A nice reminder of the coffee I drank earlier that day.

FW stage 2 theme arranged in the style of Super Famicom

just kidding

thank you

saving for posterity

for americans: "correlation" is a word meaning "mystical bond"

seems like a good idea

Something surprising but welcome was that funding for addiction treatment continued even through the DOGE stuff. I do some volunteer work in my community building "harm reduction kits" to make it safer for people to use drugs. We would build hundreds of kits and distribute them. Not just naloxone, but clean pipes for smoking or clean tubes for snorting, etc. This might sound counter-intuitive if you're not familiar but this is an evidence-backed Good Thing. It does not induce further drug use or sale, but it prevents avoidable deaths. This was just one of the small things at risk with Trump and now it's gone. It's small in the face of "literal gestapo shooting citizens in the streets" but it's still something that makes me angry. I can't fault someone for not wanting to vote for Harris as she tacitly endorsed genocide, I definitely can't fault someone who couldn't campaign for her as she endorsed genocide. But man, I couldn't stand the "both sides are the same!" people and increasingly less so can I now that some of my neighbors are going to turn into corpses.

got a spare copy

I am not a liberal but I think it's good there's now emerging soul searching on that front about immigration. I appreciate the point on preferring freedom of movement to open borders. Both are reformists, of course, but within that context the former is quite a bit better at capturing on what matters in that context (states signing treaties with each other). Open borders are the centrist position toward no borders, anyways.

is that anything??

# the first half - How do I talk about prostate cancer and biological matters of sex? > **tldr** : Scott Adams died of prostate cancer, lol. What are the risks for trans people? We don't know, but this is yet another place where I need terms for "biological sex". About 1 in 8 men will be diagnosed with prostate cancer in their lives. Dilbert probably saved some lives by publicly dying in this way. But what about trans men (who typically grow prostate cells in their vagina when on T) or trans women (who we reasonably anticipate to have a far lower risk for prostate cancer?) I find myself really wanting to be able to have sex terms to use here. Prostate cancer is one of the places it's relevant. The queer community has settled on "AFAB" and "AMAB" as stand-ins for biological sex, but crucially, these terms _fucking suck_. There are AFAB people with prostates, testes, and penises. There are AMAB people with a uterus or ovaries. This is because AFAB and AMAB are terms taken from intersex communities. For my mileage, "female" and "male" would be ways to articulate a broad set of physical metrics someone has. "FTM" or "MTF" would describe someone who once was described as female or male (respectively), but has taken hormones to change their sex. Used this way, these terms would exclude non-transitioning people. Someone who is transitioning male-to-female has a broad set of unique circumstances. People who are MTF _probably_ have XY chromosomes (for what that matters, such as rates of colorblindedness), and compared to males they have a much higher risk of developing breast cancer and a lower risk of prostate cancer. While people who are FTM _probably_ have XX chromosomes, and compared to females they have lower rate of breast cancer, and their risk of prostate cancer, is ¯_(ツ)_/¯ > Aside: FTM people grow can grow prostatic tissue cells in their vaginas. Any time tissue is growing is a time where there is a risk for cancer. The female "Skene's gland" is the tissue homologous to the male prostate, and that can also grow cancer (and is sometimes referred to as the "female prostate cancer"). I'm having difficulty finding any research at all about FTM people and their risks for cancer in either the prostatic cells or the Skene's gland. So, ¯_(ツ)_/¯ With these terms "male", "female", "mtf", "ftm", I'm also grappling with the facts that transitioning people are very similar to intersex people: They have under-researched and unique health circumstances and they constantly have to grapple with a health institution where they are under-researched. Even in a well-meaning and accepting society, there will be less data on them because there are so far fewer of them. They occupy the literal statistical margins - they are marginalized. These are things that were on my mind, _a lot_. It felt like an impossible question to tackle. I've probably written it all out before here. # It's 1996 baby But as I'm writing it, I'm realizing... Duh? I'm just listing what was the Rote Standard Transsexual Terminology for a long time. Female, male, MTF, FTM, transsexual. Crucially, this would even include people like the cis male r/kitchencels user who is taking estrogen as MTF, or the cis women who are taking testosterone as FTM. Further, this taxonomy excludes _me_ , someone who was on and off HRT for awhile. I have breasts and my testicles are smaller now, and among other things. I'm not male, but I'm not MTF either. Detrans people use ftmtf or mtftm, but even then that doesn't describe me. ¯_(ツ)_/¯ # how are we feeling about the terms "transsexual". "mtf". "ftm". etc I guess I'm wondering how everyone else here feels about this terminology, especially as it relates to "AMAB" "AFAB" terminology being so commonplace. Of course, none of this takes place in a vacuum. Calling non-transitioning trans women "males" might be a useful and benign way to talk about things like prostate cancer if it weren't for the real-world violence associated with that. But calling them "AMABs" is the exact same thing _and_ not necessarily true in the first plce.

