I generally don’t talk about it, but because you asked, I have seen a lot of anime and hate most of it. I have seen Hellsing, Hellsing Ultimate, about 9/10 of the OG run of Fullmetal Alchemist, a lot of Ranma 1/2, Serial Experiments Lain, Akira, some Death Note, La Blue Girl, some tennis one I can’t remember the name of, Castlevania, a few Studio Ghibli movies, Attack on Titan S1 & 2, random episodes of Samurai Pizza Cats, all of One Punch Man, Interspecies Reviewers, Slayers, some DiC Sailor Moon, some early Pokemon, and a few Dragonball, YuGiOh, Digimon, and Naruto episodes.

I don’t count early GI Joe or Transformers even though they’re technically anime, but I didn’t like those either.

Of those, I liked Interspecies Reviewers, about 1.5 seasons of OPM, 1 season of Castlevania, and Hellsing Abridged (because it’s fucking hilarious).

Here’s a random top 10 of reasons:

1. Anime has a horrible habit of having a great premise, a lot of repeated setup, and then zero payoff followed by a new season escalating with the same. In short, great at premise, poor at developing it into a story. And endings? They have no idea how to end a series except for fighting bigger bad guys…
2. And that’s IF they can even be arsed to finish a series. I’m aware of the timeframe dynamic between manga and anime. It fucked over Game of Thrones too. Maybe we just agree not to start a show before the source material is done?
3. Much of the animation looks abysmal and the “serious” ones seem to have an awful habit of just… panning over a scene for fucking ever to fill time. I made note of this during Serial Experiments Lain to my friend who was making me watch it and it basically ruined the show for him. It completely wrecked the pacing and was done CONSTANTLY. There were 45 second pans (which I would start audibly counting after 10 seconds) while the main character just monologued “I’m 12 and this is deep” bullshit that was nearly completely disconnected from the plot. There was no reason to do this. Even recent shows like Castlevania did this.
4. Shit just happens that doesn’t make any sense in context of the world. I hate it when a character breaks established rules of the world, and this is endemic from anime I’ve seen. Anime fans think that randomness is “creative” instead of just “throwing shit at a screen because the writer had a fever dream and it doesn’t matter at all if it makes any fucking sense”. Spirited Away is basically just this. No, randomness is not creativity, Katy the Penguin of Doom.
5. They’re just a different set of tropes than American cartoons, many of which I find to be nonsensical, twee, or cringe-inducing. Bloody nose when you get a boner trope, I’m looking at you.
6. I fucking hate Japanese voice acting (and often for the most part the Americans who dub it, especially in kids shows). This started when Sailor Moon came over and I wanted to kill everyone in the immediate vicinity whenever most of the characters spoke. That shrill panic screaming that was in SM and Pokemon was awful.
7. In the same vein, I also can’t stand constant “reaction sounds”. Someone saying something mildly surprising that you should have easily realized 10 episodes ago isn’t an excuse to stare blankly and make an “AH”, “OH”, or “UH” noise (sometimes followed by a small choking sound) roughly four hundred times per episode. Humans don’t do this.
8. They make movies that just do random shit and don’t have anything to do with the show (if not outright contradict the show).
9. A really weird number of them throw in Nazis seemingly at random, time and place be damned.
10. I am constantly inundated with friends that like anime telling me that I should watch whatever their new anime obsession is despite it conforming to 3/4 of bad things on this list because obviously I just haven’t watched the right anime.

It looks like I will be nearly the only dissenter here. I didn’t care for the game.

PROS:

• The music and sound design were completely appropriate and fit the world.
• An initially interesting story setup.
• Some of the planets have a SUPER cool premise and are a joy to explore.
• The DLC adds some much-needed (albeit mild) horror elements.

NEUTRALS:

• Achievements are implemented, but are mostly for irrelevant side activities. Do you like using a guide to figure out how to get all the achievements? Well, you will have to.

CONS:

• This is not an adventure game, this is a puzzle game first and foremost. If you are not down with figuring out hundreds of vague Dark Souls-style lore blurbs scattered all over in order to work out how to solve environmental puzzles to progress, do not get this game.
• In the same vein, if you are not down with having a loop end before you’re done exploring an area only to have to trek all the way back there and go through everything all over again in case you missed something, do not get this game. This could be partially solved by having the logs you find on a planet permanently NOT GLOW any more after you had read their chain, or maybe a ship notice letting you know there were undecyphered texts on a planet still. I had to re-tread an astounding amount of ground just to make sure I wasn’t missing something.
• When your ship directs you to a planet that you need something from, the navigation on some of them is so obtuse that I found several places I could not find again even after dozens of visits to their planets. A map or better signposting would alleviate this.
• The characters were deeply forgettable, and you are constantly inundated with dozens of gibberish alien names so unless you follow a lore guide or take notes, you’re not going to figure out who did what. And speaking of…
• The story has a veneer of “pretty good sci-fi” but is told quite poorly. You will beat the game, get the incredibly lacklustre ending that doesn’t close out the story in any way, and watch one of many lore explanation videos that will make things click into place. The fact that the lore videos have SO MANY HITS is endemic of the fact that this is a narrative poorly delivered. You will find the lore in random order. If spread over multiple sessions like I played, this will mean you will not make some absolutely needed connections.
• Many things do not make sense within the context of the world and there is no reason for them to be happening at the time except for the hand-waving “It’s a video game” excuse, which breaks immersion. Why only now is sand being moved from one planet to another at the beginning of a cycle? Why only now is one planet being broken by lava? These (and other that I can not speak about due to spoilers) are not explained - the systems have existed for ages and would have (and should have given the environments they set up) occurred before this, but because it makes for a more interesting setup, it all happens now.
• The controls are… an acquired taste at best. Look at many of the negative reviews; many state the controls as an issue. There is a reason for this, even though I did become accustomed to them over time. I swapped to a controller and it was less bad. The keyboard and mouse controls are abysmal.
• I played the final build after the DLC came out, and even this far in development, I had some severe bugs. Controls would get “stuck” and force a game restart, achievements didn’t unlock correctly, etc.
• I wound up quitting because I didn’t know what to do next and didn’t care to watch yet another video to figure it out. There were hundreds of text logs that may or may not have been useful, and no idea how to find what was missing to help me progress without consulting guides, and it became too much. I eventually realized that I was just throwing time into a hole with nothing to show for it. It genuinely felt like it wanted me to give up and I couldn’t help but oblige. I just… stopped. I hated it. I kept doing the same thing over and over and eventually felt that I wasn’t enjoying anything. I hate the very concept of repetition as a game mechanic unless executed well; this wasn’t executed well.
• Despite quitting, I have seen all the endings. The real ending is legitimately nonsense and is basically an appeal to emotion while leaving the reality of the universe behind. It abandons the premise with what can only be described as a narrative hug that does essentially nothing, but presents the veneer of “feel good.” It is nothing. It is empty. Everyone but me loves it for this, and I can’t figure out why.

CONCLUSION: Meh? I really don’t understand the adoration people have for this game. It’s a mediocre non-combat roguelike with about 3 hour of content they’ve spread over 20 hours. It feels very much like a case of style over substance. This game genuinely makes me sad. I really wanted to like it, but… ugh. It feels like work.

A trash heap where it fucking belongs.

There isn’t a thing that you can put ketchup on that a good BBQ sauce or hot sauce isn’t better on. I will die on this hill.

Understanding underlying causes? On Lemmy? Abso-fucking-lutely not!

If you like strudel and Hitler liked strudel, then you’re Nazi by default. That’s just simple logic.

I appreciate it! I mod !actual_discussion@lemmy.ca if you’d ever care to join us.

We try to disagree in good faith and not attack each other there.

That paper is not really a source, it’s a literature review. That’s not inherently bad, but essentially all it does is pull things in from other (if you check, quite outdated by nearly 60 years, which is a lot, ESPECIALLY for biology) articles and say “… and therefore this other thing may be true.” It’s essentially philosophizing.

The paper neither invalidate nor proves anything, it simply makes a loose connection to a strange claim.

The author is correct that we do have characteristics of herbivores. However that is not something anyone was questioning; that’s literally one of the requirements for being an omnivore. We also have characteristics of carnivores. And even obligate carnivores will often have some characteristics of herbivores due to evolutionary holdovers.

The paper is, essentially, saying nothing of value.

Errrr… are you looking for me to provide you a primary scientific source for how teeth work in animals with differing diets? Most of that is in veterinary texts (which is an amalgam of info), but it’s akin to asking for a scientific evidence for gravity. What you’re asking is too broad to be covered in a single paper and shows a misunderstanding of how scientific studies focus and function. I was simply giving you a primer since you asked, and that blog is good enough for that (and accurate from the portion I read).

I can point you at papers (such as this one on Tooth root morphology as an indicator for dietary specialization in carnivores) which can help explain part of how food selection works in evolution, but I’m not sure what level of information would satisfy you or why you’d even want it?

Here’s one on how tooth wear affects teeth differently based on evolutionary eating habits.

Here’s one on the development and evolution of teeth.

Here’s one on mammalian teeth in specific.

If you’d like more, feel free to use https://scholar.google.com/ to look for more.

Human teeth also have sharp peaks and deeper valleys within them which is the case for the overwhelming majority of omnivorous creatures. Most obligate herbivores have flatter teeth or will regrow them unless they have teeth explicitly for a particular use case.

