A 1970 Corvette

Went to Anime Expo yesterday just for the day. The actual expo was pretty impressive in size (the only anime cons I've been to are pretty small Vegas ones previously) but had too much Hololive. I picked up some merch I probably could've got online for cheaper and saw some funny stuff (including an artist I never thought I'd see in person).
 
The real reason I went was for the concert happening that night which you needed an AX pass to get into anyway, pretty much 95% to see Togenashi Togeari.
 
 
They killed it, just as good as they were at Avoid Note. I popped off for Bleeding Hearts in particular. On the upside I even knew some of the other songs played by other artists. Colors (aka JIBUN WO) was pretty damn hype too. Honestly not sure how much of the lineup really counted as j-pop (sakurazaka46 definitely counted at least, and I liked their performances way more than I was expecting to) but hey, I had a ton of fun. Totally worth flying out for a day trip.
 
Spooked everyone near me cheering for togetoge at the end. Don't think I ever yelled that hard. 

Went to Anime Expo yesterday just for the day. The actual expo was pretty impressive in size (the only anime cons I've been to are pretty small Vegas ones previously) but had too much Hololive. I picked up some merch I probably could've got online for cheaper and saw some funny stuff (including an artist I never thought I'd see in person).
 
The real reason I went was for the concert happening that night which you needed an AX pass to get into anyway, pretty much 95% to see Togenashi Togeari.
 
 
They killed it, just as good as they were at Avoid Note. I popped off for Bleeding Hearts in particular. On the upside I even knew some of the other songs played by other artists. Colors (aka JIBUN WO) was pretty damn hype too. Honestly not sure how much of the lineup really counted as j-pop (sakurazaka46 definitely counted at least, and I liked their performances way more than I was expecting to) but hey, I had a ton of fun. Totally worth flying out for a day trip.
 
Spooked everyone near me cheering for togetoge at the end. Don't think I ever yelled that hard. 

I vaguely recall hearing it claimed that another editor told Palmer something like "you know this stuff is all crazy nonsense, right?" with Palmer responding something like "yeah, but watch how much I can make it sell."  But I can't immediately find the source where I saw this.

Man, there's nothing like sentence mixing.
 
 
EDIT: Oh wow, he actually's doing the whole series
 
 

I played some Next Fest demos (and one completely unrelated one):
 
PARKSIDE: DECAYED SOUL MANIPULATION - Clearly aping Cruelty Squad but without all of the polish (this is where you laugh a bit at that but we all know it's there) that makes it a good game underneath all the clown vomit aesthetics. The mission areas are a little more fleshed out and less abstract but I feel like that is to the detriment of the game since the design isn't quite there and they feel a little mazelike and hard to understand. This could be good on full release but it's currently chock full of jank and not much else. The story bits in the demo also kind of didn't give me a good feeling but that's probably just me being impatient and wanting the demo to just be gameplay. Darkenstein 3D: I thought it'd just be a fun wolfenstein-esque retro shooter but it felt more like someone's unfinished unity project, which to be fair, is probably what it is. Didn't feel good to play and the level design was idiotic. It felt like it was mainly gliding off of the aesthetic (which to be fair is fun, a deranged hobo loose in nazi germany murdering everyone trying to get his dog back is a perfect premise for this type of shooter). I feel like this game probably doesn't have much potential because just movement and shooting feel kinda floaty and not satisfying, and it seems like that's intentional, but who knows. PIGFACE: Parkside was more Deus Ex in the Cruelty Squad formula, and I think Pigface is more Hotline Miami in the Cruelty Squad formula. This one has a similar air of jank but the level design is more respectful of the game's design which mainly just is quickly and brutally taking enemies out without much RPG elements like abilities. It was a very barebones demo but I feel like it has a solid base and I'd be interested in the finished product. Nexus FPV Drone Carnage: Pretty standard FPV drone game, I just picked it up because it made me think of another old FPV VR game I played at a friend's house once. It's not bad, but probably not my actual wheelhouse in terms of game genre. It is incredibly clear with what it is: you are an FPV drone and you enact carnage. You can't call it anything but honest. VOID/BREAKER: Notably the only FPS game that was trying to be relatively modern. Waow a roguelike FPS game where you jump from arena to arena and get gun modifiers so original... The addition of destruction mechanics made me perk up a bit and try it, and I think they're not really super well integrated but serviceable. I found the modification system actually more interesting, where you have a grid inventory and your modifiers take up slots, with some of them only pointing to other slots and enhancing whatever is in the slot. It reminded me a little bit of Noita wand crafting, which is a good thing, though the item pool is pretty thin in the demo. The visuals are a little too "we have these cool glitchy tech effects and we're going to make you see them damn it" and it makes big fights really hard to visually understand, but that might be something fixable in graphics configs. The story is pretty boilerplate but not offensive.  Stellar Blade: I picked it up because it seemed like a game I'd not normally play and I think that's a valid evaluation but the demo did a decent job of giving me a taste of the gameplay. These kinds of hack and slash parry/dodge/estus flask games aren't really my jam but I was sort of clicking with it by the end of the demo so I think either the formula has been refined enough in general for me to get it a little better, or this game in particular is made to be more accessible. Not sure. Either way I was surprised by it. I'd probably play it if I had it, but I'm not super likely to buy it unless it gets absurdly discounted. Okay fine I also played it due to a very tiny curiosity in if people were overreacting to talk about the character designs in it and I think it's about what I expected. I don't mind it, at least. Some neat stuff, some complete shovelware, some in between. I think that's a pretty good next fes demo plunge experience overall. Pigface and Void/Breaker are definitely on my radar.

