SCS

514,203

Some of my favorite metal songs that I've listened to the most over the past year. Ne Obliviscaris is my favorite black/death metal hybrid with symphonic elements and has crafted one of the smoothest yet most complex sounds I've heard yet. First Fragment employs a fascinating mixture of Spanish guitar with technical death metal, which creates a distinctly beautiful atmosphere. The technical complexity of both genres blends into a veritable symphony. Scar Symmetry is an excellent groove metal band with consistently top-notch quality. Their latest album features a smooth, almost synthetic sound coupled with interesting themes and lyricism. Electric Callboy fuses EDM, techno and metal in a fashion I've never heard before, even being divergent from another favorite band of mine Amaranthe that employs EDM and pop elements. Probably one of the most fun metal bands I've encountered in recent years. Beyond Creation is a lesser known technical death metal band. Their Algorythm album carries a uniquely ponderous atmosphere along with some of my favorite lyrics I've seen in metal recently.

[JUST A PRANK] WALKING arOUND with an ANIME BODY PILLOW & T-SHIRT [GONE SEXUAL] [POLICE CALLED] Accidentally inventing a key algorithm snowballing to runaway AGI, accelerating self-iterating super intelligence and the subsequent dawn of the technological singularity.

514,189

514,187

Hi rainbowfirestorm, welcome to the forums! It's great to hear that there are still people searching for forums to join, what with them not being as popular as other social media. MLPF has a precious community and I'm certain you will make lots of friends here. Please don't hesitate to reach out if you have any questions about the forum and I'll be happy to help out! Hope you have a lot of fun here.

I have fond memories of Cleverbot, and it's fascinating how far the technology has come between that and GPT-4. I wonder if AGI will have awoken when I check this post 12 years from now.

"What are your feelings about Chicken McNuggets?"

514,184

Despite my introversion, the concept of being the only person alive fills me with an overwhelming and pervasive existential dread rivaled by few other ideas. I've always felt this way, as pondering this now mirrors my childhood response to the first time I saw Time Enough at Last. Beyond loneliness and the accompanying despair, which would be undoubtedly immense, there lies a deeper madness in considering the definitions underlying reality itself. From my limited and inaccurate human perception, everything seems paradoxically defined in relation to something else. Joy is defined in relation to despair, good is defined in relation to evil, presence is defined in relation to absence, life is defined in relation to death, and so on. Even the colors we physically perceive have comparable relations to each other. My identity and overall perception of self is defined through innumerable perceived relations to others and my environment. If my environment were wholly absent of others, even so far as to be absent in memory: if I perceived myself as being the only human being, I would no longer have or understand any recognizable definition of human, identity, or self. I cannot comprehend let alone describe what existence or awareness would "be like" in the absence of such fundamental relative definitions. Surely I would be alive, and surely I would either build a new schema from my abandoned environment or die. I simply cannot visualize what such a schema would be beyond "I am not" as relative to that which I perceived around me: but where would that chain lead?

I'm trying to grow my hair out as long as I can, but it's a slow process I've been working on for a few years now. It curls naturally and I don't care about style beyond keeping it long, so I just shower and brush it with a detangling brush to keep it presentable.

I have yet to discover a flavor or preparation variant of coffee or tea that I don't enjoy. I love some more than others, but I absolutely love both coffee and tea. When I'm trying to watch calories, I can drink coffee black and tea plain. When I do this I prefer a black medium roast, but can imbibe dark roast if I'm in need of an extra jolt. For tea I prefer plain green tea. When I want a treat, I love vanilla and mocha lattes, lemonade/ice tea (Arnold Palmer style) and all things chai. I usually avoid cold brew but can drink it in a pinch. Favorite cold brew was Death Wish as a result of both its strength and surprisingly smooth taste but my local grocery store stopped carrying it.

