Anker owns Eufy, a security camera company. A few years ago people were able to access footage remotely, even thpugh Eufy claimed it was only stored locally. Anker, as the parent company, doubled-down and responded poorly at first.

https://www.digitaltrends.com/home/anker-admit-eufy-security-issues/

Now, that does not impact stuff like cables or battery banks at all. In 2024 when I was shopping for new battery banks, Anker had the best value so I bought Anker. But the corporate response is kind of sketchy so I’m never in a hurry to buy from them anymore. And I woudk never buy anything where security or privacy could be an issue.

I liked it, but this was also the first Metal Gear game in ever played so I wasn’t as invested in Snake.

I can’t remember exactly when I first watched it. Within a year or two of the pandemic though. I was solidly an adult.

It was not my first anime, but I still would not call myself an experienced anime watcher or anything. I watched it because I really liked Kill La Kill, looked up the history of studios Trigger and Gainax, and saw that this was one of their core franchises. And I saw Evangelion’s cultural impact on Japan being compared to Star Wars in America, so I figured I shohkd watch it.

I think its great. It starts off with relatively high-budget episodes, showing off smooth animation, cool and unique-looking mechs and great sound design (I watched the Netflix English dub, which had a bigger budget than the original). The kaiju they fight are pretty unqiue looking too. I’m also a sucker for other cultures appropriating western culture, so I love all random christian imagery they toss in unattached to any of its original meaning, just to appear “foreign” to their Japanese audience. It hits a lot of the mech anime tropes, complete with an animal mascot side character for comic relief. The 14 year old girls are a bit too sexualized for me, but I kind of get they were trying to sell this to 14 year old boys so… Eh. And even though its 14 year olds, they don’t spend a whole lot of time lingering on school life which is nice.

After the first few episodes it slowly shifts to the point where calling it a mech anime is an inside joke. The pacing is incredible and refreshing, and I think has aged even better when compared against most modern media that is edited extremely quickly to hold people’s attention. Beyond that… Well I could make a wall of spoiler text but I just recommend watching it yourself. I will say that this is a rare case where the sexualization of young girls is an actual artistic choice with meaning to it beyond just creepy horniness. Although I still think that’s mixed with an element of marketing that is a bit gross… Its complicated.

I also feel like I need to say I don’t take it too seriously. The psychological aspects are largely based on Freudian theories that were debunked decades or centuries before. I also often see Shinji used to represent introverted people, and I disagree. There’s a common trope of characters like him, who I would categorize as either extroverts who are bad at being extroverts or introverts written by extroverts trying to imagine what introversion is like. For reasons, I think Shinji is the latter.

Since then I’ve watched it a handful of times again. I showed it to my wife and it became her favorite anime, and she even got a tattoo based on it. We have watched the rebuilds a couple times, and they’re… Okay. I don’t think they stand up on their own, but they are more accessible for people who don’t have the attention span to watch the original.

Is he robbing us to pay for the war, or was this war just an excuse to rob us and enrich himself from the start?

Yeah this is using the airspace but like… Are we expecting Spain to shoot down US Military aircraft?

A while ago I read an article written by a college student going to school to create comic books. Unfortunately I can’t find it now.

They said that in the classes about drawing, those professors said it was perfectly fine to use AI to help with writing your stories and dialogue, but warned how incredibly dangerous it can be to use even as inspiration to draw.

Their writing professors, on the other hand, told them it was perfectly fine to use AI to help with their illustrations, but that it was incredibly dangerous to use to even generate outlines or rough drafts when it came to writing.

AI is only ever good enough when you don’t know better.

And favouring walking and riding a bicycle over driving a car

Car-centric infrastructure is far more detrimental to people with mobility impairments than any other mode of transportation. I would recommend you research what gold urbanism is if you’re saying stuff like this.

It doesn’t, as long as your reading skills are above that of a 12-year-old.

Reading literally engages different parts of your brain that are otherwise dormant. And as I mentioned, sometimes I want to watch stuff while high. Sometimes I want to give my eyes a break from using my glasses or reading things in fine detail.

I didn’t mention this before, but it is also very common for myself and a lot of other people to be doing other things and having TV on in the background. While i’m working or cooking or doing dishes or engaging in hobbies like soldering or woodworking. Especially with incredibly long anime like One Piece… That is a whole lot of hours to dedicate to doing absolutely nothing else. Netflix has talked about how they make “second screen” content now. Personally I find the idea of scrolling some social media in your phone while watching something to be a terrible idea, but its also often enjoyable to just listen to an anime.

Bruh, what? Non-English films aren’t dubbed enough in the first place for this to be a metric for a “subculture”.

Sure.

I formed that opinion based onnfeedbacj I received from native Japanese speakers. And it makes a lot of sense. I’ve also watched compilations just admiring bad voice acting in muktiple languages- sometimes there aren’t even words, just noises and exclamations and sounds that are terrible. Sometimes its easy to tell a flat delivery even if you don’t speak the language.

