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PaperclipPerfector  1d ago (text post)   1142 thread views

Friday Fun Thread for July 25, 2025

Be advised: this thread is not for serious in-depth discussion of weighty topics (we have a link for that), this thread is not for anything Culture War related. This thread is for Fun. You got jokes? Share 'em. You got silly questions? Ask 'em.

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I was watching some clips from the Thick of It and it seemed slightly… off. The broad plot points and the characters seemed realistic enough but the overt and graphic threats, and the fucky fucky speaking style seemed to be very much written to pander to the audience rather than to be realistic.

(Who would be caught dead saying something like ‘fuck you very much’? It makes you sound like a five year old.)

I know some of us have experience in this environment (e.g. @SSCReader). What do you think? Which bits basically ring true and which bits don’t? Is TToI just outdated?

I have some experience but it’s all student politics on the one hand and dealing with civil service type people and procurement on the other hand.

The swearing is overly snappy and convoluted, and Cim is right that it was an extra-sweary period in British TV that sounds very silly now. In real life people who try to swear like that sound more like Ollie than Malcolm. But the overall tenor is definitely accurate to British politics in the Blair/Brown years. A story about two very senior aides of Gordon Brown (names omitted and stuff paraphrased, since the story was told in private, but newspaper readers at the time would recognize both):

I'm in my office with X, and she's complaining that Gordon's been fucking up everything lately, that he can't come across like a normal person, etc etc. She's got her back to the door, and doesn't see Gordon walk in. He's standing in the doorway and I can see he's about to fly into one of his rages. Now, he would have these terrible rages, and I learned that the only way to get Gordon out of it was to get even angrier than him, enough that he'd start trying to calm me down, so I jump up, kick over the litter basket, and shout "I CAN'T BELIEVE WHAT THOSE BASTARDS ARE SAYING ABOUT HIM! I'M GOING TO KILL THEM!" And Gordon calms down, and he comes over to me and puts his hands on my shoulders and says "Calm down, [aide], calm down, it'll all be fine."

In the behind-the-scenes footage, too, the actors talk about the time they've spent with people in the civil service/government preparing for their roles. Nicola Murray's actress quoted one of them as saying "I don't know why we do this. It's not for the money, because we don't make any money, and it's not for the power, because we don't have any power. It's like you're working for charity... but a shit charity, that everybody hates." Who knows if that's real, but too good to leave out.

The Thick of It is like The Office (US version) in that it’s an idealized version of a ‘fun’ office as imagined by people from that particular culture. Leaving aside that even in the mid Blair era I doubt most of that kind of banter wasn’t tolerated all the time even from Alistair Campbell types (let alone random civil servants) there is an authenticity to it.

I would say that working in an office full of well-educated English people who like banter, at its best on Friday afternoons when everyone is comfortable with each other, has had a couple of drinks at lunch and is joking around then sure, it feels a bit like The Thick of It (at least to my foreign ears).

In the same way, Americans and some other Anglos identified with the kind of camaraderie and humor in the US Office because they experienced a lesser version of it, sometimes, themselves. The Thick of It lacks the maudlin sentimentality of most US sitcoms but a similar principle applies.

The swearing in particular seems like an remnant of the TV culture of that time, ‘The F Word’, Gordon Ramsey swearing, the growth of satellite TV without watershed, established networks being willing to have more swearing on later in the evening. This was, after all, when Little Britain was airing on BBC One. In addition, the main character is based on a notorious fan of profanity even today.

More interesting for the TV connoisseur is Veep, which while a less funny show highlights the subtle cultural differences between Britain and America by having American actors and characters speak dialogue clearly written by Brits and therefore always a little uncanny to American ears.

Succession (by much the same team) has a similar problem but skirts it by making the main cast half-English.

Movie reviews and demonic modern media

I really like Robert Eggers, his movies are well made and are true to the time period that they are from, the actors are good, you get sucked into eh atmosphere, and there is no modern leftist drudgery. I made the mistake of not posting my unfinished draft and ended up losing 5 pages of progress, so I will try to be brief here. Eggers adapts euro folklore to his brand of extremely immersive cinema; his movie The Northman was the most aryan thing I have seen on a screen in a while; it celebrated values that my own people, a continent away, celebrate. I wrote a review of it here and recommend everything Eggers has made.

The lighthouse

The movie is about homosexuality, I liked it,t but it's my least favorite Eggers movie. It reminds me of david lynch a lot. Worth watching once. I like Eggers when he adapts more straightforward older material that, whilst being simple, conveys a lot of things; in this case, it felt a lot like watching David Lynch in some ways. Great movie, though not the best movie ever, kinda good.

Nosferatu

This movie is amazing; if you removed the cuckoldry from it, it would have been perfect. The dialogue and the setting are something from a weird time where it feels like a European adaptation from the early 1900s. Count Orlok strikes fear with zero jump scares. Bill Skarsgard's portrayal is very real and very scary. I would rewatch it simply because of the immersion. This is a super immersive movie, and it's very polished. It's one of the best movies I have ever seen and is a must-watch in my book.

F1

61-year-old Brad Pitt stars in a rare good summer blockbuster sports action by-the-numbers movie. The director of Top Gun Maverick made a movie that even my mom liked, who, for the record, rarely watches movies. It's a very lighthearted action-heavy flick that, due to not being leftist explicitly, makes for a great movie to watch in the theatres. Real equipment and CGI feel very different; CGI has made movies feel less consequential. Pro wrestling became worse partly because people started doing more extreme things like jumping off the cage, jumping into tacks, jumping off the cage on a table that's on fire with tacks around it. Ultimately, it only made it worse as people tuned in for the story, the usage of more extreme gimmicks worked as an occasional thing, doing it more made people desensitised, and it made everyone look superhuman. It is much more interesting to see Brad in a car than it is to see some 5'2 diverse female lead "save" the universe in CGI slop because one of them is not indestructible.

Watchmen Chapter 1 and 2

Watchmen is touted as peak comic book stuff, and this adaptation is the most faithful one we have seen since the HBO show was just cringeworthy pro-leftist drivel, and the Snyder one apparently took too many liberties. My favorite part is the comic inside the comic, where the dialogues in that comic end up matching what we see in the world of Watchmen through different POVs. Alan Moore, the creator, is a hardcore leftist in whose eyes the world is a nihilistic place; he is competent at his job and can subvert you in better ways than modern ones. The character people root for who have read the comic or seen the adaptation, is Rorschach, who Moore created to dunk on conservatives. He remains the only guy who stood for the right thing by the end.

Modern Media is Demonic

No, seriously, let's consider two superhero stories. On one hand, we have the boys, the current cucked tv show, where there is a literal line where Billy Butcher goes "He is my wife's son", which is supposed to make him look like the good guy. On the other we have All-Star Superman, a story about Superman coming to terms that he is dying and living out his last days on earth. The boys and watchmen have a nihilistic vision of the world where despite all the lawlessness, the word crime is still racism. There are no good guys, power corrupts and all endings are bad. In All-Star Superman, you instead see, also spoiler alert, skip the paragraph is you wanna not know the ending, although the ending makes no difference.

In the comic and its adaptation, Superman lives in eternally fixing the sun to save his foster homeland. There is a very touching scene where he visits his mother, who adopted him as a child, and she can sense he is ill despite no signs. It's a touching little nudge. The world needs people like him to live so that we can have order. Lex Luthor ends up with a death sentence after realising what he has done, the world is saved, and Luthor, before he dies, tries to find penance by helping Lois bear Clark's son by some sort of sci-fi IVF.

Superhero tales are for kids; they are simple. Jonathan Bowden has a good criticism of them, but we have moved to a point where even the ones he read seem like fucking biblical stories. Modern entries are that bad. These stories appeal to young boys. By making every guy in modern adaptations a bumbling incompetent idiot who is playing second fiddle to some girlboss, you go against the very nature of the story. In the case of Watchmen, consequentialist Moore wants to make these qualities look bad, though he still does an ok job with Rorschach. We on the other hand, saw Star Wars, Indiana Jones and fucking LOTR get turned into modern left-wing caricatures.

There are people who make videos on these topics, the best I have seen is this guy Despot of Antrim, there are others like nerdrotic etc, who are not as good. I never watched any of these videos about "Woke Hollywood is killing XYZ franchise". Why bother since I am too reactionary to ever get swayed? I opened one of these based on Jim from blog.reaction.la, and holy shit, modern movies are straight up unwatchable. When I was in my early teens, so the 2010s, these movies still tried being somewhat alright, but the ones today are castration via cinema.

No parent in good conscience can let kids watch modern Disney adaptations where Snow White wants a communist commune, or where Peter Pan gets slapped by a girl in his own movie. We joke about actors being whores, but current cinema is worse than whorehouses given its poisoning of little children. LOTR and Rings of Power could not be further apart. I wrote a glowing review of LOTR, after having spent 12 plus hours plopped on my bed watching all three movies, I felt something warm and glowing inside of me. Watership Down, the book I am reading and the countless folktales and mythical stories we grew up with have to do with the hero who overcomes some evil, and the end leaves him and the world better.

Men and Women are very different, the hero is a mostly male archetype, and I am sick of seeing tampons thrown at it. A concerned father here posted about his neighbour's son, how he felt bad for his mom was making him effeminate. Modern state now tries that with beloved children's cartoons too. This is a long, meandering post. I liked comic book heroes, I really did. Batman: The Animated Series was the only cartoon I ever watched. People making movies are showing me the finger, they defile some things I liked as a child, and their losing money is a good thing. I refuse to relate to a female protagonist. I would as a parent, would not want my kids to consoom product we see being shilled. These people are losing money, which gives me some hope for the world.

where Peter Pan gets slapped by a girl in his own movie

My impression was that girls slapped protagonists a lot in their own movies in the Old Movies. It's what girls do.

A girl challenging you and her showing you who's boss, and then doing that in the movie are different. Mark Renton in Trainspotting, when he meets Diane gets challenged by her despite his awful pickup, but ultimately she does not end up being the man in the movie. I like feisty women, modern portrayals, despite the nudity, are very sexless. You can sense that the creators have had weird lives; the woman running Star Wars, or whatever their latest flop TV show was, spent her high school as a pariah. No wonder her art is that bad.

How.

A few weeks back, I'd gotten in touch with an old buddy of mine living down in London. We hadn't met for ages, and I offered to come visit during the last dying days of what passes as a summer around these parts.

You can see below that my experience catching a red-eye flight (one that threatened to give me pink-eye to boot) didn't go so well. A small price to pay, I told myself, as I landed at the airport an hour or so back, and caught the train towards where my friend lives. I dropped him a text letting him know I was on my way, and looking forward to seeing him in a few hours.

At which point came back a rather incredulous message. "self_made_human, you were supposed to be come visit next weekend."

Well. Shit. I have no valid explanation, barring chronic severe deprivation brought on by too many night shifts and dissolute living. He'd been very clear on the dates, I just ended up mixing them up, only remembering that I was supposed to see him the last weekend of this month.

He called to figure out what on earth had happened, and I was in the process of explaining the above when the train went through a tunnel and lost network. I made small talk with my fellow passengers, and took to heart their advice to make a picnic out of my misfortune. Call it self_made_human's most spontaneous (and first) solo day trip. Not kidding about that, I'm not one for travel, and I never go any significant distances unless it's on some kind of vacation or to visit someone. This is quite literally the first time I've found myself in a different city with no plans or fixed agenda.

I'm furiously asking ChatGPT for advice on how to kill the time until I hear back from my friend regarding his ability to accommodate my stupidity. I've already promised to come visit again next weekend, as he'd already made time and spent money booking things for us to do.

So uh, what do I do now? Any suggestions? Tottenham looks profoundly uninspiring, and I don't even know what sport the local team, the Tottenham Hotspurs, even play. Worst case I go to a pub. Or maybe I wander around Central London, with far more discretionary spending potential than the last time I was here.

(My family is never going to let me live this down)

Edit:

If it wasn't Anita Sarkeesian I saw at the Tate Modern, then this lady is her long lost twin. I should have said hi.

Edit 2:

Brother, they're playing a film where a bunch of clean-shaven Asian twinks are jerking off with/to plants. Modern and postmodern art outdoes itself.

Tottenham play football, and they're shit at it (they're Arsenal's old local rivals). Besides, I believe the team is on tour in Thailand right now, probably watching Asian twinks jerk off with plants.

If you're still in the area, after the Tate Modern I recommend walking down the river bank towards Westminster Bridge. It's definitely the prettiest and most interesting part of the river to walk along, and there are some good pubs near Waterloo Station if the walk gets you thirsty (sadly, my favourite, a railway arch pub entirely painted with murals of the Battle, seems to have closed).

Start in St John’s Wood or Primrose Hill, walk down through Regents Park, past the rose garden and the outdoor theater, down through Marylebone and some of Mayfair, then into Green and then St James’ park, then walk down along the Strand, stopping by whatever seems interesting. Then either take the district or circle line west, back to Hyde Park, to Chelsea and South Ken, past the museums (V&A if you haven’t been), all of Chelsea is pretty nice in summer especially if it’s sunny this afternoon.

Or walk down to the Embankment or Westminster pier, take the thames boat (now branded “uber boat” due to sponsorship but its regular public transport) to Greenwich, see the Cutty Sark and the naval college and the date line, have a pint at the Trafalgar, take the boat back.

Thank you! I'm currently at Borough Market, suffering from sensory overload. I'll see how my legs hold up after I've had something to eat.

pretty nice in summer especially if it’s sunny this afternoon

The opposite, unfortunately. Tottenham was positively dystopian due to the overall bleakness and the rather concerning number of schizophrenics on the loose. Clouds as far as the London Eye can see.

Tottenham is one of the worst parts of London, sadly.

The Piccadilly area is pretty nice for shopping: it’s got a couple of good, big bookshops (Hatchard’s especially), Fortnum & Mason’s for food, and Jermyn street etc. for top-end clothes, jackets etc. (I think you were quite interested in fashion but maybe not that kind?)

Very crowded and expensive obviously, but nice.

Or there’s the historical stuff: go to Bank and see the old City of London, or to Westminster/St. James’ Park.

I'd be very leery about calling myself interested in fashion. I buy two, maybe three, articles of clothing a year, but I do try to make sure I look good in them.

