CerebralHawks

I’ve never actually played a game (but I have a set!), but, shogi, or, Japanese chess. Nine rows, nine ranks. Three nearest you are yours. The middle three are no man’s land. The second rank only contains generals, two of the new pieces. There’s a silver general and a gold general. Nine pawns. Any captured piece can be reclaimed, at the cost of a turn. It goes back to its starting position (which must be open). All pieces are 2D tiles with black kanji designations. The tiles are directional and always point away from you. (They’re slightly pentagonal.) All pieces can promote by reaching the ninth row. You flip the tile over and the designation becomes red and it gains new moves. (Its name changes too.) Most pieces can’t move backwards. This is one of the main abilities of a promoted (red) piece. The tile always points at your opponent. Games are timed like chess in official matches, and I assume they take longer. They’re typically played on the floor, though I think that’s more a Japanese thing than a shogi thing. If you’re inclined toward anime at all, March Comes in Like a Lion is a nice little cosy slice of life story about a shogi player (and the insert song Nyan Shogi is a bop you’ll love to hate (it’s cats teaching you how to play Shogi)).

Hi! I'm one of the few people who enjoy YouTube Shorts. I don't hate the idea of TikTok, I hate the privacy and political implications. I installed it on my Android phone (already a privacy nightmare) and I didn't hate it. Made an account with a burner email. They send 2-3 emails a day. I didn't get into TikTok per se, but I didn't hate using it. I could have done something about the spammy notifications (which I was getting on my iPhone since I used iCloud's Hide My Email feature), but ultimately I didn't like using it. Even on my TV, I was fine with the vertical videos. Vertical videos shouldn't be a thing because you can/should turn your phone (and some phones used to make you do it to record video!), but I don't hate that they *are* a thing. I only don't like footage that is cropped to look like vertical video. It's like Pan & Scan (4:3 video format that slides back and forth along the original video frame as needed, popular on VHS) all over again. What really fucks me off about YouTube is the AI generated shit. I listen to a lot of Japanese music, so AI generated *subtitles* are not the worst thing in the world. Thing is, I took this song ("Anima" by ReoNa) and I took several translations, including an AI one, and rolled my own subtitles for the video, taking what I assumed to be the artist's intent and going with the words I thought conveyed her meanings as best I could (not knowing Japanese). Like you can say "konnichiwa" means hello/good day, but when you're talking about a philosophical song about the colour of the soul, asking if a person's bravery or hesitation (bordering on cowardice/fear) makes them brave or not... you're not gonna get a very accurate translation, which is why all the translations suck, including mine. But mine is what I chose to go with and it's about as accurate as the others. The worst part is the ads, but it only affects my Apple TV box. On my Macs I use Firefox with uBlock Origin. I also have Wipr2, but that only affects Safari. On my iPhone, I use Safari with Wipr2 and it gets most of the ads. On my Android phone, I use Firefox with uBlock Origin. The only place I'm not protected is my Apple TV, which is why my next one will be a gently used Mac mini so I don't have to use the derpy tvOS — though, notably, tvOS itself is the best smart TV interface (no ads, just icons). I think I can make macOS into a better smart TV platform, with just a few icons on the dock and maximum magnification on hover, the highest zoom setting, and whatever else — I haven't really begun planning it yet. But, I think, with a wireless keyboard/mouse combo (like a Logitech K400 or similar, or one of those game controller looking keyboards you can get on Amazon from China), a Mac (or Linux PC) could be the *best* TV interface. (I'm not ruling out a Raspberry Pi, which kinda seems obvious, I just like Apple stuff.)