I played some Next Fest demos (and one completely unrelated one):
 
PARKSIDE: DECAYED SOUL MANIPULATION - Clearly aping Cruelty Squad but without all of the polish (this is where you laugh a bit at that but we all know it's there) that makes it a good game underneath all the clown vomit aesthetics. The mission areas are a little more fleshed out and less abstract but I feel like that is to the detriment of the game since the design isn't quite there and they feel a little mazelike and hard to understand. This could be good on full release but it's currently chock full of jank and not much else. The story bits in the demo also kind of didn't give me a good feeling but that's probably just me being impatient and wanting the demo to just be gameplay. Darkenstein 3D: I thought it'd just be a fun wolfenstein-esque retro shooter but it felt more like someone's unfinished unity project, which to be fair, is probably what it is. Didn't feel good to play and the level design was idiotic. It felt like it was mainly gliding off of the aesthetic (which to be fair is fun, a deranged hobo loose in nazi germany murdering everyone trying to get his dog back is a perfect premise for this type of shooter). I feel like this game probably doesn't have much potential because just movement and shooting feel kinda floaty and not satisfying, and it seems like that's intentional, but who knows. PIGFACE: Parkside was more Deus Ex in the Cruelty Squad formula, and I think Pigface is more Hotline Miami in the Cruelty Squad formula. This one has a similar air of jank but the level design is more respectful of the game's design which mainly just is quickly and brutally taking enemies out without much RPG elements like abilities. It was a very barebones demo but I feel like it has a solid base and I'd be interested in the finished product. Nexus FPV Drone Carnage: Pretty standard FPV drone game, I just picked it up because it made me think of another old FPV VR game I played at a friend's house once. It's not bad, but probably not my actual wheelhouse in terms of game genre. It is incredibly clear with what it is: you are an FPV drone and you enact carnage. You can't call it anything but honest. VOID/BREAKER: Notably the only FPS game that was trying to be relatively modern. Waow a roguelike FPS game where you jump from arena to arena and get gun modifiers so original... The addition of destruction mechanics made me perk up a bit and try it, and I think they're not really super well integrated but serviceable. I found the modification system actually more interesting, where you have a grid inventory and your modifiers take up slots, with some of them only pointing to other slots and enhancing whatever is in the slot. It reminded me a little bit of Noita wand crafting, which is a good thing, though the item pool is pretty thin in the demo. The visuals are a little too "we have these cool glitchy tech effects and we're going to make you see them damn it" and it makes big fights really hard to visually understand, but that might be something fixable in graphics configs. The story is pretty boilerplate but not offensive.  Stellar Blade: I picked it up because it seemed like a game I'd not normally play and I think that's a valid evaluation but the demo did a decent job of giving me a taste of the gameplay. These kinds of hack and slash parry/dodge/estus flask games aren't really my jam but I was sort of clicking with it by the end of the demo so I think either the formula has been refined enough in general for me to get it a little better, or this game in particular is made to be more accessible. Not sure. Either way I was surprised by it. I'd probably play it if I had it, but I'm not super likely to buy it unless it gets absurdly discounted. Okay fine I also played it due to a very tiny curiosity in if people were overreacting to talk about the character designs in it and I think it's about what I expected. I don't mind it, at least. Some neat stuff, some complete shovelware, some in between. I think that's a pretty good next fes demo plunge experience overall. Pigface and Void/Breaker are definitely on my radar.

