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Anneal

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Everything posted by Anneal

  1. I used to be a bit similar when I had a dislike of hip-hop and electronic back in my teenage years. Once I went to college though I mostly learned to put my biases away from different genres of music, and ironically nowadays electronic music is one of my favorite genres. Even hip-hop and electronic music can get quite experimental, like most other genres. Electronic itself ranges from minimalistic ambient and downtempo to very abrasive breakcore and drum'n'bass.
  2. I still do listen to EPs if they're well made. Some of Aphex Twin's most famous songs is on a EP (Come to Daddy) for example, and in those instances EPs are either used as a bridge to experiment with new sounds between albums or if they don't have the production time to record enough songs for album length. There's also one EP I really like, EP7 – though it's literally 70 minutes long so it might as well be an album.
  3. I like collecting vinyls myself, though compared to CDs or downloaded albums/EPs, they are way more expensive. Started doing it roughly a year back when I got a job and my parents bought a record player. Some of my collection: Kavinsky – Reborn Autechre – Chiastic Slide / Autechre – LP 5 Aphex Twin – Richard D. James Album / Aphex Twin – Syro Odesza – The Last Goodbye Boards of Canada – Geogaddi Four Tet – Rounds
  4. With the ubiquitous nature of online streaming, I wonder if anyone listens to albums or EPs nowadays. It seems that for the majority of people, they tend to listen to a batch of singles rather than an album or EP from start to finish. The issue seems to be time – most people either can't or is not willing to spend 30 to 60 minutes in one sitting listening to almost a dozen songs. Additionally, some people might not like certain tracks in one album or EP and would want to skip it. Some musical artists nowadays don't bother producing EPs or albums for this reason. So does anyone listen to album or EPs? Additionally, do you buy CDs or vinyl records?
  5. That chart is incredibly misleading because it is measuring total tax revenue, not the tax percentage or even taxed revenue per capita. Furthermore, taxes not only vary by state but by county and municipality, and many states gain tax revenue through different means – for example, Oregon has no sales tax, while Washington has no income tax. Different places also have different costs of living, even in the same state, so in practice taxes can vary wildly. Your cost of living and taxes if you live in NYC could be significantly different if you lived in Syracuse.
  6. If we aren’t talking about a scenario like nuclear apocalypse, staying within cities is actually a safer bet than duking it out in rural areas or the wilderness. Cities are typically where order is restored first, and even in the many instances of societal collapse, many cities continued to function as smaller city-states. It’s also the best chance to find other people to cooperate with – humans are fairly social creatures, after all. Lone wolf survivalists usually won’t last long. Not to mention shopping malls, train stations, stadiums, etc. make some pretty defendable settlements in a pinch.
  7. That's less due to technological limitations and more due to Fallout 2's very short development time. The game didn't even go through a full year of development and more than a third of its content was cut from the final version (which can be added back with the Restoration Project mod). And due to its short development time, some locations were poorly balanced, especially the early game, and there were plenty of bugs. Older console generations weren't immune to this. People like to see the past with rose-tinted glasses, but in reality, a lot of game companies tended to get on the gimmick of the time. And back in the 90s, it was 3D graphics and first-person shooters, enough to the point where FPS games were called "DOOM-clones". So game companies getting in and milking the new trend was nothing new. The cutscene-style gameplay that you see in contemporary games nowadays are a direct inspiration off of visual novel games such as Ace Attorney or Danganronpa, so that isn't new either. Not to mention there are games that do pull it off well, such as Metal Gear Rising: Revengeance and Resident Evil.
  8. This is less of a personal issue, but the pandemic has also motivated many cities in the US to reconsider how they design and plan out their cities. This is the longest time in a while a city such as Los Angeles could see unpolluted skies and roads without congestion. It would be insane to fall back onto our normal ways after this pandemic is done. Some American cities have decided to join the "Open Streets" movement and convert car-oriented roads to be more equitable to pedestrians and bikers. A lot of public transportation projects have also been sped up with the reduced traffic; more recently the BART extension to San Jose has been completed, while the LA Metro Purple Line project is ahead of schedule by seven months.
  9. Not to mention that some soldiers are never deployed in a combat zone, and even when in a combat zone, only a small amount of them see direct combat. A ton of jobs in the military have nothing to do with combat, such as being a cook, software engineer, chaplain, mechanic, and so on. In some cases, certain military personnel get what is basically a glorified desk job. It's part of the reason why it's so hard for the small amount of soldiers who do see combat to come back home – not only is it hard for civilians to understand what they've been through, but even within the military itself. And if you're part of the National Guard branch of the Army or Air Force, you essentially see no combat at all. The National Guard is there to perform peacekeeping duties and respond to natural disasters and acts of terrorism at home.
