In the Lord of the Rings fandom there’s a persistent debate whether balrogs, or Durin’s Bane specifically, have wings. The text in Fellowship is ambiguous whether what it is describing are literal wings or something else wing-like.
SPN the show, yea people think they were suppose to be a “gay relationship” , but the new writers mde it that way, it was clear that KRIPKE never intended them to have a human-angel relationship of any kind. but people are obsessed parasocially over this.
Recently got an allotment. No dig or not seems to be a fairly big one right now. It sounds nice but I don’t have the same Amazon addiction as some people so I don’t have 100m² of cardboard that I can lay across the plot.
Buying a shitload of cardboard and mulch isn’t an expense I am interested in right now. Over time I do want to move towards more perennial and larger plants so there won’t be much digging required anyway other than when replacing something. Or tubers/bulbs that you have to dig to harvest and plant anyway.
I would love to have no-till going, but it’s also not reasonable for me. Actual mulch is uncommon in Japan and cardboard just blows away in my area (even with 15-20cm long U-shaped staples in multiple places per piece and on joints; it be windy here). Do what you can now and don’t worry about not being the best or perfect.
I normally see the cardboard covered in some kind of mulch to hold it down. Hopefully once my compost bin has started to be productive I will be able to use that at least which should help a bit.
On top of the free cardboard as the other poster suggested (coffee shops are my preferred because I can get grounds for compost too) My friend got free mulch through Chip Drop. Arborists need to get rid of mulch and just want it gone.
My friend is in the US but they have an activity checker and I just through in Manchester and they say there’s mulch there so I’d imagine it’s semi global.
I think chip drop can be massive volumes though. I don’t have enough space for a huge drop. My allotment is off the path and the site would require someone being there to take the delivery to unlock the gate. Both make chipdrop impractical from what I can tell where they want a place that is available to dump any amount at any time.
I got all my cardboard for free just asking stores if I can take their boxes, small businesses especially are happy to get rid of boxes especially if they don’t have to cut them up
Suppose it depends on how it comes, but wouldn’t it be pretty bulky to carry if you wanted to cover a large area?
Would dead leaves be any good? Could just take loads of those from the floor around trees in parks and fill the bags on my bike. About 70L between them. Still think it would take a while to cover an allotment though.
Also got a compost bin but while nearly full it’s going to be a while to rot down.
Dead leaves are great actually, even better if you mow them into confetti since they will break down a lot faster. You can solarize a bed with a tarp pretty easily too for weed control. Chip drop is a great way to get a bunch of organic material to put into soil or mulch with too. The cardboard works well but there’s plenty of other options
Don’t have a lawnmower, but usually just below the surface layer of leaves they are already like confetti.
Previous owner used tarps and the weeds grew through. Plastic strands of tarps are all over my plot because of it and where the edges were fraying a lot.
I tell people all the time for moving that nursing homes have the best boxes if you don’t mind it saying weird things like xxl adult diapers. Probably also true for killing preventing weeds/grass.
I still play a little old school Doom and earlier this year the creator of one of the main engines people use (GZDoom) got some flak for using some AI in his coding, causing a lot of people to switch over to a fork (UZDoom).
I don’t miss many things about the old site but the niche communities are one of them. If anyone wants to dive into years of minutiae covering everything from big drama to slap fights you should check out
https://old.reddit.com/r/HobbyDrama/I collect coins, and there’s always debates about what a coin is.
For those who don’t know, a coin is usually defined as an object with legal tender status somewhere; as opposed to a token that has a face value but is issued by a non-state actor; and a medal, which is anything that looks like a coin but doesn’t have any face value.
Now, aside from the expected debate over what is and isn’t a state, there’s also the issue of NIFC (not intended for circulation) coins. Many mints sell coins that are legal tender, but are never put into circulation, some people (often those that could be characterised as “old school”) take the position that as these aren’t intended to be used as legal tender, they aren’t really coins.