Tom Petty and Whitney Houston. Two of my favourite singers of the 1980s and 1990s. Chester Bennington didn’t hit me at all — at first. Linkin Park had been growing out of favour with me, especially with regards to some of the things the band (and I think Chester) were saying about fans who preferred Hybrid Theory or Meteora to the newer stuff. Then I heard what Chester went through in his youth and how the music was therapy for him. It gave context to what he/the others said, and then it hit me. I hate that he felt he wasn’t enough to overcome his demons, but I hope that his music makes the next person stronger. Truly a loss for humanity and the arts. Good on Linkin Park for forging ahead, though I didn’t care for the new record. (Nothing against the singer, I just didn’t like the album.) It’s worth noting that my favourite band was hand-picked by Chester to tour with them, but then he died and that didn’t happen. The band is ONE OK ROCK, originally from Japan (based out of Los Angeles for the last 10 years, though, and most of their songs are in English, or at least their music since the move). They did fine without Linkin Park, but I would have loved to see the two of them together (with Chester). Mike Shinoda either did a few live shows with ONE OK ROCK, or Takahiro Moriuchi did a few live shows with Linkin Park (or maybe just Mike Shinoda), shortly after Chester died. It’s just some live stuff though, and poorly recorded. Taka would have made a better singer for Linkin Park as he could do most of Chester’s style, but I wouldn’t have liked the move as it would have ended my favourite band. So I’m glad we still have both, and maybe Linkin Park’s next album will be better — I will certainly be here for it.

I use DuckDuckGo. And I have a good example: I asked it what the birthdays of the KPop Demon Hunters girls are. (I have an “anime birthdays” calendar on my computer. It’s cool to see who has a birthday, even if it doesn’t really mean much. And I wanted to add the HUNTR/X girls (and maybe Jinu). Duck.ai happily told me that while the girls’ birthdays are not widely known, it still generated a table. It listed a fan site and Wikipedia as its sources. Neither had birthdays listed for the girls. I then found a fandom site (I know, they suck, they’re like the crotch of wikis, or at least the armpit). They listed two of the girls’ birthdays, and their source was an Instagram post by the official social media team. So as far as fictional characters’ birthdays go, that’s good enough for me. I added Rumi and Mira to my calendar. They have nothing for Zoey (ostensibly, her birthday hasn’t come around since the movie came out, which means it’s coming up soon) or Jinu (same, or they don’t care about his). Zeroth rule, optional: Use an AI that is private and won’t use your query to train itself (these are going to be not as good because of the hindrance). First rule: Use an AI that cites its sources. Second rule: Check its sources. If for whatever reason you must use an AI that does not list sources, you can either ask it its sources, or you can fact check them manually (as I ended up doing). Honestly it’s the same as Wikipedia, check the source. AI can be fooled. Wikipedia can be vandalised.

They should do this everywhere, but the speed should be a bit higher. Like if you’re on a cheap unlimited plan and you get deprioritized, it shouldn’t go lower than 5Mbit. The whales paying for priority can still get 50+Mbit or whatever, but they shouldn’t be given 100+ or 200+ so everyone else gets unusable speeds. Adjust the numbers to make it make more sense.

Right. Trump has an iPhone, and _I_ know how to make em dashes on an iPhone, maybe you do, but most likely, Trump doesn’t. Why would he?

Not sure I can trust ice cream from Minnesota. I'd think ice cream from Texas or Florida would be better, when it's a consumable utility for beating the heat. I quite imagine Minnesota as always being at/below freezing. Joking, of course — it sounds awesome.

The flavour of toothpaste (assuming mint) isn't what makes it gross, it's the texture. The taste makes it palatable in your mouth (or at least that is the intention). When I was a kid, cinnamon toothpaste was an option as well. IIRC there are plain options, but they're worse. I've made mint frosting (since shops don't seem to sell it, Wilton's buttercream icing but with peppermint extract instead of vanilla) and my wife says it tastes like toothpaste. Her sister, my niece, and I all love it though. My wife's the odd one here. Mint aversion isn't really that odd, though. It's just a flavour and not everyone is going to like it.

What’s crazy is when you actually want to watch an ad (like a game or movie trailer, or a review of a product you’re considering buying), and you have to watch an ad to watch the ad. You’d think videos advertising a commercial product would pay a fee to cover the ads.

I wish they either just made straight mint ice cream (less peppermint, and more *creme de menthe*... like Andes mints as opposed to York peppermint patties), or had mint and chocolate swirled or cubed together (like how orange sherbet is packaged with vanilla ice cream sometimes). I would fuck that shit up. Mint chip is one of my favourite flavours, but the chips kinda ruin it. If they're the little flakes or shavings, it's fine, but hard chocolate chips in *ice cream* (which is *frozen*) are just not fun.

You do your best and say what you can. It helps if you prepare the speech in advance. If nothing else, you just read it. Better to try and fumble it — everyone will understand — than to not try and regret it for years after.