  10. The Newbie Dash episode is honestly what put me off from RD's Wonderbolts arc. It was just such a poorly written episode with a poorly written lesson that contradicts the episode anyways. The whole episode was over Rainbow Dash trying to stand out because of her embarrassing nickname and trying to suppress her emotions, while most of the story could have been resolved had she acted on her embarrassment and stood out by explaining her issues sooner. Rainbow Falls was another poorly written episode, too. The intended lesson was that one should be loyal to one's friends, but RD never gets the chance to properly express her problems, and Twilight acts with hostility towards RD and guilt-trips for practicing with the other team rather than try to understand her motives. It's just a very unfair dilemma for RD.
  11. On another note, I personally don't understand why people assume everyone on the left is against gun ownership. It's the liberals in the Western world that want to restrict gun use. Socialists such as Eugene Debs, George Orwell, and Malcolm X were not opposed to Americans, especially minority communities, owning guns for community self-defense. Especially with the police abolition/defunding movement, more and more people should consider that idea for public safety. Of course, I am for reasonable gun control, but we shouldn't allow violence to be monopolized by the state.
  12. lol, I made that post four years ago so I honestly can't remember on the top of my head. I haven't been involved in Pokemon for a few years now.
  13. You may be misunderstanding what personality actually is. Making random sarcastic quips or comedic punchlines is not effective characterization. People, especially inexperienced writers and roleplayers, treat personality like a shopping list of likes, dislikes, flaws, and traits. Poorly characterized characters are often simply one-dimensional and forgettable because stories fail to explore any of their emotional nuances. What are their motivations and goals? How do these characters respond to conflict, and how do they resolve it? How do they develop as a character in the long term? If Link can be sarcastic and sassy, that's fine, but if it's not reflected in how he reacts and resolves conflicts or why he developed such a trait in the first place, then it's just poor characterization that really does not go anywhere.
  14. The Swiss K31. The 1874 Sharps: Arisaka Type 99: And the relatively uncommon MAS-49:
  15. The issue is that megacorporations simply cannot replace governments in real life. The closest thing was the British East India Company, but even they were ultimately under the control of the British Empire, and they regularly relied on bailouts from the government to stay afloat during economic downturns. Governments are not made to be efficient or profitable. There's also the issue that someone needs to print the money, and how exactly you can profit from that. The very reason that companies are companies is the same reason why it would be difficult for even PMCs today to completely replace military operations and logistics. The US spends a ton of money to keep its military afloat, far beyond the reach of even the largest corporations.
  16. I mean...I've seen even stronger cases of celebrity worship when I lived in Asia. K-pop stanning has been a fairly recent meme but it is all too common in the home country of South Korea, though they are called "sasaeng" instead of stans (Eminem not being so popular in Asia, after all). Mukbang was another trend that started in South Korea where people would watch celebrities and influencers consuming a ton of food on camera. And fashion is such a huge industry there. A lot of these trends have bled over into the Western world as well. What I'm saying is that celebrity idolization is hardly something that is unique to the US and is just as prevalent in other countries. Celebrity idolization is hardly exclusive to mainstream media as well. It's just as common on sites such as YouTube or Twitch. There are plenty of people online who are obsessed with PewDiePie or Ninja. Certain YouTubers, as we've seen with ImJayStation or the Paul Brothers, could be just as snobbish and petulant.
  17. You know, looking back at the older posts, a lot of them aged very poorly. Now that the virus has gotten considerably more severe in the US, trips outside are basically either to walk the dog or buy groceries. My dad still has his job and is able to work from home, but the economy as a whole is not doing well and there are several friends that have lost their jobs. Some of the restaurants are at risk of bankruptcy, and most of the "small business" loans failed to even get to them. And now there are anti-lockdown "protests" going on in California. It might get far worse here before the virus finally starts to slow.
  18. Eh, a post-money world is something that is largely stuck in the realm of science fiction and fantasy, because of one simple thing: every commodity has value. Money has been here since the beginning of civilization. Yes, before that, we relied on barter economies. But many modern economists today will point out the inherent inefficiencies of barter, and at some point, humans will end up pegging goods to something in particular. Even tribes thousands of years ago ultimately ended up bartering with cowrie shells or crops, which basically became their "currency". It's a bit telling that Star Trek is relatively non-descriptive on how a post-money economy would actually work, and the portrayal of Federation credits in the show is very inconsistent at times. Money doesn't just disappear in non-capitalist economies, either. Even if theoretically, income inequality ceases to exist and everyone lives in a classless utopia, humans still have different wants and needs, and so they will spend their money in different ways, including spending more or less of it. There's also major questions such as how society would deal with resource scarcity, and managing resource production if there is no one to direct it – not the free market of capitalism, the central planning of socialism, not even the worker collectives of anarcho-syndicalism.