It doesn’t help that there are tiny island nations like Niue and Samoa that will basically let companies make anything legal tender if they pay them. This leads to the rather silly situation where a batarang, and a literal statue of hogwarts, are technically “coins”. (I’ve been told this is done as a import tariff dodge as the USA doesn’t charge import taxes on coins)
Imagine being a Samoan shopkeeper and some tourist showing up and trying to pay with a friggin statue of Hogwarts.
It’s 5ozt of pure silver, so I wouldn’t say no…
id accept it as payment, record a video of myself melting it down and making it into a small blahaj figurine, and make the video public to spite and annoy jk rowling and the harry potter fanbase
Ladies and gentlemen, a coin:
What the fuck is wrong with Samoa? Like, I can speculate but my speculations are unkind. I don’t want to go there.
It has the same size population as Sioux Falls, South Dakota. Weird stuff happens on islands.
Weird stuff happens on islands.
my dude, that’s a thought stopping phrase. weird shit happens everywhere. there’s this toilet in boston
Ok, it’s probably your racist thing then. Happy?
racist thing?
What were the “unkind speculations” you wanted to hint at but not articulate?
you’re doing the antisemite thing again starik.
I don’t know if I’d go so far as to say “racist,” but I can see how someone might think you sound xenophobic. If I didn’t enjoy interacting with your posts so often, I could see how someone would see your tone as trying to “other” and shame an entire culture. But I know that’s usually not where you’re coming from.
Go: To what extent should you rely on AI reviews vs pro reviews?
AI is really, really good at Go, far better than humans, and it’s pretty undeniable that it’s a valid use case for the technology. It also makes it free and easy to pop a game into it and have the AI tell you which moves were mistakes.
But AI favors a “risky” playstyle, because it can read out crazy detailed variations to be able to tell when a dangerous position is actually fine. Humans trying to emulate that, without the superhuman reading capabilities, sometimes mess up and get worse results than if they used a safer strategy.
AI also can’t explain why one move is better than another. Humans rely on heuristics, patterns, and proverbs to point us in the right direction of finding a move. A professional can show how to find a move through a heuristic, which is more generally applicable. There can also ofc be the factor of wanting to support the community by paying for a teacher or going to a club and finding someone to help review.
The question comes when the human professional says something that contradicts the AI, who do you listen to? I’ve been in a room before where an amateur was getting a game reviewed by a foreign professional (for free, but at a paid event) and after the pro criticized a move, the amateur insisted that the pro was wrong because the AI agreed with the move.
It’s an interesting question, at least to me, whether or not that’s inappropriate. On the one hand, you’ll always have the AI’s input so getting a different perspective is valuable, pros arguably earn a certain degree of their respect from their abilities, and there are the issues I mentioned above with relying too heavily on AI. On the other hand, because AI is so indisputably good, many people see it as a sort of objective standard for evaluating moves, whereas individual players may have different styles of play. If you can see reasons to play a move and the AI backs it up, then if the pro doesn’t like it it could just be a stylistic preference. And of course the type of people who tend to be attracted to a competitive strategy game like this (especially Americans) don’t necessarily have a lot of respect for credentials on paper or social heirarchies, as opposed to whether you can back up your analysis by objective standards.
It’s similar for Chess AI (and by that I mean Chess Engines that have been developed for decades, not LLMs) except that the engines will play extremely principled and cautious Chess, right up until it gets out of the book/theory territory and it calculates 20-30 moves into the future and determines that an incredibly unintuitive and bizarre move is the “best” position, but even the top grandmasters would likely never find that specific move that the engine determined was the best move you could make.
In some cases, you can tell when someone is cheating by seeing them make top engine moves that don’t do anything or really advance the board state in a meaningful way the turn you make them because it forces the opponent to make one or more less optimal moves that the player could capitalize on, but humans are terrible and seeing these patterns because they are super analytical and require precise calculation. Also, asking them to explain why they made those moves is another way to catch them in the act - and a subject of a great deal of controversy in modern chess tournaments when some players give less than convincing answers when pressed on why they made certain moves in the game.
