Zero22xx

Posting this here because the metal community seems to be entirely links to tracks and I'm not sure how well received this would be there. Also, I'm open to anything that goes more on the punk rock side of things. I like a little punk in my metal and a little metal in my punk (which is very subjective anyway).

Basically as the title says. I'm bored of my current selection of heavy music and looking for new stuff. To per-emptively get ahead of these answers: yes, I've heard Kittie, Nightwish and Arch Enemy before (actually haven't listened to Kittie since the nu metal days and maybe I should check them out again).

Two bands that I have found in recent years that I absolutely love are:

In This Moment. They started out as pretty much straight metalcore but have a noticeable evolution with each album, to the point that the most recent album sounds like this. Evolution is something I appreciate in a band.

Butcher Babies. Just straight up chaotic. And good shit. And they're even named after an old school punk song. Chaos and attitude is something I also appreciate in a band. Pity that one of the vocalists left though, having two vocalists was something that really set them apart.

Any other suggestions?

Edit: wasn't expecting so many great suggestions here. I promise I'll make my way through each post and suggestion here but it's going to take time. In the mean time, thanks everyone. At this rate I'm going to have more than enough new (to me) stuff to listen to.

An example that I can think of is Teaching English as a Foreign Language (TEFL), which requires a relatively short online course (for a fee, of course) and entails teaching basic english to kids from non english countries online. I've usually known of older and elderly people doing this but I don't think that's a requirement or anything lol. As far as know, the only requirements are high school English and the teaching English course.

Are there any other of these sorts of online jobs that maybe require a short course, and at least potentially bring in enough to pay for the groceries?

Been looking around this place properly today. And it's honestly looking pretty good right now with some nice theming options too. And considering that I've also been giving Bluesky a go, it's pretty cool that you can even link that account.

Just one though. Unless I'm dumb and I'm missing something, browsing groups doesn't seem that great at all. Like, unless you know specifically what you want to search for, it looks like your only option is to scroll through posts from groups until you find something that interests or is relevant to you.

I noticed that there's a directory for users, why not one for groups? Is something like this in the pipeline? I appreciate that a platform like this is a lot more feature heavy and complicated than something like Bluesky or even Lemmy. So I'm not making demands or anything. Just an idea that I think would make it Friendica an even more complete replacement for Facebook.

Personally what I'm looking for out of this is a space where I can crap out my own thoughts and post my stolen memes and shit on my own profile, plus have the community discussion too. On that note, it would also be nice if you could load Lemmy communities in the Friendica interface and 'Follow' them in the same manner.

And just for my questions. First, when it comes to your handle or url, what characters exactly are allowed? Because I tried a dash and a dot in my handle and it wouldn't accept it. Are you really just limited to letters and numbers?

Second question. About the language settings. Is it recommended to also have 'Undefined' selected there, in the same way as here? And why do I still see non English posts regardless? (on that note, a translation feature would be nice too)

Edit: Ok as far as languages go, I just found the language filter addon. Somehow missed it on my first round of going through the settings. Will be interesting to see how this works.

I think I might finally be on the road to getting some sort of diagnosis and learning how to live (although it's still talk right now and who knows if I don't just end up with an appointment 6 months from now). At this point I'm 90% sure it's autism or ADHD or some combination thereof. But I'm also aware of the possible folly of reading into things as far as self diagnosis goes. But I've been lurking and spending time in these sorts of communities for a couple of years now and feel like I've been learning more and more about myself. And I'm pretty sure now that I'm not just stupid and lazy and unreasonably defiant and depressed. I think I just haven't learnt how to function in a world that wasn't made for me.

I'm hoping to ask some advice on if I should do some homework or start making notes about my perceived reasons or symptoms before starting anything official and official. I started out terrible at doing homework and it's got worse as I got older but if there's any important literature that I should read, it would be awesome to know about it and I could push through reading it. And notes, should I start taking notes of things to speak about or bring up?

Thank you in advance. Might only start replying and stuff later became I'm feeling a little scrambled right now and only slept about 4 hours last night.

I hope that this is the right place for this, please let me know if there's somewhere more appropriate because I'm not sure where it actually fits.

