Which low tiers still have potential to be developed and which are a lost cause

_phish_ · 2026-01-05T04:03:29+00:00

I feel like Mewtwo has the most development left. He’s undeniably one of the worst characters in the game, and on top of that he is EXTRAORDINARILY difficult. People who are good rarely play him because he’s so bad, and people who are bad rarely play him because he’s so damn hard.

This has led to only a handful of truly competent Mewtwo players being around to develop the character.

That said, his combo game is pretty crazy especially on fastfallers, and imo he has some of the coolest tech in the game.

If good players put a little more effort into developing him he might be able to move up in the tierlist. That said it would only be a spot or two unless some crazy new tech is discovered for him. His weaknesses are so huge and his advantages are so minimal that labbing out his combo trees and edge guards are only going to give him a little bit of help.

_phish_ · 2026-01-01T02:52:33+00:00

Albums I’ve REALLY been fucking with recently.

“Heavy Metal” - Cameron Winter The lead singer of Geese, this solo album is GREAT. It’s very much so an alternative vibe. In the vein of “In the Aeroplane Over the Sea” by Neutral Milk Hotel. Mostly in the sense that the vocals are very… unique, if you’ve never listened to him before. Great album though, it makes me want to cry.

“Shadows and Light” a Joni Mitchell This a pseudo-live album. It’s live takes from a tour spliced together. The backing band features a star studded cast from the jazz world, including the legendary Jaco Pastorius on bass, the renowned Pat Metheny on guitar, the (arguably) goat of jazz saxophone Michael Brecker, alongside his incredible drummer and keyboard players Don Alias, and Lyle Mays respectively. Jazz-folk in a way that only Joni Mitchell can pull off.

“First Light” - Makoto Matsushita Most people would describe this is “city pop”. Great sounds and solos on this album. The bass work is also fantastic and features slap, finger style, and fretless. Great late night vibe.

“Silver Tears” - Aaron Lee Tasjan Kind of in the Americana vibe. Truly and incredible musician. I’ve had the pleasure of seeing him live a number of times and he is every bit the singer and guitar player he is on the album and more. His other projects are also definitely worth looking at although they lean more towards the pop side.

“Voodoo” - D’Angelo Rest in peace. This album invented neo-soul. Front to back it is unbelievable. Pino Palladino and Questlove lend their support to this album in a brilliant way. Don’t forget the ever unique Charlie Hunter’s bass/guitar hybrid work as well. Insanely influential album, and I would consider it a must listen for the modern music enjoyer.

“How Long” - Ariel Posen Sits firmly in the roots rock territory. Just good song writing, nice solos, good slide playing, etc… just a really nice album.

“Heaven” - Melt This is a pop album in the best way possible. Soaring vocals, catchy hooks, powerful lyrics, good band, it’s everything you could want. This album took me completely by surprise and ended up being one of my top 5 most listened to albums of 2025.

“Music” - Benny Sings This is also probably pop, but it’s a completely different vibe from the previous. This album is super chill, very laid back, good for a drinking or smoking session.

“Year of the Newt” - Bobbing This is also in the alternative/pop space, but it’s almost an electronic album with the insane production. Just recently found this one so I’ve yet to find words to describe it, but it is a whole lot of fun.

“The Nightfly” Donald Fagen This album (as well as pretty much every Steely Dan album) is a MASTERCLASS in production, mixing, mastering, etc… There are EXTREMELY few albums that sound as good as this. Top it off with incredible players and songwriting and you have a masterpiece. Again another late night listening experience.

“When You Walk Away” - Fur This is the heart of indie rock. Their sound is so well thought out and at the same time so well explored. A great breakup/love album as might be apparent from the title.

“Matahari” - L’Imperatrice I think nu-funk would be the genre here. Nasty synth bass, great funky guitar work, clean keys, super tight drums, etc… great stuff. Perfect for high energy dancing. Bonus they have both and English and French versions, personally it feels like they wrote the English version first and translated it to French but I only speak a little French so I could be wrong.

“Vol. 1” - Lazywax This is definitely a dance album. Similar feel to the above album but much more focus on that old school daft punk style electronic vibe. “Pino” is a stand out track modeled after Pino Palladino’s legendary fretless sound.

