I’d need more context than a single screenshot and a second of audio. What’s happening leading up to this sound? What came right after? Can you make a video clip with at least 10 seconds of audio to pair with this specific capture? Visual cues and a bit more audio around the event will help make sense of it. As is, it doesn’t sound remotely like whimpering. Or anything recognizable.

Also, The Amazing World of Gumball is an excellent show! I’ve re-watched it 3 times already, and I’m in my 40s. Despite being a kid’s show, it’s highly entertaining no matter your age.

When I became a sysadmin 24 years ago, I figured the general public was still adapting to the rapid overnight advancements and integration into the tech industry. I assumed that as people figured out how to use software and computer technology in their daily lives, help desk support would practically disappear and we’d be able to move our efforts toward fully maintaining systems instead of customers.

I had no idea how resistant the general public would be to actually learning and understanding technology. We went from recommending customers avoid certain bad programs and hardware, to being forced to incorporate them into our infrastructure because the general public didn’t want to give them up.

My professional opinion was overruled many times because someone higher up the food chain wanted to use a device or app that hurt our client base or mission parameters, but was familiar to them, so they wanted it included in our suite of tools.

I’m grateful to see a lot of public resistance to AI, even if corporations are doubling down on their investment into the technology. But I don’t have any hope for the future of technology or the general public who use it daily. AI is just the latest excuse for people to not learn how to use technology efficiently.

I expected younger generations to be raised on this tech and be absolute wizards in its use, understanding it even better than I do! Instead, they were raised on slop and ad-riddled ADHD-promoting garbage apps that rotted their brains and prevented them from learning basic tools and functions. As a millennial, I’ve spent the better half of a decade teaching boomers how to use this tech, and then the next decade trying to reeducate zoomers on how to properly use tech and break their life-long bad habits.

I retired from the IT industry after only 20 years. Now I enjoy tinkering with technology in my free time. I always enjoyed teaching people how to use their personal computers and smartphones, but I can’t spend another minute on a help desk, fielding calls from people who still don’t know how to read error messages that pop up in their face. AI will be the death of the industry if integrated into everything and left unchecked. Maybe it’d be for the best.

NOTE: Spoilers for a 33-yr old film ahead…

As a kid, I enjoyed Mrs. Doubtfire for the Robin Williams comedy. But I hated the ending, because it felt like all the effort of the film was wasted. Robin Williams’ character doesn’t win his wife back and he has to accept the initial conflict of the story is permanent and unresolvable. It felt like a gut-punch and left me feeling sad and unsatisfied.

As an adult, I understand that this film had a more realistic approach to family and relationship conflict and I appreciate it more… but I still feel uneasy about the ending. I can’t get myself to sit down and rewatch it because it just feels so tragic to me. I’d consider this the opposite of a feel-good movie.

It’s kind of funny because I really enjoy gritty realism in my films today. But back in the '90s, films were a happy, wholesome escape from reality. Most people didn’t watch movies for a reminder of their real lives, they wanted to watch a conflict get resolved and everyone live happily ever after. It made us feel better about our lives, like we could find our happily ever after too. Having a “family comedy” that ends with the family broken up and moving on is so heartbreaking and sad. It’s a twist ending that most people never saw coming back then.

Same. How could a machine steal its own IP address? It doesn’t make sense!

I laughed at this joke, then looked over at my end table…

Ah, well… I’m not an auditory learner at all, so I need subtitles for everything I watch. Otherwise, voices kind of turn into white noise to my brain. I need something visual to focus on to follow the spoken dialogue.

The Witch completely went over my head with the thick dialects and Old English language, and whereas visual context clues usually help fill in the gaps, I honestly had no idea what was going on until I re-watched it with subtitles. So I guess YMMV. I personally got more out of this film by understanding exactly what was being said with subtitles.

What I love about this film is that it’s left ambiguous, so you don’t know if the family is actually being cursed or if they’re just letting their isolation and religious superstition drive them mad. It can be interpreted either way.

The witch(es) in the woods? Maybe just some ladies who decided to give up the Puritan life and live as hermits in the wild. We don’t know for sure if they can actually cast spells, or if they’re just high on hallucinogenic herbs or something.

Another thing I love about this film is that the language is preserved as closely as possible to the era it’s set in. Which is difficult, because we only have a handful of writing samples to tell us how they spoke. You definitely need subtitles to have some idea of what’s going on, especially with Ralph Ineson’s gravelly voice.

Robert Eggers did his best to accurately portray an era, rather than modernize it for regular audiences, and that’s why this is such a classic work. Every film he’s created so far has been incredible.

I just watched his film Nosferatu (2024) recently, and it was spectacular! He took the first ever vampire film from the 1920s and reinvented it as an incredibly realistic and terrifying spectacle to watch. Apparently, it’s been a dream of his to recreate that classic film ever since he was a kid, and I think he did a wonderful job with it. I’m excited to see what new films he makes in the years to come.

That was the first Final Fantasy game I played all the way through. And the first one I owned. It will always hold a special place in my heart.

Note: I was a teenager when that game released, and I related hard to Squall’s emo attitude toward everyone and everything. I thought he was so cool. Replaying it as an adult though, I cringe every time Squall has to interact with anyone. He’s basically a whiny baby who only has friends because a bunch of people decide to ignore his antisocial tendencies and indulge his emo behavior. Nobody would tolerate him in real life. Why did I like this character?!

Two of my childhood friends helped develop that game. One of them wrote the music for it, the other was a programmer who helped code it.

In India, it’s a huge taboo to kiss anyone whom you’re not married to. Public affection in general is mostly frowned upon there, and sometimes charged as a crime depending on where you live.

