recall the name, but couldn’t. The other bitch of it was — I later learned, after finding it — that another game came out in the same setting (not the same kind of game at all) that had a VERY similar name. I’d heard this name, and it didn’t set off any alarm bells in my head.

TL;DR the game is called Stellaryx, and of course the more popular other game is Stellaris. I’ve still never played the latter one. But, the name of that game should have clued me in, but didn’t.

So anyway, I remembered an Asteroids clone with aliens, and these black panels called monoliths you could shoot. You’d enter a single screen stage where, like in Asteroids, touching one side of the screen meant you’d warp to the other side. You also only had thrust and shoot for controls, and, like Asteroids, controls were a bit wonky since you didn’t have brakes. There were asteroids, and ice chunks, but there were also other things to shoot. And gorgeous backgrounds. Oh, and there were powerups. After so many of these stages — clearing one sucked you up to the top/center to enter the next area — you’d do like a Lunar Lander thing and land on a platform to complete the level.

The only other thing I remembered was that at the beginning, you chose difficulty by flying into it on a special stage for selecting the difficulty, and if you flew into one of the side ones at great enough speed, you’d go through the middle choice as well. (I was not sure if that did anything special, or even which difficulty option it chose of the two, but it absolutely showed both being selected, the first was not unselected when you flew through the middle one, and the middle one was not ignored by flying through the one on the side.

For years and years I asked on forums. Also tried Googling various terms. Nobody had heard of this game. Until one day I found a YouTube video where someone played a bit of like 100 Amiga games. The game wasn’t shown, but I went ahead and asked the YouTuber. They gave me a list of 5-6 games it could be, and one of them was the right one. So, mystery solved. Just had to find someone who was as old as I am and who had similar memories/experience. Because I’ve found most people on the Internet are pretty young. You will find a few old timers out there who don’t get memes and who don’t know what “skibidi” means and at this point are afraid to ask… but they’re few, far between, and they don’t always know more than their younger peers. (And yet, I’ve often found I’m not the oldest guy in the comments most of the time. But often the most verbose.)

Oh, there are a couple movies I remember details of but I don’t recall the name of the movie, but they’re not movies I ever want to watch again. Like I saw something horrific once upon a time and later forgot what the movie was. I found what the movie was, but a better example was a show… I thought it may have been an episode of Supernatural because there was a big car (like Dean’s) but I wasn’t sure. I remembered a teenage girl running from someone through some pot plants, and someone getting put in a trunk, and someone being poisoned. Everyone told me I imagined it. Then by a pure stroke of luck, my wife and I decided to watch a show called Justified — what I saw was the first episode of the second season. But now everyone wants to say Justified is cool and they love it, but when I pretty accurately described the second season pilot they couldn’t tell me the name of the show? Make it make sense. Anyway, it’s an awesome show, and the teenage girl? Katelyn Dever, one of my favorite young actresses. She’s awesome in Justified (sort of like a little sister/niece type companion role for the main guy) and I’ve seen her in a few other things. Hearing she’s in something is usually enough to get me to watch it.

I have never biologically sired any offspring, but I have over a dozen kids who have looked up to me, who I’ve helped raise, over the years.

Many of them have “outgrew” me and some I’ll never see again, but I don’t think any of them will ever forget me. I certainly won’t forget any of them.

I’m not a teacher or anything like that, I just happened to be in a few right places at a few right times. I’ve had kids call me dad. I’ve had kids tell me they wish I was their dad. I’ve had kids tell me I’d make a good dad. I’ve had kids tell me or their parents they’re completely at odds with whatever their parents say and will only listen to me, and in times like that I’ve had to make some hard calls, basically take them aside and get them to do what their parents ask. I’ve never come between a kid and their parents — while I’m always on the kid’s side, I recognise that the parents have the kid’s best interest in mind. So I help them see that. Unless one of the parents is a complete POS. That’s happened too. Then I just help them see their own value.