Furry Fandom:
How we represent ourselves as a fandom.
Some groups want the fandom to be more clean and family friendly. Some want it to remain weird and not always as family friendly as it currently is.
Some are more okay with using things like cheap plastic animal masks as bases for fursuit heads. Some people don’t want that type of stuff and would rather see bases be either hand made or use something like a sports helmet or mask to build the base around.
Some are okay with us becoming more mainstream and companies like Netflix taking a little more interest in us. Others want corporations to stay away from us.
As for me, you can guess my stance just by the fact of me being here on Lemmy. I’d rather see a base use something not quite as corporate as a cheap plastic junk mask as a base. I would also rather keep our fandom a little less sanitized and more weird to keep the corpos from coming in and turning our fandom into a heavily censored industry.
Yea don’t try be family friendly you know those peoples real intentions.
Yea, fuck the corpos. The fandom is perfectly good the way it is. I’d prefer more interest (and suiting) for therians tbh. The realistic side of fursuits that is. SUITS THAT DON’T LOOK UNCANNY.
Would be nice to not represent furries as just a kink. That is missing the point.
You need to chlroinate those who want it to be “family friendly”
Its sex and fetishes, leave the fuckin’ kids out of it.
Someone I went to school with came out as a furry and got heavily involved in the fandom, to the point of helping to organize one of the biggest furry conventions in Europe, but he insisted it wasn’t a sexual or fetish thing.
About five years later, he’s founded a company that makes high quality dragon, werewolf and other bestial dildos.
I was going to say, weird and family friendly please. Acceptable for families but not advertisers sounds wonderful. It’s why we keep our local perverts around.
deleted by creator
I was like. Wtf did the European Union do to Star Wars?!
Synthesizers: digital vs analog.
Common opinion holds that analog (specifically oscillators, but also filters and even VCAs [voltage controlled amplifiers]) are warmer and more natural sounding while digital are cold and harsh.
The thing is, digital emulation of analog hardware has become virtually indistinguishable from the real thing, but there is a certain segment that refuses to believe their $5000 Minimoog can be so easily replicated by software (realistically I doubt Bob Moog could tell the difference anymore).
Of course some also choose to argue which is better, which is just ridiculous because they both have their uses depending on what kinds of music you’re composing or just what sounds you’re trying to make.
Well yeah, they can’t afford to buy music. They spent all their money on the high density crystal core gold connector 1 meter headphone cable.
You can extend that further to the cranks in the DAW community who swear that their rebranded standard compressor algorithm is somehow different and worth spending hundreds of dollars on. Generally you‘re paying for a different UI and maybe a hardcoded EQ.
Ugh, compression is a nightmare in general. One person will tell you unless you’re using some fancy multi-band compressor on every single track, you’re doing it wrong, and another will tell you you should do your best to not use any at all. Add to that many, many people don’t even know what it does, and more can’t even hear what it does.
Send them this guide
And here’s a secret they don’t tell you - at the end of the day it’s art. There’s a bazillion “right” ways to do the same thing and if the result is enjoyed be someone, mission accomplished.
Yeah by the time you add effects, throw that synth into a full mix with other instruments, THEIR effects, and all the compression and EQing in a finished track, the only thing that matters is whether that single instrument adds what it needs to add to the whole.
Objectively, digital oscillators are better - they don’t drift unless you want them to, they stay in tune, and they can always be run through analogue filters to add imperfections (sorry, “warmth”).
But it still boils down to my first point: it’s a single part of a multi-part song. As long as it gets the job done, who cares whether it’s fluctuating voltage or zeroes & ones. It’ll be analogue on its way into the listener’s ear canal either way.
Absolutely. So much nuance is lost in a mix. Not that it’s a bad thing, it’s just dumb to think a $3000 synthesizer is going to sound better than a $10 plugin when you’ve got it buried amongst guitar, bass, drums, and vocals.
Of course some also choose to argue which is better, which is just ridiculous because they both have their uses depending on what kinds of music you’re composing or just what sounds you’re trying to make.
