there's a good joke in here somewhere about Babylon 5's canonically lesbian XO throwing a fit when the station got a gift shop. "we're not some deep space franchise, this station is about something!"
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"
Tales of the Jedi did a really good job fleshing Dooku out. many star wars villains are unambigiously evil- that's what happens when dark wizardry is very real and a viable career path i guess- but Dooku really thought he was doing the right thing at first, like a more selfless Anakin. a lot of Star Wars media does a great job illustrating that the Republic and the Jedi were deeply flawed, but don't make the jump to saying that many if not most planets joined the CIS in good faith for that reason- i guess because the new non-droids we see in the CIS are all asshats or aforementioned evil wizards, but still! the fight against the republic and the rebellion against the empire were essentially the same conflict from a certain point of view...
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
many retro systems have implementations of a language called BASIC, which is about as easy as it sounds. it has some quirks that aren't transferable to newer languages and you won't be able to make anything nearly as sophisticated as retail games for the same hardware but if you find modern engines intimidating, it can be a good place to start
that said, +1 for godot if you want to learn a more modern tool. it's way simpler than it may seem at first and there is a huge wealth of beginner-friendly tutorials available online
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
i avoid anything wireless like the plague short of wifi. pairing is always a miserable process, and by the time everything is connected, the batteries are dead. it drives me absolutely bonkers. thankfully many motorolla phones still have 3.5mm jacks . i think my current model is the motorolla 5g stylus
dark tower, mad mage, delving through the thracian caves. castle greyhawk, arden vul, castle of mad archmage too. dwimmer mount, barrow maze, chaos way down in the caves. lonely mountain, stone hell, tonigsborg dungeon as well, WE DIDN'T START THE FIRE-
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
there's a good joke in here somewhere about Babylon 5's canonically lesbian XO throwing a fit when the station got a gift shop. "we're not some deep space franchise, this station is about something!"