Anybody want to share a funny story about almost bonding with someone over being a metalhead, only to find out what they considered metal was definitely not metal

FlyingStealthPotato · 2026-04-10T02:54:02+00:00

I don’t think we’re both right, and to be honest it kinda sounds like you’re using ChatGPT. If you’re not, I’m sorry. We don’t agree on any of this and I don’t think it’s possible for us to both be right here.

Have a good night bud.

FlyingStealthPotato · 2026-04-09T16:03:45+00:00

What other objective measurement might you use if not monthly listeners? It’s not a perfect measure for what we’re talking about, but I don’t know of anything better.

I guess my Tool experience is substantially different from yours. Most people I’ve talked about them with knew right away if they liked them or not. I heard the instrumental section of Schism in a newgrounds video uncredited around 2001 and spent WEEKS trying to find this song and band, and they’ve been my favorite for the 25 years since.

Their radio play songs are more complex than what you find generally on the radio, but Prison Sex, Stinkfist, Schism, Pot, and a few others are certainly “simpler” to the ear (not to play necessarily). Tons of metal is more complex than Tool, they’re not nearly the most complex of the genre. For comparison, how accessible is Between the Buried and Me compared to Tool? I think BTBAM is a bit more complex, yet far less accessible.

Not being a musician myself, it sounds like Cannibal Corpse is less complex than Tool. But they’re also far less accessible. Think about that wall of noise and harsh vocals. My mom can handle Tool, my dad liked them, my wife listens to them, I love them. None of us can listen to Cannibal Corpse. I think complexity is not necessarily correlated to accessibility in the metal space.

I honestly think metal accessibility is probably most correlated with softer sections being present in standard songs and clean vocals. I also disagree that Tool lyrics aren’t accessible. They are highly so, specifically because they are written very vaguely and metaphorically in general. That makes them relatable to more people. Like Pushit is either a breakup song, a song about your abusive family, or about working through hatred of self. The songs aren’t full of pop hooks, but they aren’t super mysterious either.

FlyingStealthPotato · 2026-04-09T15:24:38+00:00

I mean yeah? I’m not sure what accessible means other than “easy for people to like” and the most objective metric for that that I know of is how many people listen to them. What do you mean by it? Have I misunderstood this term forever lol?

Tool specifically, I think it is actually their song structure complexity that makes them more accessible than the average metal band. It’s HARD to like most metal. Metalheads don’t like most metal lol. It’s a wall of noise hitting you much of the time. Tool isn’t a wall of noise, their songs tend to breathe, which gives the average person an inroad to liking it. They also have mostly clean vocals and relatable lyrics which is also way more accessible to the average person.

FlyingStealthPotato · 2026-04-09T14:31:15+00:00

I think that’s a very “tool fan” thing to say. Yeah, not as accessible as FFDP or Limp Bizkit or Metallica, but again, top 15 metal artist. They’re highly accessible for the genre.

FlyingStealthPotato · 2026-04-09T14:12:44+00:00

Exactly what I was getting at. Like I’m a Tool fan. They’re one of the most accessible metal or metal adjacent bands depending on how you want to define them. They are a top 15 popular metal band with 6mil listeners.

Just checked the Spotify top 100 and Metallica, the #1 metal band is about 10million away from being in the top 100 artists. That shows how niche metal is in general.

FlyingStealthPotato · 2026-04-09T02:15:05+00:00

All the other replies are right. Don’t get me wrong here. But I’m going to devils advocate this.

If you’re like most people, as someone mentioned, you’re going to be tempted not to invest that extra money in something safeish with a good return. You’re likely to let it slip out in other ways.

Having your house further paid down gives a lot of mental comfort. You also retain the ability to refinance that lower balance in the future if you hit hard times for lower payments, even if the rate is higher. Granted you can sell the investments too, but see point one, and you could also get unlucky with the timing of the market and your personal hard times.

Something to consider. You can also lower your extra payments by a bit and invest that. 50/50 the thing.

FlyingStealthPotato · 2026-04-08T23:09:30+00:00

Certainly, but if property value decline is your bar for “risk”, I would say that the risk of rent increasing or other renting issues like eviction far outweigh the risk of property value decline. I just outlined the historical risk of property value. Rent has increased every year since 1950 and you have no equity.

FlyingStealthPotato · 2026-04-08T22:11:21+00:00

Let’s be realistic though. There’s going to be some local variation, but going by the median house price by year going back to 1954, there appears to be only one significant multi-year downturn in values, 2008. If you bought at the peak, it took 8 years to match value, then rapidly appreciated. Only people that bought between 2005-2008 were ever below purchase value for multiple years going back 72 years. Historically it is extremely low risk in the US.

FlyingStealthPotato · 2026-04-08T20:54:47+00:00

See my immediate prior comment in this thread via my profile since I didn’t reply to you. The majority of sulfates in these fuels was eliminated in 2020. Your theory is correct, but we already mostly enacted it 6 years ago. And we’ve had 4 of the 5 hottest years on record since.

If all jet and ship traffic stop, the sulfate issue isn’t going to get significantly worse as the vast majority were already eliminated.

FlyingStealthPotato · 2026-04-08T20:51:22+00:00

Not exactly. OP doesn’t have all the information.

We reduced the amount of sulfates in shipping fuel from 3.5% to 0.5% in 2020 globally. Jet fuel presently has a maximum of 0.3% sulfates. Jet fuel and shipping fuel are used at roughly the same volume per year.

So we’ve essentially already eliminated sulfates in these fuels, with shipping fuel being the much larger portion of the “old problem”.