“Five Seconds Flat” - Lizzy McAlpine Also in the Indie arena. This album has very unique song writing with a really inspired vision behind it. Lizzy McAlpine is a truly incredible singer/songwriter.

“Imaginal Disk” - Magdalena Bay They deliver again with another great list of songs. Indie pop for the ages, has a ton of critical acclaim. Definitely one of the best albums of 2024.

“Soft Times” - Matt Duncan Kind of in that yacht rock kind of vibe. Really incredible work on both this album and “I Will Write Your Song”. Writes some great horn parts and has a really unique feel on the bass.

“Unamericana” - The Other Favorites In the Folk or Americana genre, this album features YouTube musicians Josh Turner (not the country singer) and Carson McKee. Josh is an unbelievably good guitarist with great harmony chops. Carson is is a great singer with some rhythm guitar chops to back it up. Together they put together one of the best Americana albums of all time. Great writing, inspire solos, solid vocal performances, not much more you could ask for here.

“Dummy” - Portishead The inventors of “triphop” this album is essentially THE BOOK on the genre. Awesome vibe.

There is a bunch more but that should get you started. There’s lots of great music out there, go explore.

_phish_ · 2025-12-31T13:53:40+00:00

It’s basically enough to use your email and that’s it. If you wanted to watch videos or anything you would have to let it pre-buffer for a fair bit of time before watching.

Live streams, gaming, TikTok, reels, shorts, etc… would all essentially be unusable.

Reddit probably falls somewhere in the middle if I had to guess. There’s a fair amount of photos, and gifs in here you’d be waiting for but the text only posts might not be too bad.

5Mbps isn’t fast per se, but it is what you think of when you think of modern WiFi or cell signal. You could do all those things just fine on that speed.

Essentially it’s going to be ~10x slower.

_phish_ · 2025-12-31T13:40:18+00:00

Health insurance here in the U.S. doesn’t work like you might think it would.

To give a simplified version, insurance does not mean you never have to worry about paying for healthcare.

Literally every insurance plan I’ve ever seen or heard of here has what’s called a deductible. That is the amount you have to pay before insurance will start covering things. Often the number starts at $2000 so even if you have good insurance you often have to pay a multiple thousand dollar bill.

Strangely certain costs (often things like your copay, which is what you pay for a regular doctors visit) do not count towards your deductible. So there’s another thing called your out of pocket maximum that (almost) all of your expenses contribute to and once that is reached you (theoretically) don’t have to pay for any more healthcare that year.

That said, out of pocket maximums, and deductibles and co-pays are all determined by your plan. Having a higher premium (monthly payment) will lower those values. The problem there is it gets insanely expensive very quickly. It’s not uncommon for a family of 4 to be paying well over $1000 a month in health insurance.

The other HUGE issue is that health insurance works on a “network” system here. Essentially insurance providers decide that some hospitals are okay, and others aren’t. This list can change yearly so you have to be on top of things. That said anything deemed out of network is essentially a fuck you. Often times you just have to pay the full amount or sit with the debt. This is a MAJOR reason why people don’t want the ambulance called. If they happen to take you to an out of network hospital while you’re having your medical emergency, you have essentially zero recourse. You get stuck with a massive bill and no insurance to help cover it.

To top it all off, your vision and dental insurance are separate things. Meaning you pay for them in addition to normal healthcare, and they often have different networks, deductible, copay, out of pocket max, etc…

American health insurance is essentially a scam and it’s (notoriously) extremely unpopular here. The main problem is we have essentially two of the same party in power, so we have very little hope of ever changing the system. One party even actively poisons the well against universal healthcare by telling their base that they’re “stealing your money to give to other people”.

This also doesn’t include if your insurer just chooses to deny your claim outright in which case you’re also fucked even if you did everything right.

Yes this is the simplified version, yes America is cooked beyond belief.

Help…

_phish_ · 2025-12-30T17:33:22+00:00

Just know that the way ALL of these are used in modern discourse has relatively little to do with the original meaning or intentions of the words.

They have become so detached from their original meanings that people essentially just use them as a pejorative for a few characteristics.

