Just listened to a track. Pretty strange and cool. Think I'm gonna be investigating further.
While trying to figure out the discography of The Gathering, a band that has been on my radar for a long time but with a lot of albums and different sounds to go through, I've come across Agua de Annique / Anneke van Giersbergen, the solo career of the now ex Gathering vocalist, which is fairly easy listening (although still rock / alternative) and something to listen to slowly when I'm in the mood.
And then also the previous band of the current Gathering vocalist, Octavia Sperati, which is some sort of gothic flavoured metal I guess? I dunno, I don't really care to know subgenres of subgenres. But I'm really enjoying this one. Which kinda sucks because it looks like they haven't done anything since their vocalist joined the Gathering.
And then today I listened to some Chappell Roan and I liked it! Not music that I'm always in the mood for but I think it'll go nicely in my rotation of '80s and '90s stuff when I'm feeling so inclined.
Edit: also I think I'm gonna finally look up whoever it is that does the intro songs for Ghost in the Shell - Stand Alone Complex.
When I was younger, I believed that it was an ideal worth striving for. Now I don't have that much faith in people anymore and I think that the best you can ask for is to try to live life your way and stay true to your beliefs and morals as best you can, according to whatever circumstances that you've been given.
Just listened to "Good Luck, Babe!" and "Hot to Go!". Definitely poppier than my usual tastes, which I was expecting. But old school, as you say, and it gives me feelings of nostalgia. Her voice is awesome too.
I'm definitely sometimes in the mood for this kind of jam, so this might actually become a little guilty pleasure of mine. I think it would fit well with all the '90s (and some '80s) shit on my playlist anyway.
While I agree with the gist of what you're saying, rioting because your favourite sportsball team lost is also deranged shit that shouldn't exist in a civilized society. It might not be nationalism to a country but it sure as shit comes from the same place, maybe just with a little more gang mentality thrown in.
Kid that wants to take everyone else's toys, after being told no by a grown-up: "I hate you! You're not my friend anymore!"
I honestly haven't even listened to any of her music (and maybe I should give it a try at least) but so far I've liked almost everything I've seen and heard about her online. The mainstream music industry needs more punks and rebels to speak out and cause a ruckus. If anything, just to kill the manufactured, conformist slop it's all become.
Yeah, Zulu is a different beast to European languages. I suppose as different to English as certain Asian languages would be. It also borrows from English and Afrikaans though, for certain Western words and concepts that weren't in the vocabulary before. And there's still nouns and verbs and tenses and shit, so it follows the same basic rules / concepts as any language.
As for Afrikaans, funnily enough I'm actually living in a part of the country now where some fluency would've been useful. Luckily you seem to be able to get by with just English just about anywhere though.
As another outsider, grocery prices seemed to be the main excuse from all of the supposed fence sitters and centrists that cast their votes for him after their supposed careful consideration. I remember a few clips doing the rounds on Reddit of people being interviewed about who they voted for and why. Which seems like a flimsy excuse to me from people that claim to be impartial.
But yeah, honestly to me it looks like culture war bullshit mainly won this for Trump. There were certain portions of the population that outright said they would never vote for a woman. And from what I gathered, large amounts of gen z, particularly men boys, are so lost to this culture war shit and treat the words of people like Joe Rogan, Jordan Peterson and even Andrew Tate like gospel. That for the first time in history the younger generation swung further right than the next generation up.
These people can all act shocked and surprised at what they're getting now but when he wasn't blabbering about Hannibal Lecter and OJ Simpson, and shuffling around on stage to YMCA, the only coherent message he ever had was bigot nazi shit. So anyone claiming it was about grocery prices or who is acting shocked now, is a fucking liar.
Yeah but she was a "female". Ew, cooties. And Joe Rogan the alpha instructed all of his alpha followers to vote Trump, so they did the alpha thing and obeyed him without making their own informed decisions. And did I mention she's a feemale? I ain't gonna vote for no woke DEI feminist illuminati agenda.
