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Baggie_Saiyan said:
Doing my yearly drop in lol how is everyone?

I've sort of been lazy with collecting anime last couple years & since it is October I usually rewatch Ghost Hunt but all of a sudden it isn't on CR and luckily I have the DVD but it was a wake up call that I have been relying too much on streaming and I really need to start buying my fav shows again!

Been checking at some of my old BDs and some of them are worth quite a bit for example one of the pre scandal DBZ Kai BDs selling for upwards of $100! Just another reason why I am glad I invested in collecting anime back when, so yeah need to get back on that train!
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I'm ok thankyou! How are you? TBH I've stopped being particularly FOMO-y about anime and manga, cuz I don't think I'll ever find time to read and watch everything out there that I would enjoy if I did, so even though I am a physical collector rather than a streamer, I've gotten a bit more philosophical about it, though I get that it would be frustrating if I had seen something and wanted to see it again and it was really hard-to-impossible to access it. I've also stopped bothering with CEs for the most part as I generally don't really go through the extras when I do buy them, though there are exceptions like Revolutionary Girl Utena Blu-ray Deluxe cuz I wear the rings from that all the time and I loved the book with Ikuhara's insights (in beautiful hardcover! I had the Utena DVD collector's sets but the deluxe really feels extra fancy!). It also ofc means generally getting series for cheaper and not having to buy them when they're on early bird for the discounts and availability. I've been wanting to watch Ghost Hunt for a while as I'm a massive fan of Fuyumi Ono's The Twelve Kingdoms anime and quite liked the Shiki anime as well though that was a bit too grim for me to keep to rewatch after one viewing - do you buy US releases at all or import from Australia or just UK region B stuff or? :)
 
RadFemHedonist said:
I'm ok thankyou! How are you? TBH I've stopped being particularly FOMO-y about anime and manga, cuz I don't think I'll ever find time to read and watch everything out there that I would enjoy if I did, so even though I am a physical collector rather than a streamer, I've gotten a bit more philosophical about it, though I get that it would be frustrating if I had seen something and wanted to see it again and it was really hard-to-impossible to access it. I've also stopped bothering with CEs for the most part as I generally don't really go through the extras when I do buy them, though there are exceptions like Revolutionary Girl Utena Blu-ray Deluxe cuz I wear the rings from that all the time and I loved the book with Ikuhara's insights (in beautiful hardcover! I had the Utena DVD collector's sets but the deluxe really feels extra fancy!). It also ofc means generally getting series for cheaper and not having to buy them when they're on early bird for the discounts and availability. I've been wanting to watch Ghost Hunt for a while as I'm a massive fan of Fuyumi Ono's The Twelve Kingdoms anime and quite liked the Shiki anime as well though that was a bit too grim for me to keep to rewatch after one viewing - do you buy US releases at all or import from Australia or just UK region B stuff or? :)
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Yeah I am not to fussed about bells and whistles anymore either like My Dress Up Darling importing the CE was £50 more just couldn't justify it in the end especially since I also collect figures (my twitter is pretty much a merch info account now lol) and play video games too

I also rewatch Shiki this time of year too! It has I think best soundtrack of any anime, I also loved how the show changed who you root for.

Ghost Hunt is great I love the characters and some of the cases are unsettling whilst one is pretty sad.

Tbh I did just buy whatever is cheaper or available
 
RadFemHedonist said:
I did mine the other day and was similarly confuzzled :/
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It’s particularly bad because those “Can you confirm that you never?” questions come at the end of a big list of that were just straightforward “Do you?” questions for which the answer was obviously “No”. There’s no reason these questions couldn’t have been phrased the same except to try and catch people out and then go “Aha, so you cannot confirm that you never do this, meaning you do, money please”. Scummy as hell. If I wanted to be a real d*ckhead about it I’d say “No, I can neither confirm nor deny that I do these things, ask me a straightforward question.”
 
ayase said:
It’s particularly bad because those “Can you confirm that you never?” questions come at the end of a big list of that were just straightforward “Do you?” questions for which the answer was obviously “No”. There’s no reason these questions couldn’t have been phrased the same except to try and catch people out and then go “Aha, so you cannot confirm that you never do this, meaning you do, money please”. Scummy as hell. If I wanted to be a real d*ckhead about it I’d say “No, I can neither confirm nor deny that I do these things, ask me a straightforward question.”
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I thought the same thing - I get that there are valid arguments in favour of the license fee such as getting cultural things that might not be commercially viable without it and potentially less biased news channels (not that I'm saying that's how it plays out in practice, especially now, I'm just acknowledging that argument), but I really don't like their "you're guilty until proven innocent!" approach - I like a fair bit of western media but back when I was living in a shared house with a communal TV in the lounge with a paid license fee (over 10 years ago now), I mostly just ended up watching the same episode of The Big Bang Theory several times a day, tbh I have enough of my time sunk into computers and smart devices without adding broadcast TV into that mix!
 