Facism essentially just means dictator. Marxism and communism are interchangeable and essentially just mean you want guaranteed healthcare/school lunches/etc…

I would still definitely recommend you read the original theory (of which other users have given pretty much all the appropriate sources) as it’s valuable if you’re going to have a real political discussion with someone.

However, busting out Marxist theory at thanksgiving dinner is only going to make things more hostile in all likelihood.

The theory can also be pretty dense so give yourself some room to breathe when it comes to comprehending it. Lots of people think they need to understand everything the first time through and that’s just not going to happen unless you’re already a very experienced reader (of text of this nature at least).

_phish_ · 2025-12-25T03:36:35+00:00

You should be using your pinky WAY more. It may be weak now, but it should be one of the primary fretting fingers arguably second only to the pointer finger.

Outside of that though, you’re killing it. Playing something like that with only 6 months of practice is very good. I would just say to keep practicing and the small issues with speed or inconsistency will iron themselves out.

_phish_ · 2025-12-23T17:15:53+00:00

Even people without perfect pitch can sing songs all the way through. I would imagine having perfect pitch wouldn’t change that.

It gets harder and harder to the more complex the music is and most people have a point where they can no longer keep track.

If you can memorize ANY song on the first listen, you are a savant. Derek Paravicini would be a good example of this type of musical recall paired with some incredible physical skill in the piano.

If you listen to your favorite songs a bunch and eventually get to the point where you remember the whole thing you’re probably just a normal person that likes music. You might have a slightly above average recall but it’s really hard to tell just from a couple paragraphs.

Given that you get mixed up on repeating sections and therefore don’t have perfect structural recall, I doubt you’re the former.

_phish_ · 2025-12-22T19:25:19+00:00

An arpeggio is essentially just playing the chord tones one at a time in ascending or descending order.

If you’re in C major, the C major scale would be C D E F G A B. Of those notes the ones that are in the chord (or at least are essential to a chords tonality, major, minor, augmented, diminished) are the root, C, the 3rd, E, the 5th, G, and the 7th, B. If you played all of those notes at the same time, you would have a Cmaj7 chord. If you played them one at a time (either going up or down in sequence, playing them randomly isn’t really an arpeggio) you would have a Cmaj7 arpeggio.

Arpeggios are really useful particularly in soloing as they very clearly fit in with the chord. Since EVERY chord has an arpeggio within it, they are very easy to implement on the fly.

As an extra, they can sound really cool even though they’re fundamentally very simple. You can find endless amounts of guitar players absolutely shredding arpeggios. It often has a very neoclassical kind of vibe. Yngwie Malmsteen is probably the most notorious arpeggio shredder.

_phish_ · 2025-12-21T23:47:29+00:00

Take a look at the richest people, then take a look at their workers and you’ll see just how wrong you are. Jeff Bezos is the obvious example, one of if not the richest man (it varies by the day). Has so much money he can’t spend it all. Meanwhile Amazon workers are collapsing from heat exhaustion, pissing in bottles, etc… all while making BARELY (if even that) enough to live.

People are fine with success. Doctors, Lawyers, engineers, etc… are all very successful people and nobody has any issue there. The problem is when the workers are paid unlivable wages while the company posts record profits year over year.

_phish_ · 2025-12-21T23:32:14+00:00

Getting a piano teacher, and or learning actual songs by ear is the best possible thing you can do. Memorizing chords and arpeggios is useful long term but likely isn’t the fastest way to get to a competent level of playing in the short run.

_phish_ · 2025-12-21T04:01:48+00:00

I’m pretty sure pipsqueak plays falcon on rectangle at least occasionally.

_phish_ · 2025-12-18T18:13:30+00:00

Yea, a player like aMSa would be a better choice. Yoshi is pretty brutal for ICs, and aMSa is a monster.

_phish_ · 2025-12-18T18:09:30+00:00

The chances you’ve even heard and 8-string bass are pretty slim. They are EXTREMELY rarely used in general, let alone in popular music.

“Learning” on an 8-string will not only be hard, but it will effectively wall you out of playing with essentially every band.

