So, quite a few people don't like/watch video content, and don't like seeing the homepage filled with videos. Let's try something new, see if it sticks.

What are the best videos you have watched this past week/fortnight?

So, I’m sitting at an airport lounge right now and the thing that is on the bar TV is golf. The (only) folks watching it are the most typical business folk you can imagine. Is golf just the modern version of polo (the ones with the horsies)? As someone who prefers to watch hockey and finds basketball and baseball to be less entertaining. Golf goes the extra distance of not just being uninteresting, but irritating by how snobbish it feels.

I’ll confess that I had a couple of drinks already so I’m a bit extra, but I’m genuinely curious if my take is wrong and I’m missing something.

Edit: another thought, will Millennials and Zoomers don’t embrace golf at all and golf resorts become a rarity in the future?

Keeping it rolling with our weekly post series bringing ~music ten of the best new Drum & Bass + Jungle tunes from across the globe.

You can find the songs shared on this Spotify playlist. Follow it for new stuff, now updated every Sunday. Have no clue what Drum & Bass is? Start here!

_ - BEGIN TRANSMISSION - _

NEW MUSIC

.:...:..:::..::::..

Bensley & Justin Hawkes - Don’t be Scared [UKF]

[Spotify] | [Apple Music] | [More]

High energy and melodic, this summer time scorcher from Bensley & Justin Hawkes has been burning up sets since the start of the season. Propellant and uplifting, the buzzy bassline and bouncing vocal play perfectly off each other for a feel good fusion of these two producer styles.

Tantrum Desire - Rhythm [Technique]

[Spotify] | [Apple Music] | [More]

The boss is back! Tantrum Desire’s well known for his jump-up anthems, but ‘Rhythm” sees this veteran producer step it up with an anthemic prime-time roller on Technique. Featuring a classic vocal slice of big room cheese taken from Corona’s eponymous “Rhythm of the Night” plus some pounding drum work and squelching synths, this one will drive a dance floor mad.

Rockwell - Comfy [Obsolete Medium]

[Spotify] | [Apple Music] | [More]

Like bugs in the brain, this highly infectious cut from Rockwell will burrow into your playlists and never want to leave. The title track of his latest EP is a technical exercise in precise sonic engineering and percussion.

Giant22 - We Go [Obsolete Medium]

[Spotify] | [Apple Music] | [More]

Bright, bouncy and ready to rock for any summer party, Giant22’s “We Go” plays tight drum work and a little ‘chopped and screwed’ flavour vocal against echoey, off-kilter synths that create a swinging, swaggering cut that’s good to go in any fan or DJ’s playlist.

Matec - Adrift [All172Things]

[Spotify] | [Apple Music] | [More]

Hard. As. Hell. This cut from the mysterious Matec brings to mind Black Sun Empire and Prolix at their most pulse-pounding. Unrelenting synths and razor sharp drum programming drive this one through its 4 minute run time with unrelenting energy and a dystopian atmosphere throughout.

A.Way - Closer [Neksus]

[Spotify] | [More]

With a finger on the sound of ‘now’, A.Way’s “Closer” makes its mark in the same arena next-gen producers like Imanu, Caracal Project and [Borders] play. Epic vocals, soaring synths and stuttering, digitally frenetic vocals ride clattering, swaggering drums that bounce between full on roller and half time swing.

Disrupta ft. Eden - Do You Believe [DNB All Stars]

[Spotify] | [Apple Music] | [More]

Like a beach front sunrise, Edens anthemic vocals soar over this certified summer anthem from the unstoppable DNB All Stars camp. With an unapologetic cheese factor you can’t deny, this one brings back memories of the best High Contrast and Hospital Records epics. After “Shine like the sun”, Disrupta has proven they’re on quite a roll in the past year. .

SUUNE ft. Young Gho$t - Signal VIP [In The Lab Recordings]

[Spotify] | [Apple Music] | [More]

Down low, deep and dirty, the vocals of Young Ghost keep white-hot producer SUUNE’s latest firmly in the depths of the darkest warehouse raves. Bouncing with energy and confidence, be sure to keep this one ready for the right moment.

Hieroglyphics & Feux - Belief [Critical]

[Spotify] | [Apple Music] | [More]

From his newest full-length album on Critical “I’ll Wait, I guess”, Hieroglyphics brings the drama with a smooth, sombre cut that’s already wining over atmospheric and intelligent DNB fans far and wide. Pair those bubbling bass-lines with with a soulful vocal like this, and you’ve got a recipe for success.

KOAN Sound - Ascension [Shoshin]

[Spotify] | [Apple Music] | [More]

Something from far orbit, former Dubstep stalwarts KOAN Sound are back with a cinematic, soaring epic that’s forward thinking beyond any dancefloor. Fusing world music flavours, soundtrack style orchestration and touches of classic jungle breaks, this one’s bound to stay a favourite for years to come. Simply beautiful.

NEW MIXES TO CHECK OUT

.:...:..:::..::::..

Subtle Radio - 10/06/23 - Delta 9 Recordings w/ Flipz

[SoundCloud]

Italy’s Delta9 get things moving with a guest spot on Subtle Radio, and online community broadcaster. Deep cuts and some tougher stuff get rinsed out while host Flipz keeps things lively on the mic. A great intro to the labels sound and a fun listen for your weekend afternoons.

VISION RADIO - S03E24 - Hosted by Dave Columbo Jenkins & Martijn

[YouTube] | [SoundCloud]

Noisia, although “retired” from the DNB scene, continue the essential VISION radio series, which has always proven to be a great place to find the latest from their own label and other fresh new music from the scene’s best… this week they premiere ‘Hide Sun’ by Machinedrum & Holly plus new music by SMG, Censored The Audio, Klippee, Thys, Molokai and more.

HCKRS - Repack Radio June 2023

[YouTube] | [SoundCloud] | [MixCloud]

Warning: Shameless self promotion! Had to plug my own latest mix: a snapshot of some current, classic and unreleased stuff that embodies the “my sound” of DNB. An hour long blend of big room stuff like Dimension, ShockOne and The Prototypes with some deeper cuts from Amoss, Polyrom and other fresh tunes…and some new stuff from yours truly. I think it slaps pretty hard, so I’m adding it. Enjoy!

