Actually, all but one of those problems you listed in the Happy Hour with "the player" are problems with Flash. We don't control Adobe's development team or any of the many issues that the new versions of the plugin introduce. It's always a work in progress. Sorry if you are having problems with them conflicting.

The only actual "issue" is the playback quality, and that's dependent on the user's internet connection. The player automatically gauges your internet speed every couple seconds to determine the optimum playback quality that your system can handle without having to "buffer". If you have a wired and stable high speed internet connection you don't have those issues. If you are using wireless, have a lower speed internet connection, or if your internet provider simply has unreliably stable connections, you will experience that issue (which is caused by the player testing your connection and seeing that it can handle HD mode, then testing it again a few seconds later and seeing that you can only see SD mode, hence the switch over). I hope that explains things a bit better. As always, make sure that you always have the latest versions of Flash and Java installed on your machine.

We are currently developing a new version of the player that will allow people to choose what quality they view the videos at, but at the expense of load times and/or buffer screens.

Hello there. I saw you comment on the recent LDT. I think I've seen the video you were talking about, how americans (mostly white americans) are racist for dressing as anime character. I've also watched quite a few responses to it.

I tend to think something lack that is fueled with a lot of prejudice and racism for whatever reasons the video maker has. I know I didn't take it too seriously. Honestly, I really hate the idea that anyone would be limitied in cosplay based purely on race (even if the character is of a different race).

I suppose things go into weird territory if you start actually painting your skin up. That's a discussion unto itself.

There are those people who fetishize the race itself, and I think that's the type of "racism" people see when they think of something like ganguro as Korey and Cohost seem to enjoy discussing. It's people accepting this over simplified (stereotypical perhaps) image of an entire race and wanting to emulate that image. That can be applied to people who fetishize Asian culture as well as the people doing this black face or whatever.

I think calling it racism in the first place is a bit misleading anyway.

On a slightly related note, I've always heard that ganguro was more about just being weird, bizarre, and "gross" rather than being about immitating a race, but perhaps both definitions are accurate.

That's my take on it anyway.