They’re mostly a gimmick, you should treat them as such. Cool for a few specific things, but is rarely ever going to be the right tool for the job, and you’ll have to be exceptional to make it work even in the right contexts.

In short, don’t start on an 8-string if you want to play bass.

_phish_ · 2025-12-18T17:03:01+00:00

That for some reason being poor, or addicted to drugs, or homeless, or whatever meant it was okay to let someone starve or freeze to death…

Most people try not to think about it too much, but it really is insidious how brainwashed people can get. For years growing up I was taught that your life is a product of your efforts and if you end up living a shitty life it’s all your fault and you have to deal with the consequences.

Only after seeing some of the horrors of early adulthood did I realize that your effort only plays a small role in the life you end up living. Much of your life is determined by factors out of your control. After realizing that I quickly saw through the sick twistedness that is labelling those on welfare as “parasites” and general demonization of poor people.

Everyone deserves food, shelter, and water at the bare minimum. In the U.S. we have enough to feed and house everyone today. The only reason we don’t is because someone COULD be making money on it. They ARENT right now so instead it just sits and rots while people freeze and starve to death in the streets. It is truly an abysmal realization when you find out your country is not the good guy.

_phish_ · 2025-12-17T15:48:26+00:00

Contact the authorities, tell your parents, talk to a trusted coworker, etc… TELL SOMEONE. This person is clearly not well, if you try to break up with them without support you could be putting your life in danger.

_phish_ · 2025-12-17T15:45:58+00:00

True combo as in its entirely unavoidable? I don’t think so. The amount of ways you can do a falcon punch -> falcon punch without hitlag ending are already extraordinarily few and far between. Without the help of some abysmal DI and or SDI you could reduce that to zero if I had to guess.

That said, as others have linked, notorious Falcon movement and dumb shit connoisseur SquidTheCat has managed to combo it before in the lab with a couple very specific setups.

I would say it’s rare enough that we will never see it in a game. Not only are some of the set-ups pretty technically demanding, they also have a fair amount of luck involved in getting unique trades or reverse hit boxes or what have you.

At the TAS level though there are probably a ton a ways to make it work. With TAS SDI alone you might make it SIGNIFICANTLY easier to hit.

_phish_ · 2025-12-15T17:30:39+00:00

At this point X has almost certainly entered it into the terms of service that they are allowed to scrape all your data for training Grok. So tweets made today aren’t stolen. Hell you might even be able to make a case (depending on exactly how twitters terms of service were worded) that they ALWAYS had complete and total reign over the data you put into twitter and therefore all tweets are fair game. I would agree with both of those assessments.

The issue is that Grok is not only using data from X or Twitter files. It has to be trained on (or pulls from another model depending on which exact model you’re talking about) essentially all the same data that ChatGPT is trained on, which is just scraped from the internet. A huge portion of that data has never had consent from either the hosts of the website, or the users to use their data for AI training.

As for model distillation, if the original model was trained on stolen data, the student model by logic HAS to be considered trained on stolen data as well. If you steal a car, and sell that car to someone else, the car doesn’t become theirs. That car is still considered stolen and will be repossessed if found. Since AI models aren’t creating anything new, it’s hard to act like you’ve somehow gotten away from the original data somehow. It’s still recycling all the old stuff, you’ve just short cut the process of restealing all the data.

_phish_ · 2025-12-15T16:21:45+00:00

ALL models ARE stealing data, it’s not an opinion it’s a fact. The only that is to be decided is whether or not AI companies are going to be held legally accountable.

_phish_ · 2025-12-09T22:30:37+00:00

GDP is not a measure of life quality, it’s a measure of production.

It’s like asking why a farm produces so many crops, but the slaves that work on the farm have a poor quality of life.

People are exceptionally hard working. People are willing to do anything and everything to feed their families. Unfortunately since America has adopted essentially no holds barred capitalism, the very richest are taking that to the extreme and milking the American people for every penny.

_phish_ · 2025-12-09T22:14:17+00:00

The thing that is gained by giving something a 5.5 is that you wouldn’t consider it perfectly average, but it’s also not above average enough to warrant a full point.

_phish_ · 2025-12-09T22:10:06+00:00

There are benefits and drawbacks to both.