This is something I never really thought about until watching this video:
 
 
For those who don't want to watch, he discusses a phenomenon where children remember being able to float on the air down the stairs (but not up the stairs.)  This is something that they are only able to do in private, and lose the ability to do when they get older. And it's never something that can be used to go up the stairs, only down them. Apparently this is something that a lot of people remember.
 
Now I don't remember ever having this happen to me.  But this is the "dreams" thread and I do dream about this quite often.  I don't lucid dream very much, but I do sometimes get a partial awareness that I'm not in the normal world but in the dream world.  And when this happens I am able to float down stairs like is described in the video.  I've always thought of it as "falling, but you miss the ground."  How it works is that I take a small jump at the top of the stairs, just enough to be above the next steps.  Then I simply continue moving forward in such a way that I never touch the ground.  It's not just jumping because I do not get to the ground as quickly as I should, and I can even go around corners in spiral staircases and the like.  Furthermore, I am able to maintain this state for quite some time after the stairs end.  It's not flying because eventually I will hit the ground, and when this happens I can only get back to the floating state by getting to the top of a stairway (or a slope) and jumping off the top again.  So this technique can't be used to up the stairs.
 
The thing is that when I am dreaming, this feels completely natural.  Like it's just something that any human could decide to do.  But in my dreams most people do not descend the stairs like this, and that actually causes me confusion.  Like, it's so simple so why don't they do it too?
 
I've had this experience in literally dozens of not hundreds of dreams.  It's so common that the cases where I walk down the stairs in dreams are probably rarer than the times that I float down them.  Until I saw the video above, I thought that this was just a quirk of my psyche.  That is, I knew that dreaming of having your breaks not work, being late for an appointment, losing a tooth, etc. are common dreams so I don't think of anything when that happens to me.  But I assumed this was one of those things that are unique to me.  But I guess it's a common thing?
 
Of course, most people responding claim that this happened to them in real life, just when they were real young.  It makes me wonder if they are just remembering dreams though, since I've confused dreams from childhood with reality.  (In particular I remember an event where our family computer got infected with a virus that caused it to display flashing ASCII art in a golden ratio spiral.  There is no distinction in how I remember this incident versus other events from my childhood.  But no one involved remembers this happening, the virus in the dream destroyed the computer but the computer worked just fine throughout my childhood, and when I think of the room where this event supposedly took place I realize it doesn't correspond to the room the computer was in, nor indeed any room in any house that I've lived in.  So it must be a dream... but if I hadn't had investigated I easily could see myself telling someone else about a weird virus that ruined one of our computers like it really happened.)

That's an awesome piece, damn

No!!! Now you'll never be able to reason out which comments were mine!
 
For the record here are the comments I remember:
 
Cryptic Command (which doesn't even fucking come up when I search for it in the new Gatherer, adding broken search engines as a common topic) - Normally modal spells give you subpar options but are playable due to flexibility. For example, Assault//Battery is either a sorcery speed shock or a green Hill Giant, neither of which is great on its own, but the ability to switch between removal and threat makes it playable. For Cryptic Command you get six modes, each of which is absolutely worth 4 mana, meaning that the value this card gives you is insane.
 
Jedit Ojanen - This card is kind of a litmus test to when you started playing. When he came out he was cool: a bit cat guy with a fancy gold frame and evocative flavor text.  Definitely something to get nostalgic about.  But everyone who played later realized that this guy wasn't even well costed for the time.
 
Order of the Sacred Bell - These guys were awesome in Kamigawa limited. The block was stuffed with high cost but low stat spirits with tricky abilities.  So rather than take part in that nonsense, you drafted these guys and smashed face.
 
