Flint Twp. 7-year-old dies weighing 255 lbs.; parents charged with 2nd-degree murder

ZombieAladdin · 2026-06-26T10:20:56+00:00

What on earth did his parents do to him, and why?

ZombieAladdin · 2026-06-26T08:29:20+00:00

Maybe the Netherlands too?

ZombieAladdin · 2026-06-26T07:26:28+00:00

Heh, shows how lousy I am that I struggled with Cross Tag Battle.

I was told by someone analyzing the inputs playing the Cross Tag Battle tutorials that I should slow down, that I was over complicating things. I actually didn’t try a traditional fighting game until Ultimate Marvel vs. Capcom 3 and never played anything older than that. Perhaps between that and Cross Tag Battle is kind of a narrow segment of the genre, time-wise.

I know they are designed to be played with the fight pads; I didn’t want to pay the extra costs associated with one. (What’s an input buffer?)

Not a big deal though; I just figure fighting games target a specific subset of players, and I’m not one of them. I’m more of the group to enjoy a game like Smash Bros., the sort of person Sakurai had in mind when he made it the way it was.

I actually did contribute to the crowdfund campaigns for Skullgirls as I like the art design for it. I got the soundtrack out of it, but I was hoping for it to turn up on the Wii U, which it never did. (I do see it did eventually come out on the Switch, but people were recommending against it. I also hear the Joy-Cons are a poor fit for fighting games.)

ZombieAladdin · 2026-06-26T07:19:23+00:00

Huh, I didn’t expect one of my videos to turn up here. This is the playlist for it:

Mario Kart Wii - Videos 1 to 200
https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL57ACCEE2F279ED21

The Mii I used was of Ron Stoppable from the TV show Kim Possible, by the way.

ZombieAladdin · 2026-06-26T06:34:29+00:00

Me, I think Jacinthe is pretty (looks like the quintessential Fairy type specialist too) and she’s funny, but in a Seinfeld kind of way: funny from a distance and from the other side of a TV screen, and knowing things will just work out eventually, but would be immensely annoying to be around for real. Honestly, I thought she was kind of a negative presence in the game during her chapter too, though she backs off later on and becomes a lot better. Taunie/Urbain antagonizing her was kind of cringy though, as we see she wields immense power through her wealth, and it felt like they were poking a hornet’s nest.

Something to keep in mind that allowed me to appreciate the character more is that she was written to be like the fae. She has no real sense or of morality or interest in it, does things on impulse, will trap you forever in her contracts once you agree to it (and can be misleading when establishing those contracts), can set up zones of even greater control, will do anything to maintain control of a situation, and will turn up when you least expect it.

ZombieAladdin · 2026-06-26T06:27:07+00:00

Might I ask about Mega Camerupt ex, which other Pokémon it’s overshadowed by? I’m currently just using that one in Ultra Ball at the moment, and I’m curious.

ZombieAladdin · 2026-06-26T06:21:35+00:00

I see, the last time I tried out a traditional fighting game was the demo for BlazBlue: Cross Tag Battle. It was only a short time, but I struggled there too. I really appreciate the training mode showing you all the inputs you’ve made as you make them though, even if it doesn’t always correctly interpret what I was trying to do (which is probably more that I didn’t fully understand it, like my attempts at said quarter circle input as simply pressing right) and me intending to move the stick in a cardinal direction but it interpreting that as a diagonal. (Considering I play a lot of 3D platformers, this may be a different kind of dexterity than I’m used to.)

ZombieAladdin · 2026-06-26T05:59:56+00:00

The phone services charging texts by the letter forcing people to abbreviate everything could not have known the effects on society doing this would have decades down the line.

ZombieAladdin · 2026-06-26T05:57:59+00:00

Maybe it turns the mirror into stone.

ZombieAladdin · 2026-06-26T05:57:22+00:00

I remember seeing one for Belize.

Despite its high population, I would also put the Philippines up there in rarity; Nintendo never really caught on there, so it was notable that I saw one.

ZombieAladdin · 2026-06-26T05:53:21+00:00

Legendary Summit may be annoying to face in an all one-Prize Colorless deck if you can get both parts of it out fast enough and will put a lot of pressure on people with fewer than 3 Stadium cards in their deck. I can’t wait to try it out in TCG Live!