This is one of those video essays that are more like audiobooks with supporting imagery and video.

Daily motivation if you're someone who really wants to switch to Linux and really needs an annoying nerd online

I go to a site to buy environmentally handsoap, like a normal person. Brave immediately reports 33 blocked scripts across eight different domains, but I enable them. I am then hit with 24 different trackers across eight different domains. **BAM** I am immediately accosted with (1) automatically playing video showing someone sitting on a beach and **BAM** (2) a rapidly flashing TikTok-style video in the bottom right corner showing smiling white women and girls holding handsoap and **BAM** (3) I go to close it but it seems the hitbox on the "X" is very tiny, so the video takes up my whole screen and starts noise and I have to close it again and **BAM** (4) a `<marquee>` in this year of our lord 2025 stating review stats and money-back guarantees and **BAM** (5) the entire page is replaced with a full-screen popup slowly fading in with the statement **Unlock Your MYSTERY OFFER** (email required) Just to compare, I dust off the old "Amazon dot com" and I search "brand name hand soap refill". Every page is littered with toilet handles and covid tests (I buy from Amazon sparingly and these were my most recent purchases) but nothing more annoying than that. I click "Add to cart" just to look at the nice, utilitarian check out screen. The whole thing costs 40% less on Amazon dot com too. Amazon is _evil_ , and the site is already _so so spammy_. And yet, it's consistently better than 90% of other online shopping sites out there. I end up not buying anything from either site. (The concern about getting imitation handsoap with benzene or whatever is everpresent after all). I just want to wash my hands man.

i'm guessing there's gotta be a name for that

i give them three years until they name it back but they'll never live this down in my mind

applied to three jobs, edited a podcast. all despite being mega tired today. from here on out i'm doin a whole lot of nothing

This madman did what we've always wanted to be done: replicate the Coca Cola formula to such an extent that it's the product is within the range of their own product. Turns out that some of the secret ingredients include white vinegar and tannins (since apparently the real recipe uses coca tea).

I have a jay peg that I think people on this web forum would get a kick out of. They might have a good time viewing it. But there's a catch! It's too big to upload to this fine website.

thank u for saving me from the emergency room and reminding me about the importance of good knife posture

