I will admit, despite the relatively crummy animation, I'm still watching it. It's oddly compelling.

I also started watching Lycoris Recoil, which I had completely passed over back when it initially aired. "Another girls with guns show? Bugger off."

But after checking out the new shortform series, I was like, "Damn! Did the original show look this nice?" And the answer is yes.

Bumpkin is alright, but the way characters move around during combat just looks absolutely fucked. And it's on full display right out of the gate in the intro. It's like trash-tier rotoscoping or something, and the director is incompetent at fight scenes. And that would explain why they've just been skimming over the big encounters.

Further to that, whether you're a fan of Demon Slayer or not, you can't deny the transition from manga to anime is nothing short of miraculous. Imagine Bumpkin in that team's hands, you know?

But that's probably all just beyond the scope of their production. Bumpkin seems very... obligatory. Like, no one's really expecting anything from it, so there's no extra effort being made. Just get it out there and move on to the next project.

Too much anime feels like that, honestly.

From Old Country Bumpkin to Master Swordsman anime could have been pretty good based on the manga I've read of it, but they absolutely bombed the adaptation. Every fight thus far has been handwaved...there were three (bumpkin vs loli magic sensei, bumpkin and muscle student vs. flying cockatrice, bumpkin and loli magic sensei vs street gang necromancer boss) in the manga that lasted several chapters, and in the show lasts a couple minutes at most. It's a shame, as it had the makings of a unique and entertaining storyline, but the fights have to be there.

God, my job keeps pushing AI. My boss is all "It's not going to take your job."  And I'm all, "Sir, it's being trained to take our jobs. Using it is training it."

Then we have some fucking VPs visit our office this week and all of us working hybrid in this damn office are forced to be their captive audience of clapping seals.

VP1: So AI won't take your jobs.
VP1: We can't grow the company without batteries human beings.
VP1: Here's something cool the AI can do that a human could've taken five minutes to do already. It's a reverse image search. Isn't that great? But instead of telling a human to do that, we'll have the AI do it more and in greater numbers. Like it's a fucking Jawa.

VP2: AI can find meta data on photos! Surely a person couldn't do that already!
VP2: Also, I'm making people constantly feed prompts into the AI so I can teach it to do your job.

VP3: We've been collecting data for well over a decade and we're feeding it all to the AI. Nothing bad could possibly happen. Your jobs are, like, totally safe.

VP1: Anyway, we won't have to hire 250 people in the future because AI will be doing all of their jobs. B-but not you guys sitting in the room with us. Your jobs are totally safe.


What a waste of an hour of my life. At least it was paid time and I got free homophobic chicken out of it.

Man, YouTube's trend of "you listened to this? here's it is over and over again" is kind of tiring. I listened to the album Dopamine by Borns and Youtube's all "Here's every song from that album in your feed!"

Oh man, I never got to talk about the saga of "Heavy Shift".  They're a British acid jazz band with, like, one hit back in 1995 or something. I used to have their CD "Unchain Your Mind." I know I ripped this goddamn album before I got rid of it, like, fifteen or whatever years ago, but I can't find the rips and I really want to listen to it. 


And it's not an album available in its entirety on YouTube. Otherwise I'd just content myself with listening to it there. There's a supposed playlist with the videos now hidden. The only thing left is one of those short videos that's a secret ad or whatever.

Trying to get full albums through anywhere that's not paywalled, password protected, or via torrent is such a pain the ass. I haven't been taking any albums in a while so what a surprise to find that whole online world utterly crippled. Another great example of how completely neutered Google searching now is.

So fine, I'll buy a legit digital copy. Except, no, I won't. It's not fucking available. How dare they. You can't kneecap my ability to pirate it AND also take away my ability to digitally buy it, you pieces of shit.

I ended up buying a version of the album one of the members released on his bandcamp but it's not exactly the same thing. One of the tracks is live so I have to hear clapping or whatever at the end. Man... don't put a live track on there unless you also have the, you know, not-live one.

I know people are saying physical media needs to make a comeback since these big companies want to pull this shit. I by no means plan to replace all of the books, movies, and CDs I've gotten rid of, but this album might be one of the things I actually rebuy if it's not going to be offered anywhere.