(/s just in case)
can't function in society where random individuals can freely reject their statements, so they need the internet to hide away from life.
Show me where in real life are random individuals able to interrupt your conversations with friends and like-minded people without being told to fuck off or punched in the face? People like you keep peddling this idea that we're all supposed to 'meet in the middle' at all times with bigots that think we don't deserve human rights, or else we're the bad ones. Fuck off, what does the 'middle' of respecting rights or not respecting rights even look like. And real life doesn't fucking work like that anyway.
I would not hang out with inbred supremacist 'alpha' fucking idiots even if you paid me. And I would not welcome them into my home or my social circles. You're free to speak but that doesn't mean that I have to fucking listen.
Personally I'm not a relationship expert by any means, in fact I'm probably closer to ace than anything as far as sexuality goes. So I'm not here to offer advice, just some resources.
If open relationships and not being tied down or tying anyone else down (metaphorically, you're welcome to use rope in other ways if you wish) is your thing, maybe Relationship Anarchy would be a useful school of thought for you to read up on. It's something that I've been reading up on slowly that I think has some interesting ideas whether you're polyamorous or monogamous. Just a little something to help work on your own headspace with this perhaps.
Imagine naming your 'encyclopaedia' after a political school of thought and making it crystal clear that it's more about pushing ideology than information, then giving it the tagline "The Trustworthy Encyclopaedia".
And the sad part is that the people this caters to will 100% believe that tagline while ignoring all other evidence to the contrary and clutching their Trump bibles and wearing their red hats.
I'm late here but whatever. I'm finding myself more and more on board with this, the more time passes. When I was younger, I would've been more willing to 'debate' every asshole but the older I've got, the more I've realised that they've all just got the same 'points' over and over again and if arguing those points hasn't changed anything in the last 15 years, it probably won't change anything now.
Same goes for "just asking questions". It's the same fucking questions that every JAQ-off asks, and all 'questions' that can be easily answered by shutting your fucking mouth and opening your ears for once. Maybe stepping out of your bubble and listening to what people who are different from you are saying for once.
Last night I blocked my first customer. Got a shitty, really over reacted and unnecessary comment to something. Checked their profile to see if it was just someone having a bad day and saw that literally every comment this person makes is to shit on someone, that's their entire contribution to this platform. Even spotted a "typical white females" in there. So I just blocked, knowing that nothing of value has been lost to me.
And I think that's how I'm gonna play it from now. If I get an aggressive response from someone that isn't full of aggressive responses, I'll indulge them a little. But if it's someone that's clearly just here to fight and make people miserable, the most attention I'll pay them is hitting that block button.
Feeling a bit left out that I haven't been messaged by the Fediverse Chick yet.
I should look into where I can get hold of CBD products. We don't really have dispensaries and stuff around here. It's legal to have but not to actually buy anywhere (or sell) lol. I think it is approved for medicinal use though.
Although you can get a grade of weed here that's basically a step away from being a hemp plant. As far as I know, that can of stuff is heavier on the CBD ratio of things. Doesn't taste great though.
I buy R50 bags, which is around the price of a pack of legal cigarettes with some change left over. Although I think it's hard to compare prices of things across borders and currencies.
And this R50 bags are basically the lowest rung of the decent quality. And it's outdoor, so sometimes the quality is pretty close to indoor, sometimes it's not so great. And if the quality is good, it'll be a strict 5 grams but if it's standard stuff, the guy usually packs a little extra.
So it's also a bit difficult to give it a per day cost. A R50 bag can last me 1 to 3 days depending on a few factors.
Just want to add, I'm also my weed guy's movie and series guy. So I'm often getting free bags thrown in, in exchange for some movies and shit loaded onto USBs.
I can believe that having kids changes things. And yeah, I'd like to cut down as well. If for nothing else, then just my wallet lol.