_ - END TRANSMISSION - _

♥ DNB? Join In! Heard something you like? Share it below? Been to show? Let us know! We want ~music.dnb to be a place for fans and newcomers to share our love of the scene in a positive space.

If you’ve read this far, thanks! Stay tuned, I’ll be back next week with another 10 #DNB / #Jungle tunes you can’t miss. Feel free to throw me a DM with love / hate / questions.

Have you been visiting just too many different social media platforms lately, checking them out to see what the deal is? Well, same here. It feels like I've been a guest every night in different houses for the past month and I must say: I am exhausted.

But it's not over, far from it.

And I'm here to give you a heads up: we've witnessed platforms dying in the past, I'm guessing most of us have been a part of some sort of digital exodus before but I have a feeling that this one is going to be more painful.

Mainly because we've created so much data over the years and the majority of it got collected by centralised platforms. There are very few ways to take it with us and move elsewhere, it's all locked in.

Backing up your data now would also be a good idea, before some CEO comes with up the plan that it should be a paid feature.

I just want to say that this is all to be expected because the social web is in a transition period, and that golden bookmark doesn't exist yet. However, I think there are some contenders for it. What I want to ask is: where will you go next?

I've got some ideas, feel free to add your preference if I'm missing anything.

• Threads: Meta's Twitter clone that will be out some time this summer. It will be a federated (ActivityPub-enabled) platform.
• Bluesky: Jack Dorsey-backed Twitter clone. This one is also federated but it uses AT Protocol.
• Mastodon: The Twitter clone. It's got a fairly large userbase now, with lots of instances to choose from.
• Blog: Maybe it's not a bad idea to set up shop on a platform like Micro.blog (which is ActivityPub-enabled and has got community features built-in) and lead a quiet digital life.
• Threadiverse: Reddit-alikes.

Inspired by an old topic from 2021 on here: https://tild.es/uti
How do you think?
Have you ever thought about how you think?

Do you have a voice in your head? Is it your own voice? Do you think in visuals? How strong are the visuals?

Let's have a conversation about it. We all think differently!

As an exercise, if I asked you to sit down and solve a cross word in silence, how would you think it through?

Edit: thanks for all the very interesting and very insightful replies! I've been reading them today and I really appreciate everyone's input.

This is a place to post your ideas about what to do about Tildes groups and tags. I'm going to write about some problems (as I see them) and save my ideas about solutions for the comments.

The taxonomy problem

We have tags and groups and they are somewhat arbitrary. A tag could be a group someday. A group can be downgraded to a tag if it's not used much.

Topics can have multiple tags, but they can be in only one group (and its ancestor groups).

It's hard to pick the right group. An example: a post about animals could go in ~enviro (for wildlife), ~hobbies (for pets), or ~science (for a scientific study). So where do you put news article about a scientific study of the effects of house cats on wildlife?

Adding ~animals seems like it would be a good thing because now you have an obvious place to find all the posts about animals. Animal lovers rejoice! But from a taxonomy point of view, it makes things worse, because now you have another place where you could logically put an article and another place to go looking for it. More groups means more edges and more edge cases. It's enough to make you wish for crossposts.

The competition problem

Tags are better for taxonomy, so why not just have tags? Because classifying topics isn't the only thing we want to do. As Deimos wrote about, eventually we'd like to have somewhat more independent communities, closer to subreddits but hopefully without their downsides. It would be nice if subreddits that wanted to migrate to Tildes could actually do it. We also want to have a good mix of topics on the front page, while allowing some groups to have a lot more posts than others.

I'll start with an analogy: if a school has only one sport that matters, the people who are good at that sport win socially, and other people don't have as much of a chance. But if you have multiple sports and clubs that people care about, there are more ways to win at something. I don't believe pretending everyone is a winner works all that well, but more ways to win promotes diversity and creates useful social ambiguity.

The front page of Tildes is the most visible and has limited space. That creates an all-against-all competition between topics. We also have groups with their own leaderboards, but they are lesser competitions and it's unclear if they matter yet. (I'm using them more, though.) Meanwhile, each topic has an independent leaderboard for its comments that doesn't conflict with any other game. (Maybe that's why I like megathreads?)

I haven't been thinking of Tildes in terms of leaderboards, but maybe it can explain why old-timers are often reluctant to post topics? We aren't really trying to win, but we have ideas about fair play. When there's only one game anyone cares about, we don't want to drown out other worthy topics by entering too many contestants. We're also a bit reluctant to enter anything that's too specialized into the competition, because it doesn't "deserve" the attention. It's not a worthy contestant and it's just gonna lose.

Also, sometimes this isn't a game you want to win. Entering a controversial topic into a competition can get you unwanted attention, and that's often no prize at all. When a game isn't one you wanted to enter, getting attention is more like losing than winning.

For the front page, I expect this problem will get worse with more people. Entering the competition brings more attention than before.

Note: thinking of a topic listing as a leaderboard for a game is only an analogy and I don't mean to promote competitiveness. They weren't designed to be leaderboards and I think we'd like to see design changes that reduce competitiveness. There are known downsides to competition that we don't want, like "cheating" to win with "unworthy" strategies and the rules-lawyering and jealousy that come with that.

Ideas?

Some rules for this "game": Please post one proposal per comment. If you have multiple independent ideas, you can post them separately, but post them together if they're interrelated.

If you were to set up someone with a brand new kitchen, what are the components that you would suggest to them for getting that 80% of functionality for 20% of the investment (Pareto Principle)? These are especially things that I would consider to be worth a healthy investment as a buy-once-have-it-forever situation. Some things that come to mind:

A cast-iron pan: high skillcap and can cook almost any type of food
Stainless Steel Stock Pot: cooks most things stovetop that the pan can't handle
Chef's Knife: A good quality, sharp knife makes all the difference in the kitchen
Mason Jars: Preserve food, bring them to bulk stores, drink water out of them... top-tier utility

Things that are on the fence in my mind:
desktop blender/immersion blender/food processor: I love all of these appliances, but how important are they? A food processor is maybe the highest utility & makes meal prep way easier. Also unlocks recipes like hummus and salsa.
a large cutting board: small cutting boards suck, but how high of a priority is upgrading it?

Let's have a discussion where you state your case for an individual appliance/tool (or argue one of these suggestions) and see what other people have to say!

