efaardvark

Someone mention popcorn? I love me some popcorn and diet coke. I have a big, stand-alone popcorn maker and occasionally make huge batches. I take some to work and the neighbours and eat the rest. Then I'm sick of popcorn for a few months. And the cycle repeats.

Real-world physics is still pretty dang awesome, powerful, and effective. And as any science fiction reader knows, any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic. Cellphones are just magical devices to effect psychic abilities like clairvoyance.

I've never encountered anything personally that can't be readily explained without appealing to the supernatural. I won't say that it is impossible for things like ghosts or ESP to exist, and it is certainly fun to think about, but I'm not a big believer in such things. Besides, even if they are real it probably doesn't matter. The simple fact that such phenomenon and abilities are next to impossible to detect and replicate means that they're hard to control at best, and have minimal, if any effect in the real world. That said, I'm a "never say never" kind of guy. I would be among the first to embrace "magic" or "ESP" if such things could be objectively measured, especially if it/they could be made into a useful tool. It certainly wouldn't be the first time in human history that such things have happened. There are whole fields of present-day science that are based on phenomenon once considered magical. Everyday use of commonplace items like cellphones or flashlights or antibiotics would have been enough to get you burned at the stake for witchcraft in certain - even fairly recent - periods of history. And there are definitely still gaps and inconsistencies in our "official" understanding of how the universe works. That being the case, it would be unreasonable not to keep an open mind.

The original, native title is "ネト充のススメ", with a subtitle/translation of "Recommendation of the wonderful virtual life". These are what's in the trailers and the opening of the actual show episodes. If I just hear someone read the Japanese title it sounds like "neto-juu no susume" and I think something a little different like "advice of a recovering net-addict". Literally it is something awkward like "net-full recommendation", which is a horrible title for an anime. To break it down, "ネト" is kana used for foreign words, and pronounced "ne-to" or "net", as in "internet". "充 is pronounced "juu", and if you just heard that without seeing the written form then you might think another meaning "獣", or "beast". So as kind of a word-play thing it could be interpreted as "net-beast". That (plus the actual content of the anime of course) is probably how we get to "MMO junkie" in some English versions. We're not given the kanji for "ススメ", so it could be interpreted to mean different things. "Advice" or "recommendation" is the most likely interpretation, but there's also an interpretation of moving forward or progressing, so that's probably where "recovery" comes from. It is kind of complicated/layered (to this non-native listener) so the different English translations are probably attempts to capture different aspects of the interpretation(s). IMHO, YMMV, etc...

Snacking on trail mix. Almonds, peanuts, cashews, hazel nuts, sunflower seeds, pepitas, Brazil nuts, and pecans, with "craisins" (dried cranberry bits), chocolate chips, and the little round bits are caramel drops... yum! (I think someone got there ahead of me though.. almost all the pecans and Brazil nuts and most of the pepitas seem to have been lifted.)

nope theres no anime for it,  That's too bad. Expanded to 6-12 episodes that one song could be a really good anime series. I'd definitely watch it.

I've watched a few gameplay/streams of this on youtube and twitch. As a former Minecraft addict it looks pretty cool to me. There's even a version for my platform (linux). I've been holding off due to lack of time though. There's also a number of reports of moderate-to-severe graphics issues on the linux version. Definitely something I've been following, if from a distance for now.

Yeah, though sometimes it is only a matter of setup. SAO is straight up fantasy, except they threw in the Nerve Gear as plot device. It's all good. The story is what counts.

How about things like Zetsuen no Tempest (Blast of Tempest) or Zankyou no Terror (Terror in Resonance). Maybe also Higashi no Eden (Eden of the East)? Not the movie though. Or maybe The Third: Aoi Hitomi no Shoujo (The Girl with the Blue Eye). Any of those seem interesting? Just throwing out ideas to see what resonates. Maybe for the "hard" sf.. I'm into stuff that might really be possible. GitS or Planetes more than Log Horizon or Overlord. Not that I didn't watch and enjoy all of those, just that I'm more interested in the former than the latter.

Today I saved one Eding Kerbin, scientist, from the wreckage of his plane in low orbit around Minmus. No, I don't understand how someone can get stranded in orbit around an outer moon in an airplane cockpit either, but there you go. And so low! Any lower and I could swat the hilltops below as they go by!

While not exactly earth-shaking news, this makes me happy nevertheless since this one has been kind of hard to find online.... http://www.crunchyroll.com/hyouka

Flying foxes, aka bird puppies... Wolves and octopi are cool too.

I'm not quite that bad. I mean, I could be, but I don't have that kind of time. I've actually started avoiding those sorts of games in favor of the more open, "sandbox" games because I've found that I get less caught up in the "do it right" thing. Minecraft for instance, or my current obsession Kerbal Space Program, or I'm also waiting for Space Engineers. Great FPS, low latency, awesome physics engine. Plot needs work though.