Typical bully behaviour, to whine when the victim fights back

Was gonna say Enya but everyone is taking paintings. Escher it is, then.

My stepmother told me she didn’t like Star Trek Voyager because it was unrealistic, and would watch Beverly Hills 90210 when it was on. The lives of the characters on Star Trek Voyager is closer to our lives then than 90210 was. One was set on our planet with realistic looking people, but the other had aliens in places we don’t even know exist, all the settings are made up. However, one had people who live impossibly well off lives, while the other had people working together to solve their problems. I’d identify with Janeway, but I drink more coffee than she does. Honestly I’m more like Neelix. Love to cook, good with kids, and a natural mediator. But my favourite character was Tuvok, I always like the logical ones. Spock, Data… DS9 is hard because Odo kind of fits that, but I was leaning more toward Jadzia, not just because she’s hot, but for her scientific background.

Good matches and the health and safety of all players and spectators. Not a fan of football.

Okay, so Bush was there because of 9/11. It’s not that the government knew about 9/11 in advance and got POTUS out of the area. It’s that the government gets hundreds/thousands of threats a day, and that one was credible enough they got Bush out of town just to be safe. Then, when it happened, Bush didn’t react because he was in a classroom full of kids and he did not want to upset them. I’m not saying Bush was a saint, he wasn’t, but a couple things he did weren’t as bad as people think. That’s what that was. As for the “you don’t get fooled again” quote, he knew if he said “shame on me,” the Democrats would use the sound byte, and he was correct. So he course corrected. Made himself look like an idiot to prevent his opposition from making him look worse. Still a bad guy, but let’s be fair, especially with information we’ve learned since.

Interesting. The Internet’s been pretty divided, with a lot of people supporting Epic because they ultimately want to see Apple’s control over iOS reduced, and ultimately, so do I. But the fact is, if Apple allowed sideloading like Android did, Epic would still try to force Apple to allow them on the App Store despite breaking the rules because they want Apple to host their app and its updates. Those of us rooting for Epic aren’t rooting for Tim Sweeney per se, we’re rooting for the change he’s bringing.

Hopefully this will get people to stop pretending Epic is the good guys against Google and Apple. Android and macOS never stopped Fortnite from running on their platform. Only iOS ever did that, because Epic wanted its virtual currency to be sold directly from them and not give Apple their cut. In and of itself, that is not an unreasonable argument, except Apple is entitled to something considering Fortnite has multiple 10GB+ updates, per user, per week. Multiple. They can’t afford that infrastructure, so they have Apple bear the load, but they don’t want to pay for it. That’s what the App Store fees are for. On macOS you also have the App Store, but you can also go around it entirely. The Epic Games Launcher works on macOS. However, Epic does not distribute Fortnite through it on macOS because they don’t want to pay the server costs of the constant, huge, mandatory updates. They just say it’s unavailable. On Android, the Play Store has never been the exclusive app store. You could always just download an app and install it. Recently they warn you it could be harmful, but they still let you do it. Nothing has ever stopped Epic from releasing Fortnite directly on Android, or via the Epic Games Store. Similar to Apple, they just want Google to bear the load. Yes, they recently settled with Google. Now Google will carry Fortnite in the Play Store and support the updates, which are getting neither smaller nor less frequent, and Google will take less money from selling the Fortnite “V-Bucks” (even though you could always buy them directly from Epic, either on their website or via gift cards sold in stores). It was never about the V-bucks. Yes, Fortnite makes money from licensing pop culture stuff and selling it to players, but the game’s true purpose is to advertise the quality and capability of the Unreal Engine it runs on. If you’ve never played Fortnite, do yourself a favour and try it out, preferably on a modern console, or a capable PC. The gameplay is at least as good as old Unreal Tournament (which is what it’s basically the modern incarnation of), and the graphics are outstanding. Yeah, the culture around the game is juvenile, but if you’re good at shooters, you will do okay. I can’t love it, I remember when it was a beta, it was a very different animal to what it is now, and I remember YouTubers I still follow raving about how cool Fortnite was. It still has some of those elements, but it’s not what was originally promised. In many ways it’s more, but I’m not sure all those ways themselves are good. Anyway, while you can say that Apple and Google are “rent seeking,” Epic has always been after free high-demand high uptime web serving. Maybe Apple and Google should have charged less, but Epic was always trying to get something for nothing, and that should be frowned upon as well.

