Zeus

Any reason why?

The more rules there are, the less participation there tends to be. Even simple themes get more attention than complicated ones. We are reflecting on a few ideas of what to do next, but we want to be careful and not ruin a good thing. But then again, members not holding up their end of the bargain also ruins the experience.

It really sucks to spend time putting together a mix for a trade-off and then not getting a review. If it were once in a blue moon I'd let it slide, but this is the seventh time I've participated and haven't gotten a review back and it's starting to piss me off.

The space race is stupid and motivated by the wrong reasons. Humanity isn't looking to space out of wonder and excitement at what lies in the cosmos. We're looking because we've messed up Earth's climate here and we're looking for a second chance on a new planet. We're going about this in the wrong order. Our planet is so rare and we haven't found another one like it. I don't see a point in returning to the moon because we can't make much of the floating asteroid. Mars is the new hotness but I'm not keen on living in a bubble in a frozen desert. I want to go outside in a T-shirt and feel the sun on my skin the same way I do today. We need to figure out how to terraform a planet and cultivate nature from nothing before we look to another planet, and I honestly believe Venus is a better candidate than Mars. If you can reverse the runaway greenhouse effect on Earth, you can scale it up and test the same thing on Venus. It's easier to get to and more similar to Earth than Mars too. But the whole point is I don't see the point in turning Mars into Earth while we turn Earth into Mars, and we don't have the technology to move humanity to another planet in this lifetime. We need to triple down and take care of the planet we have, and learn how to terraform this planet first before worrying about how to get to another one. If the universe keeps expanding faster than the speed of light, we're going to need FTL travel sooner rather than later if we're serious about exploring the stars, and we're not close to this. I fear all this talk of the new age space race is going to distract people from the problems at home.

We can look into doing something like this for the next Trade-Off.

Glad to know I'm not the only one that throws those out. I didn't know you were supposed to keep them lol.

Nefarious script kiddies have been using my personal e-mail to sign up for services. There's nothing like messages from Instagram telling you what's new when you don't have an Instagram account. What's even worse is that their support number is total shit and a farce; the robotic message basically tells you no one is going to pick up the phone. I had to spend time this afternoon manipulating password recovery services so that I could gain control of the accounts and then purge them from their servers (and I mean purge, not that frou-frou deactivate temporarily bullshit). I guess some people would call it hacking, but it's not hacking if I had access to all the pieces in the first place and it's also not hacking if password recovery services not built with security in mind sends out recovery messages with passwords in plain text. Why don't you just set your username as your social security number and post your security questions and answers on Facebook for everyone to see while you're at it? I'm just glad everyone is equally as fucking incompetent.

Band drama and rumors of an unverifiable nature is one google translate tool and a few clicks away. Lets not do this here.

On one hand, acting is acting. I like to turn my brain off and enjoy the movie, TV show, or story. If the actor or actress is convincing enough, the accuracy of their portrayal of the character doesn't bother me much. So yes, she's right, she should be allowed to play a wide range of characters. ...but not every single character ever. This is the problem I have with her. Plenty of roles are available to her and she's cherry picking the roles least suitable for her, and the roles I'm least likely to suspend my belief over. She's not the only actress in the world. I understand why the trans community was up in arms about the casting decisions made for that movie, and I'm glad she bowed out. I don't have any recs on who would replace her, but that just means it's an opportunity for a new actor or actress to hit the stage.

I've been so tired lately and it feels like a rubber band is wrapped tightly around my brain =(

I thought about this too and one of my answers is that some people integrate facts with their identity so much, entertaining any possibility that they are wrong is to reject their reality and by extension, them as a whole.

What do you mean by "done" @Demivee?