Yes. Even really socially obnoxious characters like Naoki Irie in Itazura na Kiss are relatable on some level, at least if the authors have done their job right. That said, it would be hard to find an anime (or book, or movie) character that I'd want to use as a strict role model or emulate too closely. They are designed for the roles they play, and are usually not as well-rounded as a real person could/should be.

That sort of thing has been happening occasionally since forever. (Or at least since Zero Wing and "all your base are belong to us" in the 90s. ) I don't get too annoyed unless the Engrish translation really starts interfering with the understanding of the dialogue. Sometimes it'll make me laugh and wreck the mood in a serious bit and that can be kind of annoying too. Fortunately I can understand spoken Japanese well enough that I usually only pay marginal attention to the subs anyway so I might not even notice.

I do that sort of thing too. Especially if I had trouble the last time through I have to go back and do it over, just to "get it right". Otherwise I keep thinking about it and I can't move on to the next game. One of my personality quirks I guess.

About 6-8 episodes in. Not my thing. I'm doing the same with Black Clover. I'm on ep12 and I just can't get motivated to watch the next one. It'll get pushed to the bottom of the queue and I'll never get back to it. I might have made the effort to go back and finish it if it had ended after a season or two. But committing to watch hundreds of episodes of an anime that I wasn't really into in the first place? Nope.. not gonna happen.

This seems like it'd be a good anime, but I don't recognize it. Does such exist? Anyone seen it?

@Part_time_anime I'm a bit inland so the beach is kinda far. There's a national forest area literally within walking distance, and a ski area about 30km away as the crow flies, but the nearest beach is over 60. (100 for the good one.) Still, that's only maybe a couple hours by car, even on our freeways.

The Good: Nice weather year-round. Close (~an hour or two drive at most) to hiking, camping, skiing, ocean, mountains, and urban center (night life, dining, etc.). Did I mention the nice weather? The Bad: Brush fire season. Every. Frikin. Year. The brush gets extremely dry in the summer and something/someone always lights it off. Most fireworks outlawed as a result. Air quality sucks, especially in fire season. Extremely high cost of living. (House prices are currently about US$600-$900/sq.ft. Electricity is $0.32/kWh. Taxes are insane.) Freeway traffic. OMG!

Anime and games and books, in roughly that order. If I feel especially motivated then I might see about upgrading my ubuntu to 18.04. I had a rough week at work though so I'm kind of anti-computer at the moment.

I too like my verisimilitude. Don't get me wrong, I enjoy fantasy. Lord of the Rings is wonderful. (I've even read The Silmarillion, which tbh takes a more than a bit of dedication to the material.) Star Wars is fine. But to get me engaged I need something real to sink my teeth into, and I'm more into "hard" scf-fi. King Arthur is fine and fun, but a story about how Merlin was actually a cyborg with his own wifi-controlled nanite cloud is more interesting to me. SAO > Log Horizon. (A least from a plot-device point of view. A good story can make up for a lot of technical deficiencies.) Even better would be something awesome that could actually happen in the real universe without resorting to speculative fantasy-physics. Unfortunately my education and professional background gives me a pretty deep understanding of things like physics, space travel, and computers that the science fictiony stories that I like most are based on, which makes it a lot easier for me to spot the flaws in a story unless the author is really, really good. Sadly, a lot of "science fiction" authors don't even try. These days the launch manifest on spacex.com or pictures on nasa.gov can get my imagination more stoked than anything by Lucas or Tolkien, or even Yukimura (Planetes) or Ota (GitS). (But also .. yay reality!) I liked that one too.

Stayed up past my bedtime watching True Tears last night. Was only going to watch a couple episodes, but kind of got sucked in. One of the hazards of binge-watching I guess... you can "just one more episode" until the sun comes up if you're not careful. Now trying to decide between Ryuo's Work and the 2nd season of New Game next. I need to go back and finish Re: ZERO too. So much anime.. so little time. What would Itami do? (I need that on a t-shirt.)

I'm ashamed to say that I'm really not reading anything at the moment. Technically I'm in the middle of "Leviathan Wakes", but I kind of lost interest and haven't picked it up in months. (That and I've just been too busy.) I've barely glanced at the latest issue of "Analog" either. I think the last actual book I read was either Mahaffey's science-history "Atomic Accidents" or O'Neill's "2081". (The latter of which is still amazingly on-point, considering it was written over 30 years ago before personal computers, cellphones, the 'Net, Musk, or Sorensen. Fox Cluster or bust!) Neither of those is what most people would call recreational reading however. For that I'd probably have to go all the way back to last years' reread of "Legacy of Heorot", by Niven, Pournelle, and Barnes. I thought that one was a hoot. I was a big arcade crawler back in the days of pinball and Space Invaders and I played ALL those games at one point or another. My VR/holodeck house will have an old-school arcade stocked with the likes of Space Wars, Space Invader, Asteroids, Galaxian, Star Wars, Gauntlet, and all the rest.