Weird, I thought I put city. Thanks for quoting me so I can see that’s not what I sent. Either iPhone autocorrect is worse than I thought, or I’m not as young as I used to be.

They can in many areas but chose not to. So you’d have to ask them why they don’t when they can. Why aren’t they setting an example for the other areas? Like New York I believe allows women to go topless. The Empire State. Home of the biggest or at least most populous state in America and they don’t do it.

I knew who he was from the meme, and I knew he was some sort of alt-right influencer, but other than that I couldn’t have told you much about him. Honestly still can’t. I don’t care for politicians or anyone in that circle of influence.

I have friends and colleagues all over the political spectrum. Guess which ones really don’t like it when I say “can’t we all agree that they all suck and just get along?” Yeah, it’s the conservative/authoritarians. I mean yeah, the liberal/progressives who fight for us are more aligned with our — that is to say, those of us on Lemmy who lean left — views might be better, but they still exist in a grey area, they still do what they need to to get ahead. We accept that those things are necessary but I don’t think any of them are saints. But on the other side? They believe their leaders can do no wrong, and that is worrying. But they love when Trump does bad things to dark-skinned people or the LGBTQ+. They love him for the things we despise him for, from the child predator shit, to the attack on the country almost six years ago, the felony convictions, and all the piss poor decisions he’s made in office.

For paying people more in some markets and adjusting the prices to be about the same everywhere. So the way a business works is, they have certain profits they have to make to appease the shareholders, and this has to improve year after year. It doesn’t always, but to do so is the goal. So when things like regulation and etc. raise their costs, they raise their prices so their profit still increases.

Honestly, Taco Bell used to be cheap. Now it’s not. It hasn’t been cheap for a long time. But yes, all fast food places have gotten crazy expensive.

Sit-down restaurants have gone up, too. But not as much. So if you want a burger, a sit-down place might not be cheaper, but it might be a better value.

Fast food has kind of always been a scam though. You’re paying for the convenience. So in the west market, Hardee’s (which is called Carl’s Jr. out there) marketed a burger about 20-25 years ago called the “Six Dollar Burger.” They argued that their burger was the equivalent of what you’d pay six dollars for at a sit-down restaurant. What they assumed their customers were too stupid to understand was, that “six dollar burger” at a sit-down restaurant came with fries and cheese and was still bigger. By adding fries, the $4 burger got real close to that $6 price. The combo was more. So they were banking on people not being smart. Naturally, it worked. (Hardee’s just called it the Thickburger. They’ve since discontinued the whole line. Hardee’s and Carl’s Jr. no longer make thick burgers anymore. They’ve honestly been trash ever since. And most burgers in fast food start at six bucks now.

Fun fact: if you have a smartphone, Google Translate is free and has a camera mode. Wife and I use it all the time when captions aren’t translated (we watch a bit of foreign media).

I have an iPhone, it’s not just on Android.

I think it’s like the trolley problem: a trolley (like a train) is barreling down the tracks to a fork in the tracks. You have a lever that will divert the train. Tied to the tracks dead ahead are five innocent people who will all certainly die if you don’t throw the lever. However, one innocent person is tied to the tracks that you would divert the trolley to. Assume the trolley has no passengers and all five (or the one) will certainly be killed by the trolley.

The dilemma here is that by doing nothing, you could say you have nothing to do with the five people dying. You didn’t put them there. You can blame the person who did put them there, but by doing nothing, you can say you have no blood on your hands. Or you can pull the lever, but then the blood of the one person is absolutely on your hands, but you can say you saved the other five.

Diverting the trolley is the lesser of two evils. But is it the right call? Depends on the situation.

I host with Plex. It doesn’t pay attention to my carefully crafted tags, it uses its own. I still do the work with Mp3Tag. But I do m4a. Better quality than mp3 and better licensing. My files are a little bigger than 320k mp3 and sound almost lossless.