I remember when that was a big deal… my read on it was that their producer was trying to market them as “hot underage Russian lesbians” but they themselves just wanted to provide representation through an act that did not reflect their real lives. Good faith on their part, bad faith on management’s.
Not that the disgust with them was entirely unjustified. They still misled people.
I prefer the Russian version, feels more authentic since they’re from there.
For consumer boxes, it’s basically Shield (Google), Apple TV, Roku, Fire (de-Googled Android), or some bargain bin shitbox.
The best streaming box on the market is arguably the Apple TV because it’s a bunch of icons, no ads. You say it spies on you, I’ve seen or heard no proof of this. The only “proof” is that it’s closed source and you don’t know what it’s doing. But not knowing what it does does not necessarily mean you get to assume the worst and tout it as fact. It just looks like you have an agenda — or a stake in the competition. The best set-top box on the market for gaming (if we specify that) becomes the Shield, due to more options on Android, though the Apple TV can run RetroArch now, so it’s closer.
The best option is probably to get an old corporate junker, put Linux on it, find some 10’/3m interface, and get a wireless keyboard/trackpad deal like the K400, then you can do what you want with it. But, most people aren’t gonna go that far. Maybe more people should. Curious now what you’re running with. I’ll tell you mine — 2nd gen (2021) Apple TV 4K. Good for everything but YouTube. I mostly use it for Plex (streaming from my Mac). I could use Infuse (Apple-only streaming thing like Plex) but I don’t care for it.
So you’re okay with Google scraping your data, but not Apple. Open with that next time, you save everyone the time of reading through your subterfuge.
You don’t care about privacy, you’re just tribal.
My point is, even if I was in the top 1%, it’s not like I’m working at NASA or anything. I’m just a regular guy. So I don’t think the test was worth shit. If it was even an IQ test, official or otherwise.
You… do know why Android exists, right?
I suspect my brother is smarter than I am.
I tested very highly. I can’t remember what the number was. Triple digits at least. It impressed people. I was placed in advanced classes and did very well in school, but I also got bullied and didn’t get girls.
My brother tested very low. People told him he was smarter than that. He said, “prove it.” He attended normal classes, had more friends, and had plenty of girlfriends.
Neither of us attended university. We both work for a living and do alright.
I think he threw his test. So who’s smarter?
Also to be clear: I don’t put much stock in the test itself. We were tested in elementary school. It’s been almost 40 years, so I don’t remember much. Not all students were tested. We were tested at my elementary school, but I don’t remember if it was the office or a classroom or even the library or cafeteria. We were also tested at different ages — I’m 3 years older. So I can’t even say it was a real IQ test. Some kind of aptitude or placement test though. But after, they all said I was some kind of genius. But I never felt like they proved I was any smarter than anyone, just singled out to excel, and for what?
They should do this everywhere, but the speed should be a bit higher. Like if you’re on a cheap unlimited plan and you get deprioritized, it shouldn’t go lower than 5Mbit. The whales paying for priority can still get 50+Mbit or whatever, but they shouldn’t be given 100+ or 200+ so everyone else gets unusable speeds. Adjust the numbers to make it make more sense.
The OP (Opening) is supposed to represent the best of the show, but sometimes it shows things not in the show or straight up misrepresents the show. The best example of this is Bradio’s Flyers from Death Parade, a macabre semi-anthology series about people competing in billiards games in a bar in Purgatory to determine which of them takes the elevator up and which one goes down. Or something like that. The show is very dark, but the OP is bright and cheerful.
I think anime’s bigger sin is the use of CGI. It’s very obvious in many cases. I don’t hate it, I just think it’s slightly more offensive than OPs that misrepresent the show (therefore, I don’t care about AI in them if they’re pretty). I’ll skip an OP I don’t like. Like in The Promised Neverland any time they run down hallways. It’s so obvious and distracting. Lots of animes do it, though.
