Chicken eggs are $6.00+ at Aldi. At this rate, Trader Joe’s is the less expensive competitor, which was not the case when Ralph’s eggs cost $1.99/dozen ten years ago.

The day I learned that the Postal Service allows and has the means to ship living chickens through USPS mail was one of the most fascinating discoveries in my thirties.

Just so you know “wessel” is real. We have a ship in port with a Russian captain and he called his ship a “wessel”

As I meet more and more Russians I've been.amazed to find how spot on Walter Koenig's accent really was.

Too bad it wasn't nuclear powered. That would have been precious.

bravo1102 wrote:
Just so you know “wessel” is real. We have a ship in port with a Russian captain and he called his ship a “wessel”

There is So Much praise out there for Wrath of Khan, on the contrary, my favourite film will always be The Voyage Home.

Before the other thread ends up being derailed with the subject of modern music, I have to say if there's another artist who I have problems with it's Lorde. Actually, I should say that I have no problems with Lorde herself, but rather the fact that even though she has multiple songs and albums, the music industry as a whole continues to just treat her like she's a one-hit wonder with “Royals”. Seriously, that is literally her only song you ever hear on the radio or other over-the-air broadcasting. You'd think with the way Taylor Shit is worshipped like she is, that somebody who's said to be her bestie would have a lot more clout and recognition in her industry . . . hell, I heard that Lorde even got pissed off when an Uber driver didn't even recognize/realize who she was (while he went on and on about another celebrity he had just driven for).

kawaiidaigakusei wrote:
Chicken eggs are $6.00+ at Aldi. At this rate, Trader Joe’s is the less expensive competitor, which was not the case when Ralph’s eggs cost $1.99/dozen ten years ago.

The day I learned that the Postal Service allows and has the means to ship living chickens through USPS mail was one of the most fascinating discoveries in my thirties.

I got lucky recently and found 18/$1.99 but it is usually 3.50.

I found out about the mailing a chicken thing during the US Mail crisis near the beginning of the pandemic. Mail was getting delivered therefore chickens were DOA. (Read some article about it)

Just got an email this morning informing me that my old Photobucket account (which I stopped using years ago) has been deactivated because they no longer support free accounts altogether.

Anyone remember when this whole mess started years ago? When they just randomly and unexpectedly decided that they were no longer going to let anybody use their service for free, and so they hijacked all of our accounts and held them for ransom until we paid them to unlock the content we had stored with them? Needless to say, I jumped ship when they happened. Somebody told me about Postimages, so I migrated all of my content over with them instead and have been using their service ever since.

But I mean, there were warning signs that Photobucket was going downhill, such how at one point, they suddenly began resizing and compressing our media, like JPGs for example: I have mostly always saved my content as high-res JPGs, and then all of the sudden, they all had been compressed into crappy low-res 80% or lower . . . I was so pissed about that, because in many cases, my old computer didn't really have much in the way of being able to save backups of anything back in the day (maybe onto CD-ROMs and that was it), so I relied on Photobucket as my main backup for a lot of my files, and then to see most of them had been resized and compressed just set me off. Luckily, once I got my current computer, and was able to save backups onto other devices like USB Flash drives, or even external hard drives, that has helped tremendously.

But yeah, Photobucket can take my middle finger, sit on it, and rotate for all I care.

80% compression on a Jpeg seems pretty high to me. I only have my comic pages at 50% and it looks fine to me. Is there something wrong with my eyes?

I'm just a stickler like that. 80% and lower is when you start seeing distortion and loss of resolution and quality due to the compression. I can remember when I first migrated my comic here and had to convert the website banner to a PNG because the JPG version was automatically compressed and distorted, which I found made the website as a whole look terrible.

Oh, and getting back the Photobucket thing, I did neglect to mention that they had a specific reason for resizing and compressing our content: they apparently were running out of bandwidth from hosting so many accounts with so much content stored with them, and had to start conserving. I'm guessing that was an issue with deviantART at some point too, because I remember a few years ago when I was still active with them, they also compressed a bunch of people's artwork that were uploaded as JPGs.

But again, I'm a stickler like that. I don't spend hours, days, weeks working on these projects of mine to ensure they look as great as they can, only to have their quality decreased and distorted.

J_Scarbrough wrote:

Anyone remember…

It wasn't random XD
They got bought out by a Russian company and switched fro getting money from ads to subscriptions.

I still have my account somewhere… I used to post all the news stuff for this site there. Because of that I paid access and because I got in early it was quite cheap ^_^

Ah yes, Russia. That Capitalist country that America hated up until Trumpy became so palsy-walsy with Putin, then suddenly America loved Russia and wanted to be just like them.

J_Scarbrough wrote:
Ah yes, Russia. That Capitalist country that America hated up until Trumpy became so palsy-walsy with Putin, then sudden America loved Russia and wanted to be just like them.