Let me just start this off by saying, I recognise that these are kids movies and I also thank these movies for bringing me back into the franchise and revisiting such a big part of my childhood. In fact what's great is that it's introducing a new generation of kids to it.

Just finished Sonic the Hedgehog 3 and after spending the last 6+ months (re)watching all the animated adaptations and (re)playing the games, I really don't think I enjoyed it as much as the first two movies. And I've realised that Sonic has actually been characterized pretty badly here and completely tamed and watered down. And even more so, I feel like this displays a larger problem in mainstream media right now.

Sonic in the '90s and 2000s:

Back in the '90s when I was a kid, we had two Sonic cartoons running at the same time. In both of them, Sonic was an anti-authoritarian "freedom fighter", trying to topple Robotnik's tyranny. One of them had little PSAs like calls to respect those who are different from you or warnings about scammers and false info. It was woke before woke was a thing. The other one involved Robotnik, the tyrant, stomping out free thinking by turning people into robot slaves. A not so subtle message.

In fact even without the cartoons, from the first game it's a pretty easy assumption to make that the little blue guy with the mohawk / spikes that runs around smashing machines and freeing the animals is supposed to be some sort of rebel. I promise that it wasn't too much for my little 7 or 8 year old brain to handle back then.

Then we get to the Modern era of Sonic, which gave us Sonic Adventure with wall to wall heavy metal and cool guitar solos. And little surprises like weed leaves placed in certain locations. And the defacto animated adaptation of this era was Sonic X, where Sonic blatantly shows no respect or even disrespect to authorities fairly regularly. But always with the message of doing the right thing. At one point, he inspires the 'freedom movement' which sees people quitting their jobs by the masses, dyeing and spiking their hair and just living their lives their way (I'd love to know where they got their income from though).

Sonic the Hedgehog movies:

Which brings me to these movies. I had fun watching all of them but now I am realising just how watered down and wrong a lot of the characterisation is. Instead of being about rebellion, it's about 'family'. Instead of heavy metal and weed leaves, it's top 40 pop and McDonald's references. Apart from an Easter egg thrown in here or there like a bone.

And I realised that the characterisation of Sonic, Knuckles and Robotnik are more like Sonic Boom than any game or other adaptation, except with all the adult references and humour removed. And Sonic Boom isn't known for its faithful representations either but still at least has some edge.

The Declawing of Media:

When I look around at the world today, I think that we need anti-authoritarian icons like Sonic the Hedgehog more than ever. But all of the movie studios and all of the artists are beholden to fucking suits that don't want to take any risks in case their precious money flow gets harmed.

And so we're left with a world where the art that used to inspire kids and teenagers to rage against the machine and keep it real has all become safe and boring and paint by the numbers. And so they're being attracted by douchebag podcasters that give them something to rebel against instead.

I feel like the Sonic the Hedgehog movies so far are a great representation of just how stale and corporate everything has become. I believe they call it enshittification. And I'm thinking that maybe Hollywood and the music industry are just as much to blame for the state of affairs today as social media. And not because of the wOkE agENdA but because no one has a fucking spine anymore and everything is trying to chase numbers on charts that go up and down. Enshittification is more than just social media design IMO.

I hope this isn't a question that's already been asked to death, in app search for "mbin" isn't all that helpful.

I'm still in the stages of looking for a permanent home here in the fediverse. So far mbin has really caught my eye because it's basically Lemmy+ for all intents and purposes (at least for mine). I'm not all that happy with what looks like the only Android app though.

So I was wondering if there were any plans to add mbin functionality to any existing Lemmy apps? Even if I used a Lemmy app solely for the 'Threads' or Lemmy section of mbin, then used the web page or only mbin app for everything else, I would be fine with that.

I tried to see if I could sign in with the app that I'm currently using (Eternity), with the kbin.earth instance and no luck. So obviously the API is just that much different.

Are any devs here thinking of expanding their apps in future? Or is there one I've missed? I've seen more than one app with the description "For Lemmy and the Fediverse", but what exactly is meant by "and the Fediverse" is unclear.