The greatest sin in anime is the texture of clothing. This is most obvious in the Count of Monte Cristo anime due to the art style. Basically if a character is wearing a robe or some other clothing that has patterns on it, the patterns do not move with the person. The pattern is fixed, almost like there’s a layer of nothing but the pattern across the entire frame, and the outfit is just “transparent.” In fact, I think that is exactly how they do it. Almost how a lot of PlayStation games (Final Fantasy 7 and Resident Evil were notable for this), where you have a pre-rendered scene and the characters move across it within invisible walls which are supposed to, but do not always line up with what is drawn behind them.
I would pay a lot for YouTube Premium if it actually blocked all the ads. Unfortunately, it does not. The video itself is allowed to contain ads inside the video, which YouTube does not block. I have heard that if the creator declares it, it can be skipped, but SponsorBlock (aims to) skip all of them by default, and for free.
I have an iPhone — the second worst device for consuming YouTube on, tied with the iPad for the same reason. On my old Android phone, I have Firefox with uBlock Origin. Same with my Macs, and my work PC (which is at work). The worst device for consuming YouTube on, I also own — the Apple TV streaming box (which is ironically the best streaming box due to it not having ads in the OS — I’m dead serious, even if you’re Android all the way, you should get one).
On my iPhone, I’ve deleted the YouTube app. Instead, I have a shortcut to YouTube on my home screen that opens in Safari. I have a Safari plugin called Wipr 2 that I paid $5 for, one time, to a solo developer who uses the Fediverse (Mastodon) and is a woman (this shouldn’t matter, but I do enjoy minority representation, and seeing girls win). I occasionally see ads on YouTube, but it’s rare, and typically, refreshing Wipr (updating its block lists) fixes the issue.
That’s on an iPhone. Wipr2 is not available for tvOS. So mostly, I consume YouTube content on my MacBook, which I can mirror to my TV. Ironically, the TV itself (which runs Android TV) is better at mirroring my MacBook (which is between 1 and 2 metres away) than the Apple TV box, at the same distance. (Make that make sense.) (So, you often hear about Apple and Google being rivals around iOS and Android, respectively, but Apple actually licenses AirPlay to Google for inclusion in Android TV. That is actually a thing, and it works great.) I can also run a Thunderbolt/USB-C to HDMI cable and make my TV a monitor for my MacBook, and just drag a Firefox window up to the TV. But it’s a MacBook Air, I still have to keep the lid open, and the screen on (I turn the brightness all the way down though).
I think they were because this is a new account created 2 days ago.
Not by choice.
When I drive with someone else at work (not often but sometimes it happens), they often want to listen to the radio, which means we’re listening to ads for 90% of the trip and then we get one song. And people are okay with that. Fucking mindless drones.
Radio really has gone to shit. If you haven’t listened in a while… the ads are almost worse than going online without an ad blocker. You won’t get a virus or spyware, but you might spend the whole trip listening to ads before you earn the right to hear one censored song. Then you get back in the car and the ads start over again. It really is mostly ads these days. Most radio stations in an area will be owned by the same company, and they sync the ads so you can’t just change the channel.
君の名は。
That is all
Oof. Didn’t know it went up. We paid a total of $15 and we’re happy with it, but we’ve had the benefit of having used it for the past 16 years.
If the price is too high, Google Keep is pretty good for doing a similar thing.
OurGroceries.
The year was 2010, and the iPhone was not yet available where I lived. I could have bought one, and I could have activated service with it, but I would never be able to use it at home or anywhere around home. So it would have been pointless. I wanted one. Android was cool, but it wasn’t really what I wanted. Wife needed a new phone, and our carrier had a deal. Two Android phones for $100, and each came with a $20 Android Market (what Google Play Store was called then) gift card. So yeah, we took that deal. The phones were ass, but I was able to put CyanogenMod (now called Lineage) on them and make them a little better.
We wanted a grocery app, and we discovered an app called OurGroceries. Free with ads, or $5 to remove the little banner at the bottom. Even without paying, it offered synced grocery lists and even Web access. As in, my wife is at the store and I’m on the computer, I just hit the bookmark and add something to the list, she sees it in a second or two (provided she has signal or WiFi). We both paid. The app was useful and it was nice.
When I got an iPhone, I immediately paid the $5 again. They since changed it to where only ONE person on the sync account needs to pay. That is to say, if you and five family members all download it, all six of you get ads. But if ONE person connected to the sync account pays, the paid status syncs and nobody has ads. That said, I’m not mad because $10 of the $15 I’ve paid wasn’t even mine to start with, it was on a gift card. It’s been 16 years, and we still use it.
