cobysev

Definitely the hard way. I tried to get a CPAP machine, but the VA kept telling me I was borderline and didn’t require it. After 4 sleep studies in 3 years, I eventually got it. But I was already 100% when I retired, so it’s not helping or hurting my rating.

I only expected to submit 2 VA disability claims when I retired; one for my legs and one for my back. But I sat down with a VA counselor before I retired and they spent 3 hours reviewing my medical records and talking over every single inch of my body. By the end, they had 33 claims written up, 30 of which the VA accepted. PTSD alone got me 70% and the other 29 claims inched me all the way to 100%.

For non-military folks, VA disability is not a straight addition equation. A 20% rating and a 20% rating don’t equal a 40% overall rating.

There’s some equation the VA uses that has diminishing returns on each rating. So two 20% ratings might only be a total of 25-30% overall disability.

Not to mention, sometimes the VA will accept a claim but give it a 0% rating, meaning it doesn’t affect me at all, but it might be a problem later in my life. They’re on my record so the VA will cover any issues related to it, but I don’t get any further benefits because it’s not currently impacting my life or health.

So making it to the coveted 100% rating is actually quite difficult. I got a nice boost with that one 70% rating, but the rest required piling on a bunch of smaller ratings to push me through the last 30%.

I retired at 38 years old (20 years of military service, plus 100% disability got me there) and I pretty much just sit around my house all day now.

I spent 2 decades traveling the world and experiencing an extremely busy, productive life. Now I just wanna sit in my quiet, countryside home and enjoy some peace.

It’s not that I can’t get up and out of the house; I’m not that kind of disabled. I just enjoy focusing on myself for once. Investing in my own hobbies, not being at the beck and call of someone else. No deadlines, no alarms every morning, not worrying about making rent this month or feeding myself. It’s wonderful.

Google works if you put a minus ( - ) in front of the word you want omitted, without a space.

For example: correctword -wrongword

It will show searches with “correctword” but omit any search results that also have “wrongword” in it.

EDIT: But yes, don’t use Google if you can.

I thought maybe it was an old sweater mom stole from an ex of hers back in the day that her child just discovered. But then I couldn’t understand why she was crying over it. Yeah, the message of this comic is too ambiguous. I have no idea what’s actually going on.

EDIT: The sweater text said “BOY” with the male symbol for the “O.” Which I thought indicated an old boyfriend. But I’m assuming it’s implying that Mom is trans and used to be a boy? I still don’t understand the crying though.

I have a friend who used to do exactly this. He used to be a bit of a conspiracy nut and didn’t believe in the stability (or validity, for that matter) of the US dollar. He wanted to do all his monetary exchanges in gold and silver, which were very stable and reliable at the time (about 2 decades ago).

I don’t know how exactly, but he converted any cash he earned into gold and then worked out a deal with his local grocery store to buy his groceries with tiny bits of gold.

He was a good kid, if not a little dumb. I think the grocery store humored him. Besides, gold is valuable, so they may have been just ripping him off.

I discovered bidets when I was living in Japan for a few years. I eventually bought my own for my home. Now I feel gross pooping anywhere but my home. Leaving my house for more than a day is absolute torture.

Why do Americans just use toilet paper? If you spill chocolate pudding on the floor, are you just gonna use a dry Kleenex to clean it up? Do you trust it to actually be clean without water at a minimum to scrub with? What if that floor happens to be carpeted? You’ll never get it out with just a dry tissue paper.

Bidets are definitely my “true level” experience. I’ve upgraded every toilet in my house. I can never go back to just toilet paper.

SETTWINGS

I dated this girl in high school. She tricked me. We had a fascinating philosophical discussion after school one day and I instantly fell for her (intellect is my #1 attractive trait). Didn’t help she was also a goth/emo girl. It was the full package. I was in love!

Once we started dating though, she turned into an airhead. I never again saw any hint of intelligence from her. She was blindly loyal to me, though. Wanted to follow me to the ends of the earth, no matter where life took me.

Unfortunately, she needed so much maintenance. She had no dreams or aspirations of her own. No plans for her future. She was basically just coasting through life at the whims of her surroundings. And she was 1000% dependent. If I wasn’t around for a while, she’d slip into depression and start cutting herself. That was the emo side of her coming out. She already had scars on her arms and legs when I met her.