Seeing that this is taking off a bit, I'm going to try compiling some of the response data here:

Level 0 - Starter Kit

• Stainless Steel Pan (+3)

• Aluminum Stock Pot (+3)

• Vegetable Peeler (+3)

• Plastic Cutting Board (+3)

• Spoons / Spatulas / Ladles (+3)

• Chef's Knife (+2)

• Paring Knife (+2)

• Serrated Knife (+1)

Level 1 - Booster Pack

• Weighing Scale (+4)
• Baking Trays (+2)

Level 1a - Cooking I

• Immersion Blender (+2)
• Box Grater (+2)
• Dutch Oven (+1)

Level 1b - Baking I

• 2L jug (+1)
• Measuring Cup (+2)
• Pain De Mie Tin (+2)
• Wire Rack (+1)

Level 2 - Intermediate

• Instant Read Thermometer (+1)

Level 2a - Cooking II

• Food Processor (+1)

Level 2b - Baking II

• Immersion Whisk (+2)

Level 3 - Advanced

• Cast Iron Pan
• Mason Jars
• Air Fryer

What are your thoughts on Naruto as a series? Anything specific you want to highlight (plots, characfers, themes, arcs...). Thoughts on manga, anime, movies, novel... all welcome.

Hi everyone! I am new to Tildes and wanted to say hi to the ~Health community. I am on a 28 hour emergency general surgery call today and have a bit of downtime. I also noticed that the post on the moral crisis of America's doctors had some interest so I thought I would answer any questions about that or training to be a surgeon in the United States. I am finishing my 2nd year of a 7-year training program. Ask me (almost) anything!

Title
Anyone that has been playing multiplayer games for a while must have noticed the recent shift when it comes to multiplayer games matchmaking trends.
Multiplayer games were no joke, they were hardcore, with high entry barriers where the more experienced players would dominate the field, and newer players were nothing but fodder for them. If you were new to a game you could expect to lose most of your matches for a while, but if you were to put in the effort, improved, learned the game and persevered trough, then you'd be rewarded by becoming the one to dominate the field instead.
Nowadays it's different, anyone can pick up a game, no matter how experienced they are, and expect to win roughly half the games they play. From newcomers to pro players, everyone seems to be relegated to a strictly forced 50% winrate policy. But how is that possible?

The focus in game design seems to have shifted from rewarding individual oriented play, to rewarding more teamwork oriented skills instead. The focus on teamwork has been pushed so far to the point where, if your team isn't putting in the effort, no matter how good of a player you are, you won't be able to compensate for your team lack of skills and they'll be the reason why you lose the match. There wouldn't be anything inherently wrong with this, especially in a team game, if it weren't for the fact that it really feels as if the better you get at the game, the worse your teammates get.
This is how they're able to make everyone's winrates hover around 50%. Sure if you lose too much the algorithm will start giving you better teammates, but if you win too much then the quality of your matches will be abysmal, leading to a point where all the good players get effectively punished and can never fully see the fruits of the effort they put for actually learning the game.
Players have expressed for years their frustrations against this balancing method, as many felt cheated due to losing too many matches due to factors completely out of their control, but so far nothing has changed.

This sort of matchmaking algorithm can also be used to impose certain "patterns" in the wins and losses that a player experiences while playing, in order to increase their engagement. A study from 2017 published for EA , goes to show how players are more likely to quit a game if they incur in specific win/loss patterns. For example, of the entire playerbase, 5% of them will quit the game if they were to incur in three losses in a row.
Here's an excerpt from the paper's abstract
"Current matchmaking systems depend on a single core strategy: create fair games at all times. These systems pair similarly skilled players on the assumption that a fair game is best player experience. We will demonstrate, however, that this intuitive assumption sometimes fails and that matchmaking based on fairness is not optimal for engagement"

This is just a window into what goes trough the developing process of a multiplayer videogame these days. The paper is from 2017 but troughout these years this approach to multiplayer games has been adopted and developed to the point where every single multiplayer experience, from PC to mobile to consoles, feels artificially crafted and finely tuned to keep you as hooked for as much time as possible to the screen.
This doesn't stop to win/loss patterns, another example would be gears of war, where the devs have admitted to make your bullets do more damage on your first match of the day, because their studies showed that people were more likely to play troughout the day if they were to win the first match they played. These same devs would later go to make Fortnite, which would go on to generate billions in revenue for years.

What are your thoughts? Do you prefer the modern take to make multiplayer games more accessible to everyone, or would you rather go back to the days where communities would develope more organically?

.

I've been seeing the mention of the game a lot lately, and I've seen many memes about it in the past week or so, I've never played the game so I don't know much about it, I'm guessing it's because of the new game that was released ? but why has it gotten so famous suddenly ?

Google trends

I'm relatively new here, and excited about the community. My question stems from learning that the usual way communities evolve here is by having specific topic information repeatedly surface in more general category forums. If we do not create a women's community here, comparable to the one that already exists for lgbt, will we be less likely to create topics related to women's issues? Can we predict how it will evolve?

What do you think?

Photography is a bit of an odd form of art, especially if you're not doing anything 'weird' with it. Occasionally I'll be thinking about photography as a hobby and a bit of dread sets in about how every photograph I could think of has already been taken and done better than I could. And so I think, what is the point? Why do I enjoy photography?

So, after a few highly coherent 3am thinking sessions, I have come to my conclusion. My "philosophy", if you can call it that, behind why I enjoy photography is that I use it as a way to appreciate what I see and the world around me. I don't consider myself an artist because I just use photography as a way to display something beautiful that already existed. (Not that I don't consider other photographers who do similar stuff to me artists, that's just how I view myself.)

If there are any other photographers on here, amateur or professional, I am interested in hearing your beliefs and what meaning you put towards your photography, whether its general or for specific photos.

Preface: I usually post my book reviews on /r/Fantasy. With reddit's future being uncertain right now I figured I'd experiment with posting on here, let me know if you're interested in future reviews. I should add that this probably isn't my most interesting book review ever, it just happens to be my latest read.
Please feel free to let me know if you'd like to see more fantasy book reviews in the future, I am new to Tildes.

Recommended if you like: ottoman empire inspired setting, royalty/bodyguard romance, MC with anxiety, queernorm setting, low-magic setting, m/m romance, homoerotically washing each others' hair, royal palace slice of life, fake-dating (sort of), gay yearning

Blurb

Kadou, the shy prince of Arasht, finds himself at odds with one of the most powerful ambassadors at court—the body-father of the queen's new child—in an altercation which results in his humiliation.

