Yeah, I keep in touch. I experienced some deprivation as a kid, so as an adult, I pursue interests with glee. Maybe even to my detriment, but overall I think it’s a positive thing to rush toward interesting things.

The flip side is, really draining sometimes, and I push it away in favour of gratification. Could also be a sign of an imbalance in life, if recovering from work-based responsibility doesn’t happen well enough, and it intereferes with personal life responsibilites.

Yeah, Addict is great for what it is especially for thr price. Paying that much for basically a nothingburger seems weird?

If you care about fashion, everything will go out of style every now and then. If you like cargo shorts, wear them. There’s no reason to cater to someone elses gatekeeping. If you think that they don’t fit your look, then that’s a completely different issue.

They are very handy too in all the right ways.

Driving people out because of their past isn’t fruitful. Someone used to have bigoted views but something made them change their mind, and they pushed hard enough to reform their life? Sounds like they wanted it, and are probably a changed person.

I know a few people like this. They help others leave similar situations. Great people doing important work.

I guess when I ran into Aesop Rock, and got absolutely infatuated? I don’t do a lot of rap, so his stuff hitting so damn hard was a surprise.

I remember a few of the other times. Mostly it has taken the right moment, the right mindset and the right artist. A dark autumn evening and a walk in a park for Dark Sanctuary, falling asleep to SunnO))) and waking up to it was a mindblowing experience.

Carpenter Bruts album Trilogy opened up electronic music for me, and Crypt of the Necrodancers soundtrack cemented it.

Oh wow, it’s still going? I really thought the game got shut down! It’s a cool shooter, definitely fun to mess around in.

As it stands, vocational education is faltering but high school is still ptetty strong - and they are mandatory untill you are 18. Not all vocational school/trade schools suck, but I’ve talked with a good deal of young students (hundreds) to get s feel that there are staggering differences in how much the teachers care, or are able to motivte the kids into caring about learning.

If you take vocational education/trade school, there’s a good chance you have a single course or two of publics, history or similar subjects and that’s that.

It’s also turning into a bit of a gender issue, since our high schools are skewing heavily toward female students, with boys opting more and more to do trade school, partially due to lack of grades, partially because they feel like the school system isn’t for them and studying theory is unpleasant or downright hard. So they get demotivated and go where it’s considered “easier”, and scrape by.

After you graduate secondary education, a lot if guys don’t pursue further studies, so their access to education and discourse stalls. Young women do pursue higher education though, but it is not an idel situation at all.

Wasn’t this in an episode of Futurama?

Where are the belching robots when you need them? Or even a giant ice cube.

This seems to be the case yeah. The rhetoric of the left is preaching acceptance and solidarity, but in an uncertain world “feelgood rhetoric” isn’t strong enough. The right are preaching what appear to be solutions (close borders, nationalism, tax cuts to income and gas, segregation and defunding social programs to adress debt) so people buy into it.

What they don’t realise is that the tax cuts hurt the debt cutting messures and eroiding social security hurts nations and paves way for more insecurity, hate and fear (which fuels the right wing machine).

There’s precious little education on politics and choices for 20-somethings, and people are left to try and understand what the media pushes out. Finland benefits from a trusted national news media, though they have been criticized by the right of being politically biased and not worth their budget. So people slanting toward the right tend to be sceptical of it, and are pushed away, toward other news sources.

Social work and sex ed with a smidgen of research.

Tinder is very superficial and a hard platform to find people on. The gender ratio is very skewed and it turns against itself, since the competition for attention is so hard. This benefits the app though, since it makes peopel waste money on superlikes and whatnot - so they won’t ever try to fix it.

You definitely aren’t too old to date around and have fun meeting people. Mingling around in real life might be easier, since you don’t have to rely on a single picture and a few lines of text to impress someone.

An aboslutelty wonderful timewaster has been Brotato. Someone described my relationship to it quite well: it’s like solitaire. Whip it out every now and then for a quick timewaster, win or loose, it’s fun.

Boltgun was great too! So much Warhammer-infused fun.

“Dude just talking to people, everyone can do that”.

Almost anything by Ray Porter is incredibly well read and well produced. NOS4A2 read by Kate Mulgrew is solid.

Thank you, that’s a great list of good stuff. I haven’t seen night of the Demons in Ages, popping that beast into a playee asap!

Nice, thank you! Anna and the Apocalypse is a new one for me. If it’s anything like Repo the Genetic Opera, I’m gonna love it.

Cytotoxin IS great! Listening to Nuklearth, this stuff is great. Thank you for the recommendation!

Yeah, once the out-of-control stuff starts happening with mutilated kids, a lot of people might find their boundaries crossed. Good movie though, shame that there aren’t many like it.

The Deep by Nick Cutter kinda evoked he same feelings, but in book form. Then there are the myriad underwater horror movies like Leviathan and Deep Star Six, but they aren’t the same.

Cytotoxin is a name I’ve seen pop up every now and then, but haven’t given them time. I’ll fix this asap. Beyond Creation is great, a real household name at our home. Algorhythm is a stellar album, and really encapsulates what great tech death can be. It’s not all about speed.

I’m not sure if you like the jazzier side Beyond Creation puts out, but if you do, I think you might like White Ward. They are a black metal-ish (post black metal??) group with a quite big spot given to saxophone. The bands plays well, they have a great sound on their latest album and the songs absolutely kick ass.

I’d love to hear more about your favourites too! Give a penny, take a penny! Especially stuff that isn’t as over-the-top as Psyopus and the craziest stuff Archspire puts out.

Like, I feel that Nile, Origin, Rings of Saturn and their like are at their best, when they blend in some harmony, coherent structure and melody as a contrast to the hammering.