When I joined the military, I decided I needed to end things with her. I couldn’t drag her around the world with me. Military life was already stressful enough; I didn’t need the equivalent of a human pet to care for at home. I needed a human being who could take care of themself. I needed an equal partner in life.

Last I heard from her, she went to college for a year, dropped out, then became a manager at the local McDonald’s next to the campus. She gained tons of weight and started dating some local meth head dude that was at least a decade older than her. I still worry about her sometimes, but I’ve since lost contact with her.

[…] it felt crazily fast-paced […]

It would have been a much better show in my opinion if it had simply slowed down a bit.

To be fair, the original manga that this show is faithfully reproducing was kind of disjointed and jumped around between plots, while also having the Puppet Master plot lingering in the background until it became relevant at the end.

Those small Japanese paragraphs that pop up randomly in the corner of the screen? Those were etched in the margins of the manga. Shirow Masamune had so much world-building in his original work that he didn’t want to slow down his story to explain everything. So he would write blurbs between manga panels explaining the details of the world so you didn’t have to stop the story to absorb more lore. If you wanted to learn more about how the world worked, the info was there, but it was not essential to the plot.

So yes, it was definitely rushed. But a product trying to faithfully recreate the original manga was going to be, as the original work itself crammed a handful of random stories into a single volume.

If they try to make a season 2 based on volume 2 of the manga, expect it to be even more disjointed. With the Major no longer a central focus of the story, the manga started really bouncing around between plot points and characters, not having a real solid focus on anything. It’s probably why there was never a volume 3 made. Volume 2 just wasn’t as interesting or easy to follow as volume 1. It got really absorbed in world-building and not as interested in telling an actual story.

I found the 2026 show to be much easier to follow by binging it as one extra-long story. It feels rushed if you’re watching one episode per week as it’s airing. But if you view the whole show in one sitting as one story stretching across a year or so, each episode feels more like pieces of an overall plot that start to fit together near the end.

My wife and I had to binge the whole show at the end because she was having a hard time following the threads of plot that each episode was weaving. But it all made sense when we saw it all at once.

I found the intentional lean into a more retro style to be fun, but my biggest gripe is also related to that - because they didn’t commit to it hard enough.

That was one of the things I loved the most about this show. It actually replicated Shirow Masamune’s original art style from his manga. No other version of Ghost in the Shell looks anything like the original manga.

If anything, I really appreciate them replicating his art, but modernizing it a bit to look cleaner and more detailed. The original manga was written in the late '80s/early '90s, so none of it is very high-def in appearance and it can be hard to make out what’s going on in some extra detailed panels. But he has an unmistakable unique style that’s not seen in any other manga or anime. So it’s nice to see an anime series done in his particular flavor.

If they had truly committed to “retro” anime style, it wouldn’t look anything like Shirow Masamune’s art. So I’m glad they stuck to his work exclusively.

I’m on the opposite end of the spectrum. As someone who’s been a huge fan of Ghost in the Shell for literal decades, I’m excited to see a new series that’s not only a faithful adaptation of the original manga, but the first video media to replicate the original art style and preserve personalities from the manga. I’m tired of seeing a Major who’s either borderline robot or a strict leader/boss type. Her character has depth and emotions in the manga! She could be hot-headed too!

Other variations of the media have been interesting in their own isolated universes, but nothing has come close to recreating the original work.

I’m actually binging the whole 2026 series right now. I haven’t seen the final episode yet, but my wife was getting lost on the overall plot, having only watched it one episode per week as it’s releasing. So we’re re-watching everything, including the final episode, tonight. I’m excited for the conclusion!

I’m also curious if they’ll make a season 2 that follows volume 2 of the manga. The original work was written as a singular isolated volume, but its popularity led Shirow Masamune to write a second volume after the fact. Plus a volume 1.5 to fill in some gaps between the two volumes.

Regardless, this sole season should tell a complete story without any additional episodes or seasons. That is, if it stays loyal to the manga. And I’m fine with that.

