“Voice acting as a profession just doesn’t pay,” she said.

True in the U.S. too, as I know from personal experience. And becoming even less true with AI voices that can realistically simulate emotional inflections. Basically, except for a very small number of people, VO is a side gig.

Don’t piss off Teju Jagua.

We are Americans.
We are Americans, oh yeah!
We carry great big guns
'Cause we are Americans!
Oh yeah!

We’re strong (we’re strong!)
And we’re free (we’re free!)
We are Coke, We are Pepsi
'Cause we are Americans
We are Americans.

What we’d like to do for you right now,
is a short history of the United States of America.
First of all a short scene depicting the United States
of America, and their diplomacy.

Hey pal, do whatever I tell ya!
No!
I got a really big gun here…
All right then.

Yeah! Secondly a short scene depicting the United States
of America, and their economy, yeah!
Hey pal, gimme all your money.
No!
I got a really big gun here…
All right!

And thirdly a short scene depicting the United States
of America, and I’m sure we all understand their foreign policy, yeah!
Hey pal, let’s go fight a war in Iraq.
Okay! Where’s Iraq?
Yeah!

And finally a short scene depicting the United States of America, and the settlement,
the settlement of that great nation, we know and love as the USA, yeah.
Hey you Indian. Here’s a bunch of glass beads, gimme all your land.
No.
I got a great big gun here.
Nice beads!

We are Americans
We are Americans, ah yeah!
We carry great big guns, yeah!
'Cause we are Americans

We’re strong (we’re strong!)
And we’re free (we’re free!)
We are Coke, We are Pepsi

And we wear
Canadian flags
When we travel On our bags

'Cause we are Americans (ah yeah!)
We are Americans (c’mon everybody, make like you’re at Woodstock, yeah!)
We are Americans
We are Americans
We are Americans, Here we go!
We are Americans
Everything I do… I do it for you.

– Americans, Corky and the Juice Pigs [who were a Canadian musical comedy group]

Everyone hoping there’s still a chance, you need to remember… this is only a city-killer asteroid.

We need to hope for a much bigger asteroid.

Ok.

I’m not mad that you were too lazy to watch the 30-second ad it’s from, I’m just pointing it out.

You seem mad though.

At least use the right old lady.

Not a good name for a guy who destroys Rome. Maybe Peter the Ex-Roman.

And exactly what do you expect them to use in a surprise kaiju attack?

It’s pretty easy to beat them when they just lie about what they achieved:

https://tech.slashdot.org/story/25/01/28/1315215/deepseek-has-spent-over-500-million-on-nvidia-chips-despite-low-cost-ai-claims-semianalysis-says

While quite impressive, I don’t believe that was the sort of value he was thinking of. I prefer that sort of value though.

But honestly, he bought them because he thought I’d be able to sell them when he was gone and make a bundle. And yes, I did have to sell them. And all the other stuff he collected, much of which was not worth a lot of money.

To his credit, he did once sell a movie poster at Sotheby’s for $70,000. Unfortunately, that just made him think he was even better at predicting value. Especially of movie posters. I have dozens I don’t know what to do with and now my wife will be stuck selling most of them off for cheap along with everything else he’s left us since I can’t take any of it to the UK.

But before the “this will be valuable” thing even kicked in, he was always a collector. Thousands of LPs, and CDs, hundreds of DVDs. Some of them did have significant value- nothing near the value of that poster, but I was doing okay as a full-time eBay retailer for a while- but most of it ended up either given away or, finally, dumped at Goodwill.

Do not leave stuff to your kids unless they really want you to.

I have a very special copy of Maus II.

When I was a teenager, one of my dad’s professor colleagues had Art Spiegelman come over for a conference, and he had a signing afterward. My dad was the very first person in line and he was one of those "this will be worth something one day** people, so he had Art Spiegelman sign each copy, “To [my dad full’s name].” When I was in line next, I gave him my copy and told him my name and he could see we were related, especially since we were talking, so he started signing it, “To [my dad’s full name],” and I said that he was signing the wrong name.

So he signed it, “To [my dad’s name]'s boy, [my name],” and drew a really good illustration of himself as the mouse from the book underneath it.

Also, fun fact, he was the artist who came up with and drew all the original Garbage Pail Kids. ⠀
⠀
⠀
*My dad bought four Big Mouth Billy Bass and kept them in their original boxes for that reason. He didn’t even like them.

As a born-and-raised American who recently got UK citizenship, I would like to say: you filthy Yankee colonials try it and we’ll show you what we did to the bloody Bosh at the Battle of the Somme, what what!

Sure. While kissing Trump’s ass at the same time.

Doesn’t surprise me. Trump and company like when stuff blows up real good.

One of the first things Trump did a couple of weeks ago was a bombing campaign in Somalia. And people still unironically claim Trump is anti-war.

Because Egyptians also hate Palestinians. In fact, a lot of Middle Eastern nations would be happy for Israel to redevelop Gaza into a resort area except that it would mean they couldn’t use Palestinians as a wedge issue.

Egypt has never offered Palestinian refugees the option of citizenship. Their explanation is that if they are given citizenship, they will lose the right of return. Maybe let them decide that? Especially all the ones who were born in Egypt and lived their whole lives in Egypt as second-class non-citizens who do not get as many rights and protections as Egyptian citizens? But they don’t want any of them becoming citizens because they would happily roll over Gaza themselves if it would benefit them.

Every time a cartel member is arrested, which happens constantly, Mexico takes another illegal gun off the streets. The problem is they keep flowing in from U.S. gun stores.

But no, it won’t immediately end all gun violence in Mexico. And if you’re not someone who thinks like Trump or Musk, then you shouldn’t expect solutions to systemic problems will make them go away instantly.

Unfortunately, way too many people do.

Very much so. Toddlers, who almost totally lack empathy, show more empathy.

If a toddler punches their friend and you tell them it’s bad and they need to say they’re sorry, they say they’re sorry. And also feel bad about it even if they don’t know why they feel bad about it.

I’ve known infants that don’t act this infantile when people say things they don’t approve of.

There are two gun stores in all of Mexico.