Apple doesn’t really promise device update time frames. They basically support a device as long as it’s feasible because they are still, at their core, a computer company, though they are more focused on the iPhone and related accessories than the Mac lately. They are transitioning to a services company. But still, updates are based on what they conservatively think the device can handle. Even phones that aren’t getting the latest iOS still get security updates. iOS 18 and older versions are still getting updated, but they get no new features. With Android, it’s more about getting people to buy new phones, which isn’t a dumb idea from a business perspective. Back when US carriers were giving phones away a lot more (like 15 years ago), it was actually a game to piss off customers so they go and buy a phone from a competitor sooner. They all benefited from churn. These days, Google and Samsung are offering 5+ years of promised updates, but they don’t support them beyond that, because a customer who won’t upgrade has no value to them. iOS is a bit more polished than Apple, though that’s largely down to the developer. It’s easier to support iPhones because there are fewer of them. But plenty of apps are just fine on Android. Agree with you about a janky Linux phone. I kinda want it to be janky! I miss when phones were kinda rough and you had to know how they worked. I loved messing with custom firmware around 2012-ish. Android Jellybean was awesome for tinkering.

I watched OZ (the prison fantasy show on HBO) before I watched Whiplash and seeing JK Simmons toned way down didn’t bother me as much as someone who didn’t know him as a rapist Nazi before. Fantastic actor, love to watch him work, but he is so good at making you hate him.

Looks like the normal font to me. ;) But anyway, they're still only gonna run on Pixel phones (and Motorola soon, apparently). It's one thing to say "my custom firmware does X, Y, Z," but if you can't install it on any Android phone... I think it's time we stop treating Android like some kind of bastion of freedom or privacy. Android maintainers and custom firmware developers have talked about a unified base for over a decade and it still hasn't happened yet. If you buy a phone in certain regions (like the US, China, and other limited countries) you can't just install whatever you want. The goal has always been to make phones more like computers, where you can "just install Linux" if you don't like Windows. (Well, not the iPhone, that's always been locked down.) But it's never been true of Android. The goal is open hardware you can install anything on. Even a modified version of iOS, if someone's got the balls to host it. Kind of like a hackintosh, but a phone version. Like if you had a PC that had similar specs to an Intel Mac, you could run Mac OS on it (as long as that version of Mac OS supported the Mac you were similar to) fairly easily. We need that for phones. Maybe someday.

It's the brightness and lack of cooling with my M2 MacBook Air. I have that, my iPhone, and my Galaxy S10. I'm on Lemmy on the S10. Even that isn't as bright as my iPhone, but the typing is ten billion percent better.

So only the user process is locked out of the C drive, not the boot/system. Fortunately, the way Windows 10/11 works by default, if you sign into a Microslop account, it backs all that stuff up to OneDrive. At least your documents. And no one’s saying it’s not bad, it just seems like most affected individuals will be able to go about most of their day. I have a Mac, so I don’t need to worry about any of this have separate issues to worry about.

But it can boot into Windows, which is also on the C drive? So it’s not locking users out of the C drive, it’s locking users out of parts of the C drive.

I’ve literally never heard of going to a kid’s party and being expected to pay for anything. Pushing 50, kids’ parties are still a blast. I can hang back with the parents or jump In and give shoulder ride’s and spins and other fun stuff.

I thought you meant “as far as users go” and I would say Loxian, it’s only heard from one mouth, Enya’s, and it’s only known to be known by Enya and her songwriter, Roma Ryan, who invented the language. Based on my limited understanding of what you’re saying — which is not your fault, I think you explained it well enough — I think you’re probably right about Toki pona. A lot of people online know how to read/type it, I think it had a surge about 5-15 years ago. I heard about it but never bothered.

Reddit also hates people who criticize child predators. I question calling something Nordic if it’s based in Panama and headquartered in Lithuania. I get it, it’s just branding, like how Texas Pete isn’t made in Texas (at least it’s not made in New York City, I suppose) but maybe call it something else? IIRC Proton _is_ Nordic, but I don’t know if that makes their VPN better or worse. They do have a free ordering and I use it when I’m on public WiFi because I can, but otherwise can’t vouch for it.