EDIT: I just finished the show. Yup, it was loyal to the manga, right to the end. The Puppet Master bit near the end felt a bit sudden and rushed. They had a few episodes where they could’ve done a better job building it up instead of info-dumping at the very end of the final episode. But otherwise, I highly approve. I’m glad to see a manga-accurate retelling for once.

The 1995 Ghost in the Shell movie was the closest thing to retelling the original manga we’ve had before, and if you’ve seen it, you’ll probably recognize similar scenes and stories in this 2026 show.

But the movie changed the look and personality/behavior of everyone. Not to mention, it had to condense an entire volume of manga into an 80-minute film, so it solely focused on the Puppet Master story, with a few philosophical discussions mixed in. Gotta touch on the philosophy of what the “ghost” in the “shell” is all about, right?

The 2017 Ghost in the Shell was just a live-action retelling of the 1995 movie, with a slightly altered plot. But it flopped because they cast ScarJo to play a typically Japanese main character. Even if they provided an in-universe explanation for why the Major looked American. It didn’t sit well with audiences.

Ghost in the Shell: Stand Alone Complex is its own thing, set in a similar world and maybe touching on a couple familiar stories from the manga, but mostly creating its own plot to explore. It’s excellent on its own, but it has almost nothing to do with the original manga.

Same with Ghost in the Shell: Arise. It was a prequel series, showing the Major’s early days, but it’s not connected to the source material at all. If I recall, I don’t think it’s even canon with Stand Alone Complex either.

Overall, I’m very pleased with this 2026 version and it will be the version I recommend to anyone who wants to get into Ghost in the Shell without reading the original source manga.

“THE VAST ATLANTIC OCEAN.” Nothing to see here…

You can select hidden or public when uploading to Imgur. If you select hidden, no one sees it unless they have the direct URL to the image. If you select public, it uploads to the public feed and everyone on Imgur can potentially see it. It’ll pop up on Newest, and anyone browsing that category can upvote or downvote it.

If your public post gets enough upvotes, it’ll rise to the front page of Imgur. Much like Reddit. And yes, the community can comment on all public posts.

As someone who once slipped and fell down the stairs because the rubber feet on my crutches were just a tiny bit too slick… HELL no.

Looks like Haruko Haruhara, the crazy girl on a Vespa from the “FLCL” (Fooly Cooly) anime series.

Fences

I live in the countryside, so for decades, my area just showed up as a few main roads and a lot of empty map space. I’ve had delivery and mail vehicles fly by my house because they didn’t know where exactly to turn in. Inviting friends over was always a challenge because I need to describe distances and landmarks. Everyone misses the mailbox.

With OpenStreetMap, I’ve not only been able to put in driveways and outlines of houses on the map, but I put in the fences between my property, the 40 acres of conservation wilderness next to me, then the neighborhood on the other side. Now you can actually see the local neighborhoods out here! And every house has an address associated with it, instead of just a number next to the empty road that doesn’t quite match up with driveways.

And since updating it myself, I’ve noticed those details populating on Google and Bing maps too, so deliveries have been more accurate lately. I’m no longer getting mail for my neighbors, or having neighbors drop off my mail that was left at their house.

I volunteer for my town’s parks committee. Lately, I’ve been marking and labeling our parks and trails on OpenStreetMap because locals are always asking where they are. And my town’s homemade maps are ancient and awfully drawn. I spent my whole childhood living here and I’m only now learning about some of these parks and trails in my 40s!

I’ve spent a lifetime irritated with how little information is available on maps for my region, and now I get to update it myself! It’s been wonderful. I’ve even edited details in my local town as construction changed the street layout and no one updated public maps. It’s so convenient!

Hey, I didn’t want to speak for other cultures. I don’t know how many other countries also use this style of tally marks. But I know America does.

American tally marks vs. Japanese tally marks.

It was a singular scene where Moss was fixing someone’s computer and actually hitting it off with her. But he’s so dense, he didn’t realize she was flirting with him.

She’s a nameless extra for this one scene. The show is The IT Crowd, a British comedy show about members of an IT office in the basement of a large corporation.

That’s Google for ya! Their motto was, “Don’t be evil.” That was the two original founders’ motto, which was silently changed sometime after the company was sold.