I didn’t think this season was going to produce anything more batshit than Niwatori Fighter. Evidently I was wrong . . .

And the moral of the story is: always be careful to put proper signage on your clam. 🤣

Depends on what you’re doing. If you’re okay with very limited Web use, even 2GB is viable (or was about a year ago when I retired that machine). More normal levels of Web use, you’re going to need more RAM. Not sure about GPU-constrained loads like 3D modeling, as I never tried them on that machine. But other than those and some games, nothing on Linux should require even 8GB. Server systems can make do with even less.

Exactly. Justice is not fast food. It takes more than a few weeks or even months to go through the steps.

I’m in Ohio. I wonder how hard it’d be to drive to Canada, pick up a router, and drive back?

You jest, but I suspect this is going to be a Thing. I mean, people were willing to do it for eggs (and getting caught at the border), and a router’s a rather larger purchase.

Anyamal Tantei Kiruminzoo might work, if you can find it (I have no idea who holds the streaming rights right now, if anyone). Comedy-adventure about kids who find a device that lets them turn into animals. I don’t remember it having anything too heavy in it, although admittedly it’s been a few years.

In a couple of years, Detective Conan / Case Closed might be good (and will keep you busy for a very long time), but six is probably a bit too young.

Expectations have gotten a lot higher. These days, no studio would even try to get away with something like Violinist of Hameln (13-ep budget stretched to cover 25 in the hand-drawn cel era, although IMNSHO the show succeeds despite all the corner-cutting in the visuals).

Time and energy to prep meals is also a cost. I don’t know how it is in Europe, but in North America, the poor-but-employed segment of the population is often working multiple minimum wage jobs to stay afloat. Even if they know how to cook and have the tools to do so, they may be too tired when they get home to do more than pop a pizza in the oven.

that wayward magical energy - that just has to fly in the direction of Seiichirou somehow

Obviously he has Plot Magnetism. Kind of the opposite of Plot Armour. 😉

Still, they could have come up with something better than that (although I suppose that if it’s a carryover from the light novels, they might be stuck with it).

Yeah, I felt Flum was kind of out of character in this episode. She’s been established as often being too trusting, but not generally stupid, and the whole towel incident was a what-the-actual-fuck moment. It’s just so stunningly obvious that that should not have been her first priority (an entire change of clothes, maybe, if the ambient temperature was so low Milkit would have been at short-term risk of hypothermia, but not a single dumbass towel).

Why do I still have a 32" TV? Because that’s the largest size that’s still readily available as an ordinary, cheap, flat dumb panel with a tuner. (Well, that and I don’t especially need a larger one.)

Betcha the wings’ll taste good if basted with the right sauce.

Is it terrible that I’d like to see an LLM trained exclusively on translated shoujo manga trying to give teen boys advice about this?

Yes, there are parts of Canada that remote that still have roads. I grew up in one of them. Let’s posit an urgent but not-likely-to-be-fatal medical emergency, like the torn and detached retina I had a few years ago. That required an urgent trip to a major city in particularly foul winter weather. Nearest major city to where I grew up was 800+km, and there are other towns further out than that one. Add to that battery loss in the cold, plus loss of battery capacity over time if you’ve had the car for a while, plus the vehicle having maybe already been driven that day without time to recharge completely . . . I can think of places up in that neck of the woods where I would be seriously worried that 1000km of rated range wouldn’t be enough, although it would be more than sufficient for where I’m now living.

So I’m talking about shit that, in my experience, actually happens to actual people. The segment of the population involved is, admittedly, not all that large, but it’s of nonzero size—probably on the order of a few million, worldwide, spread through a number of countries that have large areas of empty nothing.

1000km range is fucking stupid. No one should be driving that far at once

I take it you’ve never had an emergency while living in a remote area. Especially not one with cold winters that will tank your EV’s range.

I have an enduring soft spot for Antique Bakery, although more the manga than the anime. (Isekai Office Worker is probably better, though.)

Only in the US. Other countries will be able to push the prices down.

Does it do anything that isn’t in response to a human’s prompting? No? Then it can’t be conscious. Consciousness requires having a sense of self, which implies having needs and desires that one acts to fulfill without needing prompting. Even a bacterium is more conscious than these things.

Is anyone actually surprised by this? It’s one of those things that any semi-competent programmer could have told you would be the case. The study just formalizes it and adds specifics.