They’re all Reddit alternatives that existed.

IIRC I joined before the Reddit API protests. I wanted an alternative where I would be more free to speak my mind. The problem is, Voat and Ruqqus got overtaken by white supremacists, Tildes is too much of a walled garden and both Snapzu and Hubski are basically dead.

I’ve gotten quite into doing pub karaoke for the past three years. It started as me going to monthly nights at my local, then following that particular KJ after they cancelled future gigs with her, to befriending and following a few other hosts.

There’s three particular debates:

• Who produces the best karaoke backing tracks? There are a lot of websites/platforms that produce licensed karaoke tracks, such as Karaoke Version, Sing To The World, Sunfly, Karafun, Mr Entertainer, Zoom Karaoke and a few others. I think some can be more hit-or-miss than others. Karafun are generally good with lyric readability but their app/service is kinda shit if you don’t have an internet connection.

• Should the host get on the mic and sing at all? Some i know are the kind who like the sound of their own voice a bit too much and tend to hog the mic, but there’s also one I know who rarely if ever sings himself.

• As a host, should you play songs between singers. I can understand spacing out singers when it’s quiet, but if it’s busy and you have a few dozen singers waiting for their turn, you’re just gonna piss people off if you play full songs between each act in my opinion.

TADC is probably the only good thing to have come out of Glitch Productions since SMG4 got enshittified to become more “advertiser friendly.” But part of the reason I haven’t gotten into it is the fandom.

I don’t like how half the fandom sexualizes Pomni; especially against the creators’ wishes.

Sonic has one of the most divisive fandoms I’ve ever seen.

On the one hand, you have some very talented individuals like LakeFeperd, Stealth and Christian Whitehead who have created fan projects and original games that best Sega’s own efforts. But then you get the unhinged parts of the fandom, and then Chris Chan.

I don’t like how the r/sonic, r/sonicthehedgehog and r/moonpissing subreddits have been getting littered with a mix of borderline softcore furry porn and comics focusing around cringe character ships lately.

Someone I went to school with came out as a furry and got heavily involved in the fandom, to the point of helping to organize one of the biggest furry conventions in Europe, but he insisted it wasn’t a sexual or fetish thing.

About five years later, he’s founded a company that makes high quality dragon, werewolf and other bestial dildos.

Are we talking Halo CE Anniversary Edition or the more recently announced Campaign Evolved remake?

What solidified Anniversary Edition as a shit-tier remaster for me was how the level geometry doesn’t match up with the remastered visuals. A great example of this is in The Truth And Reconciliation, Halo CE’s third level. When you go further up the plateau, the Covenant can see and shoot you through some of the boulders if you’re in the remastered graphics mode.

This is gonna be more of a rant about recruitment agencies and the consultants working for them.

When I apply for one of the (probably fake) positions they advertise, it’s not an invitation for them to ring me, waste 15 minutes of my life and grill me about everything I did in my last few jobs, my responsibilities, duties, any employment gaps, people who I answered to in my previous company, etc; only for these assholes to tell me they have no positions available but will “keep my details on file.”

It’s on my fucking resumé, and you could save a lot of our time by not ringing me and asking me to verbally repeat this because you guys are too stupid to read…

When I was made redundant last year and was basically desperate to land another role, I genuinely had some of the worst cold-calls ever from recruiters when I made the rookie error of listing myself as open to work on LinkedIn and Indeed. One particular caller who I spoke to twice, maybe three times would genuinely pause for about 10 to 15 seconds in silence after I finished speaking then ask me some absolutely mundane follow-up question in a monotone voice. I genuinely couldn’t tell if I was speaking to a lady with a room-temperature IQ or some poorly programmed AI chatbot.

On a related note, posting ghost vacancies, using AI to screen candidates, and generally treating recruitment as a massive data harvesting operation should be made illegal.

Word Up - Korn. Completely shits all over the original sung by Cameo.

Africa - Quietdrive. This one is quite divisive, so I’ll also link Weezer’s more faithful cover.

Midnight At The Oasis - The Brand New Heavies. Don’t get me wrong, Maria Muldaur’s original version was great, but it just works so much better as an acid jazz and funk song.

As for remixes…

One Night Stand (Sunship Remix) - Mis-Teeq. It’s so much better than the original by a mile. Alesha Dixon genuinely drops some fucking bars in the remix.

Selekta (SIDEQUEST Remix) - Kyle Gordon. I don’t understand why this isn’t the official version. The difference is that this version is 45 seconds longer and has an additional verse.

Moguri Mod is a great example of AI done right. A fan modder ran Final Fantasy IX’s original assets through stable diffusion models to upscale the graphics and corrected imperfections by hand to create a great HD graphics mod with decent quality 30FPS FMVs (the official ones are low quality and capped at 15FPS.)

For context, Square-Enix’s Final Fantasy IX port was quarter-arsed (only really adding battle skips and a fast-forward function), and as they didn’t even have the original assets to do a graphical remaster, Moguri Mod is the best well likely get until/unless Square-Enix decide to remake FFIX from the ground up.

AI remastering done wrong would be a recent online rerelease of the Super Mario Bros Super Show, and an update done to Killer 7’s Steam version a few months ago. Both were remastered with AI but zero effort was made to correct any inaccuracies or hallucinations.

Where I think AI could be really useful is in animation: specifically in speeding up the process of inbetweening. If you fed a decent model key frames and prompts to have it produce tween frames, you could heavily speed up the process.

I definitely fill the British bad teeth stereotype. My dental hygiene isn’t the best.

All the more ironic when you realise that some of the big businessmen and lobbyists pushing for mandatory age verification checks are in the Epstein Files. Basically the kind of people who you don’t want to be thinking of the children…

ABAB includes Taylor Swift.

Ten years ago I went to a work colleague’s stag-do. I got very drunk off of numerous pints of lager and shots and the night was going great, until we went to a gay nightclub.

Someone in our group got very belligerent with me when he was asking me what kind of drink I’d want. At the time, I thought he was going to seriously hurt me (the alcohol was probably clouding my judgement), so I quietly removed myself from the situation and literally ran from that place.

Unfortunately, the “friend” who I met up with after I bolted took me back to that place because he was more interested in scoring cocaine and dancing with other men than looking out for me.

I have loads of questions, like why does this exist, and why is there a fucking karaoke player with licensed tracks on this parody?

I’m 34. Youngest would probably be 23, oldest would be late 40s. I’m getting to that age where I wouldn’t feel comfortable dating a college student. Plus I kinda do prefer older women.

Rehab and Back To Black by Amy Winehouse. Both songs were heavily overplayed on the radio.

Gladiators.

If that’s a serious question, 34/M/Bristol.

In the context of online dating, I actually agree with implementing the same level of KYC checks that banks and credit card issuers have adopted. I also think the FTC needs to step in and break up the monopoly Match Group has created.

All of these platforms are littered with fake profiles, scammers and foreign women searching for the means to a green card. It’s made them practically unusable.