Visiting the book shops might not hurt, but I haven't bought a dead tree book (that wasn't a textbook) in almost a decade. Libgen rules.

Thanks!

I caught my first Ryanair flight, heading down from Edinburgh to London, and holy shit.

I didn't have very high expectations (and I think I got scammed by paying for extra baggage), but the experience was abysmal.

The initial point of failure was informational. Upon checking in online, the website presented me with a series of warnings, escalating in their shade of digital red, that as a non-EU citizen (despite possessing a UK residency permit, a distinction the system seemed unable to parse), a printed, physical boarding pass was a non-negotiable requirement. Failure to produce one at the airport, it was implied, would result in some combination of fines, exile, or possibly being sacrificed to the god of baggage fees.

This sent me on a quest through the Edinburgh airport for a Ryanair helpdesk, a quest which revealed that the designated helpdesk was less a "desk with helpful people" and more a "suggestion of a desk, currently unburdened by the presence of staff." (This is presuming someone's half eaten lunch doesn't count). The system, it seemed, had a single point of failure, and had failed.

An airport assistance employee who, taking pity, escorted me through a staff channel to a hidden check-in line. Here, the ground-truth epistemology contradicted the website's stated doctrine: no, of course I didn't need a physical pass. The dire warnings were, apparently, just a sort of generalized, non-binding advisory. This was my first lesson: the Ryanair informational layer operates on a different plane of reality from its physical one.

It only got worse. After getting to the terminal, I found myself boarding a perfectly normal airport bus. Tad bit crowded, when I got there, but no biggie.

And then people kept coming. And then more showed up. The bus showed no signs of readying for departure. Yet more people kept being shoved in, and you can tell that even the legendary British tolerance for minor inconveniences was taxed beyond its limit. We were semi-apologetically informed that there was only one bus operational today, which didn't really make things better.

People were loudly asking if they couldn't just walk to the plane, others made comparisons to being sardines in a can, and I added my own take by simply questioning why they didn't just do two trips if they had one bus?

Why didn’t they? One might hypothesize that the marginal cost of a second five-minute bus journey (fuel, driver time) was calculated to be greater than the cumulative disutility experienced by 180 passengers compressed into a human brick for thirty minutes. Or perhaps it's a form of signaling: you wanted the cheapest flight, and this is what The Cheapest Flight feels like. You are not a customer to be courted; you are a parcel to be shipped, and parcels do not have preferences about packing density.

Eventually, the boarding staff ceased their efforts, which had begun to resemble viral videos of shinkansen "pushers" in Tokyo, though with less efficiency and more audible sighing. Whether this was due to hitting a hard physical limit or a soft limit on potential passenger revolt remains an open question. The ten-minute journey to the plane was a miasma of condensation and shared misery, followed by another ten minutes of waiting in the poorly ventilated bus at the foot of the stairs before we were permitted to ascend.

The aircraft itself was a masterclass in apophatic design. An angry wasp, and just about as comfortable to ride. It was defined not by what it had, but by what it had aggressively stripped away. The cabin was a symphony in hostile shades of yellow and blue, a color palette that seems optimized to discourage any sense of calm or well-being. The seats, clad in a thin, sweat-inducing pleather, were clearly selected for ease of cleaning over any consideration for human comfort. The legroom was a theoretical concept, not that the seats could recline and take any more of it away.

I had paid a non-trivial fee to place my modest backpack in an overhead bin, a transaction that now felt like a failure of game theory on my part. Observing the general chaos and the apparent lack of rigorous enforcement, I suspect the Nash equilibrium for a frequent Ryanair traveler is to simply ignore the ancillary charges and bank on the operational entropy being on your side. The airline is running a tax on the risk-averse. They won't pull the same trick on me again, I promise you that much.

This flight can't leave soon enough, but now I half expect them to charge me if I use the toilets in-flight.*

(I promise you that even the most budget airlines in India don't cut as many corners. It's frankly quite impressive.)

*I fucking knew it. Their CEO had actually floated the idea of coin-operated toilets a while back, but was stymied by airline regulations. I'm no longer a minarchist or libertarian.

Ryanair is a meme. Their CEO, O’Leary, is a kind of pantomime villain, always willing to bait the press in a symbiotic relationship because, as he knows, the passengers always come back.

It is never worth flying a budget airline in Europe unless it’s a last minute flight (when the legacy carriers jack up prices to accommodate urgent and unplanned business or personal travel; in part this is because of the unusual way intra-European business class works where the seats stay the same, they just don’t sell the middle seat, which means that they can sell as many business class seats as they want up to the day of departure).

Book in advance and regular airlines (which are bad enough) are barely more expensive once you account for all the fees, the fact that you’re going to a normal airport instead of some dump 90 minutes away from the city with cheap landing fees, the psychological burden of encountering one’s fellow passengers etc.

I, uh, fucked up. I was supposed to be here next weekend. Now I'm in London, and unsure what to do with myself.

(I'd like to blame this on Ryanair too, but that's a stretch. It's probably chronic sleep deprivation and forgetting how to use a calendar)

I'll take your advice to heart, and if I come back again next week, it'll be on a carrier that isn't going to nickel and dime me to hell and back.

Protip: If you ever find yourself out of medication and the pharmacy says they are out of stock of your prescription, tell them that you are about to call your insurance company to inform them that their in-network pharmacy is unable to provide nessesary medical care to patients. Suddenly, "it's 3-4 days out," and, "this is just our procedure," becomes, "I'll check the stockroom," and "we'll have that ready for you sir," in about 2 minutes. Dangerous professional voice is a superpower. Obviously you must only use this power for good.

Dangerous professional voice is a superpower.

Can you elaborate? Is this simply bombarding bureaucratic drones with requests for specific documentation so you can create a paper trail for yourself on their inability to process something up the chain?

Despite having already signed a contract to have a custom house built, I remain obsessed with designing houses. On Monday, I managed to get my coworkers to participate in a house-design contest by offering prizes for the winners (a one-ounce silver coin for first place, half-ounce for second, and quarter-ounce for third). Is anybody interested in having a contest on this website as well?

I made some very bad houses in the Sims 1, 2 and 3, and some mud huts in Minecraft. What are my odds?

I don't have a creative bone in my body, but I can read the codes well enough to put together crushingly boring designs in infinite variety. Presumably a person capable of reading the DSM would fare no worse.

Like artistic drawings or AutoCAD style?

However you want. Let the voters decide which style is best. (As long as compliance with codes is determinable.)

There has been a discussion of Death Note lately, and I feel obliged to shill my favorite fanfiction of it: Silent Partner, Unfinished Business, which is the best thriller novel I've ever read, including original literary works. And a few days back one forum participant was disgusted by the canon's treatment of Naomi's death — here she survives Light's sadistic execution, and... well, that would be spoilers. But to that forum participant (I honestly don't remember the name): it could be to your liking, and wouldn't even require knowledge of the original series past the episode with Naomi.

That was me, thanks for the rec! I'll definitely check it out.

Excellent! I’ll check it out.

Here’s my one and only experience with death note fanfiction THE HIT AND RUN. Don’t bother with the “post that inspired this” tumblr link; the premise should stand on its own.

Why are there not loitering counter-drones above troop movements in Ukraine? I’m seeing footage of surveillance drones with high-fidelity video recording, zooming in 16x or 32x onto targets. What’s stopping the development of drones with video recording that feeds into AI and surveils for incoming enemy drones? Ai should be able to determine if something is a drone from visual signature + movement. Then you’d simply have to equip it with some kind of birdshot or have it launch a smaller drone.

I think IFF would be a nightmare in the face of ongoing jamming and other e-war. The autonomy of the drones in this war is quite constrained, and we're only seeing semi-independent hunter-killers.

Intercepting drones with other drones isn't easy either.

They’re using fiber optics drones now which is insane

I can’t think of an easier way to give away the position of your troops than having a large drone right on top of their location.

It does not appear that either side has figured out a way to hide from enemy drones. If you are in the settlement that they are attacking, you will eventually just die.

There are special cloaks that camouflage you in both visible light and IR, but they are still too rare to hand out to every trooper.

Not that expensive, though. 50 bucks if you buy them wholesale.

I mean, you don't have to hover right above them. Both sides know where each other is, at least to around the precision of a grid-square. There's literal trench warfare going on, it's not like they're not going to be manning those.

You could have drones screening the perimeter or roaming the front-lines.

What’s stopping the development of drones with video recording that feeds into AI and surveils for incoming enemy drones? Ai should be able to determine if something is a drone from visual signature + movement.

Because surveillance drones are small and practically invisible in a wide angle view from distance. Realtime (or near realtime) computer vision operates at surprisingly low resolutions and only ”zooms in” once it has identified the area that has the target object.

I did a quick test with a camera and assuming a 20 MP sensor (possibly slightly optimistic) and typical DJI drone lens, a drone size target at 100 meters away would fill roughly an area around 20x20 pixels size - and that’s when fully digitally zoomed in!

You know how the stereotypical bird photographer carries a huge ass lens that resembles a bazooka in size? There’s a reason for that and it’s called ”small target far away” (except no bird photographer would imagine getting a good shot from 100 meters away even with a massive lens)

But how far away do you need to be to shoot out buckshot or something? Or netting? Drone kill zone is maybe 20 meters.

You have to be able to find the drone and guide the loiterer close enough fast enough.

I finally got around to using ChatGPT Agent and it is actually, finally, tingling my "this thing has reasoning and problem-solving capacity and might actually be sentient" senses.

Used it for creating a delivery/pickup order from the Sam's Club website. It hunted down the items, navigated challenges that I intentionally threw up for it, and successfully completed the task I gave it, with very minimal prompting to get it there.

Yet another "Future Shock" moment for me, which is happening every two months nowadays. My benchmark is very, very close to being met.

Anyhow: Anyone have any ideas for some non-mundane, but also non-illegal and non-dangerous ways to make use of a slow but reliable personal assistant that can navigate the internet?"

I haven't tried agent, and thought I didn't have access till I just checked. So consider my thoughts preliminary:

I lack the confidence that the Agent will be able to do much actually useful work for me, a likely cause being stymied by CAPTCHAs (which I believe it's intentionally designed to not solve even if it easily could), or simply because it doesn't have access to my computer. That's where all my credentials and login details live. I feel like I'd babysit it enough to not make it worth the hassle, and would rather have o3 make a plan or guide me if I ran into hurdles.

If you think it can do better than that, I'd be curious to know.

If it encounters captchas or similar blockades, it politely stops and alerts you so you can help solve them before it continues.

How this will impact website's security measures going forward, I do no know.

Yes. I'm very pedantic about my music collection and I insist on having exact dates of release. Often, though, the exact release date isn't easily available, so I have to conduct research to determine an estimated release date. If ChatGTP can imitate my research process I'll take back everything negative I ever said about it:

  • For major label albums released circa 1991 or later, an official street date should be available. This gets first priority.
  • If a release date is provided by a reputable source such as RateYourMusic, Wikipedia, or 45Cat, use that date, giving 45Cat priority.
  • If a reputable source only provides a month of release, use that as a guideline for further research, subject to change if the weight of the evidence suggests that this is incorrect.
  • For US releases from 1978 to the present, use the date of publication from the US Copyright Office website if available.
  • For US releases from 1972 to 1978, use the date of publication from the US Copyright physical indexes, images of which are available on archive.org, if available.
  • For releases prior to 1972 or are otherwise unavailable from the above sources, determine the "usual day of release" of the record label, that being the day of the week that the majority of the issues with known release dates were released. Be aware that this can change over time. If no information is available regarding the usual day of release, default to Monday.
  • If ARSA chart data for the release is available, assign the release date to the usual day of release immediately prior to the date of the chart. (ARSA is a website that compiles local charts from individual radio stations).
  • If ARSA chart data is unavailable, assign the release date to the usual day of release the week prior to the date when the release was reviewed by Billboard, first appeared in a chart, or was advertised in Billboard.
  • If ARSA and Billboard data are both available, use the earlier date (ARSA will almost always be earlier unless there was a substantial delay between release and initial charting).
  • If neither ARSA nor Billboard data is available, use a similar system with any other trade publication.
  • If no trade publication or chart data is available, determine the order of release based on catalog number. Assume that the items are released sequentially and are evenly spaced. Use known release dates (or release months) to calculate a reasonable date of release based on available information, including year of release (if known), month of release (if known) and usual day of release.
  • If none of the above can be determined, make a reasonable estimate based on known information.

The following caveats also apply:

*For non-US releases, domestic releases often trailed their foreign counterparts by several months. Any data derived from US sources must take this into account when determining if the proposed estimate is reasonable.

  • If the date of recording is known, any estimated release date must take into consideration a reasonable amount of time between recording and release based on what was typical of the era.
  • For independent releases, dates of release from Bandcamp may be used provided they don't conflict with known information (i.e. sometimes Bandcamp release dates will use the date of upload, or the date of a CD reissue).

There's a ton more I could put here if I really wanted to get into the weeds, but I don't think ChatGTP can do what I've asked of it thus far.

Honestly I think you probably could get it to work okay right now with current models. However, for something like this, you really need to have some above-average skills in prompting. You'd find it helpful to read something like Anthropic's prompting guide, although that one's specialized a bit more for Claude than OpenAI's stuff. Some of the advice is non-intuitive, and you might need some tweaking. For example, for Claude (has some unique preferences like wrapping sections in XML tags), they recommend something kind of like the following in terms of general structure, and yes, before you ask, order can matter. If you don't want to read through it, here's my abbreviated notes for a good prompt structure for something like this:

You are __. The Task is __ (simple one-sentence summary).

< context to consider first, including why the task is important or needs to be done this way. Yes, telling the AI "why" actually does improve model outputs in many cases >

< input (or input set) to take action on; at least for really long inputs, it should be near the beginning, short outputs this can go later >

< details on how to do it, guiding the thought process. This is where you'd put some version of your bullet points. Your layout seems reasonable but it's possible scaffolding or flowcharting a bit more explicitly, including perhaps what to consider, could help >

< explain how the output should be formatted, and the expected output (possibly repeat yourself here about the original goal) >

< optional: 3-5 diverse examples that help with interpretation of goals and reinforce style and formatting. Also optional is you could provide the thought process to reach those answers in each case, mirroring the logic already outlined >

< any final reminders or bookkeeping stuff >

Did you know that Anthropic actually have a whole tool for that process? If you follow the link, you can get a prompt generator (literally, use AI to help you tweak the prompt to find a better one), auto-generate test cases, etc. It's pretty neat. You can also somewhat mitigate confabulation here by adding a bullet point instruction to allow it to return "I don't know" or "too hard" for the more difficult cases. Also, it's possible that, depending on the level of tool use and thinking needed per bullet, that applying it to a giant music library would require some real money.