I don't like a lot of music and the music that I do like is one of the following: * Instruments I like, which are usually plucked/struck strings (pianos, acoustic guitar), or other instruments which can be differentiated from the music (so, chiptunes are admittedly good). * Melodically complex with interesting progressions, which generally finds me listening to a lot of classic music . * Music I can listen to in the background of doing work, which usually excludes anything with lyrics. Good videogame music is excellent on its own while also meant to be listened to for an hour on a loop while doing a task, so this is awesome. I find myself listening to a lot of women or dead men, such as Beethoven, Chopin, Barrios, Lena Raine, Lavinia Meijer, Marina Baranova, or Marie Awadis. Metroid music has a special place in my soul _and_ has interesting compositions and melodic complexity. # an aside for Norfair > **tldr** : Norfair was a weird song and one of the worst. Very relatable The song **Norfair** from the NES Metroid is especially fucked up. There's a continuity between this song and Metroid II's _very_ scant music in that Metroid's musicians seem to think the deeper the cave, the shallower the song. So, Norfair's load-bearing melody is this repetitive tune, which almost feels like a playground taunt Then I learned a little bit about music and tried transcribing the Metroid NES music, not anticipating that Norfair would be some kind of fucked up time signature puzzle. It turns out they took out all the stakes of musical rules in order to make the most out of the hardware of the time. Norfair was a pretty strange song as far as Metroid goes, and didn't enjoy the same depth of reimagining the other original tunes got in later titles. Norfair is the only theme from the original NES Metroid not to come back in Super Metroid and Metroid Prime, I believe. (Except for Brinstar- noted later). It did come back in the Zero Mission version as well as a more instrumentally interesting cover for Smash Bros Brawl. But you know the drill: These covers are bare reimaginings of the original, with about the same depth as an HD remaster slapping higher-resolution textures and models. These covers are a dime a dozen for videogame music, even for the much unloved _Norfair_ theme. # but brinstar? oh baby > **tldr** : Brinstar was fun and punchy but did not get as many reimaginings as the other Metroid songs. Brinstar is kind of like Metroid's "World 1-1" theme. It's a punchy fun adventuring song, which is almost thematically at odds with Metroid's vibe of "YOU WILL DIE ALONE IN A PITCH BLACK CAVE". Remember- we might think of Samus as an intergalactic demigod, but in the original NES Metroid she started as a robot barely surviving scraps with hedgehogs and cave bats. Despite being _so iconic_ of a theme, Brinstar would only see three reimaginings. We get one reimagining of the song in Zero Mission and another one later in the Metroid Prime: Hunters demo. And of course, one in Metroid Prime (see later). Super Metroid, despite being a spiritual remake of the original Metroid, eschews the punchy fun Brinstar theme entirely, instead adding several _new_ Brinstar tracks to the series. # Metroid Fuckin Prime Baby!!! > **tldr** : Metroid Prime took the Metroid music and did fucked up things. They were experimental, imaginative, and transformative. This is a thing much more rare than your typical cover. Metroid Prime does something _delightful_ with Metroid's catalogue of music: It transforms so many of the original series into a delightfully textured atmospheric orchestrations with Prime's very particular instrumentation. These songs are not just cheap covers. Kenji Yamamoto my beloved. Take the original NES Metroid's title theme: It chokes the listener with this foreboding, brooding song before opening up into somber, punctuated tones which then give way to an optimistic, energetic melody, before reminding you "YOU ARE STILL ALONE IN A PITCH BLACK CAVE." It matches the progression of a Metroid game where you transition from a coughing baby into a hydrogen bomb. Super Metroid (again, being one of Nintendo's many Super-branded spiritual remakes of their NES hits), takes the original NES title theme and ups the atmoshpere to 11: The atmosphere is gone, YOU ARE ALONE IN A LABORATORY SURROUNDED BY CORPSES. I can't imagine how incredibly hard this title theme must have gone for the budding child watching this sequence in 1994. Because _I didn't need to_. I was a child in 2002 when Metroid Prime hit the Gamecube. I only had the context to appreciate the imposing atmosphere of the title and not the musical inheritance this release built upon. Metroid Prime is where we get this imagining of the Brinstar theme, as well as most of my favorite compositions of the Metroid soundtrack. This is awesome, right? They go so hard and they do so much. Like so much of Metroid Prime, it takes what's good about Metroid and goes further and deeper. # Metroid Metal > **tldr:** This is the point of the post. Much like Metroid Prime, Stemage and Metroid Metal do experimental and imaginative reimaginings of Metroid's music. "Wow," I said, a small child, "Metroid Prime 2 was amazing. I sure would love to be able to beat Super Metroid some day". I could not appreciate how these two Primes both created some fantastic remixes of Super Metroid's Brinstar themes (Tallon Overworld and Torvus Bog, respectively). All I knew was that these series had fantastic music. I knew that I enjoyed that one meme song "Wizards in Winter", by "Trans-Siberian Orchestra", and this was "Progressive Metal". Neat. My older brother (who was a musical prodigy and I'm not joking?) shared with me this neat independent musician called "Metroid Metal". And it was really really good! They're best listened to as albums: Varia Suite, Expansion Pack, and Other Album. I could not appreciate what these were at the time, but I listened to them a lot. Stemage would later go on to work on the entirety of Steven Universe's music catalogue, Bubsy: Paws on Fire, the officially-licensed _Avatar_ Pandora pinball machines, and Super Catboy.

i was concerned before that international powers unilaterally invading other nations to kidnap their leaders was Bad. but it turns out the leader is Bad! thank you for contributing to the national conversation. we really haven't been talking enough about which foreign leaders are Bad. as a sensible political observer you might think that kidnapping world leaders is Bad. but we all have to be grown ups and stop talking about that. instead, have you considered that the kidnapped world leader is Bad?