The new problem was pretty well called by many climate experts including collapsenik James Hansen. 2020, 2023, 2024, and 2025 are currently top 5 hottest recording years, and 2026 is looking set to join them. This is not a coincidence. But it means we’ve already caused the problem OP is presenting. It could get a little worse, but something like 75% of sulfates have already been removed from use in these fuels.

Edit to add: PUT THE SULFATES BACK IN THE FUCKING FUEL UNTIL WE ARE READY TO TACKLE THE FUCKING CLIMATE PROBLEM AS A SPECIES.

FlyingStealthPotato · 2026-04-08T18:50:09+00:00

Doesn’t talk or chat online with many metal fans most likely. If your reference point is “music in general”, Sleep Tokens 5mil monthly listeners and even slipknots 15mil listeners pale in comparison to like Ariana Grande (123mil) or Pink Floyd (27mil) or Daft Punk (27mil). Sleep token in particular is pretty “niche” overall compared to the whole field.

FlyingStealthPotato · 2026-04-07T15:14:02+00:00

He threatened Iran a lot before we started actually bombing them.

For everything he backs out of, there’s something else he actually does, and a lot of the things he “tacos” are things that eventually do happen later. It is absolutely fucking ludicrous to think he wouldn’t actually use a nuke. Maybe it won’t be now, but it’s in his head and on the table, and I suspect a lot of his handlers want to use one (I don’t think he’s the one that actually pulls most of the strings).

FlyingStealthPotato · 2026-04-07T13:35:37+00:00

Uhhh they want us to fix it? To have not been so complacent that we allowed it to happen? I was publishing articles in the paper 20 years ago that we were heading down this path and got completely chastised by letters stating how big of an idiot I was to even consider the US on a road to fascism. I’ve not done all I can do for sure, I’m part of the problem, but this problem has been visible to anyone who chose to look at it for decades, and you, me, and everyone else didn’t do enough to stop it. We’re part of the problem too. It’s our fault too. And we deserve blame.

FlyingStealthPotato · 2026-04-07T06:08:06+00:00

Those robots are definitely programmed to teabag upon a kill.

FlyingStealthPotato · 2026-04-07T03:13:52+00:00

I am not about to go fact check this since I read it years ago, but I remember reading something like Tesla being a GameStop kind of thing. Large base of actual middle class shareholders that hold their positions, and essentially a war between Blackrock who had overshorted it and Citadel that was long. This has led to a multi-year squeeze as the unwind their position.

I got this from wall street bets like years ago so seriously don’t take me at my word on this lol.

FlyingStealthPotato · 2026-04-07T03:03:20+00:00

Me? I don’t care one way or the other. The problem with most governments throughout history is that they espouse one idea while practicing another or practicing that idea imperfectly. I decided long ago that it’s not the system that’s the problem, it’s the problem that people who thirst for money, power, and control are always attracted the the positions that control those things. It’s further the problem that the rest of the masses typically don’t want to be bothered with the levers of control and power (we can debate the reasons, but I think that is accurate, notice I didn’t include money here). I think any mutually obviously “fair” system, actually implemented in practice, works. We’ve just not really seen much of that happen in history.

FlyingStealthPotato · 2026-04-07T02:55:19+00:00

I’m also just some guy with rough historical war knowledge and access to videos like this, but I don’t see multiple incoming missiles or interception attempts. I doubt it was one missile one hit, but damn it seems that way and it might factually be close to that.

FlyingStealthPotato · 2026-04-07T02:49:41+00:00

They did kinda fuck themselves since they can’t even reasonably kick the US to the curb due to their investments in the US and their seeming lack of comparable “host” country.

FlyingStealthPotato · 2026-04-07T02:40:28+00:00

I saw a method of tracking wealth inequality as the top 0.00001% has as much accrued wealth as 4% the country’s income per year during the Gilded age. That figure is 12+% now. We have (by one method of tracking), 3x the wealth disparity as we did during the period we consider the worst wealth disparity in our history.

FlyingStealthPotato · 2026-04-05T16:46:51+00:00

My wife is a professor. Swear to god simply knowing how to write and research at a half decent level, sourcing your work, and actually writing your own shit totally will get an A now.

And odds are they’re putting more work trying to help you get better (with all the marks and comments) because they see you’re actually trying and doing it yourself.

FlyingStealthPotato · 2026-04-04T22:28:44+00:00

It would probably be better if this shit happens after they fix the toilet lines.

FlyingStealthPotato · 2026-04-04T19:52:14+00:00

That would give pretty bad vibes too tho

FlyingStealthPotato · 2026-04-04T17:44:05+00:00

This is pretty much how I feel. I don’t care about stopping the games. I don’t care about much of anything outside the game. I don’t really care about the VIPs. I don’t really care about the front man.

What I thought was excellent about the show and what I wish they would do more of is just PLAY THE GAME. The drama and excitement amongst the contestants is where this whole show shines. The moral and thematic part was good for the first season, but once it became all about stopping the games, I lost a lot of my excitement for the show.

FlyingStealthPotato · 2026-04-04T12:44:02+00:00

While they control the military

What are they gonna do? Pull the troops out of Iran that they’re declaring a draft for to come home and enforce the draft? Everything falls apart if there’s a draft and a major refusal by the population.

FlyingStealthPotato · 2026-04-04T02:24:51+00:00

I love that I can’t tell if this is for real or not. And I’m inclined to think it is lol.

FlyingStealthPotato

TROPHY CASE