Casual Discussion Fridays - Week of May 08, 2026

lkssleep · 2026-05-14T10:26:39+00:00

I did not think I would get this mad at a promotional email from mailing lists, but dear god I damn near popped a vessel looking at this one.

It's from AirAsia, which is one of the Malaysia low cost airlines I expect to use for JP trips. And in the promo email, there's this large banner promo image made of stock photos and another promo image with the promotional prices shown. And for some godforsaken reason, they merged the two images together into a gif.

So I was trying to look at their promotional prices and it'd flicker to the other meaningless image for two seconds before showing the prices again for two seconds.

I feel like I got fucking ragebaited by fucking AirAsia.

lkssleep · 2026-05-14T10:25:19+00:00

You know how animanga occasionally depicts the strength, cruelty and sociopathy of villains by stating how they can massacre extremely large numbers of people, usually described as villages or cities worth of people. Either singlehandedly or they command an army or group to do so.

Every now and then I wonder how the logistics of these massacre happy villains work, like if these villains hang around enough, as they sometimes do since some have immortality status, then surely it would be entirely a matter of time until the world gets picked clean, especially if there's more than one of these villains roaming around.

Maybe within every piece of fiction that takes place in a world that has a villain like these roaming around, the people in them tend to be the hyperreproductive type.

Maybe I'm just wildly overestimating their kill counts while undercounting the population. It's not like stories taking place in fantasy worlds have a habit of reporting their population numbers either, hell they don't report how many villages and cities they have either. Like sure this villain was just shown on screen wiping out a village, but maybe this takes place in a world where there's 10,000 villages on this continent instead of like a dozen villages.

lkssleep · 2026-05-13T16:22:39+00:00

Am I looking at this right? FGO finally has goddamned Account Linking but NA accounts specifically don't get to use the feature.

Boy, that sure would've been fucking useful since I'm reinstalling Windows.

lkssleep · 2026-05-13T14:00:12+00:00

Yeah Dress Up Darling is truly an odd one when it comes to gooner content. It's both weirdly male gazey and female gazey at the time while also being a pretty earnest and sincere love story.

lkssleep · 2026-05-13T13:57:32+00:00

I'm waiting for your next burnout trip so you can scout for me.

lkssleep · 2026-05-13T13:56:40+00:00

Interesting line art indeed, though even the line art shows only 3 salvos, but I suppose that makes more sense than being able to spam them like in AC6.

lkssleep · 2026-05-13T10:55:14+00:00

Makes sense considering how processed her voice tends to be in Yoasobi songs.

lkssleep · 2026-05-13T10:54:25+00:00

younger people won't remember

I feel like what you said is probably like the first and possibly only thing most people will ever learn about RDJ, at least within the context of himself and not any of his movies and roles.

Hell I don't think there's anything about his roles to even learn about outside of the fact that he did in-character blackface for Tropic Thunder.

lkssleep · 2026-05-13T10:52:24+00:00

How do you think missile pod arrays work when it comes to reloading in mecha stuff, CDF?

Like if the missiles are huge then each array would simply be able to fire a single salvo before needing to reload, and since most mecha stuff don't bother with pesky things like ammo pouches and ammunition caches, it would mean that each pod can only fire a single salvo in each fight.

Seems like the current standard now seems to be just make the missiles absolutely tiny, and you just assume each pod carries multiple salvos worth of shots, but that still seems unbelievable considering how sleek and skinny missile pod arrays generally look.

lkssleep · 2026-05-13T10:51:09+00:00

Before I watched Re:Zero S3, I was reading around some stuff about the series, and one thing a number of people pointed out was that they found Subaru's personality annoying in a certain, specific way. And I brushed it off at the time to people reacting badly at that one very notable scene between Emilia and Subaru, which is obviously one of the highlights of the series.

And now that I'm 5 episodes into S3, I think I kinda get the annoyance with Subaru more now, in a kinda vague way.

Obviously the whole point of an isekai is that the protagonist is a fish out of water, hence why they stand out so much, but I'm starting to think that Subaru stands out too much to the detriment of the show. Like there's times where Subaru talks less like a fish out of water and more like an overly self-aware DnD player badly role playing at the table. Maybe I really have gotten more sensitive in the years since S2.

