Online shopping is great, except when it's not.

One store had two things I wanted listed, so ordered those. Day later "uhh, yeah, we can't get a hold of the things, so your order is cancelled." Fucktastic. At least it was a pay on delivery, so no hassle with money.

Scouring shops day 4 when I thought I had it all done on 2... I even ended up on a neighbouring Estonian site for the last item.

Guess what - it's a shock mount, apparently the hardest thing to find.

Fancy pants interface? Literally next morning they call to personally say it's ready for pickup at their store.

Fuck you expensive microphone? Another call next day "Yeah we gotta order it from Germany, it'll be here in about a week."

Needle in a haystack shock mount? durr....

That is the advantage of going to a physical store - you see that it's there, you can buy it directly.

Good gear is expensive, whoda thunk.

Best part about living in a small country like mine is having to hunt down stores that even sell the good stuff in the first place cuz I don't wanna deal with Amazon.

I especially love it when one store sells the good mic I'm looking for, but another sells a viable shock mount for it, and a third is the only one where I found the interface that pretty much every major and minor mic review site kept mentioning off hand as rock solid.

Still, excited about soon getting an XLR mic, the TLM 102 (and good god the prices on pro mics escalate like nothing i've seen before)

Okay, annoying thing that keeps popping up all the time, but why can't most of these anime-style game design male NPCs to be a bit more interesting than not at all.

Like, been playing Wuthering Waves recently, and the female patrol militia folk have exposed thighs like on the right side of this image, while the men are fully covered.

Why can't we have equality and something like the men also wearing shorts, or rolling up their sleeves, or do what Genshin's Aether did and exposed midriff more often, like the other two in this image (body bases I just found on google)

Like... show some skin, make people question their sexuality, it's good for self discovery, plus it just looks better and gives the NPC mooks some personality.

Just because you're a waifu simulator doesn't mean you should downplay half the people in your world. Or, alternatively, embrace it fully and have zero male characters at all, that works too.

Next segment in my audio dramatization-ish of tales of the Emperasque is done. Took a bit of a, apparently, 8 month hiatus from that, but whatever, distractions happened, and I do as I please.

https://youtu.be/C2A8gOL_yyY

#EMPERASQUE #warhammer40k #audiodrama

Been scrolling pinterest and every so often I find a cool image and all the comments are "this is AI" etc

And it made me think - okay, so?

The problem is with the process and intent of how that image was created. The final result exists forever now, that's just how the internet works.

The outrage is fine as far as I care, the models are built on theft and some people are using these tools to scam, cheat, lie, attack, etc.

But the product will still be there 10 years from now, and let's pretend all the legal and moral and ethical issues got resolved - the generated image is still pretty cool, and as a simple man, that's the end of the thought process. Maybe I like it enough that I save it to a background wallpaper folder.

Art is in the eye of the beholder, and the reality is lots of people just want some cool stuff and don't care about all the other things people talk about around it, and you're not going to turn everyone into a activist for necessary change and improvement. That's work and not high on my priority list. If it's important to you - great! Go for it.

Here's something to be reminded of:

we are about 1/4 done with the 21st century.

Some of you on this platform will live to see the 22nd century. Heck, if I'm careful and medicine continues to advance as it has, I might see it as well. Will be a 106 if that happens.

I'm just whiplashing myself, switching from show to show.

Now I'm rewatching the old-ish Top Gear (Clarkson, Hammon, May era, obviously) and it's fascinating how every time their enthusiasm for and knowledge of and experience with cars makes me excited to know about them.

Their chemistry and wonderful friendship is what makes the show irreplaceable, and once I've rewatched it, I will once again quickly forget everything about cars.

But right now I'm like, fuck yeah, old Maseratis, Aston Martin DB9. The Veyron is about to exist! It's great.