That’s why you never see lovers kiss in Bollywood movies. They always just hug or hold each other at arms length. They would be outraged if two actors who aren’t married to each other kissed on screen.

I use Voyager. I have NSFW posts set to blur. I need to open the thread to see it un-blurred.

I do this so I don’t have random NSFW images popping up on my phone while I’m being antisocial out in public. Yes, I could have the app just block all NSFW posts. But then I would miss beautiful works of art like OP’s post.

This happens to me on Android, but it happens whenever I make a comment on a post. My window shrinks after I submit and stays that way until I close the app and reopen it. Here’s a before and after from about a week ago:

EDIT: It happened when I posted this comment too. Literally, every comment I post does this.

I was wondering why this was marked as NSFW. That explains it.

I’m pretty sure that’s actually just a glass window. I think the entrance is on the opposite side. The carpet side.

I love that Dragon Ball is seen as the quintessential Japanese anime show to Americans, but its plot, setting, and themes are heavily influenced on Chinese culture.

Heck, the series started with Goku as a small, monkey-like boy with a tail, an infinitely-extending pole for a weapon, and he flew across the skies on a small cloud. That’s literally just The Monkey King from Chinese mythology.

I’ve seen the various anime shows. They’re decent, but since the original manga is still not complete, none of them have a real end. They just kind of stop.

The original 1997 anime told the whole story up to The Eclipse event. The first episode was actually right after The Eclipse, then the rest of the series is a flashback to Guts’ whole life leading up to The Eclipse.

In 2012-13, a 3-movie series released called The Golden Age Arc, which basically summed up the story leading up to The Eclipse. I’d recommend watching this instead of the 1997 show. It’s 3 movies instead of 25 episodes, so it’s a bit more focused and doesn’t drag between events.

The 2016 anime picks up after The Eclipse, but didn’t have a complete story to tell, so it basically just goes over some of the bigger events and battles in more recent manga volumes before just stopping. They also tried to CG animate this series too, so the style is a little weird to me.

In 2022, the Golden Age Arc films were extended into 13 TV episodes with some new scenes added. They dubbed this version the Memorial Edition, in honor of Kentaro Miura, the original creator of Berserk who suddenly passed away in 2021.

His manga team is still continuing his work, trying to finally wrap up the manga. According to Miura’s best friend, Berserk was almost finished, and he got enough clues from Miura on the direction of the story that he’s confident he can finish the story the way Miura wanted.

So maybe one day we’ll get an anime that tells the complete story from start to finish.

My apologies, I grew up with the 1957 Zorro TV show, which was a Disney product. I didn’t know he existed before that; I thought Disney created him.

EDIT: Fun fact: when One Piece first came to America, Zoro was original renamed “Zolo.” Because the American translators were afraid of starting beef with Disney over the Zoro/Zorro name.

Also, the Japanese language doesn’t have any “L” characters in it; any words with an “L” get turned into a Japanese “R,” sound, which is basically pronounced like a blend between an “L” and a “D.”

So any Japanese words with an “R” in them could easily be translated as “L.” Zolo and Zoro are pronounced the same to a Japanese person.

I was living in Japan when Naruto first released. I recognized his name because it’s the little pink and white swirly fishcake slice they put on ramen.

His full name is Uzumaki Naruto, which translates to “Whirlpool Fishcake.” So of course, his greatest tool/weapon is a swirling ball of concentrated energy in his hands. And he’s obsessed with ramen.

Negima! also released while I was living in Japan, and the main character’s name, “Negi,” basically means “Green Onion” in Japanese. He’s from Wales, where the national symbol is a Welsh onion (same thing).

Negi is a 10-yr old genius mage who takes on a teaching job at a private academy. His students, who are all older than him, sometimes call him “Negi-bozu,” which is an honorific that’s basically like calling a child “kiddo” or “sport.” But “Negibozu” is also a slang term meaning “onion head,” which is a way to refer to someone as being young and inexperienced.

And it’s not just the Japanese language. The Japanese love English and try to squeeze it into their pop culture everywhere they can, whether it makes sense or not.

I became obsessed with the Berserk manga while I was there. The main character is named “Guts” (Gattsu), which is just an English word.

It not only describes how he was found (a baby nestled in the eviscerated guts of his dead mother who was hanged while pregnant with him), but also his determination and extreme willpower. Dude never gives up, no matter how much the situation is stacked against him. He’s got real guts.

Similarly, One Piece stars “Monkey D. Luffy,” who is basically a human monkey. He’s dumb, a wild child, constantly getting into trouble and scrapping with people. Plus he loves to climb stuff. With his rubber powers, he can stretch and climb pretty much anything.

His powers in Japanese are the “gomu-gomu” ability, which just means “rubber-rubber.” All the devil fruit power names in One Piece are just describing the ability in Japanese.

His crew member, “Usopp,” is a habitual liar. He has a long nose like Pinocchio, and “Uso” means “to lie” in Japanese.

Another crew member, “Zoro,” is an expert swordsman, just like the classic Disney hero Zorro.

There are puns everywhere in Japanese anime, but those are the first few that came to mind from my experience there.

I considered that, but I apparently have a really lumpy, scrotum-looking scalp. I do NOT look good bald. So… I gotta put up with what’s left of my hair as long as I can.

The only reason my hairstyle has changed over the years is because of thinning hair.

I used to have such thick, soft hair, people would joke that I was actually growing fur. Everyone loved to scruff my hair and I got compliments all the time.

But now I’m in my 40s and the family balding curse has caught up with me. My hairline is receding, a bald spot is starting to show, and I needed to change up my style to avoid looking 20+ years older than I actually am. Eventually, I’ll just give up and let it do its own thing, but I need to experience my midlife crisis first. 😉