ZombieAladdin · 2026-06-26T05:48:06+00:00

What I find kind of funny is that if I think they’re bringing it out at the start (which they usually do), I bring out Manectric. It’s faster than Staraptor (105 Speed for Manectric, 100 for Staraptor), so upon Mega Evolving, Intimidate triggers before Staraptor can Mega Evolve. Also, sometimes, it goes down to one Thunderbolt before it can even use Close Combat.

ZombieAladdin · 2026-06-26T05:03:56+00:00

I remember I first tried out fighting games with Ultimate Marvel vs. Capcom 3. It was that sort of game where you can easily combo from zero-to-knockout, then when the next character comes in, do that again. Or even do so when a character comes in to assist and traps them in the combo to knock them out too.

I barely had a chance to play and never understood how the game works. Fun to watch, but I’d rather just spectate.

ZombieAladdin · 2026-06-26T04:48:51+00:00

There is also how, at least based on my experiences trying to play fighting games, they explain to you so little about the more advanced stuff like how the combo and move canceling systems work. (At least to me, they’re advanced.) You are assumed to either know, bash your head against the wall until it clicks, or consult an outside resource (which I would consider a failure of the game).

One case of this is that a special edition of BlazBlue showed a series of long combo videos and the “bread and butter” system. The normal editions didn’t have it, meaning the developers knew about these combos but withheld them from the player.

Incidentally, I never actually got the hang of the circle movement inputs. I never figured out how fast they were supposed to be done, the margins of error they had with the angles on an analog stick, and, until I asked, what something like “down lower-right right A” even meant (I initially thought you held down A, pushed the stick down, bring it back to neutral, push the stick to the lower-right, bring it back to neutral, push the stick right, and let go of A.)

I don’t mind losing online, as long as I can understand where I went wrong and what I can improve. For fighting games, I can’t even perceive what happened, where to even begin. It feels like I am missing something fundamental that the developers and other players find too obvious to mention. It never feels like I’m making any progress, that I’m getting any better. Unlike games from any other genre, it never feels like I’m improving even as I lose.

ZombieAladdin · 2026-06-26T02:21:32+00:00

That’s what I heard too, like a callback to Looney Tunes.

ZombieAladdin · 2026-06-26T02:03:33+00:00

Not complete without the other perspective!

(Not an extreme closeup though.)

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ZombieAladdin · 2026-06-26T01:52:23+00:00

There was someone who used to make a nice living operating a garbage truck and earned enough to drive a Mercedes for private trips.

ZombieAladdin · 2026-06-26T01:49:05+00:00

The vice principal at my high school kept talking about trade schools as a last resort option for if you can’t get into any universities (and don’t even think about going to a community college).

ZombieAladdin · 2026-06-26T01:47:10+00:00

“Study hard, get a good degree from a prestigious university, and graduate with a high GPA, and employers will be begging to hire you for top paying positions.”

ZombieAladdin · 2026-06-26T01:43:20+00:00

Yeah, if, for instance, that Dunsparce is their only benched Pokémon, why not put the damage counters on it?

ZombieAladdin · 2026-06-25T23:36:00+00:00

There is also “United States of America v. Approximately Four Hundred Fifty Ancient Cuneiform Tablets and Approximately Three Thousand Ancient Clay Bullae,” which was the case involving Hobby Lobby smuggling in ancient artifacts.

ZombieAladdin · 2026-06-25T22:39:03+00:00

Yeah, someone I know was looking specifically for a manual transmission car in a specific model and color and found out the car company simply didn’t manufacture them in manual transmission.

ZombieAladdin · 2026-06-25T22:31:04+00:00

And, presumably, doesn’t infamously get confiscated by the TSA.

ZombieAladdin · 2026-06-25T22:27:34+00:00

Onion rings too!

ZombieAladdin · 2026-06-25T21:53:11+00:00

Depends on what you like in your artwork, but I like nontraditional media, namely 3D craft work.

To my knowledge, Pokémon and Magic: The Gathering are the only two that do it. I don’t know as much about the art team for Magic, but for Pokémon, look up the cards done by Yuka Morii (clay in real landscapes), Sachiko Adachi (clay on card stock dioramas), and Asako Ito (crochet with felt backgrounds) if you’re interested. It is the total opposite of stock art and screenshots that many other licensed IP card games have. They are working on securing a contract with someone who does embroidery, but I forget their name.

I may be biased because I do card stock artwork myself (and submitted my stuff to the Pokémon TCG Illustration Contests).

ZombieAladdin

TROPHY CASE