So much love.

I wasn’t taking notes during it, but this is what I remember to the best of my ability; apologies if there are any inaccuracies:

At this point there is more money coming into animanga from overseas markets than from domestic (i.e., Japanese) markets. Companies are aware that for something to get really financially successful, it has to appeal to international audiences.

And most of that overseas money comes from subscriptions to streaming services. Merch / purchase of physical copies / etc make up only a small % of revenue.

Shonen and isekai outperform everything else to a huge extent. So there continue to be lots of these produced.

About half of all recent/current anime views are going to just a few (like, a single digit # of) series. I believe it was: Solo Leveling, Sakamoto Days, Dan Da Dan, Gachiakuta, MHA, and (I think) JJK. Also Solo Leveling by itself gets far more than any other series.

Quote: "Statistically, if your favorite anime from the last year wasn’t one of these, then no one watched your favorite anime"

Note that these are all shonen (except technically Solo Leveling since the original material is manhwa, not manga, but close enough)

Don’t be surprised that these are the series winning awards, even if you don’t think they hold a candle to [insert your favorite anime here] — there’s just so many more people watching these that it’s virtually impossible for any other series to win.

The only series in the recent top 20 that wasn’t shonen demographic or isekai genre was Apothecary Diaries.

Quote: "Thank god for Apothecary Diaries." lol

Crunchyroll has by far the biggest market share of overseas anime viewership, followed by Netflix to a lesser extent. No other providers come close.

The perception among production companies is that Netflix is where people are getting converted from non-anime viewers into anime viewers, and CR is where established anime viewers go.

Average anime watch time among anime viewers on Netflix is 1.5 hours per month, whereas on CR it’s 1.5 hours per day (?!)

Discovery on Netflix is heavily determined by what the Netflix promotes / actively surfaces to users, and that tends to skew towards particular series — likely reinforces that views are going to already-popular series and that new anime viewers are getting funnelled into certain genres.

Netflix doesn't license all that much anime compared to what they could be licensing, so that further skews things. Also, even if a series is licensed to Netflix, if the Netflix algorithm doesn't actively push it to users, no one on Netflix will watch it.

Rating sites such as MyAnimeList tend to be skewed towards a particular type of fan that is not representative of the actual market, and these ratings are meaningless when it comes to actual success metrics. IIRC he said only a few% of very frequent anime watchers actually rate/review things.

He phrased it as "rating things on MAL is not normal behavior" which made me lol

Anime adapted from light novels tends to perform the best compared to anime adapted from other sources (manga, webcomic, games) and original anime. Adaptations from manga is #2; everything else is wayy behind.

Solo Leveling seems like quite an outlier in this regard since anime adaptations from webcomics tend to be among the least popular

The single feature most correlated with success of an isekai was whether the main female character has big breasts and that’s not a joke.

Quote: "If the main female character has big breasts your anime will likely overperform, and if the main female character is a monster girl your anime will likely underperform. Because things aren’t fair."

At one point he was like yes I really do have to go into serious business meetings and present this anime breast data to client companies.

There’s a perception among audiences that pirating animanga that isn’t legally available in your country will prove there’s a demand for it, and lead to it getting licensed in your country, but this isn’t true. Pirating stats don’t actually have much effect on whether stuff gets licensed — because there’s no reliable conversion from people who pirate -> people who will pay to view legally.

Studios get booked for projects 3-4 years out, so stuff for 2029-2030 is getting booked now. There are a lot of reboots/sequels/franchises/reusing-IPs type projects getting booked, just like what western media studios have been doing, because (as with western media) companies want the reliability of IP that is known to be successful rather than the risk of something new.

This is not fabric

And the answer is, we don't.

The unhoused people who come here seeking refuge 99% of the time understand that they will be kicked out if they misbehave.

The people you have to watch out for are Jessica, who only came because the kid she didn't want had to visit for a homework assignment and she just *needs* to yell at her child for asking to borrow two books or stay an extra five minutes, or Michael, who came in to look at porn on our computers for whatever fucking reason, or Karen who just wanted to come by to throw a fit that the particular book she wanted was checked out and harrass our staff about our collection being too limited.

And we did what we could to help. He was incredibly kind and patient despite his obvious anxiety and stress, more than most able bodied, housed patrons are to us under much less dire conditions. I liked knowing that we were the first place he came.

We have so many people like this who come in everyday. Many are quiet and keep to themselves, but sometimes they talk to us.

They tell us about how they're taking a few courses on a scholarship they applied for from our library's computer at the local community college to get their diploma. Or ask about a manga or dvd or book we might have to help them pass the time.

One woman, who comes in daily with her tattered walker always says hello to me and likes to work on the new jigsaw puzzle with me when we set one out.

So like, treat unhoused people like people. Treat disabled people like people. I don't want my library to feel like the only safe space in the world, but I'm glad it can be one of them.

Forbidding the iranian team coaches from entering the country and forcing them to direct the game from MEXICO through a tv

Players from non european countries being stopped and searched like criminals with dogs

Deporting african referees just because of their nationality

Forbidding interviews from being spoken i'm languages other than English and forbidding journalists and players from speaking their native languages

México City was "modernized" to be appealing to tourists, not functional to people living on it. We have a housing crisis, gentrification issues, several problems with public transportation, and the government has tiptoed around those to prioritize appearances.

Madres Buscadoras, groups of mothers that search for their missing family members, have been ignored and criminalized by the president, attacked by cops guarding the stadium, alongside other protesters like farmers, teachers and students. Students and reporters were arrested without explanation, threatened with violence (women with sexual violence) and then released.

Adding to this, the number of missing people in the country is 133,000. Twice the capacity of the Azteca Stadium. Families tried to raise awareness by pasting posters with the faces of their missing people around the stadium. The governor of Ciudad de México sent workers to take them down.

To avoid "showing a bad picture of the country" streets around the stadium are being closed, hours before the games, in order to deter protestors. People living in this area (like myself) are unable to move freely.

Our president, Claudia Sheimbaum, on one of the morning reports, said México is happiness, said we don't have issues, criminalized the protestors and said they want to show a bad picture of México. Avatar fans actually compared the report to this same scene, the "There's no war in Ba Sing Se" scene.

so then i tried "shag birds uk"

Anyway, early on, I do my rounds one day and get back to my office to record the findings. As I'm looking at one of the photos, I think to myself "Hang on. These look different from the others. They have black heads, not blue, and I think maybe they are bigger. Perhaps these are great tits?"

But of course! As they were still moulting, I wasn't sure; and so, with the wisdom of the terminally stupid, I confidently opened up Google, went to an image search, and there on my work computer in my office in my brand new job, I typed in "great tit chicks."

The results I got were not what I expected. But. Should have been.

I had to IMMEDIATELY go and fess up to my new boss and be like HEY I don't know if you monitor our internet use at all but uuuhhhhhh I can explain. Fortunately she just about pissed a kidney laughing, so it was okay.

The blurb said the shot was taken in Granada, Spain, by Agneta Fondén.  No other info, so I have no idea how old, etc.  There's a game (from 1988) that uses a similar pattern on one of its pieces, but this could predate it by at least a thousand years  — or not.  But the pattern intrigued me, so I made a texture map and used Blender's geometry nodes (no generative AI) to set up a hexagon grid with random rotations for the tiles:

That's all done with a single design:

You'd think this would have a name, right?  (For its historical use as an architectural / decor tile — although I've found out more about its use in games, that's not what I'm looking for.)  Like the Penroses do (and no, it's not one of those).  But I've had no luck finding it, or any other info.  Any (human only, please) help?