cerebralhawks

Tried it again, it works great. It plays a lot of the Rockband customs I've collected over the years. Ran it with bots. Seems to work.

Would be cool if there were a solid place to get tracks for it. Even if you gotta source the actual audio yourself. Everyone being afraid to share that information is what's gonna keep this thing from getting big... whether that's a good thing or not, I'm not sure.

I'm not sure what an anime festival is, but I've been to a bunch of anime conventions.

Most of them aren't strictly anime. They will have an anime theme and a bunch of Japanese-themed entertainment, but you will find Trekkers, Whovians, Marvel/DC fanatics, Star Wars people (Warsians? I feel like that never caught on) and everything in between. People go there and play D&D, Magic: The Gathering, and other card/tabletop games. If you're lucky you might find a more niche one like Cyberpunk or Starfinder. And those guys love teaching newcomers!

One thing I'd say is Do. Your. Research. You will want to know what amenities the hotels have. If you can find one with a kitchenette (stove and fridge), you can bring in food and cook in your hotel room/suite and save a ton of money. Yes the room will cost more per night, but you need to know two things. One, how expensive food is around the convention due to the scarcity caused by the demand. Two, how much food you'll need. If you bring in a cooler with milk, eggs, and some other stuff, and get it into the fridge, and you can just make all your stuff? You will save a ton. But you need to know what they have. Also if they do breakfast buffet in the morning, that's a huge plus. I would say go down there and focus on protein (eggs and meat, plus fruit juice for energy), and then throw a bunch of carbs (muffins, toast/bread, bagels) on a plate and exfil that up to your room. Snack on it throughout the day. If you're an anime nerd, you probably love ramen. Ramen is super easy to make in a hotel room if you have a microwave. It's not the best for you, but hey, you're on vacation! If you do need to order, tip your delivery driver well! Driving through con traffic is hell. Better if you can avoid takeout/delivery entirely though.

Of course you'll want to get autographs and such, but it's better to make memories. Autographs are getting really fucking expensive. And really, what's the point? Honestly. It costs you nothing to say hi, and at times, the guests will have no line and they'll be bored. Playing on their phone or whatever. Go up and tell them you appreciated them in something. Strike up a conversation. If they don't have someone with them, ask them if they wanna grab a coffee — or, if you're feeling lucky, a drink at the bar. (Just be careful with this.)

There are people at anime cons way cooler than voice actors, though. Cosplayers themselves are generally pretty cool, but I go for the artists. Some of my favourite artists have staff, so you might not even meet the artist. Be aware of who's staff and who's an artist. They'll usually tell you. I've met staff where the artist isn't even there. I've met "staff" where the person selling is actually the mom and the dad, and what you thought was their little bratty child on the iPad ignoring you, is actually the artist! In any case, I feel like connecting with the artists is one of the coolest things you can do there. I also have way too much anime art...

Kinda mixed on the whole thing. Like sure, like any red-blooded (cis/het) male, I like seeing naked ladies. Sure, who (among cis/het men) doesn't? But I also want the girls to be safe, and not abused.

I'm honestly tired of hearing questions like "if you saw your daughter/niece/sister on a porn site what would you do?" and people want to see your daughter, niece, or sister, but not theirs. I feel like the correct answer is "keep scrolling, and make a note to check in with her." Not like "hey I saw your shoot" but more like, "is everything good?" like you should be doing anyway. I mean women don't necessarily do porn because there's a problem in their life and we should stop pretending showing some T&A is indicative of a problem in the first place. Like, seeing a family member in porn isn't one of the best things, but it's not the worst. The worst is, she's at a low point in her life and she's being forced to do it, or being abused, or hooked on drugs, because it's taboo and it shouldn't be.

But at the same time, I'm not gonna pay for porn. There's so much free shit out there anyway. Everyone's got a good camera in their smartphone and people aren't gonna stop posting on gonewild type communities. And I wouldn't care if porn just went away. Maybe it would make society better. Or maybe we'd just get more desperate.

