I know some cartridges feel "heavier" than others. As a kid I assumed those cartridges "used more memory" or something, though surely that can't have been the real reason.

(Side note: has anyone ever documented the weight of all cartridges to see any difference?)

But I was chatting with a gaming buddy tonight, and Armorines: Project SWARM came up. He mentioned that his childhood cartridge felt "gritty" or like it was "full of sand" or other particles. Even from brand new, in-box purchase. Like, he would shake the cartridge, and hear noise.

Did anyone else experience this with the game? I feel like I do have a game or two in my collection where this sounds kinda familiar. Has this ever been explained? The "noisy/sandy/gritty" cartridges?

Are any games known for being heavier, or running hotter, than your average N64 game?

Mr. Dundon will rue the day he engraved all those names on Lord Stanley's Dominion Challenge Cup.

Stella Lefty is a controversial country-pop music artist who has had recent success, with her single "Boston" reaching #2 on the Billboard Hot 100; behind held off the #1 spot only by Ella Langley's "Choosin' Texas" for several weeks running.

However, what makes Stella Lefty controversial are several factors. I'll explain below;

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• Nepo Baby • Stella Lefty was born to a very well off father, as we'll find out below.

• Stella Lefkofsky • Again, this refers to her birth name, as we'll find out in a few moments.

• Botting Allegations • Many in the comments of her YouTube videos and other social media posts have wondered if Stella is running, or at least benefiting from, a large botting campaign; likely run with the help of Artificial Intelligence. Many comments seem inorganic, or from new, and anonymous accounts. These allegations are furthered by various additional facets, as well find out below.

• "Boston" = "Stick Season" • Many have noted similarities between Stella's hit "Boston" and the song "Stick Season" by Noah Kahan; a lower charting hit, but very popular on TikTok and among the Spotify girlies. The song especially shares a similar syncopated rhythm with the delivery of the lines in the chorus. Stella posted numerous covers of Stick Season on her social media, showing she was familiar with the song. She has since credited Noah Kahan as a "songwriter" on the track, which has become somewhat common with modern music, and songs sharing similarities to other songs; whether intended or not.

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• Industry Plant Allegations • It's common these days for people to wonder if someone is an "industry plant" in the entertainment industry. This allows the "creators" or "executives" to have total control of an artist they've prepared and "groomed" for stardom. However, some have wondered if Stella might actually be an industry plant, not from the Music and Entertainment industry, but the Artificial Intelligence Industry; with the goal of normalizing the use of AI Generated music in the mainstream.

• Father is Worth $5bn / Eric Lefkovsy Made Groupon • This is of course, the main source of people viewing Stella Lefty as a "Nepo Baby". Of course, Mr. Lefkovsky likely worked hard and got lucky in order to succeed with Groupon, and make billions of dollars. But many point to this as a source of "help", or at least, a huge safety net, for Stella to pursue a career as a musician.

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• Her dad founded an AI Company • Eric's subsequent work with Tempus AI, an AI "medical company", has led some to wonder about Stella's connections to Artificial Intelligence in her own "songwriting" work.

• Her Music Interpolates Other Songs • So, not only does "Boston" sound similar to "Stick Season", but many on social media have noted that many of her other songs also sound similar to other, well known songs. To the point where nearly every single song on her album "Long Way Home", has been compared to another previously known song.

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• Her music is generated by AI, then reworked / Interpolations are Coincidental • This is one theory to explain why her music sounds similar to other songs. Generative AI, as it currently stands, can only "learn" from pre-existing material. So the theory is that, Generative Music AI ends up sounding "similar" to pre-existing songs. The idea being, that Stella uses Generative Music AI, then slightly reworks or tweaks the output, to give a more "human" sound; which results in songs that sound uncannily copied from other musicians.

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Okay, the last two are "Far out there", but interesting to ponder, in terms of the rapid advancement of Artificial Intelligence and Robotics

• Stella Lefty doesn't actually exist • This one is easily disproven by people who have worked with her, or seen her perform live; but the idea being that we have already seen the rise of completely AI fabricated music artists. How long until one reaches the success level of Stella Lefty on the modern, pop charts?