Finding quiet solitude in nature wherever it can be found. If you're in the city, finding a large or less-traveled park or a walking trail is paramount. Silence your phone and other devices, go alone (but during the day, keeping safety in mind). Don't try to force yourself not to think about anything: let thoughts come and go as they please, but gently redirect your focus to the sounds of nature around you. Whether it be a babbling brook, swaying and sifting leaves in the trees, any myriad of unknown yet comforting animal sounds. Simply being present in the moment and experiencing the sensations of nature is an indescribable, irreplaceable and ultimately sublime experience that cannot be replicated by any purchased good or service.

My self-defense urban carry is a Glock 48. Its primary utility is its compactness and subsequent ease of concealed carry. I don't regularly carry knives anymore, but when I do I prefer concealable sheathed fixed blade knives for both self-defense and general outdoor utility.

Assuming that smoke inhalation is cheating, I would far rather die by water. I simply cannot imagine the all-consuming agony of burning alive, and while drowning is terrifying that would undoubtedly be a less painful (and potentially faster) way to go. And while I would rather not find out the hard way, I presume that drowning may reach a point of tranquility before burning: a point at which the brain checks out and lapses into unconsciousness. Sort of poetic in a way, dying by water as the majority of our substance is of water. All that being said, both ways are awful and I would rather die of natural causes after living a long life.

How's it going? Hope US folks had a good Thanksgiving.

514,182

514,179 Morning!

514,177

Our fields alight Is this a dream? Glowing inferno Reborn, red dawn Searing, auric chariot With karmic wheels, they burn again The karmic wheels, turning again

514,174

I've lived in both, and I can say I definitely prefer small town life. As with all things though, both have their upsides and their downsides. While all places and lived experiences will differ, my time in large cities has consistently met with a higher density of suffering. Crime, poverty, homelessness, drug addiction are rampant and integrated into your daily experience. I have been in the vicinity of stabbings, assaults and most common of all, car crashes. I frequently travel through an intersection with an ever-growing collection of crosses memorializing those who died. I also experience a sensation of "energetic imprint" that differs across spaces and feels stronger the more people there are living and passing through. For example, when I visited San Francisco I felt a pervading sense of despair and tragedy soaking into the very fiber of my being as if I were standing on the shore buffeted by wave after crashing wave. This was not simply a reaction to the personal tragedy I witnessed there, of which there was no end. But even walking through the oddly silent streets at midnight, past businesses boarded up and scaling the inclined sidewalks I felt the tsunami of grief reverberating throughout all, punctuated only by the wail of ambulance sirens every quarter of an hour. Conversely, when I visited Las Vegas I felt physically ill in a distinctive way the moment I stepped foot off of the airplane and first made contact with the earth. It felt as if I had immediately been plugged into a circuit of tar and sludge, dragging down every movement with intensifying gravitational pull. I was not actually sick, but that's the closest analogy I can use to describe the feeling I had there that I have never in my life experienced before or since. The air and earth surrounding me felt infected by an innate sense of wrongness that threatened to swallow me whole at any moment. Again, I witnessed and reacted to an array of varied human suffering, but this sensation was all-pervading. But as with all things, nothing is ever just one way or the other. I visited a beach in San Francisco holding one of the most beautiful harbor scenes I have witnessed in my life. I meditated on the calming waves gently lapping at the shore, and absorbed the sunset gently cascading. In Las Vegas I witnessed monumental feats of architecture and engineering, with green-infused spaces and water features inspiring genuine delight. We will always shine a light in the darkest of places, and this duality of being bears a grounding exhaustion with a joy afloat. Small towns are not by any stretch of the imagination exempt or disconnected from the matrices of suffering. If anything, I find rest in these emptier urban environments and in nature alike from the emotional quietude compared to large urban environments. The "energy" (for lack of a more accurate term) feels quieter, emptier -- all imperfect analogies for a nonphysical sensation -- allowing for more introspection, and for more of simply existing without as much parsing of sensory input or connected implication. You will witness joy and suffering alike, but it will be less often and in smaller quantities. Within the silence I find a door connecting both inward and outward in a sea of liminal tranquility.

Really happy to see this being implemented! This was always one of my favorite new major additions from v4 of Invision Community and has a lot of fun applications for a forum such as this with so many different interest groups, both within and outside of the MLP fandom. Excited to see what clubs people come up with.