As far as what I like/dislike... I'm not really gonna get into that, but I've noticed, on Lemmy, there's a trend with AI generated women to generate more older women! I love that. Even if they're in their 60s. It's not like a kink or anything, but the older I get, the less I appreciate stuff like "she just turned 18" or whatever. I don't think it's utterly terrible some people wanna see that, but I'm over twice that age! I would never date an 18 year old. Friends maybe, but never more. But the AI stuff is really fucking weird, but it's also kinda cool because these aren't real people, they're people generated by an algorithm. Maybe the algorithm is trained on real people with real bodies, but it mixes so much up you can't really identify it as a specific person. I'm fine with that. But if we can stop people from looking at the illegal/dangerous stuff, and use AI to create it, let those people watch that instead, I think that would be a net positive. Of course you'd want to identify them, tag them and keep them separate from the rest of people; it's not a solution to the problem they create, but if you can reduce the demand for it, I dunno, I want nothing to do with that kind of stuff, but I feel like there's a solution in there somewhere. I probably won't be the one to come up with it. My solution is small, metal, and you can hold a few of them in your hand. I'd like to think there's a better solution out there.

Aware of it, might even have it installed. Nice thing about YARG is, it doesn't require Windows. I have Macs, and I ran it on my Mac. So I think it's on Linux as well, but I'm not sure.

Ah — I'm a bit used to that. While Rockband 3 added vocal harmonies, the first two would just pick which vocals you sang. You were never singing more than one part at a time. There were some, though, that gave more attention to a backing vocalist than the primary one. It's fine if you recognise the pitch/tone change. One that was notorious for that was Spoonman by Soundgarden. I know that Chris Cornell was the singer of Soundgarden, but at some points in the song, it follows a backing vocalist and you have to completely change your pitch and tone, though the voice you hear does not sound like it is. It's a very tricky song to sing and it's generally disliked except by Soundgarden fans, most of whom would rather play it on guitar. There are others — and I'm struggling to think of an example, and threw Spoonman under the bus to try to give myself more time to think, but I'm drawing a blank on names — where it straight up turns you over to backing vocals. Like I didn't know those lines were in the song. The main singer is singing one thing and the backing vocalists are singing something else.

Never been to "actual" karaoke. However, I played Rockband games for about ten years, off and on. That's karaoke with a score system. And you can also play guitar or drums, but I suck at that? Singing though? That, I can do.

The Final Countdown (Europe). This one's so fun to sing. It feels like it goes to some 80s movie, but I don't recall one that features it.

What's My Age Again? (blink-182). I went into these games not caring for pop punk and emo, but hands down, they're the most fun to sing by far!

Headphones On (Miranda Cosgrove/iCarly). See above, but pop rock. According to You (Orianthi) is even more fun to sing, but unless the guitarist is warmed up, he'll have it in for you for the rest of the night if you pick this one early! Headphones On is a great warmup though.

Enter Sandman (Metallica). This one's upper mid tier for everyone, but everyone loves to play it. Easily the most fun Metallica song to sing. The Black Album was basically their pop record. It's a legit hard rock/radio metal album (and, not for nothing, but Nothing Else Matters was highly rated by Sir Elton John of all people) but it's a pop record. It was engineered to go viral and it did. And most of the songs are a blast to sing.

I wish Rockband was still around so we'd get the KPop Demon Hunter songs. I'd sing the shit outta What it Sounds Like or How it's Done. I wouldn't object to any song from that soundtrack being picked. You can fake it through the few Korean lines (and hope they're written out phonetically rather than the symbols). I stood and sang for all the songs in the Sing-Along version in theaters (twice!) and I feel like though I said the Korean words as written, they didn't come out right.

This is good advice. However (more toward OP), be advised that call recording laws like "two-party consent" (which means both parties must agree to the call) only means the call cannot be admissible in court if recorded improperly, not that you can't record it or that the recording is illegal.