Is it the best grocery app? I think it still ranks highly. Personally I think the one in Paprika is a little better. Our first requirement is that it must support iPhone, Android (my wife still uses Android), and computer. Paprika checks those boxes — so does Google Keep, which is another good option (that is also free!). Apple has shopping list support in Notes, and our computers are Macs, so that works, but Apple Notes doesn’t really work on Android. It actually does, I think, through the browser (since my wife has an Apple account, on the Mac and on her iPad), but it’s not as robust if you actually have an iPhone. Any note taking app should work, but the sync won’t be there.
So if you don’t want to pay, Google Keep should be your first stop. If you don’t like Google for privacy or whatever reason, you’ll probably have to pay. OurGroceries is either a single developer or a small team, and they’re independent, and deserve at least the $5 they’re asking for a whole family to use their app indefinitely (as long as they keep the server up — I hope, should they ever decide to take their server down, they allow a self-hosted option). If you want more features, Paprika is definitely a solid choice, but you’ll want to wait for a sale. Normally it’s like $10 on phones and $20 on computers or something. But it’s actually not a shopping list app. It’s a recipe manager that has a shopping list and a pantry inventory. And a couple other things. (OurGroceries also has a recipe manager, but it’s not great, it’s really just another kind of shopping list that can be copied into an actual shopping list — you can have multiple.)
I always thought “dump him” was followed by an unspoken “and give me a chance.” In other words, incel culture.
Might not be all cases, but that is what I generally assume when I see/hear about stuff like that.
Oh yes, I’ve used diced white onions in my tuna salad as well. I don’t like relish (or celery), it’s just not the flavour profile I’m looking for.
BBQ sauce = ketchup with molasses, more or less, I think, on the off chance you were asking what it was. I don’t think that’s the case, just covering my bases. Anyway, I use the sweet/spicy kind, so it adds a kick. I wouldn’t do both BBQ sauce and Tabasco. Tabasco gives it a kick, but it’s more subtle, the flavour of the sauce is covered by the tuna, but the heat is still there. For heat plus added flavour, I go for the BBQ sauce. Specifically Sweet Baby Ray’s sweet and spicy (or whatever that variety is called).
What’s crazy is when you actually want to watch an ad (like a game or movie trailer, or a review of a product you’re considering buying), and you have to watch an ad to watch the ad. You’d think videos advertising a commercial product would pay a fee to cover the ads.
Fry sauce! I add hot sauce to mine. Popularized in the American Midwest but you can make it anywhere.
I don’t believe in guilty pleasures because I don’t feel guilty about listening to weird niche music that everyone around me thinks is beneath them.
That being said, I understand the concept and can apply it to my music library. So here’s a big one.
22/7 - Hyacinth Apple Music | YouTube
I’m linking the Apple Music version not just because I think they deserve to get paid more for your stream, but in case you’re a subscriber, you have Dolby Atmos turned on, and you have compatible earbuds, because the song is fucking magical in spatial audio. It’s like feeding candy to your ears. The best spatial audio mastering I’ve heard is Tom Sawyer by RUSH. This is second best. The song feels like a tech demo for spatial audio.
For context, 22/7 (which is another way to say Pi, mathematically, and read as “twenty-two per seven”) is a cartoon band, similar to HUNTR/X from Kpop Demon Hunters, except, after the anime series about them… they just continued making music. Hyacinth isn’t from their anime. They even make music for other anime now. So they’re a real band. Anywhere between 8 and 12 Japanese girls singing in unison in groups. For JPop/idol music, it’s pretty good. You don’t need to know their anime to listen to them. It was a fantasy series about a mysterious wall that would spit out engraved metal chips with instructions. No one knew who was writing the commands, but people started following it, and it told them to build an idol group and when and where to have them play. They become an overnight sensation. Eventually the wall tells them they have to disband, and after being forced to do so, they seek out who’s behind the wall. It’s… not very good, as far as anime goes, but the music is on point and I think it’s worth watching, if you like music anime.