I tend to focus on instruments, textures, arrangement elements, so it also shocks me when I bump into a song with a lyric well written enough to break through. And, are you *kidding* me? What mad God of artistic inspiration woke up and chose to punch the audience right in the heart feels? Last line in in the quotes: "I feel numb most of the time Lower I get, the higher I'll climb, and I will wonder why I got dark only to shine And I'll light up the sky Stars that burn the brightest Fall so fast and pass you by 🎇🚬--> Cough like empty lighters" <--🚭💨 COUGH. LIKE. EMPTY. LIGHTERS. Oh my fuggin' GAWD. The personification, the imagery, the tactile feel, the connotations, it's all so perfect. I will never get over my obsession with this line. I'm hamming it up a little bit, but that's only cuz I'm legitimately uncomfortable with all things sincere and this lyric, this one line will always hit me harder than I like to admit. youtu.be/DnmJiyfqvGk?is=JTLI…

Let's not be hasty.

I've already spent too many words on this, but it's worth pointing out that no, that is not how the manga and anime industry are viewing their products. Anime manga exports are not just an idle afterthought. If that was the case, the US wouldn't be outspending Japan in terms of anime consumption and we wouldn't be spending it a fourth of what you pay in terms of manga consumption. When the US is pumping so much money into your anime industry that if we all stopped watching it, it would collapse? You don't get to be simultaneously dismissive of requests for distribution and angry at piracy, well, not if you want anyone to seriously listen. You don't get to reap the benefits of having a huge income source and then complain when you don't give them away to give you money.

Ooh, big feelings, shallow thoughts. I get it now. Thinking's tough, eh, little buddy? Want me to explain it to you in a way you can understand? Please see the funny donkey for further explanation.

Today I learned that apparently the Europeans have been stealing valor and giving the Japanese shit for getting bombs dropped on them. One? Super gay, Europe. Very very gay. Two? Aw, sorry Japan bros. On the worst of days, no one should have to the suffer the slings and indignities that come with even a slightly extended conversation with a European.

I went to bed hoping I'd wake up and not be as down on the Attack on Titan ending as I was right before crashing, but unfortunately the cat's out of the bag. Kicking myself for being so oblivious to the obvious Norse mythology references. Once you see them, it's really obvious where things would have headed, and since they didn't, it's just fucked everything up on so many levels. Literally would not be an argument about the rumbling being justified or not or whether or not Attack on Titan was fascist if they had actually just completed goddamn Ragnarok. It would have tied a nice bow on the cycle of violence, blood debt thing, let Ymir piss off for the right reasons, the remaining Yeagerists realize they backed the wrong horse, etc. It's not just that one character Arc was disappointing. It actually has spawned so much confusion regarding what the fucking message actually is that the only real plausible reading is that the series believes that freedom and attempting to escape oppression is a bad thing, but fuck up and accidentally get started, better kill literally everybody. I'm quite bad at clocking mythological references because I don't like to engage with stories in that way if I'm being honest. Knowing those themes were there does take away what I thought was depth and replaces it with just the biggest display of being a pussy by a mangaka you can imagine. You can read this story legibly as it stands. But it could have been so much better. I legitimately feel like I lost something last night when my perspective changed and I'm shocked at how sincerely bummed out I am.

This is like one of my favorite topics but whenever I stumble into a situation where it would be appropriate to get into the nitty-gritty, people decline. I even come equipped with the neopragmatic support donkey Eeyore Rorty! He's so approachable!

This is the most accurate take on astrology I've seen in a while. Astrology is a way to talk about things and signal to one another without breaking social rules and norms around both self-aggrandizing and insulting another person inadvertently. You're not talking about yourself for them, you're talking about what the stars say. The interpretive malleability and flexibility are a feature, not a bug.

Introduce yourself by listing 10 bands you have seen live: 1. Company of Thieves 2. St. Vincent 3. BABYMETAL 4. Green Day 5. Against Me! 6. Palace 7. Blane Fonda 8. Jimmy Eat World 9. ORESKABAND 10. Von Grey

Resolutely refusing to understand something is not the same as proving it's not real. Weird hill to die on. Using language as if it were a net you're trying to draw around people in order to force them to adopt your idiosyncratic, non-standard use of the term? Literally why.

I feel like there's always this intentional retardation about the persistence element, needing to have goals and motivations, and an environment to navigate for cognition as a concept to even mean anything. Also, there's the corresponding side of the rebuttal which is the calculator problem. Why is my calculator not sentient? Somewhere between me and my calculator things are different. I think at this point the substrate talk is probably a straw man.

Understanding means you can utilize a linguistic tool or mental model or what have you in such a way that it helps you navigate through the relevant environment/environmental cues. I might be able to memorize the definition for the aforementioned theorem, but I can't make use of it. LLMs do not understand because LLMS do not have persistence and an environment to navigate. It's like an interaction made out of very precise linguistic reflexes. This reactivity demonstrates lack of understanding because no human would be unphased if you changed topics as as wildly as we do with chatbots or not react to this as odd. A model won't see your behavior and how that's changed over time and change it's approach without being explicitly told. It can't decide to interact with you beyond "run the symbols". This is why it can talk eloquently about music theory and describe certain songs beautifully, but if you keep poking at it, you'll realize it doesn't or know how to match things up quite right. The tldr here is quit acting like linguistic symbols are magic meaning containers and if you can shuffle them around you must understand things.

As a devout pragmatist, I am honor bound to point out philosophy definitely leads to more misunderstandings in and out of philosophy than useful aphorisms do. This brings me little joy.

We call it "utilitarianism", thanks.

Alec Baldwin but he got away with it.

BRILLIANT.