• Stella Lefty is an organic robotoid • An organic robotoid is basically a "robot wearing a human suit"; or a biologically-based artificial life form. With the rapid advancement of AI and Robotics, how long could it be until a music artist comes onto the scene, who is not actually a human, but simply a robot, running on AI, who appears to be human?

I somehow ended up playing a phony with >!RESTAINS!< through one of the >!Ns in MOANING.!<

As far as I can tell, there was no Triple-Triple available through the B either.

So, I've been thinking lately about the Canadian Shield, and how it apparently forces everyone in Canada to live close to the U.S. Border.

Yet, Muskoka exists. A very thoroughly travelled, populated, and popular location; located entirely within the Canadian Shield.

I'm sure everyone here on r/geography has seen those maps of the "emptiness" of Canada. The majority of the country is unpopulated, thus cramming the population into the coastal regions, and the regions close to the U.S. Border. And this is almost always chalked up to the "Canadian Shield" being "impossible to build on" and making the majority of Canada "literally uninhabitable".

So how does one explain Muskoka? Why is it such a popular area? It's located, generally, a 2-4 hour drive from the Greater Toronto Area. I'm sure anyone who has travelled through here, or stayed here, has seen how busy it can get in the heat of the summer; whether it be traffic jams on Highway 11, long lines at Weber's, or car backups getting gas at Wolf Energy. Let alone people using the docks at the various port towns through the region. (I had a fun carousel ready, but this subreddit doesn't allow them, so my collage will have to do).

Not to mention, there are many cottages on the lakes in this region that cost in the $10M-$20M range. On one hand we are told that "land in the Canadian Shield is useless because you can't build on it". Yet, on the other hand, we see behemoth cottage properties here, demanding tens of millions of dollars. How can this circle possibly be squared? Is land in the Canadian Shield actually valuable and buildable, or not?

Canada has more lakes than the rest of the world, combined. Ontario has many, many of these lakes, located in the Canadian Shield. One could buy waterfront land on one of these lakes for very cheap and build a cottage. Yet, Muskoka cottages are reserved for generationally wealthy families, or billionaires. Heck, there's even a stretch on Lake Joseph called "Billionaire's Row." And yes, many of Canada's billionaires (as well as those from around the world) do indeed vacation there.

But it's on the Canadian Shield, of all places.

This raises only one question. How is such a thing possible? Could people be wrong about the difficulty in building up population centres, roads and infrastructure within the Canadian Shield?

And before anyone answers "well it's only a few hours from Toronto"... well, sure. But there's still tons of less developed shield which is... also only a few hours from Toronto. Or Ottawa, or Montreal, or Winnipeg. So... what gives?

Is it just the "dumb luck of history" resulting in a few people settling here, and "the rest is history"? Or have we been entirely misled about the difficulty of building in the Shield?

I know there are silly rules or whatever preventing more teams from the entering the Greater Toronto Area (Gary Bettman could change these with the stroke of a pen, btw), but I've been wondering this for a long time.

My "intuition math" says Toronto could easily host at least 4 teams, just based off London's 7 Premier League teams, New York City having 3 NHL teams and even Los Angeles having two teams. Toronto clearly has more hockey "appetite" than New York City, whilst being the economic centre of Canada. Again, intuitively, one in Mississauga/Brampton, one in Markham/Richmond Hill, and another around The Hammer (Hamilton) and area, would make sense.

Another avenue to explore is the idea of enticing Mr. Ted Rogers III himself with more teams, and thus, more TV rights. Would he go for it? (At least, strictly speaking in theory only). The whole reason behind the "local area restriction" or whatever the rule is called, is because the Leafs want to maintain their "monopoly" on the area, or whatever.

But if you gave more teams to the owner of the Leafs, maybe he would just see this as a way to make more money, rather than anything infringing on his monetizable area of fandom and TV rights.

What are your thoughts?

EDIT - No Automod, this is not a screenshot from Twitter or Bluesky. I made this entirely myself! In Photoshop!!

