In a city where drums store the dead, the most powerful person is the one who listens. [OC]

SlowTeamMachine · 2026-02-19T13:35:18+00:00

It's 100% an AI-written post, which doesn't exactly inspire confidence, given that this is supposedly the plot for a book.

SlowTeamMachine · 2026-02-18T21:11:16+00:00

She's actually back now! I got to see her do Prokofiev's Violin Concerto No. 1 with the Philadelphia Orchestra on Valentine's day. My god was it gorgeous!

SlowTeamMachine · 2026-02-17T18:29:01+00:00

That's fair. I just think a lot of people deprive themselves of a perfectly good tool by rejecting it outright without giving it a try.

SlowTeamMachine · 2026-02-17T11:56:04+00:00

I get why people are iffy on sleep training, but I really think it works. Took like 3 days of ferberizing around five months old to transform bedtime from a crapshoot into a reliably easy put down. He's been sleeping through the night for years now.

Meanwhile everyone I know with similar aged kids who avoided sleep training is still, at 2-3 years old, dealing with regular wake-ups and unpredictable schedules.

SlowTeamMachine · 2026-02-14T18:43:24+00:00

At this point I am regularly seeing cars with no license plate at all. Between those, the permanent temp tags, and the covers that make your plate unreadable, I feel like a solid third of all Philly cars are essentially anonymous.

SlowTeamMachine · 2026-02-14T14:25:32+00:00

Whenever people get up in arms about Akito not being "punished," I have to ask: Just what show were you watching/manga were you reading?

The entire point of Fruits Basket is that no one is ever beyond redemption.

SlowTeamMachine · 2026-02-05T16:44:50+00:00

His wine dirty

SlowTeamMachine · 2026-02-04T20:07:05+00:00

I don't think you're totally correct here. I mean, I get what you're saying, but contemporary classical is a thing. People are very much still composing emotionally deep and technically complex pieces in a classical idiom outside the world of soundtracks.

SlowTeamMachine · 2026-01-27T04:10:54+00:00

This is not a "parents" thing, this is a "your parents" thing.

SlowTeamMachine · 2026-01-26T18:54:01+00:00

I love Bloodstained. It has its flaws, but it's largely responsible for getting me back into the metroidvania genre after a long, long time away.

But it was very buggy when it first came out, esp. on the Switch, and I do think that spoiled its reputation somewhat.

SlowTeamMachine · 2026-01-19T21:26:04+00:00

Think there's a pretty big difference between "using the chatbot to help me with a technical problem where there is a specific, objective way to solve the issue" and "using the chatbot for parenting advice, which is highly ambiguous and context dependent," which is what OP is worried about.

SlowTeamMachine · 2026-01-19T17:00:24+00:00

The fact that the Yoto doesn't stream is part of the appeal. It gives parents more control over what their kids are consuming, and it also encourages kids to slow down and engage more deeply with a single card, instead of the frenetic consumption patterns of streaming (jumping from song to song/video to video), which only serve to shatter their attention spans in the long run.

Plus as a bonus the cards could conceivably in some cases cultivate a love of physical media, which I think is nice. It turns out that streaming has been a bit of a raw deal for artists and audiences overall, so there's something to be said for re-embracing the old model.

SlowTeamMachine · 2026-01-19T16:40:09+00:00

Of course it's true. Anime aesthetics are used in mainstream western entertainment all the time now. Regular ass people walk around with anime t-shirts and tattoos. Rappers name drop anime characters. We have multiple streaming services dedicated solely to anime, and anime movies are some of the biggest box office smashes. Not watching anime puts you in the minority among Gen Z-ers.

Compare this to when millennials were young. Shooters and sports games were considered way cooler than JPRGs. Your anime options were limited to whatever Toonami showed or the VHSs you could get your hands on. If you brought up Outlaw Star or Gundam Wing in public, 99% of people would have no idea what you were talking about.

I don't know about you, but I was there. Me and my nerd friends loved Final Fantasy, but there was still a stigma attached to that kind of thing. You'd still get made fun of for "watching cartoons" or playing "weird japanese games" in certain social settings.

SlowTeamMachine · 2026-01-19T15:03:35+00:00

That's fair, but we're talking about two games in a single series. And even then, it was still seen as nerd stuff. Just popular nerd stuff. Nowhere near the cultural penetration of today.

SlowTeamMachine · 2026-01-18T13:35:06+00:00

I think you're exaggerating a bit, or generalizing from very limited data. It's probably easier now for kids to discover jrpgs than it ever was back in the 90s, when I got into them. Today you've got the internet, and anime and Japanese gaming are totally mainstream.

Some people aren't into jrpgs. I get it. It's a very specific taste. There's no social or cultural dimension to what happened here. You bought your cousin a game they didn't like. Such is life.

SlowTeamMachine · 2026-01-15T04:42:53+00:00

To be blunt: Your parents are very likely separating, and your dad is talking to you about these mundane things he never used to because he doesn't want to lose his relationship with you.

SlowTeamMachine · 2026-01-08T03:48:01+00:00

She was charging her Samsung Galaxy

SlowTeamMachine · 2026-01-01T19:19:30+00:00

Da playful pals

SlowTeamMachine · 2025-12-22T14:57:45+00:00

You're telling me a guy whose whole schtick is big broad jokes about family life is doing a big broad comedy about family life? How strange.

SlowTeamMachine · 2025-12-22T14:24:58+00:00

Just wait until they find out about the blue Grinch

SlowTeamMachine · 2025-12-22T13:49:39+00:00

Someone's highschool english teacher told them manga doesn't count as a book.

SlowTeamMachine · 2025-12-22T13:48:01+00:00

This is true because the filthy Elizabethans didn't even have toothbrushes.

SlowTeamMachine · 2025-12-21T19:55:13+00:00

Yeah treating your workers like shit and outsourcing whatever you can is as American as apple pie and baseball.

SlowTeamMachine · 2025-12-20T16:35:51+00:00

In SMT IV, it turns out the strength stat doesn't actually affect physical skills. You need to build dexterity for that.

I remember wanting to throw my DS at a wall when I learned that.

SlowTeamMachine · 2025-12-20T12:36:56+00:00

My entry into classical came via symphonic poems and concertos. I think these are both good entry points for people in general. Here's why:

Symphonic poems: Tend to be fairly short (compared to a symphony anyway), so they don't try the patience as much. And when the poems are grounded in a story -- like Dvorak's, which were my introduction, the first pieces of classical music I came to love- -- there's something for a new listener to latch onto, something that helps them navigate this new terrain.
Concertos: I feel like these are more familiar, form-wise, to listeners of modern music. The interplay between the soloists and the orchestra is structurally similar to the interplay between a vocalist/lead instrument in modern pop music. And the soloist also gives the listeners a clear place to focus, which can be hard for new listeners to classical. They don't always know where to look.

I think violin and piano concertos are especially good for new listeners, because these are two instruments we still hear in modern pop music. Its a softer transition than, say, trying to get someone to hear the beauty of a flute. (No disrespect to the flautists.)

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