I will note that OpenAI's guide has some slightly different advice, but still pretty similar. The main difference is a lack of XML tags, and also, OpenAI recommends this structure:

< identity, style, high-level goals >

< detailed instructions >

< examples of possible inputs with desired outputs >

< context that might be helpful >

As you can tell, it's actually pretty similar overall. Yes, you have more control (as well as more complicated stuff to manage) when doing it programmatically via the API, but I think you could probably try via the normal chat interface with decent results. I should also note that if the AI doesn't need to use very much "judgement", you might actually do better with a well-prompted 'normal' model instead of a simulated-reasoning model.

Do you have a paid plan? If not, I can try and ask o3 to give this a go, if you tell me a name and have the ground truth handy. I'm reasonably confident it can do this.

I want to make a todo list that automatically makes each item concrete:

You type in ‘buy flowers for anniversary’ and it whirrs for a bit, does some research and turns it into ‘buy roses from Mr. Weds’ Flower Emporium ten minutes away’.

Likewise for ‘find language Meetup’. ‘Make lamb curry’ automatically retrieves a recipe and list of ingredients.

Basically just reducing the cognitive load and bar for taking action to be as low as possible.

Funny enough, this was my second impulse after I tested its capabilities.

I have an account with the list/organization app "Remember the Milk," and it has a web interface, it is very handy.

I should be able to get GPT Agent to enter list items, and sublist items, and relevant notes, as part of relatively simple prompts.

"Book me a haircut this Sunday" should lead to reserving the appointment at my preferred barbershop, adding the haircut to my to-do list with the start time set for the appointment time, and adding a reminder enough time in advance for me to drive over, and setting aside the approximate amount of time it should take to get the hair cut.

And more generalized stuff, as you say. "Add a reminder to cook [specialized dish] tomorrow evening, find a highly rated recipe, and make a list of all relevant ingredients, and prepare a pickup order for those groceries from the nearest Aldi." Then I can just remove the items I already have, submit and pick up the order.

And if I can get this thing to take over the more arduous steps of planning events with friends, I'd be ecstatic.

If Full Self-driving cars are actually solved now, we're getting very close to a point where I can do this entire operation without once seeing or interacting with a real person. Terrifying, but also very appealing.

Oh, and if ChatGPT adds on digital avatars like Grok (plz no), we can ask our digital waifus to do this stuff for us. Very Trad.

FU

TU

RE

IS

HE

RE

Great minds ;) Would you be interested in collaborating?

Does anyone here know their Myers-Briggs type or ever tried to figure it out?

Ok yes I know it's pseudoscience, I know it's not much better than a horoscope, but it's the fun thread gimme a break. If we can talk about tarot we can talk about MBTI. (MBTI at least is willing to talk about the weaknesses and negative aspects of different personality types, which makes it a little better than a horoscope.)

I think I'm an INFx (never quite sure on the last letter). Or at least an INxx. Probably most people who enjoy long internet arguments are an INxx of some kind.

Most people think you're supposed to just mix and match the four letters (decide if you're an introvert or extrovert for I or E, thinker or feeler for T or F, etc) but actually what it's really "about" is the "cognitive function stack", the cognitive tools that you use to process information and make decisions. The four letter personality type is just a code for a specific function stack. So for the INTP for example, their functions (from most dominant to least dominant) are Ti Ne Si Fe - introverted thinking, extroverted intuition, introverted sensing, and extroverted feeling. The "introverted" functions are more private, more about determining the texture of your inner experience, more about how you generate thoughts and ideas internally, and the "extroverted" functions are how you interface with the outside world, those are the aspects of your experience that you want to share around and make public, you're more likely to want to know how other people are experiencing that same function, etc.

If nothing else, I think the idea of different individual aspects of your cognition being introverted or extroverted, rather than introversion/extroversion being a single trait, is interesting and may have some use.

I actually was required to take Gallup's Clifton Strengths test for my business communications college class (at a discounted cost) which I actually found pretty good and a step above the other tests I've taken.

For example, one of my top traits was "Context". Basically, that I enjoy thinking about the past, like to think about cause and effect, etc. This is helpful for I think some obvious reasons, but also a weakness, because change can be tough, and it can sometimes slow me from looking for current opportunities. I think that's actually pretty spot-on for me, and at the same time it's not true of all people (a lot of people find the past boring) so it suffers a little less than some of the other tests from the generic-advice trap common to astrology and horoscopes. Most of the traits highlighted has some kind of pros and cons list, with the idea being to better understand yourself and to double down on what you're good at (and be aware of the blind spots for what you aren't good at).

Or, "Harmony" was another top trait. It can be helpful for sensing conflict beforehand, finding common ground, staying practical, etc. but also means that I might sometimes avoid conflict, seek too-easy band-aid fixes, or get stressed when people don't agree.

Now, I will say that it's oriented towards corporate-like utility, rather than some kind of 'accuracy', and any system of personality with cleanly separated domains with suspiciously similar numbers of sub-categories is a little suspect, but I also kind of like that aspect of it. Also it's identifying the top "strengths", but really it's just saying these traits are your strongest traits, somewhat divorced from if they are good/bad or on some kind of sliding scale. In that sense it's a bit more honest because it's not so much about "you are X category" but more "this blend of traits represents you best".

INTJ, every time. The amusing thing is, while I peg the I and T scales quite hard and am always comfortably N, I'm always around 51% J to 49%P. You'd think at least once I'd take the test on a day when P was up but, nope, never happens.

INTP this is the first Internet forum I've ever been on where a solid majority of the commenters aren't INTx, that's quite interesting.

My vague recollection of the online MTBI test I took was that every question boiled down to "are you stupid, Y/N?" and if you answer no you get INTP or INTJ, and if you answer yes you get something else.

I was INTP of course.

Oh, you don't feel like saying "Strongly Disagree" to:

Complex and novel ideas excite you more than simple and straightforward ones.

You are not too interested in discussions about various interpretations of creative works.

You prioritize facts over people’s feelings when determining a course of action.

You actively seek out new experiences and knowledge areas to explore.

Or "Strongly Agree" to:

You usually feel more persuaded by what resonates emotionally with you than by factual arguments.

People’s stories and emotions speak louder to you than numbers or data.

You favor efficiency in decisions, even if it means disregarding some emotional aspects.

You are not easily swayed by emotional arguments.

Congratulations, your personality type has been determined to be mottezan!

What? The majority of people here are either INTJ or INTP…

(Ok among the self reports here it’s only slightly tilted to INTx rather than super strongly tilted but I still think INTx is a solid majority)

I’m an INFP idealist. I want to see everyone saved, rescued, loved, and a part of me hurts when they aren’t. I want everyone to comprehend and never to argue.

It was 4chan that taught me to have a thick skin and give as good as I get, here on the Internet.

Usually it feels like 90/10 among people who comment with the 10 being NTs of another flavor.

I was first introduced to myers-briggs in a religious ed class. I've noted before that Catholic school religious education is essentially useless- not from an it's all fake perspective(I am not an atheist) but from a 'there is no curriculum and so we learn nothing but the teacher's personality' perspective. We had guest lectures on the ancient aliens theory. We watched movies. We learned interesting, but not particularly relevant, facts about church history. Once a year, we picked a saint and wrote a biography. I submitted the exact same thing every year; so did half the rest of the class. Nobody ever noticed. If there was something on campus, we got out of religion class to go to it. If there was a project to do, we had study hall. If the teacher had some sort of personal idiosyncracy, 'the intersection of a vegan diet and the Catholic faith' could eat up several class periods. I liked the older teachers better than the theoretically better qualified ones.

Anyways, one of the projects given to absorb classtime was to research myers-briggs and write about your temperament in connection with faith. This was incredibly vague and, as I recall, like one half of one paragraph. It's interesting that every myers-briggs temperament corresponds to aristotelian temperament combinations, but there's not much of a pattern as to which to which. That tells me there's a there. It may not mean much but it surely exists.

It's interesting that every myers-briggs temperament corresponds to aristotelian temperament combinations, but there's not much of a pattern as to which to which. That tells me there's a there. It may not mean much but it surely exists

Myers and Briggs were reading Jung, who was almost certainly reading Aristotle (along with all the myths he could find), so it makes sense.

ENTJ

I just did the Meyers-Briggs a few months ago at the suggestion of some people I work with. Unknown to me at the time, the office consensus had settled on ENT already and was only undecided on J or P.

Once I got my results, J seemed pretty obvious to me, but I guess I hide it well or come off differently to people in real life.

We were made to go through a test and an interview with a psychologist when I started out as a management consultant as part of the onboarding process. They said I was ENTJ which fits well enough but the E wasn't very definitive.

Pretty much everyone they hired were NT, most E but with a pretty even split on P/J. Being NT seemed like a hiring requirement.

If you want personality pseudoscience I recommend the Enneagram over Myers-Briggs. It has a lot more depth. Myers-Briggs is focused on being descriptive, while Enneagram is more focused on being prescriptive. As in, "If I have this kind of personality type, what should I do to be a healthier and happier person?" And the advice is very good in my experience! At least for type Fives, I have not tried the advice for other types and can't testify to their accuracy and effectiveness. But if you're the kind of nut who finds categorizing by personality really fun, then you're probably a type Five anyway.

Based on the descriptions, I'm more of a Four. (...and that's exactly what the test gave me, 4w3. That probably should really be 4w5 though, because I have rather idiosyncratic conceptions of "status" and "success" that probably don't line up with what the test authors had in mind.)

I think there's a difference between, do you like to categorize people because it's another interesting data point about how they work, or do you like to categorize people because you want to know the color of their soul.

do you like to categorize people because it's another interesting data point about how they work

This is basically the thing that got me interested in psychometrics. My problem is I have a bad tendency to categorize people in my head as lab rats with identifiable characteristics and try to predict what they’re going to do. It can make it a little hard to actually connect, because I’ve already formed an impression of what box someone fits it, and my box is oddly specific.

That said, what you said earlier about the most interesting part of Meyers-Briggs being the type functions is also my view. I think the categorizations are bogus, but I’m definitely the sort of person whose most conscious experience is thinking through things like I’m making a logical argument, pulling in information from the environment to try and enhance that logic, and then dragging my feelings along.

Except when anxiety hits and the processor gets interrupted by the amygdala. That’s when things go off the rails.

I’m definitely the sort of person whose most conscious experience is thinking through things like I’m making a logical argument, pulling in information from the environment to try and enhance that logic, and then dragging my feelings along.

That's really interesting! I didn't have you pegged that way based on some of your other posts, but I suppose it does fit.

The idea that someone could experience "logical argumentation" as their default mode of conscious experience is definitely very interesting to me. I mean I understand intellectually that there's no reason why that couldn't be the case, and I know that there are many people who would report that they think this way. But it's rather foreign to me, because logic to me is a tool, it's not where I live. The urge to typical-mind is so strong, so when people report to me that this is how they are by default, I always have a little urge to ask... really? Do you actually not experience your mind as a buzz of images and sounds by default? It's quiet and "logical" up there? Really?

I didn't have you pegged that way based on some of your other posts, but I suppose it does fit.

That's actually my big issue with the MBTI: Thinking and Feeling aren't so alien to each other. I could probably be equally described by the INFP functions, making decisions based on values, following what's right, working on refining values, trying to take others' perspectives into consideration. I do both. But I'm distrustful of my 'gut,' and I want to expose it to logical argumentation to see if what I'm doing is actually in accordance with the logical way to pursue my values and preferences. I'm a big believer in cooperation, but because I believe it is logical.

I also have a strong romantic identity, which does somehow slot in to that frame. But by far the most important thing in a relationship to me is that I can explore ideas with my partner -- my girlfriend met me because I gave a lecture about history and she felt, according to her recollection, that "this is the kind of man I need in my life!" 100% of my partners have either identified with the Tumblr phrase "sapiosexual" or could fairly be described with it. That's not to say I'm not affectionate in a traditional sense, because I have also been described as romantic, but for me a relationship needs both aspects. For me, my idea of an amazing date is a discussion about the concept of justice over dinner and a reflection on the future of commerce as pillow talk.

That's also a problem with the MBTI -- it doesn't have anywhere to put the logician who's also a hopeless romantic!

But it's rather foreign to me, because logic to me is a tool, it's not where I live.

I think in words. Have you ever used Spreeder? I hardly know her! That's what my mental imagery often looks like; words scrolling through my head against a black background. I often feel punctuation, when I wrote "feel" just then I felt kind of like I needed to lean, and when I write a full-stop period, I feel like I need to jolt forward like a typewriter. (*jolt*)

Basically 85-90% of my internal experience is me thinking about what I would write in an essay or say in a lecture about my experiences or whatever I'm thinking about; for instance, today, I was thinking about how the prisoner's dillema applies to dating and the kind of argument I would make for cooperation in a world where so many people feel like defecting. I don't necessarily think in syllogisms, but I do think in logical, well-flowing arguments. So what people read on the motte is extremely close to just what I'm doing in my head most of the time. That's why my motte posts are often so long. This, right now, is literally my stream-of-consciousness.

I have "absent-minded professor" vibes, and I frequently make wrong turns when driving because I was thinking about personality theory instead of navigating. Fortunately my cerabellum is pretty good at keeping my foot on the brake when it needs to be.

I also like listening music to crowd out distractions so I can get into my flow of words, and sometimes I pace while thinking to also occupy my body and 'get it out of the way.'

Do you actually not experience your mind as a buzz of images and sounds by default?

Well, maybe not unless you count the sound of my own voice, or music. I don't experience many mental images, and I find fiction hard to read if it has a lot of description, because my imagination can't keep up with the imagery they're trying to get me to experience. I prefer dialogue.