I've been thinking a lot about the death of the age of individual genius. No one calls it that, but that's what I've taken to calling it. Humanity has progressed so far that most, if not all, of the "low-hanging fruit" of scientific discoveries has already been discovered, studied, and refined. There are plenty of things left to create and discover, but that will be done by teams of scientists working together. But it is not the same. Humans have a fascination with the number one, because it's one of the few numbers humans can conceptualize mentally. Teams of scientists don't have the same ring to it that "John Bale, M.D." does, and that got me to thinking if Einstein's theories would have penetrated pop culture as deeply if he worked closely with another scientist and they proposed their theories together. A large part of me thinks that it wouldn't have, because "Einstein & co." isn't as marketable psychologically as "Einstein". With one you can spin a story of team work and collaboration, but the other you can deify into a figure whose last name becomes synonymous with genius. Everyone alive is looking for a way to earn a footnote in the history books, and inventing some new math or new technology is an easy way to do it. Or is it? This is where I see the idolization aspects of American culture eating away at cultural progress. Think back to a few months ago when we captured the first ever photo of a black hole in space, and how quick the press was to assign credit to only one person for a good example on this. Our society is addicted to technology, dependent on it even, and we're constantly pushing people to enter STEM to advance the fields, but we can't name the inventors of many of these technologies without looking it up. Cell phones? Internet? GPS? Wi-Fi? Artificial Intelligence, machine learning, and neural networks? Self-driving cars, voice recognition software, graphical user interfaces? A lot of this stuff expands past casual conversation and requires some real thought to work through, so when things get reduced to simplest terms it turns out that credit doesn't matter if it benefits humanity all the same whether the person knows your name or not. Maybe other scientists read your paper and give you credit, maybe your name hits the newspapers, maybe you win the pop culture lottery and people remember your name for longer than fifteen minutes. Most likely, you'll end your lunch break to get back to those open-ended, graduate level problems in your queue. When it comes down to it, credit shouldn't matter and the discovery should stand as a testament to itself. But our society requires that you have clout in exchange for funds to continue existing research and start new research, and that begins with making a name for yourself. But it's hard to do that when most work is collaborative and your name never appears first on any of the work you do, and you don't get full credit for the work that you do. It's difficult to see the point in continuing to do what I do everyday when all of these "benefits to science" aren't benefiting my pocket or my resume. I've done some crazy impressive shit while people are waiting for the next Einstein to enter the field and do some crazy impressive shit, and it's almost as if people aren't looking for what they say they are. It's twice as depressing knowing that yesterday someone gave a 45 minute talk casting doubt many of my clients have on the value of what I provide to the institution, as if I haven't spent five years of my life untangling 60+ TB of twenty seven of the most poorly managed big data sets I've ever laid eyes on.

Middle aged folks can be "woke" too. There are all types on the internet.

I should have elaborated a bit before I dropped my earlier comment. I'm over the reactionary culture I'm living in right now. All it takes for inane drama like this to boil over is twelve angry people on Twitter with enough followers and too much time on their hands. We've reached the point where you can be offended by proxy; no one has to directly insult you, a straw man that attacks your ideals will do just fine. All I see when I go on Facebook are people one upping each other trying to appear the most accepting and woke about PoC, or posting history lessons about what the original Little Mermaid story was and why skin color doesn't matter, or people posting jokes and memes about it making light of the situation, but I bet you that absolutely none of these people are friends with a racist on Facebook. They filtered them out years ago, and that's my beef. Facebook these days is too many posers who always have to say something and the choir is tired of the sermon, and the sword cuts both ways with this one. It's true that no one will care in a month about this, because in a month it will be a brand new topic to get enraged over, and people will go right back to the front lines, ready to be angry again. Tell her to hide the posts and save both of yourselves some grief. They won't stop, she won't defriend them, you don't really care, hide the posts and save everyone the time. Out of sight is out of mind. That's why I hang out here and not FB.

I'm finding this manufactured controversy around the skin tone of Ariel the mermaid endlessly annoying. Society loves picking at old scars over and over again when we get bored, eh?

It is okay to have strong female characters who kick ass and have large tits.

I prefer to say complementary. There are things one gender is good at or can do that the other can't, and we need each other to survive. I think we've reached the tipping point and we're on our way back to the middle, but this can take years. I don't think we'll see actionable change until people of all walks of life can complain and be heard without banshees screeching in the night about how "it's their turn".