South Africa and pretty much just English. Apparently I was fairly fluent in Zulu when I was little kid, before starting school and losing it. And we learnt Afrikaans in school but Afrikaans kids went to Afrikaans schools and I grew up and lived in English speaking areas so it was never used. If I tried to speak Afrikaans now, I would embarrass myself but I can mostly read it and understand someone if they're talking slow enough and I'm concentrating hard enough.
Honestly something that pisses me off is that despite going through school in the 'new' South Africa, the new government never bothered making sure we learnt to communicate with each other. So instead of learning Zulu and being able to freely communicate with the majority of the population, we learnt Afrikaans because they never fucking bothered to change it.
I can also understand very small bits and pieces of written and spoken German from high school but that's barely worth mentioning. Also, I can kinda sometimes understand a little bit of written Dutch because it's remotely similar to Afrikaans.
Lol I guess it is. And I'm absolutely addicted to weed. Anyone who says that isn't addictive hasn't experienced the lack of appetite, insomnia and general lack of will to live when you're a heavy smoker and you go without.
It's still probably cheaper therapy than actual therapists and pharmaceuticals though.
Decided to stay
There's no posting to your own profile here on Lemmy, so I hope it's alright that I use this space to just dump some shit that no one cares about.
I was going to migrate to mbin or somewhere with more features than base Lemmy, and I also wanted to be able to see downvotes, but I've decided that in spite of those things, I think I'll stick around for a while.
As far as Lemmy forks go, I think I'm just going to keep an eye on them for a while until they're a little further along in development and have more app support. I'm keeping an eye on PieFed in particular but for now, while I'm still new here, I think I'm going to stick with base Lemmy for at least my first year.
As far as downvotes go, I have realised that I just do not care anymore. And I like not caring.
So I can live with just not seeing downvotes anywhere in exchange for a good local feed that can teach me and keep me sane in these fucked up times ahead. And honestly, I've noticed that I even like the 'All' feed better here than when I was on world.
Thanks for attending my monologue. I might edit this with other random shit that has no place along the way.
Sonic the Hedgehog & the declawing of art
I hope that this is the right place for this, please let me know if there's somewhere more appropriate because I'm not sure where it actually fits.
Let me just start this off by saying, I recognise that these are kids movies and I also thank these movies for bringing me back into the franchise and revisiting such a big part of my childhood. In fact what's great is that it's introducing a new generation of kids to it.
Just finished Sonic the Hedgehog 3 and after spending the last 6+ months (re)watching all the animated adaptations and (re)playing the games, I really don't think I enjoyed it as much as the first two movies. And I've realised that Sonic has actually been characterized pretty badly here and completely tamed and watered down. And even more so, I feel like this displays a larger problem in mainstream media right now.
Sonic in the '90s and 2000s:
Back in the '90s when I was a kid, we had two Sonic cartoons running at the same time. In both of them, Sonic was an anti-authoritarian "freedom fighter", trying to topple Robotnik's tyranny. One of them had little PSAs like calls to respect those who are different from you or warnings about scammers and false info. It was woke before woke was a thing. The other one involved Robotnik, the tyrant, stomping out free thinking by turning people into robot slaves. A not so subtle message.
In fact even without the cartoons, from the first game it's a pretty easy assumption to make that the little blue guy with the mohawk / spikes that runs around smashing machines and freeing the animals is supposed to be some sort of rebel. I promise that it wasn't too much for my little 7 or 8 year old brain to handle back then.
Then we get to the Modern era of Sonic, which gave us Sonic Adventure with wall to wall heavy metal and cool guitar solos. And little surprises like weed leaves placed in certain locations. And the defacto animated adaptation of this era was Sonic X, where Sonic blatantly shows no respect or even disrespect to authorities fairly regularly. But always with the message of doing the right thing. At one point, he inspires the 'freedom movement' which sees people quitting their jobs by the masses, dyeing and spiking their hair and just living their lives their way (I'd love to know where they got their income from though).
Sonic the Hedgehog movies:
Which brings me to these movies. I had fun watching all of them but now I am realising just how watered down and wrong a lot of the characterisation is. Instead of being about rebellion, it's about 'family'. Instead of heavy metal and weed leaves, it's top 40 pop and McDonald's references. Apart from an Easter egg thrown in here or there like a bone.