My internal conscious experience is highly verbal, and I've occasionally found myself thinking about a phrase so intensely that I say it out loud accidentially. My chief mode of internal experience is to imagine that either I'm doing what I am now -- and writing something -- or to imagine myself with my partner, or in front of a crowd of people, explaining to them what I'm thinking. When I was in school I often imagined giving a class presentation on whatever was interesting me at the moment.

I hate smalltalk, but I love public speaking, because to me it's like writing an essay out loud, and with more opportunity for humor.

It's quiet and "logical" up there?

It's logical, but not necessarily quiet. Like I intimated, the logical processing I go through has to compete with the anxiety feelings that often try to crowd it out -- tightness in the chest, lightheadedness, shaking, impending sense of doom. I guess you could maybe think of the logical thinking as a way to compensate for the fact that my emotional experience is so intense and unreliable.

Thinking and Feeling aren't so alien to each other.

Right, I'm always trying to explain this to people. The "logic vs emotion" dichotomy is clearly overly simplistic and not really tenable. But at the same time, I think it's pretty clear that different people do think and experience in fundamentally different ways, and we need some kind of language for talking about it, even if we end up not using those terms specifically.

If you're the kind of person who writes things like "the color of their soul" then yes, I would agree you are a Four. :-)

Enneagram "tests" are pretty hit and miss, I find the best way to type someone is to teach the types to them and let them type themselves. But based on your comments 4w5 sounds pretty likely for you.

I tried looking into Enneagram for a while (recommended by a Five, I think), but just couldn't. It seemed like everything that might have been interesting was not just paywalled, but sold as "retreats" and "experiences." I came out type nine, and I think it had super generic advice one would get from a generic check-up, like getting more exercise, which seemed actually worse than a horoscope.

Call me crazy, but I think bring advised to get more exercise is quasi-universally applicable, and beats the advice given by the average horoscope. Just because something is universally applicable doesn't mean it's worse!

Sure, it's good advice. It's just good advice in almost all contexts, hardly anyone gets enough exercise nowadays. It's worse for the purposes of differentiating various personalities.

It's true that most of the stuff online is either fluff or paywalled, and there are a lot of expensive workshops out there. You can skip those. If you want to get into it, you really just need to read one book: Personality Types: Using the Enneagram for Self Discovery, by Don Riso. It has 90% of everything you would ever need to know about the Enneagram, packaged up in a very readable format. You can probably get it at a used bookstore for $10, and it will likely be at your local library.

(Or you can read it online here, if you don't mind being a pirate)

Here's an excerpt from the book on Type Five:

Like the other two members of the Doing Triad, average Fives tend to have problems with security because they fear that the environment is unpredictable and potentially threatening. Fives protect themselves by being extraordinarily observant so that they can anticipate problems in the environment, particularly problems with other people. Their curiosity, their insight, their need to make sense of their perceptions — and eventually, their paranoid tendencies — are all attempts to defend themselves from real or imagined dangers.

When Fives are healthy, they observe reality as it is and are able to comprehend complex phenomena at a glance. In their search for security, however, the perceptions of even average Fives tend to become skewed. They come to premature conclusions about the environment by projecting their faulty interpretations on it. They begin to reduce the complexity of reality to a single, all-embracing idea so that they can defend themselves by having everything figured out. And if they become unhealthy, Fives are the type of persons who take their eccentric ideas to such absurd extremes that they become obsessed with completely distorted notions about reality. Ultimately, unhealthy Fives become paranoid, utterly terrified by the threatening visions which they have created in their minds.

Their problem with anxiety, one of the issues common to the personality types of the Doing Triad, is related to their difficulty with perceiving reality objectively. They are afraid of allowing anyone or anything to influence them or their thoughts. They fear being controlled or possessed by someone else. Ironically, however, even average Fives are not unwilling to be possessed by an idea, as long as the idea has originated with them. Nothing must be allowed to influence their thinking lest their sense of self be diminished, although by relying solely on their own ideas, without testing them in the real world, Fives eventually become out of touch with reality.

The upshot of this is that average to unhealthy Fives are uncertain whether or not their perceptions of the environment are valid. They do not know what is real and what is the product of their minds. They project their anxiety-ridden thoughts and their aggressive impulses into the environment, becoming fearful of the antagonistic forces which seem to be arrayed against them. They gradually become convinced that their peculiar, and increasingly paranoid, interpretation of reality is the way things really are. In the end, they become so terrorized that they cannot act even though they are consumed by anxiety.

I may have underrepresented how much I tried getting into it, though it's been most of a decade. I bought and read a book (not sure which), had coffee with a neighbor who was a certified counselor and used it in her work, who also lent me a book, and put probably about 20 hours into it, with no results, just confusion. Meanwhile, MBTI people say things like "use your second function more," which is much more actionable.

ISTP

I was really into it for a while, due to having a less common personality for a woman, and hearing a lot of "women ___" statements that don't really apply to me, and trying to express why.

My main objection, in comparison to OCEAN, is the Sensing/iNtuition dichotomy. I'm both high openness and a concrete (rather than more abstract/symbolic) thinker. For instance, when I paint, I prefer plein air or studio painting rather than stories -- I want to capture the thing in front of me. But I also spend a lot of time reading people theorizing and predicting, so shrug, I think high Openness/concrete captures this better than S/N

Yeah, I think part of the reason why I'm so drawn to this stuff is that I'm always looking for language to describe why I feel so different. I'm both highly abstract and also feelings-based, which is... just unusual in general I think, but especially so for men. When I read the description of Ni-dominant thinking I was just like, yeah, that is what it feels like (subjectively speaking anyway).

I agree that MBTI can be overly restrictive and has a hard time describing people who are blends of different traits. It's a bit silly that according to MBTI you can't have both introverted thinking and introverted feeling for example, I think it's pretty clear that there are people who fit the descriptions of both. But I still think there's something illuminating about it regardless.

I just took one of these online tests and got INTP. Not the first time I've taken it; I tend to oscillate between INTP (Ti-Ne-Si-Fe) and ISTP (Ti-Se-Ni-Fe), though a far larger amount of the time I score as the former. Even as a participant it's pretty apparent just how low the test-retest reliability of Myers-Briggs is. Introverted thinking as my dominant function and extraverted feeling as my inferior function seems to be a consistent characteristic though.

I think it is better than a horoscope or tarot, because it's based on the actual individual patterns of behavior, instead of something that has no relationship to the actual person. But of course attempting to reduce the infinite human diversity to a handful of broad classes would be very imprecise and frequently misleading. That said, there are people that can be described as "phlegmatic" or "sanguine", and that's not entirely wrong, even though nobody believes in the humoral theory anymore. It's clear that there are some patterns in people's behavior, and those can be to some measure classified. My type on MBTI comes out as INTJ and it's roughly matching my behavior and is probably useful to a certain measure - you wouldn't know everything about me, you won't probably know any of the important things about me as a person, but you would understand roughly how my thinking and approach to things works. I think that is useful, though one must always understand that this is very imprecise and not to put too much into it like "I know how you think now, you're totally transparent to me". No classification system is ever going to do that.

Yeah, whenever people come out of the woodwork to say things like "Meyers-Briggs is complete nonsense" I roll my eyes, because it's not. Like you, I am certainly willing to believe that the framework is not perfect. Not only is any framework going be imperfect for the reasons you said, but with MBTI specifically some of the categories seem poorly defined. The introvert/extrovert and think/feel axes are really strong in their ability to gauge what a person is like, but the others not so much. So yeah, the system is flawed. But on the other hand, most people I've known tend to get consistent results on tests, and people with similar results truly do behave similarly. So despite the flaws, there is truth to be found there, and the "Meyers-Briggs is complete nonsense" claim simply does not withstand scrutiny under the available evidence.

I think Judging Perceiving is just as strong in gauging what a person is like, but not named very well!

INTP. You are aware that MB is a load of shit, so if you want horoscopes but actually rigorous (standing up to a factor analysis), then OCEAN is the one for you.

One use I have for MBTI (InTx btw) is safely demonstrating diversity. Not on a forum like ours, where INTJ/P are dominant, but in a more normie company it can be eye-opening how different people are. Like, a guy you are buddies with tells you he's an ESFJ and you're like "woah, he should be the complete opposite of me, he has answered every question on this quiz wrong and yet he's still a human being I enjoy working/studying/hanging out with".

I think this is too harsh, MBTI has value if you understand its limitations. For example managers can use it as a shortcut to understand management styles until you get to know your staff on an individual level.

In a healthcare context you can use it to understand a little bit about what interventions, therapy, explanations and so on will work for a patient until you get to know them better.

Most patients won't know that they prefer a logical style of consenting over an emotional one, but if they tell you they are an INTJ you can be pretty sure, etc.

I don't think I've ever seen it applied, certainly not in a healthcare setup. If someone's getting utility out of it, it's not happening where I could see them. Which isn't the same as saying it has no utility, it just doesn't seem to come up.

I think that's mostly a skill issue lol. Most managers are bad, most conversations with patients are low skill and meant to check a box before moving to the next thing. If it's not a tool in your toolbox it isn't necessarily worth making it one, but I have seen MBTI used to great effect in a way that you can't with say the Big 5.

I've heard of the Big 5 being used in management, but mostly as a hiring screen, to try not to hire people who are too low in conscientiousness. Which is of course a zero sum game, so not useful for society at large.

INTP, reliably. I think the "horoscope" comparisons are nonsense propagated by an unholy alliance of IFLSciencers ("Don't you know THE SCIENCE says you are not supposed to use it?") and people who are vaguely aesthetically annoyed that its fans have some intersection with the horoscope crowd (people who just like labels). The questions the classification is based on ask about real and reasonably stable personality traits - why would the classification that results not capture personality? Is "people who said in a questionnaire in ten different ways that they are not perceptive of others' feelings will be seen as insensitive" comparable to "people born in October will be seen as insensitive"?

The only potentially valid objections are that it doesn't categorise along principal components or "cleave reality at its joints".

I'd bet that INTP and INTJ is 5-10x overrepresented on this forum compared to the general population. I'm INTJ personally.

Oh yeah for sure, anyone who identifies as a Rationalist in the LW sense or has an affinity for that style of thinking is basically an INTJ or INTP by definition.

More than zero rationalists are extroverted. Not gonna dispute the NT part of that though.

Does anyone here know their Myers-Briggs type or ever tried to figure it out?

Ok yes I know it's pseudoscience, I know it's not much better than a horoscope

Is it actually any worse than mainstream psychology?

Academic and high-class psychologists use Big Five, your average crunchy psychotherapist on the street is more likely to use the Enneagram.

Yes. Because mainstream psychology abandoned it ages ago in favor of the Big Five/OCEAN.

I was under the impression that it was never part of psychology, but was developed by two housewives for some popular magazine or something. Like 4bpp the claims of it being like a horoscope feel like cope. If psychology has a better test, fair enough, but I'm gonna need an RCT betwwen M&B and Big Five or whatever, before I actually believe it.

Well, I'm not a psychologist, so I might have misremembered that factoid. Never heard MB being used in a healthcare setting, last I heard, it had been a mild fad in HR.

Even OCEAN is of limited utility.

This is a really big area that I’m largely ignorant of. Here’s an overview of the historical development of the Big Five model with copious citations, particularly with reference to studies on cross-cultural validation of the Big Five categories.

I note that the paper notes that, methodologically, research into the Big Five “originated in studies of natural language trait terms […] For the layperson, personality is defined by such terms as friendly, high-strung, and punctual. These are the basic ways in which individuals understand themselves and others”. I sense an effortpost in the future on the relationship between ordinary language philosophy and this approach to psychology.

INTJ, every damn time. I found the whole bit about extroverted sensing being my inferior function quite interesting, as it explained a few of my RW peccadilloes like driving fun cars.

Friday hornyposting thread.

I went to the friendly local mall yesterday to buy a bucket hat for my trip to the mountains and it looks like the fashion went full circle. Girls in their late teens now dress like they dressed when I was their age in the early 00's. I couldn't help myself and eyefucked every single one of them as I was walking from shop to shop.

Maybe all these men that suddenly married a much younger woman are victims of cyclical fashion?

"Mom Jeans" seem to have come back in fashion HARD.

But as you note they're often paired with a top that is either barely-there or is designed for maximum emphasis of the body's traits.

Someone reported this:

REDACTED: Creep post sexualising minors.

Really? Are the mods now expected to moderate the male gaze? "Late teens" presumably includes 18 and 19. It seems to me that half the porn industry runs off barely legal teens, which, I am told, are still legal.

Also, for the vast majority of the world (and American states), including Russia where Orthoxerox lives, the point at which one is no longer considered a sexual minor is 16+, which is literally the latter half of the teens.

Pretty sure you meant to write ”does not constitute”.

Yeah. Edited for clarity

Do we really need a complex explanation of why a young woman appears attractive to an aging man?

Maybe I hadn't aged enough, but I didn't notice myself having a reaction like this before. It was more of a cursory "she's young and pretty, but not my thing" thing.

My mid-teens daughter collects shirts from bands like Fall Out Boy and My Chemical Romance, Panic and Avril, then mutilates them into exposing her midriff and a shoulder. She periodically threatens to revert to her emo phase.

And my paternal instinct is to make a vague threat over the eye-fucking, but my grounds are uncomfortably shakey. I took her to a concert a while back, and while I think I kept my gaze pretty respectful, I was very aware that the actual women (more early 20's than late teens, but still) in the venue were aesthetically delightful. There's something about watching a young woman dressed in the alt style of his youth snarl to her friends that "It's time for BeatDown Slut Metal!" that inspires a man to want to make ruinous decisions. Would that I were 25 again.

Fall Out Boy and My Chemical Romance, Panic and Avril

Your daughter has fantastic taste in music, but it’s a bit interesting that kids today are still listening to the bands of the previous generation, no?

Maybe there’s something to that whole “death of culture / cultural stasis” idea.

Nah, there's plenty of more modern stuff the kids like too. Every singer at that concert I took her to was under 30. The kids at her school are into country, of all things, but she likes singers like Megan Maroney, who is also late 20's. And then there's the wierd crossover ones, like Yung Gravy, a 20-something white rapper known for sampling old songs.

And that's without even getting into all the limpid, easy listening rap they know will just make me start ranting about DMX.

In my day our rappers were all hardened criminals, I tell you what.