Russian friendship comes and goes like the tide and is as ephemeral as a castle of sand. The West has a hard time understanding Russia with its history as the gate to Asia and the perceived bastion against Asia but always with an inferiority complex because they think no one ever gives them the credit they deserve nor accepts them as European.

And that Slavic fatalism. Try to have a reproachment and reevaluate the relationship and they walk all over you and rob you blind. It's that proverbial mystery wrapped up in an enigma.

I learned from watching this game show at my ol' folks place last weekend that Putin apparently does have some shrivel of humour in that “No NATO, no nukin' you, Scandinavia” brain of his. He once made a comment on orgies saying “well, the fine thing about that is that like with all collective work you can leave it to someone else in between runs”. That's classic post-soviet humour for ya':P

bravo1102 wrote:
Russian friendship comes and goes like the tide and is as ephemeral as a castle of sand.

Russian people are great. The country… I reserve judgement.
On friendship with Russia as a country- The Balkin states have their stories to tell, haha! I learned some interesting stuff about the machinations during the Ottoman occupation of Greece and Serbia when those countries needed friends to help them achieve independence.

But really when it comes down to it, it's not that much different to any big imperial power who a smaller country comes to for help about that stuff. Even the modern day US is the same in most ways.

Andreas_Helixfinger wrote:
He once made a comment on orgies saying “well, the fine thing about that is that like with all collective work you can leave it to someone else in between runs”. That's classic post-soviet humour for ya':P

HAHAHA!

Should also be remembered that I am half Slavonic (Also called Rusen or Rusin and more recently Carpathian Ukrainian) which a “true” (aka “Muskovite”) Russian will tell you is Low Russian as opposed to Little Russian ( Belarus)

So I have a bit of an inside track. I was raised mostly by the Russian side of the family though aware of the family lineage of the English side.(not British, specifically English.)

Amazingly when in St. Petersburg my mother told off a museum worker in Russian who berated her in Russian about sitting on a bench even though my mother walked with a cane. None of had ever known she retained that much Russian considering her mother always said she lost her Russian going to school at age 8 though we always referred to grandma's parents as baba and gigi which are somewhat equivalent in Russian to “momma” and “papa”. It's not so much the reading or study but what you just absorb growing up despite the distance in years from leaving the homeland.

Before her passing my grandmother left a written account of what she remembered of her parents, growing up and also grandpa's background. I'd heard a lot of the stories as I spent the most time with her growing up after my two siblings moved away. Guess it also helped I'm the spitting image of my grandfather who passed away three years and one week before I was born.

Helped a bit doing “Attack of the Robofemoids ” which takes place in the Soviet Union.

That's an interesting insight into your history Bravo ^_^

“friendship comes and goes like the tide and is as ephemeral as a castle of sand.”
In my experience that really fits an African friend of mine. I doubt it fits all African people though or even people from the same country, region, or tribe, just them hahaha!

Fascinating roots there. Me I have Walloonian heritage, mostly from my dad's side I think - where the Walloon features really comes through both from my dad and his dad, my grandpa - but probably a little bit from my mom as well as her dad, my other grandpa, also was of Walloon heritage.

That said though I have never been to Walloonia, which is located in Belgium I believe, and don't know a single thing about Walloonian culture. I just know that a portion of Wallonians migrated to Sweden in like the 1920's to work in the steel industry we had here back then.

Sigh. I don't get YouTube sometimes. I put so much time, work, and effort into my video content, and yet it as the years go by, the less views and traffic they get - which is not helped by many different factors, such as how broken the subscription/notification system is, and how the algorithms and everything are rigged against smaller channels.

Meanwhile a lot of the Stories (or “Shorts” as they call them) I upload do get quite a bit of attention for some reason, and I can't figure out why. Several months ago, I uploaded a “Short” of just me messing with a rubber dog puppet head having it yawn and say, “This shouldn't happen to a dog!” Got over 3,000 views in one day. My regular videos barely crack 100 views in a month (way back when YouTube was more communal and partner/verified channels didn't exist, I could easily accumulate that many views in a day).

Matter of fact, this past Valentine's Day, I made two versions of the same video; a full version that I uploaded as a regular video…
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jx8I7MwgVIc

And a cut version I uploaded as a Short…
https://www.youtube.com/shorts/d4mlgYqbUvs

It took a couple of months for the full version to surpass the Short version in views and likes, but still, the Short version initially got more attention than the full version did. And ironically, I “corrected” a lot of the “mistakes” that the so-called YouTube “experts” tell me I do wrong with my channel and my content in the full version, in that I made as simple, bland, and boring of a thumbnail, and as oddly specific a video title as possible, and yet, none of this did anything to improve my performance on YouTube - not even including the name and face of one of maintream entertainment's current brightest and hottest stars.