  19. A dark sky doesn't literally mean that the sky is dark, just that there is a lack of artificial light pollution. Many observatories and radio telescopes are located in dark sky regions, away from civilization, to minimize light pollution.
  20. It's still entirely possible for German civilians to receive a firearm license. You need to get either a competitive shooting license, a collector's license, or a hunting license, and each one has different criteria. For the first one, you can get a yellow competitive license which allows you to own as many non-semiautomatic long guns (shotguns and rifles), with a limit of two firearm purchases per six months. The only requirement is that you're part of a gun club, have taken a gun safety exam, and have no felony and mental illness record. Those who are actively shooting for at least a year can apply for a green license which allows two handguns and three semi-automatic rifles, as long as they are not "military grade". Germany has 19.6 guns per 100 people, and around 1.4M Germans own guns. Hardly as common as the US or even Canada, but it's still a sizable amount. My family actually does own a few guns, though; two handguns, a bolt-action rifle, and a shotgun. We live in California, so gun laws are fairly stringent relative to most other states.
  21. Well in the red. California is highly urbanized, so there isn't many dark sites in the state. My hometown is San Jose but I live in Santa Barbara to go to college. I used to live in LA as well and the high light pollution and poor air quality makes it near impossible to see anything in the sky. It doesn't have to be this way, though. City policies can do a lot to reduce light pollution; a lot of the small cities in Arizona such as Flagstaff actually use LED lampposts that face downward and some homes there have exterior shades to prevent interior light from going out. Flagstaff is one of the few cities that is considered a dark sky location, and the effects can be pretty dramatic; for comparison, Cheyenne has the same population and area as Flagstaff but has more than ten times the light pollution.
  22. It does help to point out that most American infrastructure makes it difficult to get around if you don't have a driver's license. It's extremely restrictive, especially to people who have physical or mental disabilities. Add on the fact that some infrastructure is simply not well accessible to the disabled and you'll see how much of a challenge it is to be disabled.
  23. Yeah. Anneal is my main OC, though I have several others that I use consistently. I tend to focus more on molding out certain OCs and their unique personalities and background rather than creating a massive amount of them which barely get used. I know some people have like dozens, if not hundreds, of OCs.
  24. Tap water. It's actually much cheaper than bottled water and despite what most people think, drinking tap water will not kill you. People should really check their local water district, since they are required to disclose the particulates in tap water and whether it is safe to drink – at worst, if you live in a fairly polluted area, you should buy a good water filter. Tap water costs roughly half a cent per gallon, while bottled water goes for around $1.50/gallon. The plastic literally costs more than the water inside. Bottled water is also no less susceptible to bacterial and viral contamination as 14 brands had to recall in back in 2015 due to E. coli contamination.
  25. I would like to make another point: you don't need massive amounts of exposure to make good music. It's always been that the more experimental genres of music tend to be less accessible to the public, while popular music is generally more formulaic so it can be the most accessible and easiest to listen to. This is something that is not unique to the contemporary era – even back in the 70s and 80s, the radio was over-saturated with arena rock or hair metal bands (and trust me, it was just as formulaic as popular music today), but only the good ones are remembered nowadays while the majority of those bands are simply forgotten about. And in the 50s and before, barbershop quartets were the norm, so plenty of songs at the time...kind of sounded the same. Again, most of us only remember the good groups at the time like the Ink Spots or the Chordettes. Additionally, virtually all of the bands you just mentioned are metal bands, and people have to acknowledge that most metal genres will never get any airplay nowadays – certain genres like death metal or thrash is simply considered too aggressive and fast to be played on most radio stations. Not to mention certain subgenres like melodic death metal or technical death metal are considered far too niche to even remotely get any attention outside of dedicated fans. This is something most of the metalhead community already accepts, and in fact believe that not getting any mainstream exposure is a good thing; most metal bands have the freedom to experiment all they want without feeling beholden to public opinion or major record labels. They can likely survive on their own with their dedicated metalhead fanbase, away from the spotlight of "popular" music. Rock music is inevitably going to go down that path too as popular tastes change, but maybe being out of the popular spotlight could be beneficial to the genre – we may see more experimentation than even before, much like what's happened to jazz and emo when they both phased out of the radio. Parts of the public may want music that is simply easy to listen to, but there would always be massive dedicated fanbases for these genres. Imagine music like a bunch of streams intertwined with each other, with the lake in the middle where the music is the most formulaic and experimentation doesn't happen – it would be dumb and completely unfair to judge certain music genres by that big dumb lake.
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