Ryan / Neppermint / kaon_bu / probably a few dozen other names I don't want to remember or let you know about. I've been around for a while.

Essential Roles

Email

Want to get into a heated conversation with me? Send a message to the address below:

If you send me an email and I decide that you're a human, there's an 8̸̨͕͈̟̞̪̻̭̮̺̰̹̾͂̍͌̀̓̌̀5̷̯̎̍̆͊̔̃͆̀͐% chance I will reply!

Ongaku

  • The old parnassus still holds up: Tool, SOAD, Nirvana.
  • Keep this quiet, but Soundgarden might secretly be the best of the Seattle groups.
  • Despite what I thought for some years after high-school, Linkin Park's first three albums (I'm including Reanimation) are actually exceptional. Meteora has a whole second album of solid tracks that were cut! All of them are better than "Nobody's Listening".
  • After watching Frieren I've had YOASOBI in my regular rotation. I think it's solid pop; throw on this album and give them a shot.

Games

I played too many video games when I was young and I do not wish I had played more. Gaming today comes with a quiet shoulder demon that wispers to me that I'm going to die soon and that I am very cool for completing my Pokedex again.

Still, I turn my Switch 2 on from time to time, but I don't find myself excited to try new games anymore. I'm locked into a pattern I felt beginning with the PS3, of replaying the old favorites or things very close in style to them. The old stuff is the best. My perspective is that this isn't boomer goggles; I felt this when the old stuff was still the recent stuff! Once achievements and patches and online rankings came along, the magic began to die.

  • Valkyrie Profile gets a hell yeah (but I can't stomach the dub anymore).
  • Second gen is best.
  • Fourth gen is also best for the remakes.
  • There is only one Kingdom Hearts game (It's called Kingdom Hearts).
  • DMC3 is CRAAAZY
  • MGS 1+3 are still great
  • Sidescrollers peaked with MMZ3
  • I enjoyed my time with BlazBlue (Platinum and Rachel) but I discovered that I am not very good at changing my strategy and reading opponents on the fly, and so I gradually put down the fight stick.
  • Kirby Air Riders is the most shocked I've been in years at a game holding up to hype

I have never liked board games and I don't want to play them with you. No, not that one either.

Movies

There are movies that I like, but I do not like movies. I think Hollywood should shut down for 10-20 years and have a nice blooding. Movie theaters are sticky and noisy places of worship and I hope never to enter one again.

I'm not looking for epic sword fite's. My hope is that I'll find something layered, that changes with rewatches, that my understanding of will morph as I age and enter different parts of my life. This is what I'm searching for with books as well, but it seems prohibitively difficult to accomplish with movies... (a result of the process depending on so many people and teams?)

Off the top of my head...

  • Godfather I+II
  • There Will Be Blood
  • Perfect Blue

There is no third Godfather movie and I hope they never make one.

Books

these are for loser nerds

Rankings and Lists

The below is a collection of lists and opinions. People seem to enjoy the list format on the indie web.

Top four cardinal directions to sleep pointing towards
  1. West — This is an excellent direction to sleep in. Feet forward into the world, looking honestly at where you're headed as we spin. Not a chance of the pesky day moon getting in your eyes if you catch a few extra winks. West is the one.
  2. South — South is a strong contender for second place, and if the genetics of your house and bed arrangement rule out west as an option, this is still a fine choice. If there's a window, you can even see all of the planets! Your mileage might vary in the southern hemisphere.
  3. North — Not ideal. Saint Peter was crucified upside-down because he felt unworthy of the same death as Jesus, but that's a bit dramatic for just going to bed every night. You won't necessarily wake up with all the blood in your head if you sleep facing this direction, but all of the planets will pull on your hairs in the night and give you a headache. Tread carefully.
  4. East — TERRIBLE!!! Easily the worst direction to be sleeping. Not only are you heading headfirst along an arc as earth rotates, but the goddamn sun is going to be right in your face when you wake up! Highly recommend against this one.
"I should have slept facing south!"
Favorite average body temperature

I'm partial to 96° myself. There's something about this number that is calmer than 97°. It's also a known fact that fractional temperatures are a crude fabrication. Why would there be half-degrees? Very silly concept. Yes, it's 96° for me.

Funniest and most original things I've heard people say in elevators
    (These are real observations from the field.)
  • "Wow, sure is crowded"
  • "Got room for one?"
  • "Ugh, it stops on every floor!"
  • "We're about to be really close friends!"
  • "It's ok, let's get cozy!"
  • "It's ok, we only have a couple more floors"
  • "It's the worst going down"
  • "It's the worst going up"
  • "I can't take 10 floors of stairs!"
  • "I'm sure you are all wondering why I have gathered you here today"
  • "This is gonna be a struggle"
  • "Oh boy..."
  • "upsie-daisies!" - Katie
  • "I recommend you going up first to go down"
  • "Oh my god it's stopping one by one, thats why it takes so long"

Strong Opinions

Serious and unhobbyish thoughts within...

A person in search of a way of understanding the world develops his or her own private language and scaffolding. In trying to externalize these thoughts we are guaranteed to be misunderstood; very few people are likely to have the patience to learn another's private language in order to try processing their thoughts. Very few of the people who do try will be in perfect accord to agree. Finally, it's a subtlety that rarely goes acknowledged that, in persons truly curious and circumspect, personal knowledge is always undergoing critical revision. One day a sweeping declaration is made and another day it has a caveat.

This is a feature of information and not a bug. It's unfortunate, because it means that you're far more likely to be misunderstood than not, but that makes it even more important to seek out people who are, if not in accord with you, able to patiently listen and understand that there are no bald facts in life. Everything comes with an infinite regression of qualifiers. Constantly reiterating each of these infinite qualifiers is a nice way to never say or do anything, and should be clinically diagnosed as one of the many causes of "analysis paralysis".

As a result, I see a private scaffolding as a shortcut to reaching new understanding as basically essential. One consequence of this is that you will encounter a lot of people engaging with you in bad faith. That's okay. Their goal is probably to flatten the world into an orthogonal set of one-dimensional problems, on which we can be either right or wrong. No problems (or at least very few problems) actually work this way.

Therefore, any time I say "The World Is Like This", what I mean is "This Is My Current Understanding Of The World Given The Information Available To Me". It is always changing and will be refined up until the day I go senile or die. I guess I'm a Bayesian.