Country has been having a thing recently, it's really just pop music that's rebranded.

Come to the UK, our local rap scene probably samples gunshots from right outside the studio.

Guns in the UK? I thought you weren't allowed even pointy scissors and pocketknives that lock.

The lack of if being allowed only increases the street cred.

When I was a kid in that actual era, I listened to a ton of music from the 80’s and 90’s, as well as contemporary music. I think that’s extremely normal and doesn’t say much about the quality of current music.

I thought baggy masculine clothes were the style for zoomer girls? (I know of a couple irl examples.)

Could be a regional or Blue/Red thing.

Nope, low-rise pants and skimpy tops. If it's a tshirt, it now hugs the body again. No more elder Zoomer bagginess.

Not to get all culture warry, but its really funny that younger girls see how being sexless blobs made their elder zoomer/milleniel sisters 'happy' and decided that being pretty actually might be more fun.

In any case, boo on you all for perving on 3D women. Superior 2D all the way. Mute by default, and now available in near realtime paperdoll.

I can assure you the female desire to be sex objects, display their bodies, and court sexual attention did not begin with younger zoomerettes.

Millennials dressed like literal prostitues when they were young though. 'Sexless blob' came when they got older and could uncharitably be viewed as a cope for aging out of attractiveness (or getting fat).

1girl has joined the chat

The weather's probably part of the reason. At the moment, I'd probably go out into the street in only my underwear too if it was socially acceptable.

It frankly boggles my imagination how skimpy the clothing is around these parts, given how cold it can get. Even more so in Manchester, where every wo-man seeks to expose as much of their chest as feasible. Not that I'm complaining, especially not when I need motivation to go the gym.

I was always shocked when I'd goto Boston in March/April, and coming back from a convention at 1 am we'd pass gaggles of scantily clad women without jackets outside some club while we hustle past in thick winter jackets. Some hoes are just a different breed.

From Ghastly's Ghastly Comic (NSFW):

In Canada winter is the line that separates the real attention whores from the posers!

"Beauty is pain."

Anime recommendation thread:

(My interest in Gurren Lagann improved significantly when one of the most annoying characters in the show died.)

My own subjective rankings:

Made in Abyss- 10/10

If you plotted "child suffering" on the x-axis and "visual beauty" on the y-axis, Made in Abyss would occupy the upper-right quadrant where angels fear to tread. The show operates on the principle that the human brain can only process so much cognitive dissonance before it either shuts down or ascends to a higher plane of aesthetic appreciation. Each frame looks like it was painted by a Renaissance master who'd just discovered mescaline and child endangerment laws.

One could argue the series functions as a case study in the Dunning-Kruger effect as applied to spelunking; the characters' confidence in their ability to survive the Abyss is inversely proportional to their understanding of its true nature. The soundtrack, by Kevin Penkin, is not merely an accompaniment but an essential component of the world-building. I have it saved to Spotify and I listen to it regularly.

Madoka Magika: 10/10.

I seem to have a thing for the psychological torment of small children, in this case a bunch of magical girls who make regrettable decisions by signing up for that lifestyle. You will never hate a cute little kitty cat more in your life.

Shaft's decision to animate this as if it were directed by someone having a particularly artistic psychotic break was the correct one. The show functions as a deconstruction of the magical girl genre in the same way that a wood chipper functions as a deconstruction of trees.

The central tragedy unfolds from a series of Faustian bargains made by adolescent girls under conditions of extreme emotional distress and information asymmetry. The catalyst for these regrettable decisions, a feline-like creature named Kyubey, is a chillingly perfect depiction of a paperclip-maximizing artificial intelligence or a utility monster; it is a perfectly rational agent whose value system is simply orthogonal to human flourishing.

Do not expect to leave the show feeling happy. But you will leave satisfied.

One Punch Man: 10/10

I must provide a strong qualification here: this rating applies exclusively to the first season. The series subsequently suffers a catastrophic decline in quality, falling off a narrative cliff from which it has yet to recover. But that initial season is a sublime achievement in parody. It succeeds not by merely mocking shonen tropes, but by exploring the philosophical endpoint of shonen power progression: the existential ennui of absolute, unchallengeable strength. The protagonist, Saitama, has solved the problem of physical conflict so completely that he is left with a terminal case of goal-contentment dysphoria. Once away you have punched away all the problems susceptible to punches, what are you going to do about those that are left?

The humor is derived from the constant category error of applying godlike power to mundane problems. The superlative animation and soundtrack are merely the icing on a conceptually brilliant cake. You must truly understand and love a genre to mock it so beautifully.

Attack on Titan- 9.5/10.

AoT succeeds primarily because it takes its premise seriously and follows the logical implications wherever they lead. The mystery-box structure works because the mysteries have actual answers that recontextualize everything you've seen before. This is mystery writing done right - not arbitrary confusion, but genuine information management. The show's treatment of warfare deserves particular praise. Unlike most anime where combat is individualistic spectacle, AoT understands that military effectiveness comes from coordination, logistics, and tactical innovation. The development of anti-titan combat techniques feels like watching a tech tree progression in real time.

Overall, a remarkably well-executed epic that largely succeeds despite occasional pacing issues and certain grating secondary characters. Its primary virtue lies in its consistent portrayal of characters as agentic, rational actors within the horrifying constraints of their environment. The world of AoT is a high-stakes, low-information war game, and the characters, for the most part, behave accordingly, making sensible, calculated decisions under immense pressure. The periods of narrative slowness are forgivable as they represent the necessary lulls for strategic planning and information gathering that make the subsequent kinetic, high-casualty engagements so impactful.

Neon Genesis Evangelion: 8/10.

A wet dream for the aspiring pseudo-intellectual. NGE is an exercise in what can only be described as symbolism-as-a-service; it drapes a veneer of Gnostic and Kabbalistic mysticism over a standard Kaiju narrative to feign a profundity it never earns.

The plot’s coherence degrades exponentially with applied thought. The protagonist, Shinji Ikari, is a case study in clinical depression and crippling anxiety (and also a little bitch), and I'm left with the distinct impression that the entire plot could have been averted if NERV had employed a single competent staff psychiatrist with a prescription pad for SSRIs. And yet, for all its narrative failings, the show is compulsively watchable. The action sequences are iconic, a few characters possess genuine depth, and the entire production is a triumph of aesthetic and mood. My inability to "understand" it is, I now suspect, a diagnostic indicator that there is, in fact, nothing of substance to be understood.

The Melancholy of Haruhi Suzuki Motorsports Suzumiya: 8/10

An elegant thought experiment executed with surprising sincerity. The premise: a being functionally equivalent to God has reincarnated as a Japanese high school girl, and the universe's continued existence is contingent upon her not experiencing boredom. We have all seen Pascal's Wager; meet Pascal's Entertainer. The protagonist, Kyon, is effectively the world’s sole, overworked AI safety researcher, tasked with aligning a god-like entity's utility function away from the existential risk of ennui. The show is played remarkably straight and is better for it. I think I watched around 8 episodes, so there's plenty left. It remains in my queue, pending sufficient activation energy to complete.

Fullmetal Alchemist: Brotherhood : Closer to 8 than it is to 7

A show that frustrated me. Too tropey, too many characters being retarded. I find it hard to articulate my dissatisfaction in a satisfactory way.

FMAB represents everything that's simultaneously right and wrong with shounen storytelling. The worldbuilding is genuinely excellent: alchemy as magic system with consistent rules and costs, political intrigue that feels like actual statecraft, character motivations that make sense within their contexts.

But the show consistently undermines itself with genre conventions that feel obligatory rather than organic. The power of friendship speeches, the reluctance to actually kill major characters, the way complex moral situations get resolved through superior firepower, it all feels like the show is checking boxes rather than exploring the implications of its own premise.

The homunculi work brilliantly as antagonists because they represent genuine philosophical positions (pride, wrath, envy as ways of engaging with the world), but the final confrontations devolve into standard boss fights rather than ideological reckonings.

Chainsaw Man: 7.5/10

Chainsaw Man operates in the uncanny valley between genuine artistic ambition and adolescent power fantasy fulfillment. It's a show that simultaneously wants to be a profound meditation on trauma, exploitation, and the commodification of human suffering, while also being a series where the protagonist's primary motivation is touching boobs (me too buddy, me too...). This tonal schizophrenia should be fatal, yet somehow the series maintains enough coherence to be genuinely engaging.

The genius of Fujimoto's conception lies in recognizing that most shonen protagonists are essentially feral children who've been weaponized by adult institutions, then having the audacity to actually say this out loud. Denji isn't noble or pure-hearted; he's a walking collection of base desires who's been systematically deprived of every basic human need except survival. The Public Safety Devil Hunters don't disguise their exploitation behind rhetoric about heroism or duty; they openly treat their operatives as expendable resources in a cost-benefit analysis against apocalyptic threats.

The action sequences deserve particular praise for their kinetic brutality. Unlike the choreographed dance of most anime combat, fights in Chainsaw Man feel genuinely dangerous and unpredictable. Characters don't trade blows in neat exchanges; they attempt to murder each other with the frantic desperation of cornered animals. The animation captures this beautifully, particularly in moments where Denji's chainsaw form moves with the mechanical violence of actual industrial equipment rather than the fluid grace of typical anime transformations.

What elevates the series beyond competent ultraviolence is its commitment to the psychological consequences of its premise. Characters don't bounce back from trauma with shonen resilience; they carry their damage forward, making increasingly destructive decisions as survival mechanisms. The devil contracts function as externalized representations of psychological damage, with characters literally trading pieces of themselves for the power to keep functioning in an hostile environment.

The series' treatment of sexuality deserves analysis beyond the surface-level horniness. Denji's obsession with physical intimacy isn't played purely for comedy; it's the desperate reaching of someone who's never experienced basic human affection toward the only form of connection he can conceptualize. The fact that this is consistently used to manipulate him creates an uncomfortable but effective commentary on how vulnerability becomes a vector for exploitation. (I wish Makima-san would groom me . I'm weak for mommy GFs, even if they probably intend to ritually sacrifice me later)

Where the series falters is in its occasional retreat into conventional anime bullshit. Certain episodes devolve into standard monster-of-the-week format, losing the psychological intensity that makes the series compelling. Some supporting characters exist primarily as trope fulfillment rather than genuine personalities, though the core cast maintains enough complexity to carry the narrative weight.

The ending of season one represents the series operating at peak efficiency. Without spoiling specifics, it manages to deliver genuine emotional catharsis while completely recontextualizing everything that came before. It's the rare anime climax that feels like both a natural culmination of established themes and a complete surprise, demonstrating that the series' apparent chaos was actually precisely controlled narrative architecture.

Best enjoyed with the frontal lobe mildly disinhibited or disengaged, but not because the series lacks intelligence, rather, because its intelligence is often buried under layers of deliberate crudeness that require a certain receptivity to appreciate. It's junk food that occasionally achieves the status of art, which is more than most anime can claim.

Steins Gate: 7.5/10

The most frustrating anime I've ever watched. So close to greatness. A lot of nothing ever happens, and a waste of what might have been excellent worldbuilding potential. If I ever hear another "tuturuu," I'll stab a bitch. I warn you, the show will ramp up tension over and over again, and rarely justify it.

Steins;Gate has one of the best premises in sci-fi - time travel that follows consistent rules and has meaningful consequences (but completely wastes it on pacing that would make a DMV clerk impatient). It also betrays its own commitment to internal consistency, the plot eventually hinges entirely on whatever mechanism running the timeline being actually malevolent.

The show demonstrates, on multiple occasions, that the setting doesn't have a Novikov self-consistency principle, changes made in the past ripple through to the present. Absolutely no justification is given for why ~tuturuu chick's death is an exception, and it reeks of Plot Reasons. I expected better.

The first half consists almost entirely of setup that could have been accomplished in three episodes, followed by a rushed resolution that doesn't adequately explore the implications of its own concepts.

Mob Psycho 100: 7.5/10

In a nutshell: One Punch Man, but worse. Still manages to be above average, but maybe I'm grading on a curve here.

Mob Psycho 100 represents ONE's attempt to recapture the lightning-in-a-bottle success of One Punch Man, but with the satirical edge sanded down into something resembling a generic coming-of-age narrative with psychic powers stapled on top. Where Saitama's overwhelming strength generated genuine philosophical comedy through existential ennui, Mob's god-tier psychic abilities are merely a vehicle for tediously earnest lessons about "being yourself" and "friendship is magic" - the kind of treacly moral messaging that wouldn't be out of place in a Saturday morning cartoon.

The series markets itself as a psychological character study, but scratch the surface and you'll find the same tired anime formula: awkward protagonist learns self-confidence through the power of believing in himself and having friends who believe in him. Mob's "journey" isn't particularly sophisticated - it's bog-standard therapy speak wrapped in supernatural window dressing. The show treats basic social skills development as if it were profound character growth, when really it's just watching a 14-year-old learn to make eye contact.

Studio Bones' animation style oscillates between genuinely creative psychic sequences and the kind of deliberately ugly character designs that mistake "stylistic choice" for "artistic vision." Yes, the psychic battles look impressive, but they're essentially expensive distractions from a story that lacks the conceptual sophistication to justify its runtime. The visual flourishes feel like compensation for narrative thinness rather than organic extensions of the storytelling.

Reigen, the series' most acclaimed character, is fundamentally a conman who's stumbled into an accidentally functional mentorship role. The show wants us to find this charming, but it's essentially watching an adult manipulate a psychologically vulnerable child for personal profit while occasionally dispensing fortune-cookie wisdom. That this relationship is treated as heartwarming rather than concerning says more about anime's comfort with questionable power dynamics than it does about compelling character writing. The fact that Reigen's exploitation "works out" only redeems him to a certain extent.

The series suffers from the same structural problems that plague most slice-of-life anime masquerading as action shows: it doesn't know what it wants to be. Episodes oscillate between mundane school comedy, supernatural battle sequences, and heavy-handed moral lessons without achieving coherence in any category. The cult storylines, praised by some as sophisticated social commentary, are actually fairly surface-level examinations of charismatic manipulation that any undergraduate psychology student could deconstruct. They're not profound; they're obvious.