This is where you lost me. Let me explain why. We're on a college campus and we want to create a group focused around celebrating culture and ethnicity. Chinese, Japanese, Korean, and Indian clubs? Good. Black club? Great. Hispanic club? Awesome. White club? No no no, can't support white supremacy here. Maybe instead we want to create spaces for underserved populations. Let's make women only scholarships, black only scholarships, latinx scholarships, etc. and that's seen as being progressive. There's a scholarship for being left handed even! But let's find a scholarship out there where the only qualification is that you have to be white, or that you have to be a man, and suddenly it's regressive and sexist. Do you see what I'm getting at here? Feminism as an ideology is fundamentally flawed because it views the relationships between men, women, and those not on the traditional gender spectrum as a zero sum game where one group must lose in order for another group to gain. This is a flaw deeply ingrained in human psychology. Within this distorted view, the "oppressor" group gaining any ground must come at the expense of the "oppressed", because those resources the "oppressors" have could have been put towards "the oppressed". When men try to stand up for themselves and bring light to their own issues, we are often dismissed by men and women. Our situation is so fractured and fucked that we're not given the vocabulary to discuss it, which is what feminism has empowered women with: a voice. I call this phenomenon spreadsheet equality, because on the surface everything looks as fair as it can be, but fairness and justice are two different concepts that should not be confused. If I sound like an alt-right lunatic, that's because the alt-right is fueled mostly by angry white men who see their opportunities being snatched away from them, unfairly or not. Angry. White. Men. The very group that is blatantly told that they're not allowed to complain because they live life on easy mode, as if life on easy mode doesn't have any challenges at all. They have a point to a point, and much like "the left" (I hate that phrase) they have an agenda, and their agenda is white supremacy, but absolutely no one is taking the time to dissect the points that make sense from the lunacy that doesn't, and we just disregard their points entirely, which kick starts the vicious cycle that sends a vast majority of disillusioned men down the echo chamber that is the alt-right pipeline. Every move made and talking point espoused by anyone anywhere is to further a personal agenda to better their current position in the rat race that is capitalism. Feminists have one. White supremacists have one. Even I have one. Propaganda is a weapon stronger than the nuclear arsenals of the world combined, because it's much harder to kill a belief than a person. And as long as our society continues to believe this "inferior"/"superior" crap in any dimension, we're never going to come to the table and talk as equals. And I say this as someone who has six eggs in one basket and half a dozen eggs in the other.

Acoustic version of DOZING GREEN sounds promising if it's anything like the Before Construction Vers. GRIEF live sounds like it could be good, considering THE DEEPER VILENESS is one of their better re-recordings. I'm cautiously optimistic. Hope the mastering is finally good this time.

https://www.amazon.com/Blank-CD-RW-Discs/b?ie=UTF8&node=3690571 Amazon sells everything.