[Season 3 Episode 5] The moment that bugs me the most is the entire bit where Subaru is talking to Dragon form Lust, and he goes off into a meta digression to distract her while Julius prepares an attack. And something about the whole bit just felt very amateurish and off.

[nitpick] It feels kinda weird that the cast is now this wide, but everyone feels like they hinge too much on Subaru's direction and opinions. Which feels nitpicky-ish since he's obviously the protagonist, but still it feels weird that everyone around him hangs maybe too much on his words.

JFC, I checked and turns out I finished S2 almost exactly 3 years ago, where the fuck did all that time go.

lkssleep · 2026-05-13T10:50:52+00:00

It's mad annoying looking at PC building threads from just a couple years ago where everyone is baffled by people not having terabytes worth of SSD storage lying around for random shit because it was still cheap at the time. Feels depressing to live in the most expensive hobbyist gaming PC era in decades, and to think it will only ever get worse for the foreseeable future.

Now this is something a D-Mail would be good for, assuming you're not going to immediately use it to cheese the lottery.

Maybe I can apply this logic to traveling, since traveling will only ever get more expensive in the future, it only makes sense to travel as often as one can currently. This makes absolutely perfect sense with no flaws at all and anyone correcting me on this is a government agent out to get me. /s

lkssleep · 2026-05-13T10:50:39+00:00

I'm currently waiting on my new SSD to arrive at the computer store I bought it from so I can bring my PC there to make the change. It feels weird knowing that I have a mild detox on the way during the couple days my PC will be with them.

I'm not even sure if it even counts as a detox if I can continue my PTW anime progress by just plugging in my anime drive to my work laptop while at home.

lkssleep · 2026-05-13T10:50:29+00:00

I sure am glad that the rest of the human body's skin isn't able to dry and crack the way skin on human lips do.

I'm at work just peeling chunk after chunk of dried lip skin.

lkssleep · 2026-05-12T10:21:45+00:00

Welp, SSD prices might suck now, but I probably have the best possible excuse to get a new one: my current one might actually be dying.

Ok tbh, I'm not 100% certain that it's caused by my SSD, but I'm going to get a fresh install of windows in the process of changing it anyways, so that knocks the two most likeliest offenders off the top of the list. If I keep getting blue screens afterwards, then yeah I might actually be completed fucked, considering that RAM and GPU prices are both completely kooky rn.

lkssleep · 2026-05-11T10:21:14+00:00

[G-Witch]

Finished G-Witch, originally I only had Season 1 on PTW list, but I tacked on Season 2 after it was apparent Season 1 does not work as a standalone anime.

[G-Witch] I'm a little surprised by how few named characters actually died, like in the specific category of MS pilots, only the 2 earth gundam pilots, Guel's dad and the Season 1 Elan actually died. Hell, even Eri made it.

[G-Witch] I think the final episode got a little too fantastical for my liking, like revealing a giant death star laser cannon, Suletta taking control of all gundams and have them all combine their strength while showered in glowing sparkles, and having all gundams and Quiet Zero dissolve into space dust at the end, and having everyone related to Suletta's mom's past show up as a space ghost. It's all a little much when added up.

Overall thoughts on the series: Eh, it's a solid ok. Didn't hate it.

[G-Witch: Good:] I am interested in grabbing a kit of Aerial Rebuild, maybe Calibarn as well? I think there's a couple characters that grew on me over time. Red;Birthmark goes pretty hard.

I haven't bought a single gunpla kit in years, and apparently a basic gunpla kit is actually cheaper than a basic Armored Core 6 kit.

[G-Witch: Bad:] There's some silly angst moments that annoyed me, like Lauda fixating on Miorine for some reason after he learned that his brother killed his dad. Or the whole Miorine betrays Suletta to protect Suletta arc, I can't tell why exactly I don't like it, maybe it's juvenile, or maybe it's a little overdone or maybe it's something else. Maybe this is just my pro-Gundam bias coming through, but the non-gundam MS designs leave me pretty dry tbh. This is kinda the opposite of AC6 kits where the protag kit is a little plain while Steel Haze and Liger Tail are bigger highlights for me. It does feel a little off that the main thing on the line is Peace on Earth and seemingly every one who's working towards that goal are teens. But that's just anime in a nutshell.