Most damning is the series' fundamental dishonesty about its own premise. Despite positioning itself as a meditation on the dangers of unchecked power, Mob never faces genuine consequences for his abilities. The show consistently pulls its punches, ensuring that his psychic outbursts never result in permanent damage or loss of life. This safety net renders the entire "dangerous power" concept toothless - it's hard to take the moral complexity seriously when the universe conspires to prevent any actual moral complexity from occurring.

What we're left with is competently executed mediocrity that benefits from lowered expectations. It's One Punch Man without the wit, insight, or satirical precision that made the original compelling. The 7.5 rating is more a reflection of anime's generally dismal quality standards than any particular merit of Mob Psycho 100 itself. It's the kind of show that feels profound when you're 16 and vaguely embarrassing when you're old enough to recognize therapy-speak platitudes dressed up as wisdom.

Elfen Lied: 5/10

Elfen Lied represents everything wrong with edgy anime from the early 2000s. It mistakes graphic content for meaningful content and confuses shock value with emotional depth. The premise (evolutionary superior beings emerging to replace humanity) has potential, but the execution prioritizes gore and fan service over coherent storytelling (and I like gore and am a fan of being serviced). I gave up on it 3 episodes in, and would need a very large bribe to give it another go.

Demon Slayer: 5/10

A case study in how far superlative production values can carry a work with an empty core. The animation, courtesy of Ufotable, is undeniably god-tier. However, this aesthetic brilliance is a crutch for a story populated by a protagonist whose head contains little more than noble intentions and air. It is high-production narrative slurry. Slop, but served in a pretty box. I gave up on it a few episodes in, and see no reason to continue.

GATE: 6/10

Not enough curb-stomping of Virgin Magic Wielders by Chad Modern Military Hardware, in a series where that's the core conceit. Massive JSDF fan-wank by a Japanese revanchist.

GATE had one job: show modern military technology absolutely demolishing fantasy armies, and somehow managed to get distracted by harem antics and political messaging. The few scenes that actually deliver on the premise are genuinely satisfying, but they're buried under layers of irrelevant subplot and nationalist wanking.

Tokyo Ghoul: 3/10

I was incredibly high when I binged this series, and I still found nothing that could redeem it. I barely remember anything about the plot except it involved, as the name suggests, man-eating ghouls in Tokyo, and the fact that it gargled donkey balls. I'd say it only warrants mention due to how forgettable it was.

Miscellaneous:

Vinland Saga: Maybe an 8.5/10?

Didn't get very far before I got distracted, but I enjoyed what I saw. On the back burner for now.

What I saw of Vinland Saga suggested a show that takes historical setting seriously while using it to explore themes about violence, revenge, and the possibility of redemption. The animation quality was solid, and the characters seemed to have genuine psychological depth rather than anime archetype substitutions. Also, Vikings are just hella cool.

Jojo's Bizarre Adventure: Never got past the first episode, something about the faux-British setting set me off. I mean to, at some point, if only so I can appreciate the memes better.

There's probably more I've seen, but I usually didn't finish them, and didn't have very strong feelings when I did. Will add in later.

Vinland Saga: Suggest finishing, partly because the anime does something I've rarely ever seen: after the first season is a (fun) orgy of violence and revenge and action, the second season is the opposite: character development, slow plot, and a message about how violence is bad.

My own suggestions/mini review list, loosely sorted in order of appeal to non-anime types, or people who have only watched one or two. Of course, it's always subjective. I don't quite agree that "anime is just a medium" because its highly-controlled production pipeline and limited set of studios creates some definite commonalities, but it's true there's a wide variety of genres.

Violet Evergarden, 9/10

THIS is really an excellent first or early anime. A woman used essentially as a special-ops child soldier is now a little older, and while the war continues, she decides to take up an unusual vocation: a typist in an era where few people know how to write (I guess), she also assists in helping people organize their thoughts to write letters. Often, these letters are emotionally charged, or offer some major catharsis; thus the show's episodes are organized roughly with a major letter per episode. Parallel to this, we should mention that the main character, the eponymous Violet Evergarden, has lost both of her arms, replaced with mechanical ones, which mirrors her emotional state, still dull and robotic from her war experiences. So we slowly get to see her open up over the course of the series. Sad and emotional at times, hopeful in others, this one is highly memorable and at times honestly you often forget it's an anime at all. Finished, a season and a movie or two.

Apothecary Diaries, 9/10

This show is great. A nice mix of mystery, cool setting, and like the previous, much fewer anime tropes than your usual fare, this one stands out. A fairly level-headed girl but with a strange obsession with poisons, raised as an apothecary by her adopted father (read: herbal-medicine doctor for the poor, in this case often a brothel) is kidnapped into a loosely-Chinese imperial palace as a servant there. And not the cool, plot kidnapping version either, she's literally just nabbed off the street and sold and has to come to terms with her new life. Which she does, and she's pretty smart and a good investigator even though it really isn't her interest, and she gets pulled into harem politics to some extent as first a food taster, and then other adventures especially for a powerful eunuch within the palace. Ongoing story with two seasons, but with some good closure.

Frieren: At Journey's End, 10/10

Now, I'm not sure whether this score, which reflects my anime of the decade designation, translates to the general public, but it's very enjoyable. A fantasy series that explores the idea of what a long-lived elf's life is actually like! Lord of the Rings plays a bit with this idea in a way, but doesn't fully commit and it's spun differently. There, the elves are kind of tired of life, but here, we ask the question: what might Legolas be feeling, going on an adventure with some others, when he knows that they are going to die and leave him behind again? LotR dodges this a bit by both killing much of the cast, and Gimli is also of a similar long life, but Frieren tackles this a bit more explicitly. She once went on a save-the-world trip, but as the mage of the party. Living for at least a thousand years however, she doesn't fully appreciate the impact this trip had on her, and experiences regret for not emotionally engaging more after her friends pass away. She uses this as impetus to start another journey back north again to the demon lands, retracing the save-the-world steps with a new group of people who grow on her. The world-building is great, the storytelling is on point, the vibes are excellent, it's just a great watch. Ongoing, one season completed.

Kaguya-sama: Love Is War, 9/10

This one earns a rare distinction for carrying with it a strong piece of advice: try the first episode or two subbed and dubbed. A humor-first series, this one takes place in a super-elite high school, where the two highest-performing students (one old money, and one a scholarship student), on the student council together, are trying to get each other to admit a crush on the other. They play all sorts of mental gymnastics to make this work. The humor largely comes from the commentary/narrator, but the sub and dub both approach it differently (and the dub actually localizes many of the jokes, so they are funny but in a different way). The sub leans a bit more dry-humor, irony-focused, while the dub plays up the conflicts as being outrageous. At any rate, this one is just good fun and although the series starts out as a bit more like a series of connected skits, it eventually transitions a little more into a proper show with character arcs and plot and all that good stuff. Finished, three seasons, epilogue movie to come.

I don't really know how the below actually stack up but I felt like tossing them in too.

Angel Beats!, 8.5/10

Admittedly it has been a while since I watched this one, but it's good. Some nice emotional catharsis, but I don't know how much I can say without spoiling things too much. A guy wakes up all of the sudden in a sort of alternate-reality school, with a confusing 'war' between a group of kids within the school and the school student body president, who is a bit of a robot, with the drone-like other students as bystanders. Despite the presence of guns, this is a low-violence affair where the war is mostly a series of, well, pranks more or less? Despite the sort of confusing set-up, you get some good character moments, and this one is a tear-jerker at times.

Dandadan, 8.5/10

Visual flair. Panache. Dialing stuff up to 11. This anime is now in its second season and is ridiculous but fun. You probably only need to see a few minutes to get an idea about what this one's about, but for text purposes the classic hook is that a high schooler who believes in ghosts teams up with one who believes in aliens, and they're both right! He has his balls stolen by a spirit, and aliens try to kidnap her, and then they have some adventures trying to resolve that.

Code Geass, 8.5/10

This is kind of like the Ender's Game of anime in a way? The main character lives as a privileged elite in a dystopian Japan ruled by a world monarchy-autocracy, but decides to join a local Japanese rebellion. He's very much a 5D chess type of guy, takes on an alter-ego, and did I mention there's mechs for some reason? Most of the show is him outsmarting people, because in a similar kind of "hook" to the oft-recommended Death Note (which I personally don't like), he has the ability to brainwash-command anyone to do anything... but only once, ever, in their life. Which he obviously wants to keep a secret, but has to also be smart about using due to its one-time-use nature. Two seasons.

Have you seen the Promised Neverland? It feels like it fits well with your top couple shows.

I've heard the name, don't know anything about it I'm afraid. If it's anywhere in the same ballpark as MIA or MM, then I'm certainly interested!

Fullmetal Alchemist: Brotherhood : Closer to 8 than it is to 7

A show that frustrated me. Too tropey, too many characters being retarded. I find it hard to articulate my dissatisfaction in a satisfactory way.

FMAB represents everything that's simultaneously right and wrong with shounen storytelling. The worldbuilding is genuinely excellent: alchemy as magic system with consistent rules and costs, political intrigue that feels like actual statecraft, character motivations that make sense within their contexts.

But the show consistently undermines itself with genre conventions that feel obligatory rather than organic. The power of friendship speeches, the reluctance to actually kill major characters, the way complex moral situations get resolved through superior firepower, it all feels like the show is checking boxes rather than exploring the implications of its own premise.

You should really try the original Fullmetal Alchemist.

First of all, if you only watched Brotherhood, you completely missed the setup, because Brotherhood speeds through the early episodes on the assumption that you have watched the 2003 version. Second, it is a much darker, cerebral, and emotional story. It's not filled with fights and comedy and friendship speeches the way Brotherhood is. 2003 avoids the standard battle shonen cliches in favor of telling a more dramatic and philosophical story using the exact same setting and characters.

It's like Fullmetal Alchemist for grownups.

My own recommendations:

Erased (AKA The Town Without Me) is one of the most beautiful stories I have ever had the privilege of experiencing. It's also only one cour long.

The Promised Neverland. The first season is incredible, and ends at a very natural stopping point, but definitely leaves room to continue the story. The second season is legendary for how bad it was, and most fans pretend that it doesn't exist. It works really well if you choose to treat it is as a single-cour anime. I wrote a longer review on /r/rational.

Made in Abyss

I watched the first season of this after seeing numerous recommendations along this line (are all of these reviews based on single seasons or entire series?), and my ultimate feeling was "meh". Made in Abyss presents a world in which there is a big creepy hole, and ooh, what could be inside the big creepy hole? Turns out it's big and creepy. Wow.

While it is nicely animated and soundtracked as you say, the dull approach to the story and particularly unpleasant anime degeneracy left me with little desire to continue.

Mob Psycho 100

So much better than everything else on your list I honestly have no idea

I must say, most holes that are big and creepy don't leave you bleeding out of your anus. That is at least +5000 creep points, in every sense of the word.

Most of the "unpleasant anime degeneracy" is, in my view, instrumental, not incidental. The juxtaposition of childlike innocence and body horror is the engine of the show's aesthetic effect. It's designed to create maximum cognitive dissonance. It's a story about the absolute, uncompromising brutality of a natural system that has no regard for human values like "fairness" or "pity." The suffering of children is used because it's the most effective means to maximize the audience's sense of injustice against an indifferent system. If you find the mechanism distasteful, that's a valid reaction, but to me it's the core of what makes the show function so effectively. I don't think it would have hit nearly as hard if it was Hitler and Stalin going on a buddy cop adventure into hell.

So much better than everything else on your list I honestly have no idea

Mob Psycho 100 is, by all accounts, a well-executed character piece about self-acceptance and emotional growth. It is narratively and thematically safe. Its central message is "it's okay to be yourself" and "your friends can help you." These are pro-social, therapeutic platitudes. It is, essentially, My First Therapy Session: The Anime. My preference is for stories that are thematically unsafe. Madoka is a brutal examination of utilitarian ethics and the horror of information asymmetry. Made in Abyss is about the collision of human aspiration with a universe of crushing indifference. Attack on Titan is a multi-generational study of the feedback loop between fear, violence, and ideology. One Punch Man (S1) is an exploration of existential ennui in the face of solved problems.

These shows take a high-concept premise and follow its logical implications to uncomfortable, often horrifying, conclusions. They are exercises in systems-thinking applied to narrative. Mob Psycho uses its high-concept premise (god-tier psychic powers) as a vehicle to deliver a fairly standard, low-stakes emotional journey. Mob's internal conflicts are profound to him, but the show's philosophical stakes are puddle-deep compared to the others.

(are all of these reviews based on single seasons or entire series?)

I tried to specifically note where I simply got fed up with a particular show, or got distracted (which is often not the fault of the show itself, particularly for Vinland Saga). I think I finished the first season of MP100 before deciding to venture elsewhere.

I suppose I should add my own anime recommendations to the list. In no particular order:

K-On: 10/10

This is a series about high school girls who are in a rock band together. The personalities range from "very responsible" to "complete moron slacker", and a lot of the enjoyment comes from seeing how the different girls interact and handle the situations that come up. There is essentially zero plot to this show, which would normally bother me as a plot-centric person, but somehow works here. The closest to a plot is a general sense of the girls moving through their young lives - figuring out where to go to college, having to face the pain of saying goodbye to friends when they graduate, that sort of thing. It took me a bit to get into it as you need to get to know the characters some to fully enjoy it, but once I did it was a blast. Also one of the few shows to ever make me cry, which it somehow does every single time I watch one episode in particular.

As an aside - there's one part which I always found kind of bizarre, where the girls are on the beach and one of them feels embarrassed because she has bigger breasts than everyone else. @George_E_Hale, do you know if that's an actual thing for Japanese girls? I know you have boys and not girls, but thought you might have some insight. It was odd to me because as far as I know, American girls feel self-conscious if they have small breasts, not large ones. But maybe it's different over there, IDK.

Fullmetal Alchemist: 7/10

Note I don't mean Brotherhood here. I've seen that and rate it quite highly (9 or 10), but figured I would focus on the first anime adaptation. Overall it's not as good as Brotherhood, because about halfway through the series they caught up to the manga and had to figure out their own ending. Questions like the origin of the Homunculi and the nature of the alchemy gate play out very differently in this show. I generally prefer the manga author's vision (as seen in Brotherhood) for those plot elements, but this was still good. There are also various parts of the manga that were only adapted into this show, as Brotherhood chose to skip material that was in the first show unless it was critical to the plot. So that is another reason to watch the show, more fun adventures with the characters that you don't get otherwise.

