if you combine the ratings for Discovery and Knuckles, you get to the third position on the chart. Paramount, you know what must be done...

your mission, should you choose to accept it: 1983. CBS is going to tell you that you only get one disc for your double LP. a deflated Jeff Lynne is just gonna slap A1 on the first side and a few random tracks on the second and be done with it. you cannot let this happen under any circumstances. everything wrong with the world in the last half-century? it all starts with Secret Messages not ending with Hello My Old Friend. if you can fix that, you can save us all

if you can also convince him to move Loser Gone Wild to the b-side it would greatly help the flow and pacing of the album but that did not have nearly the same level of impact on the space-time continuum so we'll just file that as a "nice to have"

you'll pry my END command from my cold, dead hands...

yamaha all the way. nothing beats the fresh taste of frequency modulation

if i had a nickel for every time Spock faced off against a unique species of cat-like predator from Vulcan, i'd have two nickels, which isn't a lot but it's weird that it happened twice

source??

assuming reasonable definitions of "new" and "old," i'd wager there's been more good old music than good new music for most of human history. it all comes down to numbers- there's simply more old music than new music! there are factors that i do genuinely think make pop music not as good today as it could be (see: streaming companies), but that's a rounding error compared to the sheer scale of music history, plus all the bedroom artists making up for anything lacking in today's pop music.

that said, if you spend any time focused on a specific period or specific periods, it will not take long to find stinkers, if only because everyone has different taste and you're bound to find something you just don't jive with eventually. i've been in spaces where people who love classic rock for example review classic rock albums and their analyses are sometimes so brutal you wonder if there's anything they DO like

rexx is my favorite programming language. it's an interpreted language similar to python but it has actual visible block delimiters instead of going by indentation. the error handling system is also very convienent. the reason it probably faded into obscurity is it's wild cowboy take on typing- EVERYTHING is a string until you try to use a math function on it. i get that it's unrealistic for writing anything performance-sensitive but for writing shell scripts and utilities it is unmatched in it's simplicity. it definitely comes closer than anything else i've ever seen to the COBOL ideal of resembling natural speech. the rexx interpreter was a default feature on the amiga and i think also os/2 but these days it's really only ever used on mainframes and the few open source implementations for desktops and servers are a bit clumsy which is a real shame

Boston is the first that comes to mind for me. there's their self-titled which is easily one of the best records of all time, and then everything that came wasn't exactly bad but it was nowhere near the same level

it's been pointed out that the 7800 gives you two systems and you have an SMS if you have a Mega Drive, but it's worth pointing out that the SMS can also play SG-1000 games, which the MD cannot. the SG-1000 has a rather modest library but its very similar to both the ColecoVision and MSX1 to the point many of both console's heaviest hitters have been ported over by fans. getting all of that PLUS the SMS library makes it the obvious choice to me IF you don't already have an MD to play SMS games on. if you do, despite my bias i do have to say that both the NES and 2600 (via the 7800) both probably have deeper library then just the additional games SG-1000 support gets you

if you're torn, a ColevoVision with a RAM expansion and a 2600 adaptor gives you the SG-1000/coleco/some MSX1 AND 2600 support, and if you get a Super Action Controller too you will be the fashion envy of retro gamers everywhere. decisions decisions decisions...

even putting aside electronic instruments, modern building tools and materials have allowed some acoustic instruments to shrink. check out "mr curly" for an example- a contrabass clarinet that's a bit shorter if anything than a soprano clarinet, made out of vinyl tubing. another example is the bass ukelele, an instrument smaller than a bass guitar that aproximates the sound of an upright bass thanks to thick rubber strings. in most cases the traditional form of an instrument is preferred just because of familiarity and knowledge passed down from generation to generation, so in order for something to "take off" it needs to address a specific problem, which for most instruments size is not

i wonder if something that size would even have noticable gravity