Go figure.

On another note, this is literally the only Short I put any kind of actual work and effort into, but that was because this was shot and edited mainly for my social media like Facebook and Instagram.
https://www.youtube.com/shorts/IcHemByiBLk

Yeah. I sometimes imagine myself giving the whole YT-video gig a go, but then I remember how even some of the bigger channels I've followed struggles to stay afloat now because their content is considered to risky now, disregarding the huge sums of money and attention they've brought to Youtube that made it what it is in the first place.

Plus I feel like already a huge chunk of my energy is going into writing scripts and novel ideas and drawing and uploading comic pages to this site and comicfury. I think video making would leave me burnt out pretty quickly, plus I don't have a clue what to make videos about anyway.

I did check out some of the stuff on your YT-channel though, J. I like that calm, old school feel I get from those videos of yours👍👍👍

I actually am in a position where I can monetize my content, but I never have, and for two reasons. 1. Considering how little traffic and engagement my content receives, I probably would barely make any decent money off of my content to even justify monetization, and 2. YouTube takes way too much for themselves considering how long they've been biting the hand that feeds them: 45% . . . that's almost half! That's too big a piece of pie for them, especially after all of the ways they've screwed over not just me, but other smaller content creators who have struggled on their platform.

Andreas_Helixfinger wrote:
I did check out some of the stuff on your YT-channel though, J. I like that calm, old school feel I get from those videos of yours👍👍👍

Thank you! That's something I've been going for since I started creating content over 15 years ago! Even though it wasn't a time I grew up in, my parents often introduced me to a lot of the shows and stuff they grew up with, much of which is actually quite good, and as such, I do very much try to emulate the overall look and feel of classic, old school sitcoms from years past - right down to using the exact same laugh track, lol.

At least my subscribers/followers can appreciate such, but it's another one of those things that the so-called YouTube “experts” who tell me all the things I do wrong about my content haven't seem to caught on to as they tell me that the video and audio quality, “Isn't up to YouTube standards.”

I finally released the latest Buskers album: Mr. Petersik (And Other So-So Selections)

Why are explosions in film and TV always stupid fireballs?
Real destructive explosions tend to be mainly smoke, debris and dust… unless it's something weird and special. Because it's the shock-wave that does the damage and it's the same shock-wave that causes those effects.

Lots of fire means a slow explosion that doesn't do much, unless you're crispy fried in the middle of it… or it's nuclear.

Just once I'd like to see a car-bomb go off in a TV show that was just dust, smoke and bits of car with almost no fire. I know the common moron idea is that the audience doesn't understand an explosion without lots of fire, but I think that's rubbish. I think with a big blast of smoke, dust and bits it will look far more deadly and destructive.

theyt could probabbly do that with the right sound effects … I'm thinking a big ol BOWOWOWOWOWOWOOOOOOOOM !!! and then a ringign silence with the sound of little bits of crap hitting everything

Explosions have to be in color, so add fire to it. It's like every car going out a cliff suddenly bursts into fire even though there's nothing to ignite anything. It is pretty bad in some shows where it looks like everything is made of napalm.

Of course explosions have to be firey in movies. It's porn for the pyromaniacs that are watching. Where else are they gonna get their freak on media from?:P

Andreas_Helixfinger wrote:
Of course explosions have to be firey in movies. It's porn for the pyromaniacs that are watching. Where else are they gonna get their freak on media from?:P

Blame color film footage. When movies were only black and white, no need for bright colored explosions. But color film loves a good fire.

bravo1102 wrote:
Blame color film footage. When movies were only black and white, no need for bright colored explosions. But color film loves a good fire.

Color film footage made fire look sexy. In fact, if my memory don't serve me wrong there was a Bond intro that had digitally rendered sexy ladies in it made of fire, a testamente to just how horny color film is for the flame. Shame on you color film😆

I think it's a convention based on recieved wisdom, like the idea that actors HAVE to show their faces at all times in a show and can't have masks or even helmets on for any length of time…
The original Star-wars and then Mandalorian proved that so wrong it hurts.

I feel it's the same with fiery explosions,

Andreas_Helixfinger wrote:
Color film footage made fire look sexy.

Were you that pyromaniac in that episode of SVU who got off on fire, and even got aroused by Stabler constantly lighting and blowing out matches during interrogation?

J_Scarbrough wrote:

Were you that pyromaniac in that episode of SVU who got off on fire, and even got aroused by Stabler constantly lighting and blowing out matches during interrogation?

I think I saw that episode on occasion one time:D But, nah, that wasn't me. Never did get any roles in a TV-show, though I was an extra in one murder mystery TV-show that I don't think ever aired. C'est la vie.

This whole conversation makes me want to add more explosions to my comic