Ghost in the Shell: Stand Alone Complex: 9/10 first season, 8/10 second season

While the movie is good (as I argued in the WW thread this week), the show is better. Rather than trying to adapt the Puppet Master story again, the team wisely chose to write their own original story for this. Each season is divided into episodes which are self-contained plots, and episodes which are part of the story arc for that season. This structure works very well for the series, as it means they don't have to stretch the story arc too thin. It also means they can poke into more corners of the world even if they aren't strictly relevant to the main story. Overall I really enjoy the look at day to day operations for Section 9, and getting to know the characters better than you can with a 2-hour movie. It also has my favorite take on the GitS art style, and great music. Season 1 is overall stronger than 2, but both are good and worth watching.

Durarara: 7/10

Based on a light novel (side note: can anyone explain to me the difference between manga and light novels? They seem the same, as they are both comics), this series follows a huge cast of characters as they deal with gang warfare and paranormal activity in their corner of Tokyo. And when I say huge cast, I mean it. There are probably 20-30 characters in this story, all of whom get a decent amount of screen time over the course of the two seasons. The plot gets kind of messy and overly complicated at times, but it's a very fun show and the characters are a treat. There are real gems like Celty (a dullahan, as in the Irish mythical creature), who has lost her head and is working as a courier in the city while she tries to find it. Or Izaya, an info broker who loves to stir up shit just so he can see how people react, because he gets bored otherwise (and who is arguably the villain of the series, to the extent it has one). Or Simon, a black Russian who has landed in Tokyo running a sushi restaurant, and who is freakishly strong (he can throw refrigerators), but who is a devoted pacifist. And a lot more. The plot lets this one down at times, but it's still great fun and the music slaps.

Food Wars: 7/10

This show is one of the most ridiculous things I've ever seen. It's about a culinary school where disputes are settled with dramatic cooking duels, where everyone gets together in the school gym to see whose honor will prevail based on the votes of the judges. It's about a world where people's clothes fall off (mostly girls) when they taste food that is good enough, or people will imagine themselves being forcibly penetrated by squid tentacles as they eat a particularly nasty squid dish. It is not remotely serious or in good taste. But that's exactly why I love it. They go so over the top with the ridiculous premise that it loops back around from "stupid" to "actually hilarious" just by virtue of how hard they commit to the bit. Very fanservice-y, don't watch this one on public transport or anything. You also cannot try to take it seriously, you have to just enjoy it for the farce it is. Special props to the animators for making the food the star of the show, they know that a show focused on dramatic cooking needs to have delicious looking food and they deliver. Some of the recipes actually seem like they would work pretty well in real life, which supposedly is because the manga author worked with an actual chef to develop them and would even include recipes in each issue. I do think the show goes on one or two seasons too long, but it's great fun despite that.

Delicious In Dungeon: undetermined, not yet finished

This show is about a group of adventures who are too poor to afford provisions, so they plan to cook and eat monsters they find in the dungeon. I really wanted to watch this based on the premise alone, it sounded funny and I once DMed for a D&D campaign where my players did a very similar thing. What surprised and delighted me was that it turns out there's a plot, and it's pretty good (so far). I don't want to say much more than that, because for me discovering that was part of the joy. It's also incomplete, so it might not stay good. But possibly the highest praise I can give is this: the story gets so good that I seriously considered buying the manga just to see what happens next faster, and I hate reading manga. The fact that I was that eager for more speaks volumes, to me. I would definitely watch it, but can't really rate it just yet.

I armchair psychologize that many girls who are more well-endowed here (not simply big) develop a kind of hunched-over posture to de-emphasize their tits. Onsen (hot springs) and public bathing are not uncommon here, and a girl who develops breasts larger than the norm will 100 % have this commented on by other girls. While this is also true back in the states (or used to be, I've no idea now) there is a cultural tendency in Japan to avoid standing out. What you describe is not that surprising.

can anyone explain to me the difference between manga and light novels? They seem the same, as they are both comics

Light novels are not comics.

Can you explain? Because I've seen pictures of Durarara and it is most certainly a comic. It's panels of artwork with text bubbles and the like, just like manga. I can't tell a difference between the two, which is why I asked.

Light novels are mostly regular books that have occasional anime-style illustrations in them, maybe ten per volume. They are written at a lower level of language complexity and are aimed at younger audiences; basically the Japanese equivalent of YA novels.

Example 1, from "An Introduction to Light Novels".

Example 2, from "What Are Light Novels? How To Write Light Novels?".

Durarara was originally a light novel, and was adapted into both a manga and an anime. This is completely normal in the incestous media ecosystem of Japan; The Saga of Tanya the Evil is another good example.

In general, the lower the production cost, the more titles there are. So these days there are tons of web novels, the most popular of which get rewritten into light novels, the most successful of which get adapted to manga, and only the very best get adapted to anime.

One notable feature of modern anime is that it often serves as essentially an advertisement for the manga or light novels rather than as an end in itself, so you get one or two cours and then nothing, because there is no point in promoting a print series that has already ended. C'est la vie.

Thanks, that helps a ton. It sounds like we don't really have anything directly comparable in the US, since our YA novels don't have illustrations (or they didn't back in the day, maybe they do now).

One notable feature of modern anime is that it often serves as essentially an advertisement for the manga or light novels rather than as a end in itself, so you get one or two cours and then nothing, because there is no point in promoting a print series that has already ended. C'est la vie.

Yeah I have seen series which don't bother to adapt the entirety of the source material, which can be frustrating when it leaves the story unfinished or rushes the ending. Maoyu was one I saw that was like that - good premise, fun characters, but it managed to feel both rushed and unfinished. My understanding is that the manga was better, but they didn't adapt the whole thing.

According to both English Wikipedia and Japanese Wikipedia, light novels may have some manga-style illustrations but are not full manga.

I'm not well acquainted with light novels, but Durarara was adapted from its original light-novel format to a manga as well as to an anime, so maybe you saw an image of the manga.

I see. Yeah I wasn't aware of that, so maybe my confusion is caused by having seen the manga without knowing.

It's pretty common for works to only get localized to the West if they're popular enough to have a manga version, or sometimes only after they've had a successful anime release. I'll point to Kino's Journey as a particularly extreme example: it went directly from light novel in 2000 to anime in Japan in 2003, you could find it in the US anime in English in 2005ish, but the manga didn't start until 2010 and for stupid licensing reasons only the first volume was ever officially translated in 2006, and it was nearly impossible to find.

I will randomly watch anime that my wife is into, and recently started watching "Twin Star Exorcists" My review: if I saw this in middle school I would have been soooooo into this. As a grown man it's pretty cringe, but in a funny way. It is a catalogue of Shonen tropes.

Neon Genesis Evangelion: 8/10.

I think the history of anime aspect of NGE and subsequent movies and what they say about the mental health of the creator is worth a deep dive. The conversation on this show Says Something Culturally Important and interesting about mental health, even if the shows seems a bit dated at the time.

Just got to the second episode of Madocka magica, and while the premise is interesting and the art is cool, I can definitely see the anime-to-pedo pipeline if this is one of the most popular animes out there.

The covert sexualization of middle school aged girls is uhh.... concerning.

Very interested to hear what you think of episode 3 and following...

Hah I had to stop midway through ep 3. Not because of the sexualization necessarily just a sort of 'what am I doing here' type moment. I find it increasingly hard to 'waste' time nowadays.

Go ahead and finish episode 3; it has a real bite to it.

The three episode rule was largely established in response to Madoka.

just a sort of 'what am I doing here'

Finish Episode 3. Don't lose your head.

You really should finish episode 3. I nope'd out maybe 15 minutes into ep 1 the first time I tried to watch it, and then came back a few months later and decided to give it another go. end of ep 3 is where the preflight checklist is complete and takeoff is acheived.

Japanese pop culture may not be for you, unfortunately.

(Although, it should be pointed out, there is an entire subgenre of shows/games/books that feature, well, all-male casts, if you'd prefer that...)

I've watched a lot of anime before, most of it isn't this bad tbh. I'm surprised this one is so popular def concerning to me. Also the fact that there's a stay at home dad with a girlboss mom gives me the ick.

But hey I'm still watching it, so...

I'm reasonably confident there isn't actually an anime to pedo pipeline. Japan just has... different standards.

Also, Madoka? I don't recall seeing anything out of the ordinary there.

Ok as of the second episode I'm changing covert to overt.

For one there are constant close ups of the girls legs in short skirts, and their bosoms. There is a whole thing where the two middle school aged girls are implied to have had sex or at least made out together which is why the other girl is a third wheel. The constant fan servicey outfits and things where guns fall out of the older girl's skirt as she lifts it up, etc etc.

You aren't convincing me this isn't just different standards, lol. Well I suppose it is but it's a standard I oppose. That being said I do like anime and have watched a good bit of it but this sort of stuff turns me off. I'm probably going to try and finish the show though we'll see.

You had me questioning whether or not we watched the same show for a second there. Granted, it's been quite a while.

There is a whole thing where the two middle school aged girls are implied to have had sex or at least made out together which is why the other girl is a third wheel

If you're talking about this, Hitomi's just being stupid about it, and this is a meme for a reason. Also, I hate to break this to you, but 14 year olds do know what lesbians are, and if the mere mention of [a character that age considers that a half-reasonable explanation in the absence of other evidence] is salacious pedo-bait then I really don't understand what wouldn't be.

and their bosoms

What bosoms? Most of the girls are relatively flat; the only real exception to that is Mami, and I guess Sayaka's chestplate makes them look a bit bigger. As for the skirts, yes, drawing your attention to that part of the inner thigh is the reason people use that outfit.

Well I suppose it is but it's a standard I oppose.

Wait, you really think a 'sexuality' predicated on a lack of secondary sexual characteristics would be... enticed by outfits meant to accentuate them? That doesn't make much logical sense to me.

Instead, I think this is just your normal adult woman fetish being activated in a way you're uncomfortable with/not used to and being Very Concerned about it.

I believe Mami is a year or two older than the rest, acting as the mom of the group. Little surprise she's got big honkers,during adolescence those can come out fast.

My interest in Gurren Lagann improved significantly when one of the most annoying characters in the show died.

incoherent flabbergasted noises

IDK if you read my spoiler note (I wouldn't have in your shoes), but that character was the only good part of the show in my book. I knew we had different taste in things, but don't think I realized how opposite our tastes are until this moment, lol.

Jojo's Bizarre Adventure: Never got past the first episode, something about the faux-British setting set me off. I mean to, at some point, if only so I can appreciate the memes better.

Well... for what it's worth I really enjoyed part 1, enjoyed part 2 to a lesser extent, and then really disliked parts 3 and 4 (stopped watching after that). But, in accordance with my newfound realization of how opposite our tastes run, that probably would mean you'd enjoy it? In any case, the British setting lasts only for part 1 (which is also by far the shortest part) so don't let that put you off the show by itself.

You're talking about Kamina right? I really couldn't stand him I'm afraid. Given that he's dead, I don't suppose he could change my impression of him later on in the series.

Since about 3 of you guys spoke up enthusiastically in favor of TTGL, I'm going to try and finish it regardless. At least you've primed me to expect some ground-shaking changes down the line.

Well... for what it's worth I really enjoyed part 1, enjoyed part 2 to a lesser extent, and then really disliked parts 3 and 4 (stopped watching after that). But, in accordance with my newfound realization of how opposite our tastes run, that probably would mean you'd enjoy it? In any case, the British setting lasts only for part 1 (which is also by far the shortest part) so don't let that put you off the show by itself.

My backlog is rather long at this point! But I'll give it a go. Something about the way the (19th century?) British lifestyle was depicted hit me with an incredible sense of uncanny valley. Hearing Japanese VAs mangle English names didn't help either. (I usually prefer subs over dubs)

Your spoiler tags are broken. Two vertical bars each side, not just one. But yeah that is who I meant. By far my favorite character and honestly the only thing I enjoyed about the show. His antics never failed to make me laugh.

Thanks, fixed that.

Well, there's just no accounting for taste!

The uncanny valley depiction of foreign cultures is one of the funniest things in Jojo. Wait till you get to the second half of Part 1 (set just before WWII, plenty of wacky Nazis) and to Part 4 (set in a Japanese tourist's dream of Italy). Generally JJBA takes all the things that make shounenslop unwatchable - incredibly long fights, painstaking descriptions of each attack, powerscaling, ridiculous poses, flat characterization, corny villains, etc. - and dials it up so far it becomes amazing even if you normally hate that stuff.

I really want to like Jojo, believe me. I think I've tried watching the first episode at least thrice and bounced off it. Maybe that's just on me, since the reviews are raving. I do intent to give it a fairer examination at some point.

Jojo really finds it's footing in the 3rd arc. Don't get me wrong the first part was good but it's not very bizarre until later.

How many episodes or seasons in is that?

Part 2 (Battle Tendency is where it starts getting pretty bizzare) but it goes up like a hockey stick in part 3. Part 3 was definitely my favorite arc of the show.

The first episode (and the first arc) of Jojo are really far from what people usually like about it.

It changes a lot in between parts, in terms of artstyle, storytelling, setting, powers, etc. The first 10 episodes of part 1 (i.e. Part 1 of the original manga) in particular is pretty rough compared to the others, and the action only really kicks off in episode 3, but it certainly kicks off.

I mean, I think Jojo sucks lol. So it could just be that it isn't for you. But it is fairly popular, so it's probably worth giving a shot up through part 3. That is where the show undergoes a significant transformation in formula, and becomes more or less what it will be for the rest of the series.

Best anime for anime watchers is Cromartie High. It is near perfect in pacing, absurdity and meta-jokes about anime as a medium to begin with. The english dub is actually better than the sub simply because the ridiculousness of the voiceover heightens the comedy, even when relatively subtle wordplay (rare) is involved. Konosuba achieves largely the same and is a good rip on the extremely tired Isekai power fantasy genre.

Otherwise for seriousness I found Gundam Witch From Mercury one of the best examples of longterm psychological manipulation presented in any medium, all while wrapped in an enjoyable high school drama with good action and decent worldbuilding. Last 2 episodes compressed a season into 2 episodes which is nuts but otherwise it was pretty excellent. A good lighthearted series is Dungeon Meishi which makes an attempt at internal consistency and logical subversion/adherence to fantasy tropes, so its a good time there.