Source: You can check out scads of scientific resources on herbivores versus omnivore versus carnivore teeth. I assume you know how a search engine works, but here’s a solid article on differences.

Also my sister has been one of the veterinary bigwigs at several zoos through her lifetime and we’ve had multiple discussions on it.

Well. My child is that age and I very much relate to the protagonist. Was not expecting a gut-punch this afternoon.

The Jaunt by Steven King

One of my favorites short sci-fi stories ever.

Definitely. When I did all of my forestry work, we were warned about brown bears extensively. Don’t get on their territory. If you have to, don’t take chances. Don’t fuck with them.

I don’t know where the idea comes from that these things will just leave you alone. They will not.

You are correct. I was dumb. I’ve fixed it now! Thanks for letting me know.

Played the OG version with all the DLC and not the Spacer’s Choice version, so take my comments with that in mind:

PROS:

• The music was completely appropriate and fit the world. It was nothing I’d listen to independently though.
• It ran very well the entire time I played it. Very little in the way of hitching, and very quick load times.
• Achievements!
• From beginning to end I was having a darn good time. It’s a “smooth” game experience that I stayed up way too late a few nights in a row to get through because I couldn’t wait to see what came next.
• Many ways to solve issues; you didn’t feel forced to end nearly anything in a certain way. The only exception was one main DLC quest I couldn’t finish the way I wanted due to the level cap being too low and not having enough points.
• Zero bugs experienced.
• Plenty to explore and loads of side stories to discover. Some stories weren’t wonderfully told and were hard to track, but many more than that were awesome.

NEUTRAL:

• It felt like it ended too soon. A game like this with two expansions should have offered more. That’s both a good thing and a bad thing in that it didn’t overstay its welcome either.

CONS:

• Some of the achievements are deeply annoying to the point that I gave up on completing the set. You’d have to waste dozens of hours to grind all of them and play in some pretty odd ways that wouldn’t match normal gameplay.
• There are no romance options for the player, and only thing even remotely like it in game is a gay asexual romance quest for a side character. You get some G-rated come-ons thrown your way, but nothing can come of it. It’s extremely puzzling in it’s puritanicality in both how the colony operates, and how everything is treated. Not that this has to be a porn game or anything, mind you, but some options to do SOMETHING romance-related (or characters that operate like they have genitals) like Mass Effect or Fallout would be nice. Heck, there aren’t even any kids in the world to show that someone had bred ever.
• Some of the environments and buildings are not terribly visibly distinct and it hurt pathfinding. It would tell me to go somewhere specific and I wasn’t sure what it was referring to, and this was after playing for hours. This has something to do with the “corporate jargon” style language they use as well. It fits stylistically, but can be confusing.
• The sidekicks stories felt exceptionally rushed and some of the outcomes were a little nonsensical.
• I beat the game and both DLCs close to 100% in under 37 hours.
• The level cap even with the DLCs is set to 36 which I hit about halfway through the game, and I felt like it needed far more. It really made that feeling of progression you love in these games stop dead. There was nothing to find for new item upgrades or interesting loot past that point. This was my largest gripe with the game by far as it disincentivized exploration because there was nothing to gain by doing so at that stage. UPDATE: The new version of the game supposedly upgrades the level cap to something a little less horrible. I wish this were available during my playthrough as the game isn’t worth going through a second time. If you’re interested, I HIGHLY recommend waiting for the newer edition.

DID YOU FINISH THE GAME?: Yup! And the DLC. Though if you’re playing now, just get the new edition since it fixes the XP progression block that I mention above.

CONCLUSION: While it won’t stick with me for years, it was great while it lasted and I would 100% play more in the series. If you enjoy story and exploration, play this. The only things stopping it from being Fallout-level good was the awful level cap and the lack of content.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Assyria

If the image is true at all, the year mentioned is about 200 years prior to Assyria even being formed. This closely coincides with one of the pre-Assyrian collapse (or massive shift) periods where the society changed a great deal.

Hence “as we know it.”

The writing on this tablet being from a time when his civilization was collapsing. The only change to make his words 100% correct would be “as we know it.”

Boy do I have a treat for you.

Hey, wake up! The new Clippy skin just dropped!

That’s called being a centrist or an independent. Lemmy hates those.

I do. It’s not enough.

No-discussion downvoters are a massive problem here moreso than any other site I’ve ever used.

Oh man… you’re speaking directly to why I made Actual Discussion (consider this a personal invite).

We frequently get one-time posters coming in and flaming (or downvoting without reading) on any thread that may not agree with them, then when challenged with sources, they vanish. It’s brutal. I wish we could disable certain behaviours on our instance or in the Community itself.