Not sure if this answers your question exactly, but I once heard a guy say “I speak English and bad English.” For me, I speak the King’s English (aka English from England), and I also speak American English. I prefer the King’s English, but there are times when American English is just better. I could not tell you how to spell manoeuvre and even typing it, I have to Google it to be sure it’s right because fuck that word sideways. Maneuver just looks better. But honour, valour, even colour are just… better… than their American counterparts. And centre and metre just feel right, though it’s pronounced -ter. As for theatre, theater and theatre are two different things. Theater is the same thing as cinema, and theatre is where a stage play is performed, or like, the theatre of war. It’s a more dramatic term.

Fixed post title: “May have gotten banned from Wikipedia for possibly making all the verbs on the Ray Romano page hypothetical :(”

Mac guy… I’ll say desktop environments. It’s an advantage over both macOS and Windows. The ability to choose your desktop environment. I prefer GNOME.

Sideloading implies you have to jailbreak, like an iPhone. I could sideload apps on my iPhone if I really wanted to, via sidestore. I just don’t have any use for that (and the better options are paid). With Android, Linux, macOS, or Windows, it’s just installing. I use Macs, virtually no Mac users care about the Mac App Store. It’s trash. We don’t like it, we don’t use it. It’s not on my Dock. It’s in the Apple Menu and can’t be removed from there. So I ignore it. Once in a while I look, see it’s still trash, and ⌘+Q that shit. If apps are signed by Apple, installing is as easy as (install wizards) or easier than (drag app icon on Applications shortcut) Windows. Of course ‘brew install’ via the terminal is even better since it bypasses Apple’s gatekeeper service (or can be made to, I forget). Windows it’s a bit less static (no gatekeeper) but more spyware/malware threats. And then there’s Linux. With Android, it’s more like macOS where you gotta deal with a gatekeeper, but it’s easy enough to deal with… for now. (To be clear, easier than macOS outside of ‘brew’, but not as easy as Windows/Linux.)

If you record your dog talking to (barking at) you and play it back, the dog will think it's another dog barking at them, and they will bark back. Tested with a Jack Russell terrier. They're high strung by nature, but I imagine it'll work with any breed prone to barking into a camera (not all of them will). Of course, the dog has no concept of self. It's *always* another dog. *We* do have a sense of self, and it's often not how others see us. Consider that what you think of as you is only how you see yourself. It's partly what you see in the mirror, but it's also mixed with your ideals, who you want to be, and your shame, reflections of past mistakes. If you have a partner/lover, they see you differently. They tend to amplify your virtues and minimise your flaws. Same if you have a friend, but they still see a different side of you. Parents are stranger still; we tend to see our child for a few stand-out events in their lives. Not just parents, but anyone who's raised a child from one age to another; as they develop, we latch onto one moment. I have two cousins I helped raise, and I always see the oldest one at 4-5 because that's when we were closest. The younger one, I see at either 8 or 15 because those were her best years. They're in their early to mid 30s now. Obviously I *see* them as women (and as mothers) but in my mind, they're the children I helped raise. Ergo, I don't use profanity around them. If I partook in vices like smoking and drinking, I would not do those things in their presence. (Plus, I was always the reliable adult when all the other adults were getting shitfaced, not that it was ever abusive AFAIK, but I was the sane voice in the room, so I wouldn't want to jeopardise that.) For a far simpler explanation, none of us actually sound how we think we sound. The camera does not lie, but we lie to ourselves.

It’s just elitism by people who collect first editions, and/or have the leisure time to sit and read. You have the same division between readers and audiobook listeners. Like fuck you if you work long hours and you listen to a book in the car when you couldn’t otherwise just read. “Stop being poor and come live a life of leisure.” Way I see it, my phone doesn’t get heavier with 100 books on it. So my books are ebooks, or audiobooks. I like to run both at the same time, especially if there are a bunch of names to keep track of (e.g. high fantasy).