Slice of life isn't quite my style, though I think I watched an odd episode of Azumanga Daioh and liked it.

I'm a bit confused on where to get into Gundam, I've heard that the different series can be very different, and I'm looking for a good mecha anime in the first place.

Best mecha anime was Macross Frontier, honestly. Others mentioned Code Geass below as well, which works. Both have good mech animation, good characters, good pacing. Most of the gundam examples have moments of brilliance bogged down by oceans of slog. The ones cited by others have great scenes or episodes and then multiple filler or slogs that just make it unwatchable.

But the true best robot anime ever is Megas XLR. A giant death robot with a hotrod for a head and a hotter redhead as the boss of the mechs 2 idiot pilots? Pure joy.

Gundam has a bunch of alternate continuities called "timelines", each of which is canonically independent of the others even though they tend to reuse the same story elements (giant robots, space colonies, a masked antagonist, etc.); think Final Fantasy or Fire Emblem.

The first timeline has the best OVAs (War in the Pocket, Stardust Memory, and The 08th MS Team) but the problem is that the original show which establishes the timeline is a fucking mess. Mobile Suit Gundam has shitty animation, padding, stupid gimmicks designed to sell toys, etc. It's not really worth watching.

I'd recommend starting with Gundam SEED instead, which is basically a modern remake of Mobile Suit Gundam with much better production values, and is a genuinely decent show. Just make sure you watch the original version instead of the HD remaster, and for the love of God avoid the sequel Gundam SEED Destiny.

Which is the one with the national stereotype gundams, ie mexico gundam with the sombrero?

That's G Gundam. I hated it, personally, since my whole attraction to Gundam is the real robot aspect, but if you want battle shonen meets mecha, I guess it is the perfect show.

G Gundam? It’s fun, but even by gundam standards pretty goofy.

Thank you. But Jesus Christ, I really want to know how this particular state of affairs arose. I feel like I'd get a more canonical answer if I earnestly asked what is current Marxist canon.

The exact same thing that happened with Fate. It turns out that people give you their money if you keep re-imagining the Pacific War in space with giant robots, so when Philip J. Otaku says "Shut up and take my money!", the market responds by supplying as much Gundam as can be sold.

If you haven't watched it yet, I suggest give Code Geass a try. Although people often say Code Geass is actually not a real or true Mecha anime. I hate the art style and character design and I still watched the whole thing and don't regret it. It's widely considered to have one of the best endings in anime and I have to agree. Also the OST is great.

If the strange animation doesn't put you off (switching between old and new animation), the Zeta Gundam compilation movies are a great place to start without committing to a full series. There are compilations of the original Gundam, as well, and it's actually those movies that made the story famous after the original series was canceled. Skip ZZ. If you like Ghibli movies watch Turn A.

I'm a bit confused on where to get into Gundam

IMO:

  • Of the three core Universal Century series: The original Mobile Suit Gundam has intolerably bad animation; Zeta Gundam is peak; and Gundam ZZ insults the viewer by failing to become good until almost literally the halfway point (episode 23 of 47). But starting with Zeta Gundam while having zero knowledge of the background provided in MSG probably would be a bad idea. I dunno, maybe watch the MSG compilation movies, or play the MSG campaign in an emulated Dynasty Warriors Gundam game (which is how I got into the franchise, sans emulation).

  • Gundam X is pretty good.

  • G Gundam and Build Fighters aren't really the same genre as the rest of the franchise, but still are quite fun. (The other Build Fighters and Build Divers series are not nearly as fun, IMO.)

  • It's been a while since I tried watching Gundam Wing, Turn A Gundam ,Gundam SEED, and Gundam Iron-Blooded Orphans, but IIRC I didn't like them much.

The first Gundam I watched was probably SEED, but my personal favorite was Gundam 00. Wing was okay, and I won't recommend Iron-Blooded Orphans because I really didn't like the ending.

I've reviewed a few of these in older FFTs as well, but I think I didn't say anything about NGE. My honest opinion is that watching it is one of these things you have to do at the right developmental step.

If you are the same age as the protagonists and you've just recently learned self-reflection and furiously reflect every day in the shower and in your own bed, NGE fucking blows your mind. It's literally the pinnacle of "I'm 13 and this is deep", it resonates with you.

Haruhi Suziyama

Poser spotted

:(

For the most part the only anime I watch are movies, rather than TV shows. The one exception was Paranoia Agent, which I adored (helps that it was created by a director, Satoshi Kon, whose cinematic work I'd previously loved - Perfect Blue which was the inspiration for Aronofsky's Black Swan, and Tokyo Godfathers which might be my favourite Christmas movie). A bizarre and blackly comic mashup of police procedural, psychological thriller, fantasy and social satire which I cannot recommend highly enough.

I watched Tokyo Godfathers recently at the suggestion of my wife, and found it quite decent. Absolutely watchable. A rarity among movies in general and anime especially.

Its creator is Satoshi Kon. Of all his works, there is one I would most recommend anyone should read: https://www.makikoitoh.com/journal/satoshi-kons-last-words

Possible blow to the "Cremieux is TrannyPorno" theory: https://www.motherjones.com/politics/2025/07/cremieux-jordan-lasker-mamdani-nyt-nazi-faliceer-reddit/

It should be noted that Cremieux denies the association, but the reason he gives is very weird, so who knows.

There’s something about trying to profile someone as racist based largely on his last name…

also did appear here on MMalice's podcast https://youtube.com/watch?v=lGD4Yd7NgU4?si=4b-49sN211U7h3yO

Court opinion:

  • Russell, driving a work van on a road with posted speed of 55 mi/h (90 km/h), approaches a green traffic light from the southwest. The light turns yellow, but Russell thinks he can get past it before it turns red, so he does not stop. Christopher, sitting in a work truck at the same intersection's northwest traffic light, sees the lights starting to change and decides to enter the intersection early, while he still has a red light. Russell attempts to swerve his van around Christopher's truck (without braking), but the van collides with the truck anyway (hard enough to spin the truck around by 180 degrees) and thence careens into Jasmine's car, which is in the process of stopping at the northeast traffic light. Three of Jasmine's limbs are broken in the crash. Accordingly, she sues Russell and Christopher for causing her injuries through negligence. The jury decides that (1) the injuries are worth 3.5 M$ and (2) Russell bears 60 percent of the fault (2.1 M$) and Christopher 40 percent (1.4 M$).

  • Russell argues that the jury's decision to assign more fault to him than to Christopher is unsupportable by the evidence presented at trial, since Christopher broke the law (by running the red light) and Russell did not (by attempting to get through the intersection on a yellow light). But the trial judge rejects this argument, and the appeals panel affirms. Under state law as distilled in the charge issued by the trial judge to the jury, a driver approaching a yellow light "is obligated to exercise reasonable care, which includes making reasonable observations for traffic traveling on an intersecting street".* Therefore, the jury was perfectly entitled to conclude that a non-negligent driver (1) would have stopped at the yellow light rather than trying to get through it or (2) would have tried to avoid hitting Christopher by braking rather than by swerving without braking.

*See also the following model jury charges, which unlike this case-specific charge have been approved by a statewide committee: general duty of motorist; duty of motorist to make observations; and duty of motorist proceeding past stop sign.

People in my area run reds all the time, but I never saw people try to beat the green like this except in Puerto Rico.

It's nearly impossible to "make observations" for cross traffic when you're traveling at 55mph and the vegetation blocks line of sight to the traffic in question.

There does not appear to be vision-blocking vegetation at this particular intersection.

This tree seems to block much of the road behind the light on the right.

https://postimg.cc/McGZvDyV

It would be hard to notice a car until you are almost in the intersection.

That visibility seems pretty good to me. Remember that you're looking out only for cars that suddenly start moving after being stopped at the stop line, not for fast-moving cars. Also, note that the 55-mi/h road is NJ 54, while Jackson Road, at which you're looking, has a posted speed of 45 mi/h.

I wasn't aware there were states which didn't require the driver to stop at a yellow. Wisconsin does (and that is where I learned to drive), so as I read your story I was thinking "duh, of course he was more at fault, it's already illegal to enter the intersection when the light is yellow". One of the edge cases where road laws across states aren't quite the same, I guess.

I've only ever been in one accident, and it was because I stopped at the yellow when I shouldn't have.

It was the middle of winter, and the roads were very icy. I was late noticing the yellow, and I slammed on the brakes. I was able to just barely stop before entering the intersection: but the person behind me was not so lucky, and rear ended me. Technically she was at fault, but I know it was my bad. You can't expect someone to stop that fast on slippery roads, I should have just gone through.

I've been in a similar situation (though no accident thankfully), and like you it taught me the importance of discerning whether you can safely stop at the yellow. It was when I was still in Wisconsin, and like in your example the roads were icy. I tried to brake for the yellow far too late, but instead I just slid through the intersection. Thankfully there wasn't any cross traffic to hit me due to my mistake, though my passenger (my boss at the time) did scold me for trying to stop so late when I should've known it was unsafe to do that in winter.

IIRC, a while ago I read a court opinion where a person was severely injured by a snowplow truck that slid through an intersection like that. (I unfortunately do not have the link on hand.)

I wasn't aware there were states which didn't require the driver to stop at a yellow.

Both New Jersey and Wisconsin require a motorist approaching a yellow light to stop if he can do so safely. However, this overview of state laws appears to indicate that there are quite a few states that do not have this requirement.

Interesting that NJ does have that law. Why did the judge instruct the jury as you indicated in your post, then, rather than saying that the law requires a driver to stop if able to do so safely? That seems like it would be more clear-cut as to wrongdoing.

That law was part of the jury charge as well. See p. 16 of the PDF.

But the trial judge rejects this argument, and the appeals panel affirms.

I've said this before, but judges see a victim who needs compensation and look around for the nearest involved party with money. They then uses legalese as a backwards rationalisation for the award.

In this case the judge probably realised that neither party likely could afford to pay the 3 million alone, so decided to split it over the two of them.

In work vehicles? They would have been insured commercially. Neither will work again(at fault accidents are a killer for driving a commercial vehicle), but both insurance policies have the money.

I missed that part. Commercial insurance coverage should be enough by a single party to cover this so I don't know why the judge went out of their way to punish the yellow light driver.

That’s insane.

I’m always going on yellow. On an incredibly rare occasion the light turns red exactly as I head into the intersection.

This is perfectly logical and I assumed legal.

It’s either go on yellow or slam my brakes.

"is obligated to exercise reasonable care, which includes making reasonable observations for traffic traveling on an intersecting street".

That makes zero sense. Unless you’re literally running the red light - short of slamming your brakes so hard that you’re burning rubber, this doesn’t make sense.

It's illegal to be in the intersection when the light is red.

Incorrect (in this state).

NJ Statutes tit. 39 ch. 4 § 105:

Amber, or yellow, when shown alone following green[,] means traffic[ is] to stop before entering the intersection or nearest crosswalk, unless when the amber appears the vehicle or street car is so close to the intersection that with suitable brakes it cannot be stopped in safety.

Nothing is said about exiting the intersection before the light turns red.

§ 67:

No vehicle or street car shall be permitted by the owner or driver thereof to so occupy a street as to interfere with or interrupt the passage of other street cars or vehicles, nor shall the driver of a vehicle or street car drive such vehicle or street car into an intersection if preceding traffic prevents immediate clearance of the intersection.

That means a motorist must exit the intersection before any other light turns green, not before his light turns red. A traffic signal normally will have an all-red clearance interval of two or three seconds, so the difference between these two definitions is far from negligible.

You're right, and I was mistaken about my state too.

The jury was perfectly entitled to conclude that a non-negligent driver (1) would have stopped at the yellow light rather than trying to get through it or (2) would have tried to avoid hitting Christopher by braking rather than by swerving without braking.

Entering an intersection on a yellow light is legal (in this state). But failing to brake when you have a yellow light and someone else illegally runs a red light in front of you may count as negligence.

Also, in this case, Russell specifically admitted that he didn't even consider whether he could safely stop at the yellow light.

Also, in this case, Russell specifically admitted that he didn't even consider whether he could safely stop at the yellow light.

Yeah it's more a case for "don't talk to cops" or at least "know what the law really says and don't openly admit to breaking it" which sometimes works OK for traffic cops.

"I was really close to the intersection as the light changed and didn't think I could safely stop in time, so I proceeded into the intersection at my current legal speed" is all you should ever say about entering an intersection on a yellow; "IDK IT ALL HAPPENED SO FAST OMG I CAN'T EVEN" would possibly be even better if you think you can pull it off.

What is this place?

This website is a place for people who want to move past shady thinking and test their ideas in a court of people who don't all share the same biases. Our goal is to optimize for light, not heat; this is a group effort, and all commentators are asked to do their part.

The weekly Culture War threads host the most controversial topics and are the most visible aspect of The Motte. However, many other topics are appropriate here. We encourage people to post anything related to science, politics, or philosophy; if in doubt, post!

Check out The Vault for an archive of old quality posts. You are encouraged to crosspost these elsewhere.


Why are you called The Motte?

A motte is a stone keep on a raised earthwork common in early medieval fortifications. More pertinently, it's an element in a rhetorical move called a "Motte-and-Bailey", originally identified by philosopher Nicholas Shackel. It describes the tendency in discourse for people to move from a controversial but high value claim to a defensible but less exciting one upon any resistance to the former. He likens this to the medieval fortification, where a desirable land (the bailey) is abandoned when in danger for the more easily defended motte. In Shackel's words, "The Motte represents the defensible but undesired propositions to which one retreats when hard pressed."

On The Motte, always attempt to remain inside your defensible territory, even if you are not being pressed.


New post guidelines

If you're posting something that isn't related to the culture war, we encourage you to post a thread for it. A submission statement is highly appreciated, but isn't necessary for text posts or links to largely-text posts such as blogs or news articles; if we're unsure of the value of your post, we might remove it until you add a submission statement. A submission statement is required for non-text sources (videos, podcasts, images).

Culture war posts go in the culture war thread; all links must either include a submission statement or significant commentary. Bare links without those will be removed.

If in doubt, please post it!


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