To prove his loyalty to the queen, his sister, Kadou takes responsibility for the investigation of a break-in at one of their guilds, with the help of his newly appointed bodyguard, the coldly handsome Evemer, who seems to tolerate him at best. In Arasht, where princes can touch-taste precious metals with their fingers and myth runs side by side with history, counterfeiting is heresy, and the conspiracy they discover could cripple the kingdom’s financial standing and bring about its ruin.

Review

• This book starts out by throwing you in the middle of a handful of political machinations already underway - the inciting incidents have basically already happened off-screen beforehand. That is fine, but don't expect massive developments on these plots or new plot points to really matter. The book basically goes "this is the political background for this story" and then takes its time for the rest of the book to focus on the romance.
• I should find this book too fluffy and romancey for my taste but I couldn't help but loving it. Some of it is really dumb, it's transparently obvious that the narrative only exists to facilitate a lot of gay yearning, but I also found myself very much enjoying all that gay yearning.
• I feel like I logically shouldn't have enjoyed this so much, because the worldbuilding is negligible, the magic (touch-tasting, i.e. sensing the origins or compositions of metals) is an afterthought for most of the time, and the plot constantly takes breaks for everyone to talk about their feelings a lot. But somehow, I was totally here for all that and was sad when it was over.
• There were various aspects I found a bit grating, from some very obviously contrived setups to make the two leads have to get closer (or make drastic choices that bind them together) to some of the side characters sounding rather anachronistically sassy, to just how often the plot takes a break for people to talk about their feelings. I can list a ton of things this book does "wrong", but none of them actually managed to tip the scale away from me being into it, don't ask me why. Maybe I was just in the right mood for it.
• The setting is very queernormative and progressive in other ways, while maintaining a historical veneer in terms of technology and (for the most part) style. The use of neopronouns for some side characters caught me a bit off guard in the audio narration, but it's done with such a complete nonchalance that I assume many queer readers will find refreshing.
• The main character has anxiety and panic attacks (without quite having the language to articulate what he suffers from, and equating it with cowardice), and I thought that topic was treated pretty well. Then again, everyone that matters is super supportive and understanding the whole time, so it doesn't really serve as a source of conflict for longer.
• I've said that action often takes a backseat to the romance, but I found the action that was there pretty good.

Discussion

In conclusion: I really liked this, but I completely understand anyone who didn't. The only previous Rowland book I'd read is A Conspiracy of Truths (link to my review), where I had the opposite experience: I found it well crafted but didn't enjoy it all that much. This one just happened to vibe more with me.

Yesterday someone on /r/lgbt posted this picture of themself at a pride event, and several people in the thread commented on OP's self harm scars - one asking them to please and thank you spoiler tag the image and post a trigger warning as they found the sight of OP's self harm scars triggering.

As someone who has very similar scars as OP I said fuck that, I disagree. I found it offensive that the sight of someone else's scars somehow grants you the right and allows you to tell them to cover up or hide themself because they find it triggering. To ask to have trigger warnings and spoiler tags added is unfair, in my opinion - the commenter then replied that it's not that hard to do. But for me it's obviously not about the effort it takes to do it, it's about the fundamental principle of asking someone to cover up or hide their body that I take issue with.

OP said elsewhere that they have struggled with mental health in the past but moved on, and clearly they are now at the point that they feel comfortable or don't mind that other people can see their scars. And I certainly feel like they should be allowed to wear whatever they like. I think that showing scars like this is 1) brave, 2) helps reduce stigma surrounding self harm, and 3) should be entirely that person's prerogative - their body, their choice.

So I am curious what you all think about this?

Is it fair to expect or ask someone to tag their picture like this, to hide their scars, to cover up, etc.?

Welcome to the AEW Rampage discussion thread for June 16, 2023! We're coming to you this week from Washington D.C., following an action-packed Dynamite episode. Check out the chaotic and star-studded last 5 minutes here if you're considering giving AEW a shot!

MATCH CARD

Trios Match: United Empire (Will Ospreay, Jeff Cobb & Kyle Fletcher) vs. Best Friends/CHAOS (Trent Beretta, Chuck Taylor & Rocky Romero)

The NJPW United Empire faction, led by Will Ospreay, is set to face off against Best Friends/CHAOS this week. Will Rocky, Trent?, and Chuckie T be able to withstand the powerful combination of Ospreay, Jeff Cobb, and Kyle Fletcher? Or will Ospreay's momentum going into Forbidden Door, coupled with the powerhouse Cobb, be enough to secure a victory?

Mixed Tag Team Match: Jeff Jarrett, Jay Lethal & Karen Jarrett vs. Mark Briscoe, Papa Briscoe & Aubrey Edwards

A unique mixed tag team match is on the cards, with the trio of Jeff Jarrett, Jay Lethal, and Karen Jarrett squaring off against Mark Briscoe, Papa Briscoe, and AEW Referee Aubrey Edwards, who is making her in-ring debut. Can the Briscoes and Edwards pull off a win against their more seasoned opponents, or will Sonjay Dutt's gang of miscreants interfere to gain the upper hand?

Singles Match: Konosuke Takeshita vs. Bandido

'El Hijo del Don Callis' and Bandido are set for an explosive singles match. Each wrestler brings a unique style to the ring, and it will be a spectacle to see these two top-tier talents clash head-on.

Singles Match: Taya Valkyrie vs. Trish Adora

In a high-stakes singles match, D.C.'s own Trish Adora will face off against Taya Valkyrie. After failing to capture the title from Jade Cargill, Valkyrie seems to have set her sights on the new TBS Champion, Kris Statlander. As she looks to make a statement, this could be an excellent opportunity for Trish to show what she's capable of.