RadFemHedonist said:
I get that there are valid arguments in favour of the license fee such as getting cultural things that might not be commercially viable without it and potentially less biased news channels (not that I'm saying that's how it plays out in practice, especially now, I'm just acknowledging that argument)
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Kite said:
The TV licence is outdated and just needs to be scrapped with a more modern method of funding the BBC.
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Back when I last had a TV connected to an aerial (over 10 years ago now) and actually watched the BBC I didn’t mind paying the license fee at all, particularly since I felt their reporting was genuinely high quality and non-partisan. I thought BBC journalists did a good job of holding the Blair and Brown governments to account just as they did the Cameron and May governments. Even those BBC journalists with their own obvious biases like Andrew Neil never seemed to go easy on “their side” (despite being an admitted Tory, he regularly made fellow Tories squirm and look like complete idiots). That all changed with Laura Kuenssberg’s tenure as political editor, her obvious cosiness with Boris Johnson and equally obvious hostility to Jeremy Corbyn (you only have to take a glance at her Wikipedia page to see how enmeshed she is in the establishment, it seems like every single one of her relatives has been ennobled or at least has a three letter honour after their name) soured me on the BBC’s “impartiality” forever. I now have as little inclination to monetarily support them as I do Rupert Murdoch.
 
ayase said:
TV Licensing playing dirty, as usual:

View attachment 36208

“Yes, I can confirm I never watch iPlayer and never record TV” or “I can confirm that no, I never watch iPlayer or record TV”?
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On a similar note, I recently had my water provider try to triple my water bill, from what was already quite a high amount compared to what other friends are paying (I live alone in a rented one-bedroom social housing flat, and my water usage is not anywhere near as high as they were saying it has been for the past year), but my friend's mum offered to help and it turns out I've been overpaying for years and that they actually owe me a sizeable amount! I'm lucky I got help but what about people who don't have anyone to help and don't know how to navigate the system? It's awful to think of someone vulnerable being taken advantage of like that :(
 
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RadFemHedonist said:
On a similar note, I recently had my water provider try to triple my water bill, from what was already quite a high amount compared to what other friends are paying (I live alone in a rented one-bedroom social housing flat, and my water usage is not anywhere near as high as they were saying it has been for the past year), but my friend's mum offered to help and it turns out I've been overpaying for years and that they actually owe me a sizeable amount! I'm lucky I got help but what about people who don't have anyone to help and don't know how to navigate the system? It's awful to think of someone vulnerable being taken advantage of like that :(
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Should be punishable by law, they are effectively stealing and taking advantage of vulnerable people, it's a shocking disgrace
 
I went to a meeting today, I met up with a lady from a local Advocacy movement who help people with learning difficulties make a plan as to what they would like to achieve in life, and they help enable as part of a project called Boost they have. They teach cooking skills, computer skills, money management, reading, maths, craft, and even life skills such as shopping, getting the bus and getting a job or voluntary position. I started going to the local group's 'tea and chat' meetings at a local hub and have loads of new friends in the experts by experience that come along. The work they have been doing is great and I'm so happy I have been asked to join as a volunteer too. Thinking on from what you're saying about the bills etc., that sounds like the kind of thing this organisation helps with. I start in a couple of weeks and I can't wait!
 
Anj said:
I went to a meeting today, I met up with a lady from a local Advocacy movement who help people with learning difficulties make a plan as to what they would like to achieve in life, and they help enable as part of a project called Boost they have. They teach cooking skills, computer skills, money management, reading, maths, craft, and even life skills such as shopping, getting the bus and getting a job or voluntary position. I started going to the local group's 'tea and chat' meetings at a local hub and have loads of new friends in the experts by experience that come along. The work they have been doing is great and I'm so happy I have been asked to join as a volunteer too. Thinking on from what you're saying about the bills etc., that sounds like the kind of thing this organisation helps with. I start in a couple of weeks and I can't wait!
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That's really awesome and as a disabled person I'm grateful kind people like you are out there helping! :)
 
Sigh, I've been sitting here at work for the last hour with no commercial power in the area - someone hit a telephone/power pole somewhere nearby, so the whole area is powerless. I'm working on my company laptop on battery power right now, and using a personal hotspot with my company iPhone for network and internet connectivity. Yay.
 
Girls with Guns said:
Sigh, I've been sitting here at work for the last hour with no commercial power in the area - someone hit a telephone/power pole somewhere nearby, so the whole area is powerless. I'm working on my company laptop on battery power right now, and using a personal hotspot with my company iPhone for network and internet connectivity. Yay.
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Oof. Hope power supply is resumed soon, extra worrying if people's fridges and the like aren't working!
 
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