Moral of the story: be actively hostile towards corporations. Do not allow corporations to set any sort of foothold in public spaces. Because eventually they will try to claim those public spaces as their own private walled gardens, and everyone but them will get shit.

That one was made to be creepy. Sting (who wrote it) once said to the BBC that “the song is very, very sinister and ugly. And people have actually misinterpreted it as being a gentle little love song, when it’s quite the opposite.” and that “I didn’t realise at the time how sinister it is. I think I was thinking of Big Brother, of surveillance and control.”

Oh, I was beaten with both in my childhood. But never at the same time. Please remove this. It’s giving me PTSD. :-P

Yandere: “por que no los dos?”

Found some info about the coin in Wikipedia. The text there (𐤊𐤐𐤓𐤀 kpr’) is Kapara, the name of the city where this was minted, modern Soluntum. And accordingly to the fashion of a civilisation that calls its own capital “new city”, Kapara means simply “village”.

There are two schools of thought. There’s the glass-half-full outlook where YouTube is asking us if its videos feel like AI slop because it wants to make the platform slop-free. Then there’s the more pessimistic takeaway that YouTube is asking humans what does and doesn’t feel like AI slop so that it can move closer to AI-generated videos being indiscernible from the real thing.

Likely the later, given the Rick Beato scandal. (TL;DR: YT sloppified his videos without asking him permission, and everyone raged.)

Let me guess: you were trying to pirate Windows games and software. Right?

If yes, look at it this way. You’re pirating games for one system, and trying to run them in another system. Of course it’ll involve one or two additional loops to make it work. It’s like baking bread on your stove, you know? It can be done, but it isn’t as streamlined as using your oven.

That said it isn’t really difficult. I have a bunch of pirated Windows games installed in my Linux. Steam helps by a lot, because of Proton; add the game to Steam as a “non-Steam game”, then force it to use a specific Steam Play compatibility tool. You can do it without Steam but it streamlines everything.

You’re still better off looking for native software, though, made for Linux. A bunch of good games have Linux versions.

The design looks really badass, specially with the other side:

This is Melqart, a major Phoenician god. Patron deity of Tyre, ruler of the underworld, protector of the [over]world, he who symbolises death and rebirth. Interpretatio graeca associated him with Hercules / Herakles.

By the time this coin was minted, the Second Punic War (218~201 BCE) was just starting. Carthaginians troops advanced here and there, but inconclusively, as the Roman pushback war strong. Sicily was split between Roman (ex-Carthaginian) lands and the Greek kingdom of Syracuse. Syracuse allied itself with Carthage in 215 BCE, under the promise that they’d get the rest of the island after the war was over.

This might look an odd promise, since those lands used to be Carthaginian, but it makes sense: odds are they knew they wouldn’t be able to completely wipe Rome out. If Carthage won the war, at least it would have a strong ally at Rome’s backdoor, as a buffer state; might as well expand elsewhere, right? And if it lost… well, they’d lose those lands anyway. (That’s what happened — by 212 BCE the Roman siege of Syracuse was over, and the city sacked. And by 210 BCE the last non-Roman stronghold in the island was taken over. It was Akragas [modern Agrigento], where this coin was minted.)

In the light of all of that, the coin kind of looks like advertisement for war efforts, doesn’t it? I feel like both pictures in the shekel were carefully chosen, to remind Carthaginians of their iconic elephantry, about their origins as just a Tyrian colony, depicting a god associated with heroism and rebirth in their second war against Rome.

I’m retranslating the English subtitles into Portuguese (done) and Venetian (WIP).

I know this is dirty, and there’s no way I’d do it professionally (I’d simply refuse the job), or if this was some actual release. But given my goal is to allow my family to enjoy the series, that’s good enough. And context helps a lot, the series in question is Yoru wa Neko to Issho, you can get 90% of each episode by the animation alone.

Plus, well… weeb vocab helps a lot too. For example, you don’t need to speak Japanese to know what a “yame— ah!” means, as the cat drops a glass of water on the floor.

The tents remind me of Lyn from fire emblem on the GBA

The similarity is not a coincidence: both Dias’ feud and the Sacae region of Fire Emblem were clearly modelled after the steppes in Inner Asia, where nomadic peoples use this sort of tent fairly often.

(It’s known as “yurt”, “ger”, and by other names; it depends on the language.)

The main appeal of those is that they’re large enough to be homes (unlike camping tents), but still relatively easy/fast to disassemble and reassemble. A competent group can do it in a single hour, as in this video; but even a single person can do it, it’s just that it’d take longer.

And people still wonder why I pirate my series and keep my favs all in my hard disk, instead of “y bother lol? just subscribe to crânchi rou lmao”. It’s because of this sort of shit, or rather enshittification; I don’t want to deal with it at all, I trust streaming services as much as I trust cable TV (zero).

And this topic is specially relevant for me because I’m currently translating anime. And I can only do it because the video and subtitles can be separated; I don’t speak Japanese, so gotta work based on another subtitle, plus nobody wants to watch stuff with superimposed layers of subtitles.

Wow. The example picture alone already shows what’s wrong.