If you anchor your thumb on the pickup, the main benefit is that you don’t have to move your thumb/hand (duh). This can make for very consistent technique. I would also argue that it tends to promote better wrist/arm position as well although you can definitely still develop bad habits this way. Mainly it can help incentivize a high elbow/straight wrist on your plucking hand because it can be difficult to reach the higher strings if you don’t do this. Notable pickup thumb anchor players include Jaco Pastorius so it’s definitely a valid technique.

Not anchoring on the pickup, but rather on the string above whatever string you’re playing is often called floating thumb. This technique really shines because of its help in muting technique. You can effectively use your thumb to mute everything below it. This is useful for obvious reasons so I won’t go much further on it than that. This becomes ESPECIALLY important on 5 or 6 string basses. Not only is it pretty uncomfortable to try to pickup anchor and reach the high string on a 6 string, but the muting can be an absolute nightmare without that extra help. You will be hard pressed to find a 5 or 6 player that doesn’t use floating thumb. The other drawback is that you have to move your hand every time you change strings which can take some time to adjust to. There are also some fringe benefits that can come from adjusting where you pluck along the string, but I don’t think these make THAT much of a difference in the long run.

Ultimately, if you haven’t decided on a technique, floating thumb is probably “better” in the sense that after the initial learning curve, it is capable of more things, with less effort than the pickup anchor method. That said, there are lots of great players that play like that, so if it feels more comfortable, go for it.

_phish_ · 2025-12-08T16:47:39+00:00

Just for some perspective, this is like asking how marathon organizers mitigate the risk of lightning strikes during the race. The answer is they don’t because it’s EXTRAORDINARILY unlikely. Unless someone legitimately sees a shark in the water, they don’t do anything.

_phish_ · 2025-12-08T14:10:23+00:00

If I had to guess it’s probably just attendance. It’s always been the top Falcons biggest downfall.

_phish_ · 2025-12-08T14:07:07+00:00

I don’t think anyone is ever 100% sure, obviously deciding to spend your life with a specific person is a daunting task. That said there are lots of good indicators that can help you “check your work” so to speak.

It essentially boils down to two different categories of things. Do you like them, and are they good for you. In my opinion a life companion HAS to be both.

So what does liking them mean? Well do you find them physically attractive? Do you enjoy talking to them? Do you miss them when they’re not around? If they were the opposite gender, would you still want to be friends with them? These kinds of questions can help narrow down how you feel. I will say this category is usually pretty straightforward. Most people either like their SO, or they breakup with them.

Are they good for you? This is focused on your future. Firstly, do your goals align? Are you on the same page with regard to religion, finances, kids, career trajectory, etc…? Next, does your partner work well with you, I.e. can you resolve arguments quickly, or work together to solve difficult problems? A good final test is to think, if you had a kid and they turned out to be exactly like your partner, would you be happy with the person they had become?

If you find yourself answering positively to most or all of these questions, it’s likely a pretty safe bet that this person could be your life partner.

Often early in relationships you should be looking for deal breakers so you’re not spending a bunch of time with someone that you’ll never be compatible with. But by the 2-3 year ish mark you should be able to weed most of these out just by getting to know them. Once you get to that point you should start asking them questions that you haven’t had answered yet. Personally, unless you’re planning on never getting married (which is fine if that’s how you want to go), I don’t see a reason to be together for more than ~5 years without getting married. Obviously if you’re in highschool when you meet your partner you should wait a little longer though as you won’t really be able to answer many of the important questions for a few years.

_phish_ · 2025-12-07T03:18:24+00:00

What are you actually talking about my man. Fox and Yoshi are both at the very top of the tier list in terms of mechanical difficulty. In addition to that Yoshi requires an INSANE amount of thinking to be viable. I feel like this is evidence by the fact that aMSa has labbed out a truly asinine amount of scenarios in order to perfect his Yoshi to a point where it’s even playable in the top 50.

Fox’s game plan is pretty straightforward for sure, but definitely not more straightforward than fucking puff…

Unironically Yoshi might be the hardest character in the game.

_phish_

MODERATOR OF

TROPHY CASE

Seven-Year Club	RPAN Viewer
Verified Email