I can usually tell the difference between 128/192kbps mp3 and a CD if I listen closely on a good stereo, but can't tell the difference between 320kbps and a CD. Even at 128kbs, mp3s usually sound fine to me, though, for general listening. Mp3s have a distinct compression sound at lower qualities, but even at 128kbps…

Classical music's always been a problem as most music stores, apart from huge ones in big cities, didn't stock it. It's still a problem today as it tends not to be heavily pirated and a lot of the stuff is out of print and not carried by digital music vendors. I gave up buying CDs eons ago, but still buy Opera…

I was super into collecting DVDs in the late 90s and early 2000s, but now never buy anything anymore. I will occasionally buy Blu-Rays of movies that I absolutely love, but that's very rare (I probably have like 10 Blu-rays total).

Between them and BMG I joined at least 3 times and I don't ever remember finishing a contract. They'd just stop mailing me shit eventually. I was 12, so what were they going to do?

Could be that Sansa isn't supposed to be at Winterfell at all yet, so the show writers put Brienne there to apprehend Sansa and take her elsewhere after she escapes. I don't see Sansa wandering into Stannis' camp with Theon or wandering to the wall (can't recall exactly where Jeyne ended up at the end of the book,…

Yeah, that's possible. Now that I think of it, "Littlefinger/Sansa/The Vale" vs "Stannis" in a fight for the north would be more interesting than "Littlefinger/Sansa/The Vale" vs "Boltons" anyway (especially given how tiring the Boltons are as characters). So I actually hope that's what happens.

Yeah. The outcome of the battle for Winterfell is complete speculation at this point (given that it's not resolved in the books either), but Stannis burning Shireen just makes me that much more convinced that the Boltons are going to crush him and the real battle for Winterfell will be Boltons vs…

I'd definitely say the Golden Age is over. Everything on Netflix is awful and the most critically loved show at the moment ("The Americans") is just a pale, rehash, of Golden Age formulas.

Nomi seems a missed opportunity to me. Would have been more revolutionary, I think, had Nomi's gender identity been revealed gradually or just mentioned as a taken for granted fact of her life. I'm only 2 episodes in, but all Nomi seems to talk about is her gender identity, to the point that she's completely defined…

Their choices were spot on, I think. They seem to be picking watershed, massively influential, games, over quality. And all of their choices fit that.

They seem to be picking very safe, massively influential, games. In that sense it's hard to think of many more on the level of Doom/Mario/PacMan/Tetris.

See "Ida" if you haven't. You could take any random frame and hang it on your wall and I couldn't imagine it working in the same way, tonally, if it were in color.

They're shit. The epitome of PG-13 horror that's all jump scares. If that's your thing, though, you might like them.

I don't think "C'mon bitch" works anymore regardless of age. Once a character from Harry Potter says it I think it's time to move on to some other swears meant to indicate that shit just got real.

I don't think "C'mon bitch" works anymore regardless of age. Once a character from Harry Potter says it I think it's time to move on to some other swears meant to indicate that shit just got real. Like, "Come at me, c%nt!" or "Let's tango cumrag!"

1971 was when Fassbinder came into his own. He did 4 very interesting films that contained all the blueprints for his later films: melodrama ("Merchant of Four Seasons" and "Pioneers in Ingolstadt"), icy, self-referential despair ("Beware a Holy Whore"), and a gorgeous looking (yet completely bizarre) genre film…

I don't especially like the Kingkiller Chronicles for a whole bunch of reasons (main one being the awful protagonist), but I think he's a really good writer. It's rare in fantasy that an author will be good at the basic nuts and bolts of writing. So I hope he finishes them soon just so he can start with a new series.

I don't think the show's general lack of Greyjoys bodes well for show Theon's future, though. Theon has a role to play in the books, but the show seems to have forgotten the existence of Greyjoys entirely. I suspect he will either die immediately after being redeemed or, alternately, Meleasandra will realize who his…

The problem with King's Landing is that no one is left, so it plays like a chamber drama between just Cersei, Queen of Thorns, Margaery, and High Cepton.

Yeah. That was a really awful deus ex machina that didn't make much sense at all, to the point that it would seem like if the writers would have written themselves into a corner that only the implausible appearance of Ghost could solve that they would have stopped and realized the scene wasn't very good to begin…