DLSS off: the background is rainy, the “cigare[ttes]” thing and the delicatessens sign are weathered, there’s some blue plastic in the background, she’s wearing brown, her eyes and lips lack any shine. This scene is clearly representing a tired, weary, “soulless” reality; one you survive but not live, that makes you whisper to yourself “…I’m so bloody tired”…

DLSS on: throws the mood out of the window by adding OH-SO-SHINY!!! everywhere.

This is not a breakthrough. This is not fidelity. It’s butchering artistic intent.

I checked the voice actors (source, Anilist):

• Alna - Shion Wakayama. She also voiced Momo (Dandadan) and Nanahoshi (Mushoku Tensei), and currently she’s voicing Arte (Okiraku Ryoushu no Tanoshii Ryouchi Bouei)
• Dias - Kenichirou Matsuda. He also voiced Glen Garia (Guild no Uketsukejou desu ga) and the narrator in Spy x Family (…and Bond. Woof.)

Both are perfect fits.

The shape is functional, so people saw no reason to change it. That’s why it resembles so much modern cups.

For reference, check this 2400 years old Greek set (source)

If you subbed the silver with stainless steel, it would still fit any modern home; at the very least the jar and ladle would. Including the decoration.

Same deal with the cup in the OP. Plus a lot of contemporary people learned to like the native American aesthetics, specially the ones associated with Maya.

The name of his studio, “Kintsugiyama”, is too long. Can I clip the “sugiy”? It sounds better! :^) …okay, disregard the shitty joke.

Serious now: Kaplan and Ford’s takes are fairly reasonable. Forums online (including Reddit… and Lemmy/Piefed, by the way) seem to trigger on people a natural instinct to fit in, as part of a group. This leads to the adoption of similar values and judgements, and in turn to direct praise and criticism towards the same things — even when you’re in no position to do it, because you didn’t experience it nor plan to. In practice this means yes, it’s harder to speak “I like it” when everyone else dislikes it.

And people can get reeeeeeeeeeeeeeeally loud with this shite.

Also, I like the way they voiced this. It’s really hard to misconstrue it as “don’t criticise things”. Criticism is often healthy, sometimes even really harsh criticism; it’s just that sometimes it needs some experience to be even constructive, and that’s the case here.

Got it.

Well, good news then: if they handle the adaptation right, there’s a good chance they’ll expand on things that plenty readers found unfinished. I’m saying this because the typical conversion ratio between manga chapters and anime episodes is around 3:1, and the manga series has 28 chapters, so there’s spare room for a bit more stuff.

I like the length. Sure, it left me craving more, but the story was complete and there was no filler. And we’ll see it being completely adapted into anime!

Fuck, I’m excited for this one, since the manga series is amazing, even if short (28 chapters). A shame it’s only airing in '27.

(Small intro on the story: otome game villainess takes the side of the good-natured Earthling who took over her body in childhood. And she wants revenge.)

All symbols are wrong, but in ways that oddly make sense:

• Mint - it’s a leaf.
• Fedora - it’s a wearable.
• Debian - the logo coils itself, so does a snake.
• Arch - arcus~arco~arc is “bow” in Latin/Romance.

I don’t know if what I’m going to say is correct, but this smells like LLM shitting emojis.

Wow, it’s that time already?

Picking for sure, no need for intro:

• Re:Zero s4
• TenSura s4
• Mairimashita! Iruma-kun s4
• Dr. Stone: Science Future p3

Picking for sure, but might as well say something about them:

• The Barbarians’ Bride (Hime Kishi wa Barbaroi no Yome) - I used to follow this manga, but I grew a bit bored with it. Basically: empire fights barbarians, barbarians imprison female knight, the leader of the barbarians ask the knight’s hand in marriage. He gets to slowly gain her trust, and she gets to slowly learn about the barbarians, their living style, and the world as a whole.
• Bertia (Jishou Akuyaku Reijou…) - Bakarina plus more baka minus harem. The manga series is rather short, but the main character is lovable and there are surprisingly touching moments. If they animate it properly, I can see it becoming really popular.
• Pride (Higeki no Genkyou…) s2 - animation of s1 was poor, but… the manga is fun, so I’m giving it another try. It’s another “reincarnated as a villainess” story, like the above; but instead of the villainess being dumb, she’s guilt-ridden to the point of being silly. I like in special the moments where it shows how the current timeline diverged from the one of the otome game, they’re often full of emotion.
• Saikyou no Ousama s2 - Frankly I don’t remember where s1 ends, because it made me follow the manga. The premise is someone who reached the top in a past life at a fantasy world, got killed, reincarnated into another fantasy world, and now tries to both fix his mistakes and save the new world. A good mix of fantasy and adventure.
• Isekai Nonbiri Nouka s2 - it’s also city-building like TenSura, but way more slice of life. Fun to watch.

Probably picking:

• Ascendance of a Bookworm (Honzuki no Gekokujou: Ryoushu no Youjo) - the LN series is amazing, but I need to admit I didn’t watch the earlier anime seasons, so I’ll need to binge watch them before this one. Another isekai series; this one about a book-addicted woman reincarnated into a world where there’s barely any book, so she needs to leverage her knowledge of a more advanced society to become again the nerdy librarian she used to be.
• Reincarnation no Kaben - I don’t know the series, but “slit your throat to get powers from your past life” sounds fun, so why not?
• Megami "Isekai Tensei Nani… - ditto as above.