Three things in life are inevitable as a visual kei fan: death, taxes, and your favorite band ending activities. If you are a fan of llll-Ligro- , then you experienced all three at the same time when they announced their second disbandment. I wasn't super into the band at the time of both of their disbandments, although they were on my radar and not on my shit list, so I can sympathize with fans who had to deal with heart break twice. Fans of yesteryear went through a similar phase with UnsraW's vocalist Yuuki, and depending on who you talk to he still hasn't gotten back to his prime ten years later. The similarities are so striking it's hard to resist the comparison. But this review isn't about UnsraW, it's about llll-Ligro- and their unreleased second album 弔 (Tomurai). The three tracks that managed to survive stand as a reminder for what could have been, and what should have been. Before its cancellation, 弔 was announced for a 2018-05-30 release. Artwork and booklets were probably designed and pressed, but no scans other than the front exist. A track list was released but we don't know how many of the nine unreleased songs were finished. The album was delayed multiple times due to Hinata and Kazari's habit of postponing releases for the sake of quality, but Hinata's refusal to finish recording his parts due to acute chorditis implies that at least some of these songs were unfinished. As is, it will be impossible to give a full review of it, but there are several tracks we can reflect on. Those tracks are comeback single "INVICTA", live distributed single "basket case", and other promotional single "INVISIBLE INDIVIDUAL". "深閑ガラス" (Shinkan Glass) is a track played at their last live but no recording of it exists. 弔 (Tomurai) 1. Blame me (SE) 2. INVISIBLE INDIVIDUAL 3. basket case 4. Shinkan Glass (深閑ガラス) 5. Kuroneko wa Kaku Katariki (黒猫は斯く語りき) 6. Ratai Are Hateta Hyou (裸体荒れ果てた標) 7. DIRGE OF INFECTION 8. HIRAETH 9. INVICTA 10. Mist 11. DEEP SIX 12. Seija no Koushin (聖者の行進) 13. Kanransha wa Adabana to (観覧車は徒花と) 14. Isho (遺書) Despite all the material released as a part of llll-Ligro- 's first phase, "INVICTA" isn't the ball scorching metalcore banger I was expecting. The unassuming opening does a lot to disarm the listener, and on the first listen I thought this was going to be a ballad, but before long the song ratchets up the complexity and the aggression. The band dips their toes into the progressive metal waters with this one, as everything from synthesized piano keys to acoustic guitars and a generous amount of toms and cymbal crashes makes an appearance. Hinata's vocals are one of the most striking elements of the track, featuring his signature skill of deftly switching between harsh growls and pig squeals. Sometimes the transitions are so fast I'm not sure if it's all natural or studio magic, but having to perform that live is absolutely killer. It's a seven minute trip far more realized than most of their contemporaries. If every band has their magnum opus, "INVICTA" could be theirs. This must have been a product of their time as 時限式:uadjet (jigenshiki:uadjet). "INVISIBLE INDIVIDUAL" is a much more straightforward track, and would have been the first track on the album after "Blame me", which is an SE so I don't count it. There are a lot of cool ideas here. I think my ultimate favorite part is around 3 minutes, where Hinata's clean singing is laid over his screaming, creating a great dynamic tension to push the song into it's last section. The piano motif returns again, which makes me suspect that we would have gotten at least one piano ballad on the album. There's also some pretty dope bass slaps before the eagle scream halfway through where I expected a breakdown to appear, which is what cemented my opinion of this track as an above average metalcore dirge. The last track that was released was "basket case", a live distributed teaser that ended up becoming their last official release. This would have followed "INVISIBLE INDIVIDUAL" and does a good job providing contrast to the first track. This wasn't uploaded anywhere else, so I'll try to give a good description of how the track sounds. "basket case" opens up with a short, distorted riff into a chorus with clean vocals with a straightforward, 'four to the floor' drum beat. The main guitar riff of the song sounds mental and the song moves at a frantic yet restrained pace, alluding to the title. Most of the singing is clean and takes place with Hinata's higher register, but mid range barks, growls, and a pig squeal makes an appearance shortly after the second verse. There's a strong emphasis on twin guitar melody for this song. The chorus has a very stereotypical visual kei melodic progression, so much so that I feel like I can place at least the first few notes of "basket case" from another song, but I can't figure out which one it is yet. "basket case" descends into thirty seconds of noise as the track winds down to an end, and I find myself feeling saddened that the album will never be released in its entirety, and that I'll never get to hear "深閑ガラス" (Shinkan Glass). llll-Ligro- hold the crown for visual kei bands with one of the most promising yet unfulfilled musical development arcs of all time, and that's not a title I'm keen on reassigning any time soon. Based on what I've heard, 弔 would have been the album that made a fan out of me. I just know there's a copy of the unfinished masters sitting in a vault in Japan somewhere, and perhaps a second or third copy on a hard drive, but the odds that we'll ever get to see or hear any more of this album are slim to none. At this point, I'd even take a mini-album of whatever is fit enough to be released. A lot of unknowns remain around the members and the state of the band. Can Hinata ever sing again? Is the relationship between Hinata and Kazari too strained to imagine a third reunion? Do they even want to try or will they both move on to new, separate projects? I am reluctant to stoke the fires of hope for the remaining llll-Ligro- fans out there, because that's just cruel, but the scene has shown with both HIZUMI (D'espairsRay) and Yuuki (UnsraW) that there's always a chance for Hinata to return.

probably overkill, but why not rip new copies of the CD so that if they get messed up you still have the originals?

What's this about a megaman song?