And I realised that the characterisation of Sonic, Knuckles and Robotnik are more like Sonic Boom than any game or other adaptation, except with all the adult references and humour removed. And Sonic Boom isn't known for its faithful representations either but still at least has some edge.
The Declawing of Media:
When I look around at the world today, I think that we need anti-authoritarian icons like Sonic the Hedgehog more than ever. But all of the movie studios and all of the artists are beholden to fucking suits that don't want to take any risks in case their precious money flow gets harmed.
And so we're left with a world where the art that used to inspire kids and teenagers to rage against the machine and keep it real has all become safe and boring and paint by the numbers. And so they're being attracted by douchebag podcasters that give them something to rebel against instead.
I feel like the Sonic the Hedgehog movies so far are a great representation of just how stale and corporate everything has become. I believe they call it enshittification. And I'm thinking that maybe Hollywood and the music industry are just as much to blame for the state of affairs today as social media. And not because of the wOkE agENdA but because no one has a fucking spine anymore and everything is trying to chase numbers on charts that go up and down. Enshittification is more than just social media design IMO.
AskBlåhaj
It was suggested that I post this idea to the community proper. So I'm just copying and pasting the comment that I made, edited to make it clear which post I'm referencing (which is the next most recent post here anyway). I hope I got the link right in order to work with all of this federation mumbo jumbo.
>I’m too new to be making these kinds of suggestions and I’m far from the moderator type myself but multiple times throughout this week, I’ve been thinking that it would be pretty cool if there was an AskBlåhaj. Or even just general Ask Lemmy based here, that could be asking for unwanted attention from shitty people on other instances though.
>Not even 24 hours after seeing this post, I’ve seen someone else getting the snark and a non answer for a simple question. And also a Blåhaj user.
>As much of a public bathroom as it could be, AskReddit was pretty fun for ‘silly’ questions and general chatting. And a nice place for new users to hang around and gain karma and confidence. But with the gatekeeper neckbeardy types around, maybe what it needs on Lemmy is to be in an instance with rules that promote friendliness and good vibes.
>Just an idea to throw out there anyway.
Mbin support? Edit: Or PieFed?
I hope this isn't a question that's already been asked to death, in app search for "mbin" isn't all that helpful.
I'm still in the stages of looking for a permanent home here in the fediverse. So far mbin has really caught my eye because it's basically Lemmy+ for all intents and purposes (at least for mine). I'm not all that happy with what looks like the only Android app though.
So I was wondering if there were any plans to add mbin functionality to any existing Lemmy apps? Even if I used a Lemmy app solely for the 'Threads' or Lemmy section of mbin, then used the web page or only mbin app for everything else, I would be fine with that.
I tried to see if I could sign in with the app that I'm currently using (Eternity), with the kbin.earth instance and no luck. So obviously the API is just that much different.
Are any devs here thinking of expanding their apps in future? Or is there one I've missed? I've seen more than one app with the description "For Lemmy and the Fediverse", but what exactly is meant by "and the Fediverse" is unclear.
Two bug reports and an observation or suggestion or two
First the bugs:
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Trying to edit the top tabs such as rename or rearrange seems to do absolutely nothing, although the changes that you make in settings seem to stick.
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Changing the default server for the 'Anonymous' account also seems to do nothing. Once again, the setting does stick though.
Observations / suggestion:
I notice that there is a placeholder for 'multicommunities'. And I think I came across one or two other things that are placeholders / leftovers from Infinity. So it's all good, everything from app to the platform itself is WiP.
My suggestion is that for now, while we can't create or add multicommunities and have a bit of variety in our feeds, what about being able to add the local feeds of other instances? So that regardless of which instance I'm signed up in, I can have my Subscribed, Local, All tabs, as well as for eg. a 'World' tab, 'Blåhaj' tab etc. Is this something even remotely possible? Don't think I've seen other apps with this idea either.