And I LIKE bad voice acting sometimes. Depending on the situation it can be more entertaining than good acting.

There is good and bad voice acting in animation written for English-speaking people. Further beyond just the acting itself, there is the writing and and direction and editing and mixing to consider. I’ve seen stuff with voice actors that I know are good that sounds terrible because of these other factors.

And yes, the acting will change depending on the individual performance, but I don’t think that just because someone was the first to do it means they will be the best. For most of human history, plays were performed by hundreds, maybe thousands of different actors across centuries. How many different men have played Romeo or Hamlet? Even with bad actors, you can still usually appreciate the stories.

I would have absolutely no problem with replacing James Earl Jones with another actor in a remake. Heck, there are probably a lot of actors in their prime in Hollywood right now that have spent most of their lives working on their Darth Vader. I don’t think that’s disrespectful at all. Characters get re-cast quite often as their actors age out or die or jisy have scheduling conflicts. And you see this in anime too: sometimes the Japanese voice actor changes over time, sometimes the English ones do, its not really a big deal.

If you’ve ever tried to book a venue for a wedding, you’d known that such superstitions are a luxury most cannot afford.

For me that’s a plus. I can listen to Matt Mercer’s duldct tones all day.

I look up my favorite voice actors and see what else they have been in to decide what to watch next. I think a LOT of people do this, with live action actors moreso.

Ironically it is often local governments pressuring these companies to force the return.

When companies look for places to open offices, they functionally put out bids and make cities compete against each other for the best deal. They promise that they’ll bring tons of high paying office jobs to whichever city gives then the most tax breaks and other benefits. These cities bend over backwards to attract these companies. Once they “win”, the cities might even try to incentivize developers to build around the office, creating commercial and retail spaces for these office workers to eat and shop. Services like mechanics, lawyers, salons, gyms, daycare. While eceonmic ecosystems might be built around the idea that one of the big-4 accounting firms has an office there. Hotels spring up to accomodate business travelers visiting.

Then all of a sudden that company let’s everyone work from home. All of those businesses dry up, although a lot of the demand might get redistributed to the nearby residential areas where those workers are working from now. But then, without the restriction of physical space, the company hires more and more remote workers in other countries instead. The company may be registered locally and may have their servers there, but the city already gave them tons of tax breaks. All that’s left is an empty glass building that doesn’t generate tax revenue, and a ghost town of extinct small businesses around it.

So the local politicians apply all the pressure they can to executives to keep employees in the office.

I don’t mean to excuse any of this. The whole thing is a mountain of fragile and shortsighted decisions, and we are absolutely better off working remotely. Building communities and economies where we live, rather than where we work.

If you cannot do it legally then it’s not legally ownership. You are talking about de facto ownership, which is another thing entirely.

I can totally bequeath in my will a safety deposit box with notes containing all if the credentials required to access all of my accounts and devices, functionally giving away my Gog account. However, if Gog or any of the publishers involved find out that I am legally dead they can totally ban that account and pursue legal action against anyone else who accessed it, violating terns of service

Kind of depends on what definition of ownership you want to use.

Can you re-sell it? No.

Can you give it away? No.

Can you bequeath it in your will? No.

So no, I don’t think so. Personally I prefer Steam’s more recent approach of just very clearly telling you that what you are paying for is a license for use. I find Gog’s redefinition of the word “own” distasteful.

1. A LOT of this comes from elitist “old heads”. Until the 2000’s or 2010’s, anime in America came from importing it into specialty shops. These formed a community of sorts, a unique subculture of anime enthusiasts. English dubs were rare, but if they existed they were often done very cheaply. Bad translation, bad direction, bad acting, bad editing, bad mixing even. Because it was not a large or lucrative enough market to justify putting money into.

There was also online piracy, which included the occasional fan dub. Which like… The passion of fans can be great for some things, but most anime fans lacked the skills fkd professional quality audio production.

And so for a loooong time English dubs got the reputation for being garbage. That changed a while ago, but some people just have a hard time adjusting their expectations.

2. Gatekeeping. It is simply harder to watch things in a language you do not known with subtitles. That keeps out the visually impaired. It requires a lot more cognitive effort to watch, and takes your eyes off the actual animation that you are meant to enjoy. A lot of these old heads learned enough Japanese to be able to understand basic conversation.

In the pirate scene you also have fan subs, which is something that is much more accessible to anime fans than audio production. You need a lot of equipment and talent and expertise in different areas to create a dub. You just needed a computer and the ability to translate to make a sub. I don’t mean to diminish the effort and skill it takes to translate, but dubbing requires all of those same skills PLUS a whole lot more, so it is harder.

This is not unique to anime. People in the US who watch foreign films in different languages have a similar subculture.

Personally, I like to get high and watch anime, but I find it’s harder to read when I’m high. I don’t mind watching sub’s stuff occasionally, but I prefer dubs.