Sinking Feeling - At a sealed event my opponent carefully looked over all my cards and then put this on my biggest creature... which was Morselhoarder.
 
Viashino Cutthroat - Don't think about this as a creature, but rather as repeatable burn for 5.
 
Word of Command - The art is just a closeup of the art on Howling Mine.
 
Iron Will - When your creature tries to block, show them that it rocks!
 
Crackleburr - If Thundermare is an elemental horse, how is this thing not an elemental fox? I mean look at it!
 
Arctic Foxes - It's funny that this is an Amrou Kithkin variant, and both ended up being the only creature of their type for years.
 
Foxfire - I don't remember if I actually posted this comment, but this is my favorite card art.
 
Master of Arms - For confused new players, when this card was printed tapped creatures would not deal combat damage when blocking. So the activated ability was at tricky way to prevent damage done to Master of Arms.  The sixth edition rules did away with this rule, making the ability largely pointless.  Then they later added errata to make it so the tapped creature wouldn't deal combat damage, restoring the original functionality in a similar way to what they did with old "continuous artifacts" like Howling Mine.  Then a few years later they removed the errata, making the ability pointless again.  So I guess five years from now they'll errata it to prevent combat damage again.
 
(They didn't.... though apparently they did make a fixed version in a "Mystery Booster" just to spite us.)

This could probably go anywhere since it touches on common SPUF talking points (internet ephemerality, corporations being tech dumbasses, etc) but Wizards finally updated their Gatherer website and destroyed about a decade of archived card comments. Admittedly we all knew this was going to happen since they broke commenting in 2015 and never fixed it, but still, it was a fascinating microcosm of player opinions, evaluations, and even jokes frozen in time. There were even some comments from actual card designers in there which may or may not be the only source of some behind the scenes tidbits such as a designer apologizing for Archangel's Light and explaining that the card was initially something broken that they had to pull and replace with something safe that sucks instead. I still wonder what it was that was so broken, considering Innistrad as a block was kind of very high power. As of right now it seems the mobile site isn't updated, but it's only a matter of time. Hopefully the waybackmachine has snippets I guess?
 
Also they updated their site to reflect 15ish years of screen size upgrades but they're still offering extremely low res pictures for a lot of sets so it looks like complete ass, but that's nothing new.
 
I'm just glad I screenshotted my favorite comment only a few months before it happened.

Multiplayer FPS matchmaking systems are such a punching bag for angry players nowadays it's kind of unreal. Casual queues? Full of "sweats." Ranked? Games take forever to fire and my team always sucks. There's either too much or not enough skill based matchmaking. I'm only just now really encountering this since I made the mistake of checking discussion for The Finals now and then (previously I remember SBMM on Apex Legends being a hot topic but I mainly played in a stack and avoided discussion of the game outside of important info).
 
I've had a pretty good solo queue experience with that game honestly. It kind of just creates this weird feeling that I'm playing the same game as these people but getting a completely different experience. It's kind of impossible to verify if they're just tilted past the moon or there's an actual problem.
 
When did this all start happening though is my other question - because I played 'old' matchmaking-only FPS games in the MW2/Halo 3/Reach/Advanced Warfare era and there wasn't any kind of "fucking matchmaking is trying to poison me in my sleep" sentiment that I remember (other than perhaps recognizing certain "clan stacks" that would roll matches due to being clumps of good players in a party). Or am I just remembering wrong and that was also a complaint back then?

What I've learned is that if it sounds like the 80's, you can usually get normies to roll with it.
 
The Protomen, Astrophysics's Miku covers and the Bubblegum Crisis soundtrack are all fine.  Similarly Haken is in general too weird for most people to accept, but you can get away with Affinity.
 
A major no-no is lyrics that can be easily parsed but not understood.  No normie is going to let you get away with playing lines like "lad did you know a girl was murdered here?",  "the demon in your mind will rape you in your bed at night," "And they vowed to eradicate Hasbro, crashed the plane, kicked the door, went inside" or "Do not forgive us Father, because we believe in alien lifeforms."

Fahrenheit: 0 = really cold, but commonly experienced, temperature.  100 = really hot, but commonly experienced, temperature.
 