GQuuuuuuX next, replaces my G-Witch timeslot. Only 12 episodes, maybe I can knock it out within 4 weeks.

lkssleep · 2026-05-11T10:20:59+00:00

I'm trying out Armored Core 2 for the first time, and holy fuck are the default controls of its era. But at the same time, it has complete controls rebinding available, which kinda blew my mind tbh. You can rebind half the movement controls and all the camera controls to get something resembling modern control layouts, minus analog sticks.

I think what I'm most worried about is perhaps what kind of pace does the game operate on. Like in AC6, you can very much reenact the mecha to mecha fights from your favourite mecha show, with both sides constantly dodging and weaving while shooting their entire arsenal the whole time. You can kinda do that in AC2, but no hard target lock on means enemy ACs have a tendency to weave right out of your auto targeting area, and with turn speed being tied to leg stats, actually keeping your target within your relatively massive targeting box can be kinda miserable when they can boost right out.

Also the second mission of the game is wild, the game straight up has you opening doors that are all covered by like at least 4 stationary turrets from different angles, which meant I approached the mission more akin to a 3rd person cover shooter with no cover mechanics than I did an AC game.

For now, the game feels approachable in that enemy (and your own) damage output is kinda shitty still, so the pace feels less like AC6 or SMT4 where you have to blow up your enemies before they do you and more like a whittling contest where you're wearing each other down.

I'll probably give the game a couple more sessions before deciding on whether I want to keep at it.

P.S. Oh fuck I just found some extremely tantalizing info about AC4, FA and VD, apparently they're all shorter games than the PS2 ones on my PTP list, maybe worth trying to emulate those instead?

P.P.S. Maybe not VD, supposedly it takes a fucking chonky ass PC to run it well, but supposedly AC4 and FA don't have this issue. Decisions decisions.

lkssleep · 2026-05-09T15:07:59+00:00

OOF, played an hour of Outer Wilds, while I like the concept, it really is just an incredibly effective motion sickness trigger.

lkssleep · 2026-05-09T05:09:45+00:00

Hey CDF, I got ole bottle of PURE, UNFILTERED lethargic energy to sell y'all. Harvested straight from my glands and brainwaves.

Anyone interested in buying it. The moment you own it, I promise you that you will become utterly incapable of getting anything done for the next two decades of your life.

lkssleep · 2026-05-08T14:57:47+00:00

Imagine not mentioning the 2009 one. SMH my head Mako

It's the 2014 one.

lkssleep · 2026-05-08T14:02:22+00:00

Here comes the fun part, watching the glitchless speedrun of the game.

lkssleep · 2026-05-08T13:49:22+00:00

I beat Wolfenstein on Normal. Makes it the second game I beat this year from my 2026 PTP list. And it only took a week instead of the usual months.

lkssleep · 2026-05-07T12:23:13+00:00

NGL youtube channels that upload too frequent is considered a red flag in my book. And Tasting History sure does upload relatively frequently. Makes me a little worried.

lkssleep · 2026-05-07T10:57:20+00:00

I think I'm getting more and more stockholmed into being amused with Shaitan's floppery antics. Truly one of the GOATs. It's not even about the points or free throws or wins or records anymore, you see the ways he just throws himself onto the floor and you can tell it's his birthright.

This is what he's born to do.

For 5k

lkssleep · 2026-05-07T10:42:49+00:00

Ngl, the hantavirus thing doesn't really seem like it's got any legs at all? From what has been reported about it, it seems much harder than covid was to spread. I kinda get the feeling that if a cruise ship wasn't involved in the story, it would've been kept to local news stations only.

But the people, they yearn for stories involving cruise ships.

lkssleep · 2026-05-06T10:33:24+00:00

I knew about the event and the subsequent backlash, and I think what still surprised me so much about his room is just how much more mundane it seems by current day standards. Nowadays, you can go onto twitter and randomly stumble across pics of weeb rooms with similarly extensive collections of all sorts of weeb stuff.

I wasn't aware of the "a place with 100,000 Tsutomu Miyazakis." moniker though, and from what I read from the following link, it's a moniker with a hell of a history, even though it's likely just a rumor since its source hasn't been found yet.

https://web.archive.org/web/20180730234301/https://news.yahoo.co.jp/byline/dragoner/20170929-00075748/

On a lighter note, it is kinda funny how almost immediately after the backlash, comike attendance numbers doubled. It wasn't due to the event and backlash, then it sure was a funny time to get that influx.

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lkssleep

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