I occasionally have really detailed dreams with plots and allegory and everything. Sometimes someone will tell a joke in my dream, and I don’t get the joke until I wake up and think about it. My subconscious is sometimes more clever than I am.

Anyway, the best dream I ever had was one of those really detailed ones with a complex plot. I don’t remember any of those details, but it was some kind of mystery story where two children are on the run from a detective. It was full of plot twists and complex lies. As the plot unfolded, it seemed like there were some contractions in the narrative. One character says it happened like this, but another character claims the opposite. Typical mystery story stuff.
But as the dream went on, these little inconsistencies built up and up until I concluded that a key event in the plot must have happened two different ways at the same time. Irreconcilably, both ways must have been true, but they absolutely contradicted each other. It’s not that somebody is lying, there must actually be something wrong in the timeline itself.
This is when the dream drops its biggest plot twist: why is it inconsistent? Because it’s not real; it’s all a dream. And then I woke up.

I know the “it’s all a dream” plot twist is usually cheap and stupid, but like, it WAS all a dream. I sat in bed for like 15 minutes just being impressed with how incredible the twist was, and how it was quite impossible for anybody else to experience the same story.

I think it’s in part because the song is slightly too mature for her that it appeals to Kiki, and maybe to the younger audience who relates to her.

The lyrics of Rouge no Dengon are really good. It’s about a woman who’s on a train, leaving town to get away from her cheating husband. She left a “message in rouge” for him to find in the bathroom, that she won’t be back until he changes his ways. She’s actually going to his mother’s house, and she’ll have his mother call him to scold him in the morning.

If you’re familiar with the song as the opening theme to Kiki’s Delivery Service, it really really fits Kiki’s character as she listens to the song while leaving home for the first time. You might get the feeling that the themes of the song are things relates to herself: independence, anxiety, maturity, and female solidarity. And of course, if you watch the movie, those are all things she experiences in her new town.

Basically it’s a REALLY REALLY good song and absolutely perfect choice for the movie it’s in. I also love the singer’s other Ghibli movie song you mention, Contrails/Hikoukigumo.

Very obscure 45-minute 1991 anime movie: Christmas in January. Rated extremely low (5.46 / 10) on MAL, it’s absolutely one of my favorite movies. It’s whimsical and melancholic and so so interesting. Reminds me a lot of the Ghibli movie Ocean Waves, which is also an underrated gem (and, while I’m at it, the Kimagure Orange Road masterpiece sequel movie from the same director as Ocean Waves).

I really love stories that are just miraculous/odd/interesting excerpts of people’s lives that are otherwise inconsequential. There was nothing grand or life-changing about the events in the story, but I will never forget the delicate social interplay in the shoe store, or the only scene that actually takes place in January at the very end: just a moment of reflection.

I had assumed they were allophones and always wondered if there was a minimal pair to prove otherwise. It turns out though there is one: tooth (n) vs tooth (v), or tooþ vs tooð.

I think it’s so funny that there’s a tool called “Wii U Downloader” that literally downloads the game files, whatever game you want, directly from Nintendo’s own servers

I remember seeing this clip several months ago. In context, it was clearly in reference to Biden’s cancer diagnosis, which was still popular/relevant news at the time.

“When you start feeling sorry for him, remember he’s a bad guy” -Trump

In response to your section on pronouns:

As you identify, it’s useful to have multiple different pronoun sets to refer to different people to reduce ambiguity when speaking and writing.

We could hypothetically base these categories on anything: we could have one set pronouns each for men and women, but we could also set that dividing line somewhere else. Maybe we use one set of pronouns for family and a different set for non-family. Maybe the dividing line is rich/poor. Dog person / cat person. Personality type. Horoscope. Favorite color. Color they’re currently wearing. How recently they entered the conversation.

Some of these sound pretty reasonable and others sound really useless. A gender-based pronoun has problems, but it’s useful in that it’s often a useful differentiator between any two random people. This wouldn’t be the case for a hypothetical rich/poor pronoun system.

Now that I think of it, a Chinese zodiac calendar-based pronoun system would be really cool. The 60-year sexagenary cycle would give us 60 different pronoun sets for each year people are born, allowing each pronoun (fire dog, metal rat, etc.) to gain their own associations over time, though constantly changing as people from each cohort get older. Because people don’t really live more than 120 years, you would also only ever have two generations of each birth year. So there would be an “elder fire dog” and “junior fire dog” and it could be so interesting and artistic and poetic with two very different groups sharing a common pronoun… So much room for symbolism and reflection 🤤

But anyway, snap back to reality. Neo-pronouns already exist in colloquial English, especially online. I’m not talking about xe/xim, I’m talking about bestie, oomfie, anon, homie, my guy, my brother in Christ, girlypop, etc.
We should recognize these for what they are (pronouns) and normalize their use. They all have different contexts, connotations, and use-cases, but they are absolutely usable sets of pronouns. Some of them are still gender-specific, but the important thing is that gender is no longer the primary relevant factor in pronoun selection. Let’s have 100 different pronouns, and everybody can use any of them depending on the context. It would be awesome.