Celsius: 0 = kind of cold but it gets colder than this in most places. 100 = お前はもう死んでいる (i.e. you ded.)
 
And yet Celsius apologists will defend their system on the basis of finding it easier to remember the temperature that water boils at, as if you wouldn't be able to tell if water was boiling without putting a thermometer in it.

They've been working on it for 20 years straight!

The ideas persisted for a while.  I recently picked up a Hoyle's Board Game collection from the late 90's (after Windows 95).  It's Clubhouse Games but without quite 51 things.  It does have virtual opponents though, who will make various commentary on the games as you go through them. The game has a default menu for picking games (which resembles the aesthetic of Packard Bell Navigator):
 

 
If you click the spaceship, you get this instead:
 

 
Clicking on the buttons causes a hologram for the game to appear.  (Also note that an astronaut has randomly drifted by, why not).  You then click "engage" to play the game.
 

If you click the cabin you instead get this:
 

 
A prerendered 3D cabin you can navigate Myst style.  The games are scattered throughout.  You can see in this screen the combination checkers/chess board.  Click on the pieces you want to use and you'll play the game.  Something I didn't realize about this is that the game will actually default to changing seasons with the system clock.  When I first played this game it counted as "winter" and hence the background looked like this:
 

(The snow and fire is animated, by the way.) Here is another location in the cabin with more games:
 

 
If you play in this mode the background will carry through into many of the games:

 
(The bear talks, by the way.)  None of this was necessary.  The game would have been perfectly fine as just a collection of 10 board games.  But they did it anyway.
 
I think at the time the idea was that old people would feel more comfortable using a computer for games by using the cabin environment, and that kids would be more excited about things with the sci-fi environment.  That's certainly the explicit idea behind the Packard Bell Navigator environment.  (I have the disc for that too by the way, but it's designed to come pre-installed with a computer and as such relies on some files which are either not on the disc or which cannot be installed automatically.  So I can get it running to the point of showing off a location or two, but it will crash almost immediately.) I can see why companies stopped bothering doing this sort of stuff, but I do like this aesthetic a lot.  It makes the whole process of using the computer a fun experience.

I looked into a game solely because I saw Silent recently bought it (nubby's number factory) and it turned out to be something I've been wanting for a while. It actually started a while ago when I saw some random peggle video and thought how it'd be kinda fun to have a game like that to screw around with but it came back to the forefront when I was checking the steam activity feed (something I remember exists every couple of weeks during fits of boredom) and saw the most WordArt-looking-ass store banner ever.
 
 
It's funny how immediately an aesthetic is conveyed through the most basic graphic design (or lack thereof?). Even before I saw the game I knew exactly what it would look like

ALRIGHT Y'ALL! WELCOME TO THE DAILY AUCTIONING! SOOIE! SOOOIEEE!

Fellas I feel compelled to share that I became a dad recently
 
My boy is doing great and it has been awesome bar the tummy ache nights where me and my wife get literally 0 hours of sleep

Been a while, not drawing digitally that much these days, but I have been doodling on paper when bored. I like to believe there was some improvement.
 
 
I'd like to eventually get a digital tablet.

The bayonetted rifle was what tipped me off at first, but the red eyeliner and ever so slight trace of a halo (almost looked like more red hair streaks, but the angle wasn't following the flow of the hair) was what made me stop and question it. I actually found the art where that's from, it's an official promo art for the Wakamo event:
 
 

I kinda went left to right line and top to bottom. There's a lot of these that I recognize but don't have enough of a thread to say one thing about them and there are probably some that I missed even though they're in the same series as others I did recognize but I wanted it to be really off the cuff and if I looked up stuff it would dilute the results.
 
 
I think I did well all things considered.

Not sure if being trolled...
 
but she does explicitly retain the nickname Osaka in Yotsuba:
 

Why do TF2 HUD makers have to tear out every single fucking menu in the game for some flat ugly interface instead of just making a damn HUD? It'd be one thing if you could just turn it off and use the normal main menu and backpack but due to resource file shenanigans it's never a true option
 
for the tiny amount of extra features I want (last damage dealt, bigger targetID) it seems like my only recourse is to accept way too many extra unnecessary tweaks, OR go to the lengths to add the few features I actually want on my own