3. Ignorance. It was not ONLY the English voice acting that was bad. A lot of cheaply made anime in the 80’s, 90’s, and 00’s had terrible Japanese voice acting too. However, if you don’t know much Japanese and are just reading the subtitles, you are not really in as good of a position to evaluate it. A lot of old anime fans love their anime, and felt outcast by American mainstream culture. They related more to Japanese culture and want to think its better. So they just assume the voice acting was better even when they aren’t able to evaluate it themselves.

Edit: and here they all come to prove my point. A bunch of elitist gatekeepers telling me I’m wrong for enjoying media the way I want to enjoy it.

I actually love it. When I find a voice actor I like, I look up their filmography to find new shows to watch.

You’re just proposing a much more drastic and rapid change than I am. I agree that a wealth tax would be a more immediate effect. It is also much more drsstixnand far less tested. The idea is interesting and I am neither opposed to it nor calling for it. I do not think it it necessary.

Increasing income tax rates and corporate tax rates would be a much slower approach. I didn’t mention them, but I would also add in property tax rates and capital gains. Luxury sales taxes, inheritancd taxes. In the US, make OASDI a progressive instead of regressive tax.

For existing billionaires, there are plenty of laws they’ve already broken to get where they are that just need to be enforced. Wage theft, antitrust, union busting, fraud. The SEC should have buried Musk in a dungeon years ago. So I see the answer to eliminating existing wealth being fines rather than taxes.

Of course, there is also room to increase the minimum wage and minimum benefits. That would hell redistribute wealth too.

I don’t know Gabe Newell, or even anyone who works at Valve personally, but every account I have ever read about Valve is that they usually treated and paid their employees well. Investigate all of these megacorps and prosecute appropriately.

Taxing billionaires is not some new and untested concept. In the US throughout the 1900’s the highest income tax brackets were often in the 70%'s, reaching into the 90%'s at times, and we did not see what you are suggesting.

Increasing the taxes on Gabe Newell’s profits from owning Valve would not suddenly cause him to lose money, just to gain less money. If corporate taxes and income taxes were increased across the board, then it is not as if he would benefit from selling Valve stock to invest elsewhere, and Valve would not be a more or less attractive place to invest relative to other options either. I am not sure why you think this would cause Gabe Newell to back out or investors to jump in. Heck, these rates have all changed pretty frequently within Valve’s existence and have not had a significant impact.

Also just to say, there is also the matter of jurisdiction as he lives in New Zealand while Valve is a US based company.

1. Taxing those outside investors too
2. Taxing Valve as a corporation more, making them less profitable and less attractive to said investors.
3. I’m not even convinced this would be an issue at all really. Remember Valve is not publicly traded. I suspect Gabe would hold on to controlling ownership as long as it was profitable, and remember that taxes are usually on profits.
4. Even if outside investors move in and enshittify, the moment they start doing anticompetitive you hit them with antitrust suits. Not to mention the industry can also be regulated even before all this: a lot of governments are cracking down on lootboxes already.

Even if Valve’s offering sucked, I still have not seen anyone point out a business practice I would call anticompetitive. They are not buying up studios or publishers, or even paying for timed exclusivity. I have not seen any hint that they are colluding with competitors on prices or fees. I haven’t seen then accused of stealing IP or poaching personnel. They readily welcome Microsoft and Sony to release games on Steam, and they have released their own games on consoles including the Switch. They let you install Windows or whatever else on the Deck, if you want to for some reason.

Billionaires should not exist, and Gabe Newell is no exception. He should be taxed more. I don’t love one company having so much control of this space. But I also don’t want to have a dozen different crappy launchers from different companies to deal with. There are a lot of benefits to the user to having everything centralized in one place.

1. It has gotten bigger. More active. More posts, more new content. When i first came over i would check the All page, sorted by eitber Active or Hot, and only find a couple of new posts per day. It is still nowhere near as active as Reddit was back then (probably a goos thing), but it has enough content to help me procrastinate at work now.

2. LemmyNSFW died and has been replaced by FediNSFW recently. I am sure that it will be better in the long-term, but it still doesn’t seem to be back to where it was yet. I think a lot of the old posters were bots, largely re-posting from Reddit, and not all of those have been rebuilt yet. I have mixed feelings about that.

3. The Connect app has gotten better and better. Love it.

4. For the past year or so, Lemmy has been of a size big enougj for patterns to ripple and promulgate through it bht small enough to notice them. For example, almost immediately after New Years several different communities on different instances started to see a drastix influx of webcomic posts. Usually 4-panel ones. Usually low-fidelity ones (XKCD-style, not Girl Genius for example). And usually oned with some sort of error or controversy. Rage bait to get the comments going, but nothing controversial enough to get banned or removed.

There would be new accounts made that just posted a handful of these comics quickly, and sometimes argue with people in the comments. Once people like me started pointing out the pattern they started deleting the posts and accounts after a couple days. I’m not sure when it stopped, but i have not noticed one for probably a month.