*points at photo
“Is that the new pope?”

“Yeah!”

“Is he doin a good job?”

*4 second pause, looks back at photo
“Uhh, yes. He’s doing a good job. Did you know he’s from America!?”

I thought the serious 4-second evaluation period was funny. Good to know he’s doing a good job. This was at a Catholic thrift store yesterday.

Your arms and hands would be pretty messed up. Depending on which arm was broken twice and how badly, it may be permanently damaged.
Biggest thing is probably blood loss. I think your survival comes down to how much blood you lost in your glass injuries and from every other injury combined.

Source: not a doctor, just guessing.

I agree with the sentiment but a tiktok video can still be a meme. You’re thinking of “image macros” or at least images & screenshots.

I recognize your account and see you around a lot. I like your insightful posts, especially about Chinese language. I was just thinking about one of them earlier today, that country names in Chinese may predispose certain assumptions about the country like USA being written as “beautiful country” etc.

truly dull sections - yes I’m looking at you the vehicle sections … makes playing through HL2 a slog. Just a few hours in, I didn’t want to play any more. I was done.

Totally agree with this. HL1 is one of my favorite games ever but HL2 was just boring. I tried it a few times and never finished. Opposing Force and Blue Shift are my Half Life 2 and Half Life 3.

In defense of chronological order, the “original release” is only 14 episodes and the so-called broadcast order that many recommend is a fanmade amalgamation of the 2006 broadcast and 14 of the 28 episodes that aired in 2009.
In a literal sense, the “broadcast” or “original” order is not the original order of the broadcast. There were 14 episodes in the 2006 series and 28 episodes in the 2009 series, only half of which were new. “Broadcast” order is just the 2006 series with the new episodes tacked onto the end.

There’s nothing wrong with the broadcast order, but many people think of it as “the original” or “closer to the original artistic intent”. If you’re watching 28 episodes of the show, that’s simply not true. Many of the episodes are placed much better in the 2009 (chronological) order, especially Live Alive and Someday in the Rain. I would never recommend watching those so early, as one would do in “broadcast” order.
I personally recommend the chronological order OR if you’re willing to be a little bit confused trying to figure out what episode to watch next, a custom watch order like this one posted by user Xirema to Reddit or this one that I created and posted to MyAnimeList a couple years ago.

Yes!
The sexual harassment is definitely a major part of the show and while I think its portrayal is very nuanced, many would disagree and that’s also a valid take. “Endless Eight” is the arc where they reanimated and rerecorded the same episode (8 times actually), but each episode was directed by a different person. It’s probably my favorite part of the whole show but again, many disagree and think it’s just boring.

1. The Melancholy of Haruhi Suzumiya (2006 & 2009) - amazing in every way. Every arc is perfect and it’s the greatest character study ever in the medium of anime.
2. Kareshi Kanojo no Jijou (1998) - this one is Hideaki Anno’s best work. The same depth of characterization as Eva but without the scifi or action.
3. Hibike! Euphonium (first two seasons, 2015 & 2016) - kinda a retelling of Aim for the Ace (1973) in my mind. Really great characterization.
4. March comes in like a lion (2016-2017) - another fantastic drama and hits really hard emotionally.
5. Nana (2006) - more drama. This one has a great vibe and has a really unique feeling of yearning and incompleteness… Mostly because it’s forever incomplete.

So many pointless comments in here talking about how this cannot be objectively discussed. You are contributing nothing to the conversation. Of course it’s subjective. Do you see a thread called “what’s the best movie?” and respond like “☝️😏 actually there’s no such thing as a best movie because it’s all subjective.” Come on, the subjectivity is implied. You agree to a subjective discussion when you answer the question.

I find that the second model in your image is more accurate from a utilitarian perspective. At the most basic level, I think the origin of goodness is in pleasure (/happiness/whatever). Evil is the opposite: someone taking away your pleasure. Therefore goodness exists first, and then evil emerges as the absence of good.
Anything that’s evil, even pain and suffering and illness, is only evil because it’s preventing good. Why does this count as the absence of good instead of the presence of a novel concept of evil? Why not, rather, do we think of pain coming first with pleasure as its absence? I would argue that pain and suffering are not inherently bad; in a world without good, pain and suffering wouldn’t mean anything. On the other hand, pleasure is good even without the existence of suffering.

I’ve heard this one before and I’ve heard that the “correct” answer is to save your mother because “you can always get another wife but you can never get another mother.”

I’ve also heard that the answer to this (originally Chinese) question is indicative of cultural values (filial piety like you say) but I wonder how differently people would answer in a wide survey… If my mom asked me, I would choose my mom because I don’t have a wife.

“timer” should also be タイマー rather than ちめる (chimeru) though classic Japanese games like Super Mario would just say “TIME” in English.

Morrowind is my favorite but I like how Daggerfall (being as big as a real country) has so many little towns and big cities that you can really find a unique place to live. Make your home in a small village or move to the big city. I lived in Sentinel City, the capital.

I never finished any of the games though. They all have that one part that I can’t figure out or can’t bother to slog through