Additional Information

• Venue: Washington D.C.
• Airing On: TNT at 10pm Eastern

Here are a few of my favorite examples:

1. "Long had he believed that a gentleman should turn to a mirror with a sense of distrust. For rather than being tools of self-discovery, mirrors tended to be tools of self-deceit." p. 36

2. "For if a room that exists under the governance, authority, and intent of others seems smaller than it is, then a room that exists in secret can, regardless of its dimensions, seem as vast as one cares to imagine." p. 64

3. "After all, what can a first impression tell us about someone we've just met for a minute in the lobby of a hotel? For that matter, what can a first impression tell us about anyone? Why, no more than a chord can tell us about Beethoven, or a brushstroke about Botticelli. By their very nature, human beings are so capricious, so complex, so delightfully contradictory, that they deserve not only our consideration, but our reconsideration - and our unwavering determination to withhold opinion until we have engaged with them in every possible setting at every possible hour." pg. 120-121

In the spirit of the whiskey thread I wanted to do the same for beer. What’s the style of the evening or week?
I just returned from Indianapolis and IPAs definitely dominate the taps. I’ll drink most anything but I’m much more of a wheat guy, myself. Hoegaarden and Weihenstephaner are my go-to’s!

Do you Fish? Do you eat them or let 'em go? How'd you get into it and what were the confusing bits? Memory of a good time or lessons you wished someone taught you?

Do you want to try but haven't ever been? Did you fish as a kid and never again? What would make it easier for you to give it a go? Tried your city's "learn to fish" programs? What if you had someone else clean and cook it?

If your experience or interest limited to digital fish only, what's your thoughts on why every game and its predecessor has fishing mini-games? It's the dangnabbit armageddon but let's pause and fish for a bit first. Wild.

inspired by this super cool thread on treasure hunting kind of fishing,

I'm looking for some new rpgs to play and I'm interested in stories that they and act like tye player character is some clueless out of towner to basically act as an avatar for the player.

I feel like most of the gltimes I've seen this done its pretty hamfisted and doesnt seem like the interactions go right. I'm wondering if anyone has encountered good examples of this idea?

By this i mean things like blahaj, programmer socks, etc. Personally i think theyre kinda funny and i myself have gotten my own blahaj as a way to show my "trans license" but i was wondering how other people might feel about them. Perhaps some people think theyre overdone or they just dont agree with them.

In the book Ask Iwata, former Nintendo president Satoru Iwata is quoted as having said:

After a piece of hardware is released, the price is gradually reduced for five years until demand has run its course. But since the demand cycle never fails, why bother reducing the price this way? My personal take on the situation is that if you lower the price over time, the manufacturer is conditioning the customer to wait for a better deal, something I've always thought to be a strange approach. Of course, this doesn't mean that I'm against lowering prices entirely, but I've always wanted to avoid a situation where the first people to step up and support us feel punished for paying top dollar, grumbling, "I guess this is the price I pay for being first in line."

What do you think of what he said here?

I don't know if I'll do this every week but I figured now is as good a time as any to start. With their new show AEW Collision premiering this Saturday on TNT at 8pm Eastern featuring the return of CM Punk, their upcoming Wembly Stadium All In PPV (which is their equivalent to Wrestlemania), and the Forbidden Door collaboration show with New Japan Pro Wrestling, there has never been a better time to jump into AEW. That being said, welcome to the very first AEW Dynamite tildes discussion thread for June 14, 2023! We're returning to the Capital One Arena in Washington D.C., home of the very first episode of Dynamite that I was fortunate enough to attend.

MATCH CARD

World Title Eliminator: MJF vs Adam Cole

After a break from the spotlight, AEW World Champion MJF is stepping back into the ring to face Adam Cole in a high-stakes World title eliminator. Can Cole seize the moment to secure his title shot, or will MJF demonstrate the truth in his claims of a lack of competition?

Trios Match: Blackpool Combat Club vs The Hung Bucks

Riding the wave of their victory over The Elite at Double or Nothing 2023 PPV, the Blackpool Combat Club—made up of Jon Moxley, Claudio Castagnoli, & Wheeler Yuta—are set to square off once again against Hangman Adam Page and The Young Bucks. Can they replicate their previous success, or will The Hung Bucks turn the tables?

Women’s Title Match: Toni Storm (c) vs Skye Blue

In the first defense of her second reign, Toni Storm is up against Skye Blue, the current #1 contender after winning the 4 way last week. Will Skye Blue bring another upset and put an early end to Storm's first "non-interim" reign or will The Outcasts interfere as usual?

TNT Title Match: Wardlow (c) vs Jake Hager

Even as his feud with Christian Cage and Luchasaurus continues, Wardlow has issued an open challenge for his TNT Championship this week on Dynamite. Jake Hager has stepped up to the plate. Can he prove to be more than a practice match for Wardlow or will Wardlow get his win back from their MMA rules match a few years back?

8-man Tag Team Match: Mogul Embassy vs Sting, Darby Allin, Keith Lee, and Orange Cassidy

The Mogul Embassy, led by Swerve Strickland, is set to confront their rivals in a massive 8-man tag team match. Can they overcome the combined forces of Sting, Allin, Lee, and 'Freshly Squeezed' Orange Cassidy?

Additional Information

• Venue: Capital One Arena, Washington D.C.
• Airing Live On: TBS at 8pm Eastern Time

Just joined this site and I wanted to make a good place to discuss the recently released: The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom for the Nintendo Switch.

I wanted to get your opinions, gameplay videos, screenshots, or whatever it is you want to talk about in regards to the game.

To start, did you buy the game and what's your completion / time spent playing?

Conventional wisdom tells us money does not buy happiness, perhaps the opposite. "Studies" (don't quote me on this, just going off headlines/articles I've read) say happiness grows asymptotically and levels off around an income of 70k USD (perhaps more like 90k inflation adjusted?). I would be interested to know how any of this matches your personal experience. Has your happiness consistently grown with income? If so, where did that growth level off, if at all? And to what would you attribute it? better consumer goods, more security, more freedom...? Have any of you experienced a decrease in happiness associated with growing income? I eagerly await your thoughts!

I have never been a leader at a big company (or anywhere...), and honestly I am pretty ignorant when it comes to money and business, so maybe that's why I feel this way but... isn't this what for-profit companies ultimately are supposed to do? (make money?)

Reddit is blowing up today over his internal memo, and that's when I kind of started to feel bad for him. Wouldn't an internal memo be expected at a time right now? Wouldn't it say that kind of stuff? I'm just curious but for others, if you were in his position, what would you do right now? Is there a better move to be made? What should he have said in that memo? I kind of feel bad for him. At the end of the day he helped create reddit, and it must kind of suck to watch your own project devolve and people come to hate you.

