I mentioned recently that my kids and I are working our way through and really enjoying "Hunter x Hunter". I even posted a link to the first opening. At some point, the show suddenly switched to a different closing song-- and it was power metal! The credits indicated that the song was from a band called "Galneryus". I looked them up, then did some research into the consensus regarding their best album. This research in turn led me to their 2010 work, "Resurrection".
Now I can't stop listening to it! As soon as it's done, I just want to restart it. Their vocalist, Masatoshi Ono is unbelievable: he's like Heavenly's Ben Sotto in that he can sing super high without using falsetto-- but his voice is much more powerful, it projects better and isn't thin sounding. Regarding composition and instrumentation, the album mixes together many different musical elements which I enjoy: 1960's-style Hammond organ, Jazz chord progressions, Jimi Hendrix-esque warbling keyboard work, and kooky stuff like you'd hear in a JRPG.
I like the album so much that I've been exercising much longer than usual, just so I can hear it.
Interestingly, and in a second Heavenly reference, these guys also like to mix somber and serious one moment with jubilant and uplifting the next. It works just as well for them as it does for the aforementioned French dudes. What really got me though: on a separate whim I looked up who did the singing for the "Hunter x Hunter" opening song I like so much-- Masatoshi Ono. Yeah, it's literally the same guy!
Black Bill Nye
In an attempt to get my son into astrophysics, my mother-in-law bought him a couple of books about the subject from some guy I'd never heard of, named "Neil deGrasse Tyson". Excited to read them myself, I started flipping through them and reading various sections. To my astonishment, the books had nothing to do with astrophysics, and were instead like, "There are billions of stars, they are balls of hot gas!"
Disappointed, I put the books down, chalked them up to a missed opportunity, and filed the author's name away in the recesses of my brain.
Some months later while I was investigating the "moon landings", I saw the same fellow's name appear: Neil deGrasse Tyson! I clicked on the video, and it was a Q and A session. One of the questions he was asked was, "Did NASA really land on the moon?" His answer: "Uhhh, yeah! It would be way more expensive to fake it than do it for real! So... yeah, we were really there."
That was his entire answer. Totally nonsensical, especially in the context of the super deep exploration into the subject I was in the process of completing. At this point I looked the dude up, and found that he is a director of a planetarium-- in other words, not some world-renowned researcher, who has made major breakthroughs or anything. It then dawned on me: "This guy is a black version of Bill Nye!" In other words, a phony: an entertainer, not a serious man.
Fast forward to this video I'm watching, with Douglas Macgregor regarding Ukraine and Russia. YouTube's "related" feed once again fed me that same name: Neil deGrasse Tyson. I clicked on it, and got this: totally nonsensical arguments, false claims, shouting at the interviewer, hands shaking, sweat rolling down his double chin, waving his arms around like a lunatic, constantly interrupting.
He even invents his own social science on the fly; I'm paraphrasing, but not by much: "There is a social contract you implicitly signed where if you don't do exactly what scientists tell you to do, then you are not allowed to have a job anymore." I wonder which part of the Constitution says that? I must have missed it. But back to good ole Neil, now he's not only an "expert" in "astrophysics", but in social organization as well! Move on over Thomas Jefferson, you've been superseded.
Patrick Bet-David
Everyone in the West, myself included, has been brainwashed into the truly bizarre view that if you ram people of different racial makeups, contradictory values, hostile-related religions, different languages, and different social mores, somehow the outcome is a functional society. It'd be like saying, "You know what I love about my wife? The fact that we have absolutely nothing in common." Finally, more and more people are seeing the obvious.
Here is a clip from a fellow named Patrick Bet-David. He explains in the clip that he always prays to God for courage, wisdom, tolerance, understanding-- but that he's struggling with what constitutes "tolerance". He has reached the exact same point I have: the idea that Jesus was some kind of passive libertarian hippie is a myth. You should love the sinner but hate the sin, and not be a doormat while other people take over your society with evil.
Another Church
Go to the 2:07 mark in this video to see yet another church-- an Episcopal one this time-- taken over by whackjobs. Even this drives me nuts: it's the right wing doing the same thing! What in the heck is a "freedom church", with their idiotic "love" sign by the door? If your "church" becomes more rooted in chasing the current fads and fleeting political whims of the moment than the Gospel, you should immediately realize you're off the rails.
Revenge of the Blue Collar
Here is yet another reason to go into the trades: AI can't show up at a job site and put plumbing into place, or run electrical wire. I wonder if over the next ten years, we're going to have a reverse "revenge of the nerds" movement?