Yeah I just think it’s kind of neat how the names of English pokemon are formed in a similar way to how they are in Japanese.

I think these are the same root? Pika pika is used to mean clean but it’s onomatopoeia for sparkling. That double word onomatopoeia construction in japanese doesn’t really have a direct analogue in English I don’t think.

Usually directly feeding animals is looked down upon because decreasing their fear of humans tends to be a negative for their survival, and it might impact their ability to forage for their own food. With birds specifically, though, putting up feeders is more mixed. Migration takes an enormous amount of energy and and human sprawl has removed a lot of natural food sources. And especially in wintertime, food can be quite scarce for birds. But at the same time bird feeders can actually be big spreaders of disease and I know that there was guidance that people should take down feeders at the height of bird flu.

Now when it comes to mallards, they’re honestly a species that is incredibly urbanized already, so I don’t think directly feeding them is doing a great deal of harm.

Pika is pronounced “pie-kuh” generally. Pikachu comes from pika pika (japanese onomatopoeia for “sparking/sparkling” usually with the connotation of clean) + chuu (sound a mouse makes/squeak).

Nest parasitism is not unique to cuckoos and you can’t really put a value judgement on evolution. Brown-headed cowbirds are the most common nest parasites in North America. There’s lots of species where the parents kill their own children if they either think they aren’t strong enough to survive or if the food supply is too insecure to care for them. It’s just nature.

Oh good it’s the New 52 Joker bird.

Probably “yeah sorry the budget was cut this year so we’re only issuing chain mail for your nutsac up, tough economy right now”

Amazon definitely doesn’t check returns very closely so not at all shocking something like this could happen.

It’s not hard but I do it infrequently enough that I have to watch a youtube video every time I do it.

The sad part is that as I get older, the hardest part has become threading the needle…

Published, yeah. The two companies have worked together a lot. I was a big fan of Radiata Stories… Still have my PS2 copy.

I think that was developed by Tri-Ace, an interesting studio in itself (Star Ocean, Valkyrie Profile, and Resonance of Fate are also their games).

Cool SquareEnix is a dumb name, go back to SquareSoft. Looking forward to a new Rad Racer.

Especially from the front or back. It’s hard to even comprehend that it’s a car. I was very shocked the first time I saw one.

So “extra votes” go to their second choice… How does that work? Which votes for the winner are considered extra?