The thing about this API decision that got to me is how abrupt it was - 30 days or thereabout. That doesn't seem like very long. But aren't these decisions usually made by multiple people? (not just a CEO?) I also think it sucks that reddit app hasn't been made accessible to vision impaired folks. So maybe he sucks as a leader, but is that a reason to hate him?

I'd love to better understand.

I managed to convince my wife to watch this one (She's not a fan of gore lol) and holy hell. I loved this movie and was absolutely floored (in a good way) with all of the Native representation on and off the screen. It works so well as a prequel and the whispers of Prey 2 could be soooo promising.
What did you all think of it?

I love it here on Tildes, so I figured It's time to give back to this community in the best way I know how...through my obsessive love of niche electronic music!

SO HERE WE GO!

Kicking off a weekly post series to bring you 10 of the best (note: in my humble opinion and in no particular order) new Drum & Bass + Jungle music from across the scene! Tildes is a great place for discussion and discovery, so I thought hey, why not get the community going myself ;)

Don’t want to read all this stuff? TL;DR - You can find the songs shared here on this Spotify playlist. Follow for new stuff every Monday. Have no clue what Drum & Bass is? Start here!

Hugh Hardie + In:Most & KOJO - RWTS [Soulvent]

Listen: SPOTIFY | APPLE

Hugh Hardie returns with another sublime slice of jazzy, throwback Drum & Bass that’s equally great for sunny days or hazy nights, with a lovely vocal performance from Kojo that soars over Hardie’s as usually excellent drum work.

Nia Archives + Off Wiv Ya Headz [Island]

Listen: SPOTIFY | APPLE

Jungle revivalist Nia Archives cracks another one out of the park with her clattering, rattling and oh so addictive ‘Off Wiv Ya Headz’, channeling the ghosts of Remarc and Congo Natty to reformat them for the new millennium.

Basstripper - Left Me Bleeding [Self Released]

Listen: SPOTIFY | APPLE

DNB Allstars alum Basstripper is on an unstoppable tear lately, with ‘Left Me Bleeding’ keeping it classic with neon bright hardcore flavour and a bouncy bassline that’s definitely got the energy.

Jonth - Even The Stars [Discover]

Listen: SPOTIFY | APPLE

Firmly flying amongst the stars, this trance-flavoured peak hour tune is overflowing with energy and emotion.

Jam Theives - Disco 45 [Technique]

Listen: SPOTIFY

Jam Theives are back with another deep and dirty little dub on Bassline Smith’s Technique Recordings. Hypnotic and pneumatic in equal measure, this is another itchy little number who’s clipped, metallic soundscape almost forces you to move your body.

Phibes - Bang Bang [Phat Planet]

Listen: SPOTIFY | APPLE

Phibes are on a roll lately with another uptempo tune on their own Phat Planet imprint. Much like their previous release ‘Bassdrop’, this one’s packing a rapid-fire, wobbly bassline that gets under your skin, paired with a big ol’ breakbeat that propels this one into prime time.

The Sauce - Hypnotic [TSR]

Listen: SPOTIFY | APPLE

DNB Trio ‘The Sauce’ return with another self-released DJ tool that’s definitely due for some attention with it’s addictive kick-step rhythm and buzzing bassline.

Levela x Eksman - Zone Out VIP [LVL]

Listen: SPOTIFY

Levela bringing the throwback energy on this one, with some classic Renegade Hardware style sirens and a rough and rugged vocal from the legendary Eksman. Definitely not one for the summer picnic.

Toronto Is Broken ft. Natty Lou - Altered States [FiXT]

Listen: SPOTIFY | APPLE

A nasty little number with an unabashed punk / industrial influence proudly on its sleeve. Great vocal from Natty Lou and some crunchy drums play off TiBs sonic warfare for another big tune from LA’s FiXT camp.

DNMO ft. Wolfy Lights- Bombalaya [UKF]

Listen: SPOTIFY | APPLE

Rounding out our wrap-up (or wrapping up our round out?) with the short, sweet and oh-so sublime ‘Bombalaya’ from DNMO on the mighty mighty UKF imprint. Pairing jazzy influences with heavy bass, not disimilar to Camo & Krooked’s SMASH ‘Sientelo’, this is another Latin-flavoured Ear Worm that wont live your top tracks all summer long.

SO what are YOU listening to this week? What do you think of the songs above? Share what DNB you're into below and let's keep the vibe alive...

I'm no luddite. I'm a tech consultant who likes shaving microseconds off API calls.

But for social media, dear tildellows, please consider embracing a slower web. I mention this as I hear a few people for example missing push notifications for messages, etc.

Consider that nobody on social media websites needs to reach you instantly.
Consider that there is nothing happening on such sites that you need to read ASAP.
Consider that you will never be able to keep up with the world, and that trying to stay at the edge of some information will just mean you're missing out on some other edge.

Read your town's local news, which is a lot more likely to impact you. And it's ok to respond to your DMs after a couple days.

The 16th season of It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia started airing last night and is now available for streaming on Hulu too! What did y'all think about the new episodes?

Please make sure to provide warnings for any spoilers you may post! If you want to hide your spoilers, please follow the formatting tips at https://docs.tildes.net/instructions/text-formatting#expandable-sections to hide them under expandable sections. Thank you!

I'm kinda taken aback at Meta's most recent generative music engine (musicgen). I can't believe some of the stuff that pops out of it. I'm trying to generate a few interesting samples for use in my IDMish music.

I committed an embarrassing gaffe today. I had ordered a keyboard online from a store from the Tyneside of north-eastern England: an area with a regional accent and dialect often referred to as ‘Geordie’. I habitually speak in a ‘home counties’ accent, which is sometimes regarded as a contemporary variety of received pronunciation (RP), though it sounds quite different to historical and conservative varieties of that accent. A salesman called me earlier to inform me that the keyboard I wanted was out of stock, but that they would be happy to refund me if I didn’t want to wait for new inventory. Seemingly between the accent difference and the poor audio quality inherent to phone calls I misinterpreted ‘keyboard’ as ‘cable’, insisting with increasing urgency that I have USB-C cables in plenty and that they needn’t worry about supplying one with the order. We both went about in circles for a few minutes until it dawned on me what I was doing, at which point intense embarrassment flushed over me. Oops!

Accent diversity in Britain is rich and regional. It's not hard to place where someone grew up based on their accent. Would you consider your country to be diverse in accents? Even so, are there instances of accent discrimination?