I can't find any info about this online. I know Mario Golf, also developed by Camelot, had a few "in game" tournaments having to do with "Camp Hyrule", the Nintendo virtual 'summer camp'.

The way it worked is that you input a code, for example "0EQ561G2" for the first Hyrule Cup, and when you finished the round, it gave you another code, which would have your results embedded in it. That's how Nintendo would know your score was real.

Mario Tennis also has a bunch of these codes. ARM6JQARU unlocks the Blockbuster Cup. I haven't actually played it out yet though, so I don't know what happens when you complete it.

Given that its name mentions Blockbuster directly, and Blockbuster were known to work with Nintendo on exclusive N64 promotions (like Clayfighter 63 1/3rd, and the Pokemon Snap printout stations), I'm wondering if this means the "Blockbuster Cup" was something you competed in, and perhaps had some kind of prize or reward given out from Blockbuster themselves.

Did anyone compete in this? Does anyone have any additional information, that seems to have been lost to time itself on the internet?

The song "Choosin' Texas" by Ella Langley, which has been #1 on the Billboard Hot 100 for 14 weeks now, tying a record for longest #1 from a solo female performer, prominently mentions the city of Abilene. So I wanted to look it up, and was impressed by this beautiful skyline!

So I was watching the recent video from the Majoran channel on YouTube, where I screencapped this from.

Basically, the statues in the Castle Courtyard in Ocarina of Time, are all 64-bit renders of photographs of real-life statues. Well, there's only one other statue in this area, actually, with two "pieces" to it.

One piece is a statue of Louis XIV found in Versailles, and the other pieces are of the Compagne de Diane found in the Louvre.

This raises only one question. What is the other statue? It sounds like the Zeldatubers and Texture Matching guys have looked pretty deeply, but no one has been able to find it.

Given the other statues are both located in famous French museums/places, it would make sense that the other statue is also somewhere in a French museum.

Another possibility is that these were all just found on an Asset CD-ROM Library from the 90's. In which case, the unknown statue doesn't necessarily have to be French. But in all likelihood, it would have appeared on a CD along with these other statues. Perhaps a Visual Disk or Sozaijiten.

Are you a bad enough dude to identify Ocarina of Time's mystery statue?

There's some viral footage of a train passing through a blazing inferno going around today, near Armstrong, Ontario.

Does anyone live there? Has anyone ever lived or stayed there? What's it like, especially in comparison with some other Northern Ontarian small towns? Especially compared with those more directly on the Trans-Canada Highways, and thus more accessible? Like Cochrane, Greenstone, Nipigon, Atikokan, Dryden, etc?

How are you holding up from the fires? Is there any work up there other than maintaining the railroad, and things related to the forest? (Logging, fire safety, etc).

So, I know it's pretty obscure, and they rarely come up in play. But for the sake of fun, studying and pondering, is there any go-to "official" dictionary for 10+ letter words?

Like, what dictionary did Nigel Richards memorize, if we are to believe he actually knows every playable word in Scrabble?

Also, is there a 10+ letter dictionary for TWL and another one for SOWPODS?

What are your honest thoughts about this?

Well, I guess there are some decent deals out there. If you're able and willing to make cash offers (I presume). Of course, this isn't for everyone. But seeing the listing price at $299k, and sold for $150k is kinda cool.

The listing: https://housesigma.com/on/severn-real-estate/8-mill-street/home/L4KAX7NrGGo7eRPJ?id_listing=bEDRYazzdgly1VaB

Here's a render I made of a futuristic skyline of Toronto, Canada. Reddit has been going crazy with this city lately, so I generated an image as if the city could take a population of about 200M people. This would be pure utopia and bliss! Who agrees?

Made in Adobe Firefly through Gemini 3.1 Nano Banana 2.

What are your thoughts?

The skyline of Toronto, Canada, has been going mega-viral here on Reddit lately. So I wanted to make a ridiculous version of it in the far future, including some other well known skyscrapers, along with the legendary X-Seed 4000.

Made in Adobe Firefly through Gemini 3.1 Nano Banana 2.

What are your thoughts?