To be fair, this guy was kinda trying to game the system (I read the article). You can buy an iPhone straight from Apple (he bought the iPhone 16e) and it’s not locked. This guy went to Verizon, bought a phone from them, and intended to skip out after a month and go to a cheaper MVNO. I don’t disagree with the ruling — he was acting within the rules, and Verizon changed said rules after he signed the paperwork — but this guy doesn’t seem like a saint. I mean, fuck Verizon and all that, no sympathy for Big Red, but this guy was totally taking advantage. Of course, if Verizon makes a deal and he follows the letter of the law, I’m with him, but also, people like this make phone deals worse for the rest of us. Remember when you could get a flagship smartphone for $200 straight up and you just had to keep service for 2 more years? If you were happy with your carrier it was fine, it wasn’t even new customers only. It was like, once that 2 years is up you’re eligible. Verizon even bumped up my eligibility by 2 months when my phone was boot looping. I told them I needed a new phone, either they had to help me or I would be forced to take my business to another carrier, because I couldn’t just not have a phone for 2 months. They said “you know what, you pay your bill on time, we want your business, what phone do you want?” (Then they tried to talk me out of getting an iPhone, 6s, because my last two phones were Android. I said IDGAF about platform wars, the iPhone 6s is the best phone out right now (this was before the Pixel 1 was even announced! But the same year it came out) and it’s the one I want. Rocked that phone for four years.)

The market is kind of a trap. They sell the expensive, high end stuff for the suckers who are willing to buy them, and for those who demand the absolute best — for whatever reason. They all sell cheaper phones. This year, it was incredibly obvious that, dollar for dollar, the iPhone 17 is the best iPhone deal, but Apple got shit earlier this year when they released the 16e at the price used 15 Pros were going for (when the 16 Pro/Max was the latest model). The 16e has a couple advantages over the 15 Pro, like the custom Apple modem and… I think there was one other thing? Very minor though. Apple used to sell a cheaper phone, the SE, and the SE 2 and 3 are modeled after the iPhone 8, but they have the guts of an 11, the difference being, the 3 supports 5G. I had the SE 2 and got it for $250. It was $200 but I paid $50 to go from 64GB (base model) to 128GB. These days, you can’t get an iPhone that low. You have to pay more, or pay with your privacy and go Android. I’ve heard lots of great things about the latest Galaxy A phone. It’s $200, it’s 128GB storage, 4GB RAM (a bit low for modern Android… even a bit low for iOS), “decent-ish” cameras, 6.7", 1080p, and it refreshes up to 90Hz. Apparently, it’s a pretty decent phone for the money. But honestly, privacy or otherwise, I’m kinda done pretending Apple has the high ground or that one brand is inherently better than the other. I still like Apple for the Mac. I don’t like the direction Windows has gone (though I quite enjoy the Windows 11 machine I use at work, and I’ve set it up differently to how everyone else has theirs… I would not choose Windows for my home computer, if it could even run it). As I said, as others have said, phone makers have good phones at lower prices, and the high end is kind of a scam. All you’re missing out on with cheaper phones is AI (which I don’t need or really care about missing) and high end gaming… which I also don’t care about. Apple has some “AAA” Ubisoft and Capcom games like Assassin’s Creed and Resident Evil games on the iPhone, and apparently they look great for running on a <7" screen, but I’m not interested. I’ll take a run in Subway Surfers every now and then, but for actual “gaming,” I have an Xbox for that. I just want my phone to be a handheld personal computing device, and that’s not a good look for gaming.

Huh. Notepad++ is only for Windows? I used to use EditPad when I used Windows. There was something that royally pissed me off about it, but I can’t recall now. I know there was kind of a shenanigans with the name. EditPad Lite was free and there was an EditPad Pro, but IIRC the free one was just fine for most people (and I do believe in paying for software you enjoy using). I dunno, it did something, but now, mostly I just remember it being very good. I have a Mac now and we have TextEdit. It’s never made me want more from a notepad app. Notepad used to suck in Windows. We have it at work and I quite like it. It has Markdown support, but you can disable that if you want. It also has Copilot AI in it, but that can also be disabled. It has Dark Mode which is pretty much all I wanted from my notepad app. I actually quite like my Windows 11 setup at work, but I like my Macs at home a bit better. I also know I don’t have much room to criticise Windows if I’m not running Linux, and there’s no point in bragging about Linux from a Mint or Ubuntu installation; these days you kinda have to use Arch (which you built from source) to really call yourself a Linux user. The rest of us are just plebeians. Of course if you’re using N++ as an IDE, that’s different. I don’t even want line numbers (visual distraction).

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…

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.