I've had a bunch of different bits of conversation about TotK across the site, but it's mostly been in passing in other topics. Since I know there's a lot of (entirely justified) enthusiasm for the game, let's talk about it! What's your favorite thing to fuse to a shield? (Ice breath) Have you developed any particularly clever machines you want to share? (I made a massively overcomplicated fish-shocker and scoop, like this, but worse.) What's your favorite (Air) and least favorite (Water) temples?

Here are my views on this:

• Windows: The Windows attitude towards privacy isn't good with their telemetry and other data collection increasing gradually from 8 to 10 to 11. In fact, most geeks across the support forums think that 7 is probably the safest and most privacy friendly Windows version but MS is doing everything it can to ensure that newer software doesn't support 7 and it just goes into obsolescence.

  The "default" state in which a W10/11 laptop comes today is so privacy unfriendly that it sends all kinds of data like contacts, location, etc. to Microsoft and their "trusted partners". You can't turn off this data unless you've visited power user forums and know exactly where to find those settings, and basic telemetry still won't be disabled of course.

  As ironic and unintuitive as it sounds, Microsoft Windows was probably much better in privacy department during the bad old days of Gates and Ballmer compared to the good "open source and geek friendly" days of Satya Nadella!

• Mac: Apple systems should ideally be privacy friendly considering the amount of premium they charge to their products and services. But how well does that work in practice? I've never used an Apple product but those who use them seem to have the impression that they're no good in this department compared to others.
  Logic tells me that a more capitalist devil should be no different than the less capitalist one, they're probably all the same when it comes to throwing user's privacy in the bin!

• Linux: Linux used to be the holy grail of users who cared about privacy many years ago but does that still hold good today? Ubuntu was also in some data collection controversy or other many times in past, but how are the state of things today? And what about the derivative distros, are they good too?

Disclaimer: This is just an observation of changing dynamics on Tildes! I don't mean to suggest any sort of way that Tildes should or shouldn't be.

I've noticed over the past few days that the Tildes front page has become filled with Ask posts. My best guess as to why is that these posts are the easiest to create and respond to? They're an easy way to spark discussion, generating lots of bumps back to the front page.

Now, I love seeing folks connect over all these niche topics and experiences. It feels like folks here are finding their people after losing the tight knit communities they had on Reddit, and that's lovely! In fact, it almost feels like these niche ask posts are acting as an impromptu replacement for the niche groups that Tildes currently lacks.

But, one consequence of this is that link posts get quickly pushed off the front page. I had noticed that link posts often struggled to generate discussion, even before the influx of new users. Longread articles and video essays take time to digest, and time to formulate opinions on. But now, I think this effect is compounded by the popularity of Ask threads, with fewer eyes dedicated to these links after they've left the front page.

Some closing questions:

• Have other users noticed this? How do you feel about this shift?
• Is there any merit to having a group dedicated to ask posts? Sort of like /r/AskReddit, but for Tildes? (That way, the posts can be easily filtered if a user wants to only see link posts.) EDIT: Filtering is possible already by filtering out the 'self post' tag, as suggested by @streblo.
• Should the visibility of link posts and ask posts on the front page be artificially balanced in some way?

It's pretty clear that those times are over, but I'm sure many of us remember the heydays of VC funded tech extravagance. These are the ones that come to my mind, hoping to hear others experience.

• At one point, uberpool was cheaper than the cost of public transport in the city.
• No sales tax on Amazon!
• So many promotions and code to get you to join in on their platform. This was also before they try to get you to subscribe to their monthly plans.

It feels like in the last few years so many companies are becoming incredibly greedy in a chance to try and raise profits and please the shareholders, companies hoping that people will comply as they have no choice and give away more of their money to allow these companies to make record levels of profits.

It seems like people are getting less and less and what they have left the companies just want more and more from everyone. I'm not referencing any specific company here but I have seen these trends in the last couple of years get a lot worse.

Customer Impact

• Raising prices there is some valid reasons to raise prices, but sometimes prices are raised just as a way to make more money quickly.
• Quality reduction it feels like companies are asking more money for less quality goods more than ever.
• Excessive manipulative marketing especially on social media and other playes which can misleed people.
• Data explotation companies mis-using peoples data just so they can make some quick money.

Employee Impact

• Wage stagnation Despite the soaring profits many companies refusing to increase wages, leading to financial insecurity.
• Unfair labor practices Companies expecting more from their employees for less money basically.
• Job insecurity replacing workers with automation and outsourcing to cut costs.
• Mental health high pressure enviroments to force profit-driven companies causing record levels of mental health issues.

Society and Enviromental Impact

• Polluting Companies prioritising profits over the enviroment leading to pollution, waste etc
• Economic Inequality Coporate greed leading to income disparities, undermining social coheison.
• Unfair influence on policy Companies using their power and wealth to influence policy making

My question is, when is enough is enough? At what stage should something be done? Anything? to stop corporate greed from runing society?

Notable album releases from today, or after June 3.

Squid - O Monolith

(Rock, Art Punk)
Bandcamp

King Krule - Space Heavy

(Art Rock, Neo-Psychedelia)
Bandcamp

Janelle Monae - The Age of Pleasure

(R&B, Pop)
Spotify

Boldy James & ChanHays - Prisoner of Circumstance

(Hip Hop, Boom Bap)
YouTube Music

Jason Isbell and The 400 Unit - Weathervanes

(Country, Americana)
Bandcamp

Feel free to share more releases below.

Any feedback on the format is welcome!

Having finished out the Amazon Prime series "The Expanse" I'm now working my way through the novels and I keep coming up against a problem with with railguns. Specifically, the way that railguns are used in The Expanse doesn't mesh well with the way they're portrayed.

First, some background. Ships in The Expanse are generally unarmored. There are a bunch of reasons for this but the short version is "most things that can hit you in space will kill you anyway" and armor adds mass which makes every manuver more expensive in terms of reaction mass. So no one has armor. This is important because it means that ships in the Expanse can get ripped up by something as mundane as a stray bullet from a Point Defense Cannon (PDC). PDCs are... well, they're guns. Regular guns which are flinging around much less mass and at much lower velocities than railguns.

Thus, ships in the Expanse are equipped to handle impacts but nothing much bigger than a sand-grain moving at a few km/s.