See, the point you’re missing is that my kind of music is just better. If you prefer <option I dislike>, it’s just because your taste sucks. Try making good music, like <whatever music fits>. Then you’ll see that <option I prefer> is clearly superior.
(I have no idea about synthesisers, but I heard similar discussions among e-guitar / amp enthusiasts. I’m just guessing the above parody fits your case too.)
It fits quite well.
Female Space Marines. I’m gonna leave before this thread explodes.
Community - The slogan was ‘Six seasons and a movie.’
We are still waiting for our goddamned movie!
Make your own dammit. Fan edit it together
👐Pop! POP! 👐
The Grateful Dead were not a jam band , jam bands wanted to be the Grateful Dead.
And also, the mk4 platform we’re the last real VW’s ever made and anybody that thinks differently is a civilian that needs to shut the fuck up
Punk/metal/goth/hardcore subcultures and the nature of gatekeeping, poseurs, “selling out”, politics, social causes, and scenes that started out as youth culture now approaching 50yrs of development and have oldheads who never left as well as their grandkids joining up. For the most part the 90s “sell-out” idea that finding mainstream success is betrayal is gone so long as the band continues to be who they always were, some bands are naturally talented and will breakthrough into broader appeal. Gatekeeping can keep a community safe from predators trying to gain access to spaces where youth and intoxicated adults are just trying to have a fun time without having to fear exploitation. Sometimes youth come in trying way too hard and miss the point, sometimes the oldheads forget they were try-hard kids at one point too and are missing the point. In the past year I’ve run into a 65yo in the pit next to sweaty teens and watched a Millennial mom take her 5yo daughter to the edge of the stage and gently lower her into a crowd of tattooed, mohawked, crusty strangers who came together and made sure she floated safely to her dad. Also seen some boneheads get their shit rocked, so for all the debates and bickering we’ve never forgotten what’s really important. Best time I’ve had in the scene in nearly 20yrs.
Yeah, I sometimes get annoyed about the gatekeeping in the hardcore scene (hardcore as in gabber, not punk)
But whenever my friends take me to techno events and I see what happened to the European techno scene after covid, I start to think they might have a point
In the world of Game Collecting, the guy with potentially the largest single collection on the planet is getting rid of his collection.
The ideal plan was for it to all go to a singular museum, which was in the works and then unfortunately fell through. Problem is the next two backups also fell through. So plan D involves the collection being split up and some of it going to the Embrace Group, and some into private collections, which was seemingly both never the plan. People who donated items, thinking that they would eventually be publicly displayed, are rightfully upset. And then the rest of his fans, such as myself, are somewhat bewildered that this is how it will end after decades of amassing a collection, and then years of saying it’ll all be going to a museum.
-Guitar picks/strings
-Warhammer editions (Or competitive vs narrative play)
-using linux and the many reasons why
Doctor Who has a bunch of them!
One of the big recent ones was the Timeless Child plotline. For people unfamiliar with the show, the basic premise is that the main character, the Doctor, is an alien who’s species can regenerate themselves when they’re about to die which saves them but they become a physically different person. This was invented back in the 60s so they could change out the lead actor, William Hartnell, when he got too old to continue in the role and it’s become a core part of the show. We’re now on about the 15-16th Doctor, although that number is a bit contentious too for reasons I won’t go into here because that’s a whole other thing.
A few years back there was a plotline where it was revealed that the Doctor isn’t just a regular alien, they’re something called the Timeless Child that just appeared in our universe from somewhere unknown, and was the one that gave their whole species the ability to regenerate themselves. This was widely hated, as it not only changed the Doctor from a sort of wandering hobo into a Super Special Chosen One, but it also directly showed that William Hartnell wasn’t the first Doctor, there had been probably dozens of other ones before him that had just never been mentioned until now.
The internal debates that I’ve seen usually aren’t people debating whether this was a good idea or not, they’re mostly about the best way to retcon it away and never speak of it again lol.