A lot of companies with numbers you can call will say that the call may be recorded, regardless of where you call from. This is good because it covers their side of the consent. They cannot legally only consent to their own recording. Even in a state with one-party consent, once they consent to their own recording, if you record that, they just consented to yours. They might fight this if it goes to trial (it won't), but if you are in a one-party consent area, you can argue that you can disagree with being recorded and still have a right to call if you have business with them. They will argue and say your consent is absolute because you stayed on the line. If they say that, they're fucked — their consent becomes absolute as well. "What's good for the goose is good for the gander" for the most part. Also, with an iPhone, when you start recording, it plays a similar message. If you do that while they have you on hold, they won't record it, but it will be recorded on your end. They can't say "you played the warning while you were on hold, we couldn't hear it" because then you could say you couldn't hear their warning while you were on hold. After all, some smartphones handle hold for you, alerting you when a human comes on the line. Therefore, if you did not hear the warning and it's still valid, the same is true for them.

Alternatively, be more honest and start the recording when a human gets on the line. If they refuse to continue the conversation, you can at least assume they are up to no good. That should tell you all you need to know.

I think a lot of companies operate on similar principles to a cult. When it benefits them, they say they are like a family. When it doesn't, know you can be replaced in an instant. People who don't have a life outside of work, or they do but it involves people from work almost exclusively. And companies that have cult-like ideas or ideals. Even some aspects of professionalism (such as dress code or uniforms) are cult-like in nature. The military sees value in dehumanising people, by making them simple cogs in the machine, and private industry likes to emulate this.

The question is, can you leave? A true cult won't let you. That's the difference with a lot of companies. If you get out, you are basically out. They may not re-hire you, but they shouldn't interfere with your life beyond that point. Cults absolutely will.

I don't really downvote. I try to be helpful, so if someone's just being rude, I typically just block them. Probably more efficient.

The default for Reddit was to hide posts with X downvotes, so people could manipulate that to hide posts they don't like. Lemmy doesn't do that by default, so there's no real utility. Also users can choose to sort by time and ignore vote counts (I do) so your downvotes literally don't do anything for those users. Thus, I just block people who go out of their way to be rude or offensive.

I upvote people who are helpful and/or kind. Otherwise, I don't interact with that system.

They say at some point your parents put you down and never pick you up again.

The truth is, the age of a person's child is the image of them they hold in their heart. It could be a certain milestone, or a certain bonding moment.

For me, it varies from person to person. I'm not a father myself, but I've helped raise more than a dozen kids over the years. Many years, some of those kids have kids of their own now. To answer the question, I think of two sisters, who are cousins of mine, and 11 and 13 years younger than me. It seems, from my experience, small girls are either shy or cautious around older/teenage boys, or are drawn to them (not like attracted to, like they see them as bigger kids who can pick them up and carry them, and get them into more fun/risky trouble and maybe deflect some of the blame from them). The younger sister was the former, the older sister was the latter. The older girl was fun when she was small, but got bossy, possessive, and generally bitchy as she got older (like to preteen age). The younger one was shy and reserved, she'd follow her sister around (who would follow me around, or be carried by me), but she wouldn't let me pick her up, except one time she asked for a shoulder ride, and then proceeded to pour a can of soda over my head. But, she started getting attached to me around 8 or 9, and even cried one time when I had to leave, and my aunt and uncle made me put that fire out. So, to come back to the point, whenever I think about them (or I see them in my dreams), the older one is 3 or 4, and the younger one is 8 or 9.

Now if you mean, like, when do they stop sending you gifts? You might have a ways to go. I'm almost 50 and I still get birthday and Christmas cards from my mother. Not so much from my cousins, though occasionally they send me those photo collage cards with pictures of them with their husbands and kids.

I was just gonna say, I just replied to one, and then I saw who I'm replying to. Yeah, sorry, didn't mean to call ya out like that. Not sure if I've seen others.

I haven't, but I've seen another thread about it. Someone said that PieFed blocks this activity, but last time I looked at the thread, nobody had a good answer for why someone's using the system like that.

Reposting was basically a business on Reddit, but Lemmy isn't big enough AND these accounts don't stick around.