When we're introduced to rail-guns in the series we're given to understand that they use magnetic acceleration to chuck a 5kg chunk of tungsten and/or uranium at a target at an "appreciable percentage of C." That's much faster than a bullet or any micrometeors ships are likely to encounter. Even 1% of C is ~3,000 km/s.

5 kg of Tungsten is less than you think. Some back of the envelope math suggests that's about cube about 2.6 inches on a side... which is not big. That works out to an incredible energy density which would make a lot of sense if railguns were routinely being fired at planets or asteroids but, since they seem to mainly target ships, the vast, vast majority of the energy that goes into flinging that slug at its target is going to carry through to the other side of the ship.

All total we're talking about 488.5 million Newtons of force for 1% of the speed of light. Helpfully, this scales roughly lineraly so long as we don't get too close to C and induce relativistic mass issues, so 10% of C is 4.8 billion Newtons and so on. So, that railgun slug is carrying a lot of energy. At 1% of C it represents 22.5 trillion joules of kinetic energy. Written out long-ways so we can appreciate all those zeros it's 22,500,000,000,000 J. At 10%, we're talking 2.25 quadrillion joules. To give some sense of scale, that means that, at 1% of C, three rail-gun slugs are delivering about as much energy as the bomb that destroyed Hiroshima in 1945. At 10% of C one round carries about 537 kilotons, or about the yield of a modern, city-busting hydrogen bomb.

Those are absolutely titanic amounts of energy but, realistically, they'll never deliver that much power to a target. After all, a railgun round can only push on its target as hard as the target can push back on it. If the round just punches through the entire ship like it's made of paper, most of the energy stays in the railgun slug as it exits the other side of the ship and you get a neat hole rather than a gigantic flash as trillions of joules of kinetic energy turn into heat.

And obviously, if we're trying to kill things, we want the latter. The solution to this problem is fairly obvious: you need fragmentation. While it's great to have a tungsten cube all tightly packed together as you accelerate it, if you're shooting at a ship, you want a fairly diffuse impact, especially if we're talking about a 10% of C railgun slug. There aren't a lot of things out there in the solar system which can take 500 kilotons of hate and come out the other side in one piece. Moreover, at the distances at which a rail-gun fight happens, that spread would help ensure that you hit your target. Like a shotgun loaded with birdshot, a fragmenting railgun round would provide a cone of impact rather than a line, making dodges less effective.

And, as I mentioned earlier, you don't need a ton of mass to make this work. If a PDC round can go straight through a military craft then we can safely assume that a chunk of tungsten with the same kinetic energy will do the same thing. PDCs look rather a lot like the close in weapons systems in use on many naval ships today so we'll use those as a guide. The 20mm cannon on a Phallanx CWIS tosses out rounds at about 1,035 m/s. Those rounds weigh about 100 g (0.1 kg) which gives them a kinetic energy at the muzzle of 53,422 J.

So, if we could predictably shatter our 1% C railgun round into 421,136 pieces, each would have about the same kinetic energy as a PDC round and be able to hole the ship. At 10% C we could go even smaller and do the same thing with upwards of 40 million shards. 1% is plenty though. Each hull-penetrating piece of our original 5 kg bullet needs only weigh about 1/100th of a gram, which works out to being about 1/100th of the size of a grain of sand.

Put another way, if the fragmentation of a rail round could be precisely controlled, a target ship would experience hundreds of thousands of individual hull breaches with the mean distance between them determined only by the geometry of the ship and the angle of the attack. The result of this would be either the delivery of a titanic amount of energy to the ship itself as the armor attempts to absorb the impact or, if no armor is present (as seems to be the case in the Expanse) the rapid conversion of the interior of the ship to a thin soup.

This, however, seems never to happen in the series and what leaves me scratching my head. As a book and TV series, The Expanse does an otherwise bang-up job with hard science fiction. Most things in universe make sense. This, however, does not. We have take as a given that the materials science technology exists to allow the mounting and firing of a railgun on a ship -- there are a lot of challenges there -- but the straight-line-of-fire use of them is a rare problem with the world-building.

Any fans have any suggestions to help me square this circle?

I've been playing ARPGs since Diablo 1 and have over a thousand hours in PoE, was wondering what everyone thought of D4?

I think the slower gameplay is a fun change of pace and that the legendary affix system is an elegant solution to always making drops interesting.

Surprisingly, as much as I didn't really care for D3, it's game feel was excellent. D4 has taken an odd step back in that regard. In D3 when you bashed an enemy to death with a barbarian they flew across the stage, or melted into a pile of goo if from poison. D4 everything feels kinda bland visually during combat.

Excited to see what end game is like, still only level 35 so we'll see how this so scales later on.

Thoughts?

So, quite a few people don't like/watch video content, and don't like seeing the homepage filled with videos. Let's try something new, see if it sticks.

What are the best videos you have watched this past week/fortnight?

Curious to see and talk with others about using AI to dynamically write personal novels as a hobby, a form of choose-your-own-adventure where you can offload part of the creativity and majority of the grunt-work involved with writing onto the AI.

I started around half a year ago with Novel AI, yet when my stories would reach around the 15,000 word count the context management required due to the 2k token limit caused for a a net negative experience. A few months ago I experimented with ChatGPT at its 4k token limit, but the major cons of the limited ability to edit the content combined with the "always happy" bias hard-wired in made it short lived. That is until I discovered the variant site, Open AI Playground in Chat mode. It isn't free, but the first $5 are free as a trial. (And technically they mention it isn't for entertainment purposes and to use it responsibly)

Using the Playground I've written a 41,000, 23,000, and 21,000 (in-progress, plan is to hit 6 digits) word count personal stories/novels/adventures thus far. Using the co-DM system of bouncing with the AI to suggest creative alternatives (e.g. "List 10 twists that could occur next in the story"), adding creative embellishments (e.g. "Describe the city in detail, using epic high-fantasy influence"), and many other tips it's kept me hooked on some wild adventures across my favorite genre(s), tailored to me.

Edit:
OpenAI just released a GPT 3.5 Turbo 16k model for the Playground, lol. Absolutely obliterating NovelAI's 2k and the previous 4k limits. You could fit a significant portion of an entire novel and it'd take into account every sentence said. It'd probably take a pretty penny to use even half the context window, but could be useful for more critical moments of my novels.