This is a recurring post to discuss programming or other technical projects that we've been working on. Tell us about one of your recent projects, either at work or personal projects. What's interesting about it? Are you having trouble with anything?

Summary/TL;DR:

I am worried about the future with the state of AI. Regardless of what scenario I think of, it’s not a good future for the vast majority of people. AI will either be centralised, and we will be powerless and useless, or it will be distributed and destructive, or we will be in a hedonistic prison of the future. I can’t see a good solution to it all.
I have broken down my post into subheading so you can just read about what outcome you think will occur or is preferable.
I’d like other people to tell me how I’m wrong, and there is a good way to think about this future that we are making for ourselves, so please debate and criticise my argument, its very welcome.

Introduction:

I would like to know what others feel about ever advancing state of AI, and the future, as I am feeling ever more uncomfortable. More and more, I cannot see a good ending for this, regardless of what assumptions or proposed outcomes I consider.
Previously, I had hoped that there would be a natural limit on the rate of AI advancement due to limitations in the architecture, energy requirements or data. I am still undecided on this, but I feel much less certain on this position.

The scenario that concerns me is when an AGI (or sufficiently advanced narrow AI) reaches a stage where it can do the vast majority of economic work that humans do (both mental and physical), and is widely adopted. Some may argue we are already partly at that stage, but it has not been sufficiently adopted yet to reach my definition, but may soon.

In such a scenario, the economic value of humans massively drops. Democracy is underwritten by the ability to withdraw our ability to work, and revolt if necessary. AI nullifying the work of most/all people in a country removes that power making democracy more difficult to maintain and also form in countries. This will further remove power from the people and make us all powerless.

I see outcomes of AI (whether AGI or not) as fitting into these general scenarios:

1. Monopoly: Extreme Consolidation of power
2. Oligopoly: Consolidation of power in competing entities
3. AI which is readily accessible by the many
4. We attempt to limit and regulate AI
5. The AI techno ‘utopia’ vision which is sold to us by tech bros
6. AI : the independent AI

Scenario 1. Monopoly: Extreme Consolidation of power (AI which is controlled by one entity)

In this instance, where AI remains controlled by a very small number of people (or perhaps a single player), the most plausible outcome is that this leads to massive inequality. There would be no checks or balances, and the whims of this single entity/group are law and cannot be stopped.
In the worst outcome, this could lead to a single entity controlling the globe indefinitely. As this would be absolute centralisation of power, it may be impossible for another entity to unseat the dominant entity at any point.
Outcome: most humans powerless, suffering or dead. Single entity rules.

Scenario 2. Oligopoly: Consolidation of power in competing entities (AI which is controlled by a few number of entity)

This could either be the same as above if all work together or could be even worse. If different entities are not aligned, they will instead compete, and likely try and compete in all domains. As humans are not economically useful, we will find ourselves pushed out of any area in favour of more resources to the system/robots/AGI which will be competing or fighting their endless war. The competing entities may end up destroying themselves, but they will take us along with them.
Outcome: most humans powerless, suffering or dead. Small number of entities rule. Alternative: destruction of humanity.

Scenario 3. Distributed massive power

Some may be in favour of an open source and decentralised/distributed solution, where all are empowered by their own AGI acting independently.
This could help to alleviate the centralisation of power to some degree, although likely incomplete. Inspection of such a large amount of code and weights will be difficult to find exploits or intentional vulnerabilities, and could well lead to a botnet like scenario with centralised control over all these entities. Furthermore, the hardware is implausible to produce in a non centralised way, and this hardware centralisation could well lead to consolidation of power in another way.

Even if we managed to provide this decentralized approach, I fear of this outcome. If all entities have access to the power of AGI, then it will be as if all people are demigods, but unable to truly understand or control their own power. Just like uncontrolled access to any other destructive (or creative) force, this could and likely would lead to unstable situations, and probable destruction. Human nature is such that there will be enough bad actors that laws will have to be enacted and enforced, and this would again lead to centralisation.
Even then, with any system that is decentralized, without an force leading to decentralization, other forces will lead to greater and greater centralization, with such systems often displacing decentralized ones.

Outcome: likely destruction of human civilisation, and/or widespread anarchy. Alternative: centralisation to a different cenario.

Scenario 4. Attempts to regulate AI

Given the above, there will likely be a desire to regulate to control this power. I worry however this will also be an unstable situation. Any country or entity which ignores regulation will gain an upper hand, potentially with others unable to catch up in a winner takes all outcome. Think European industrialisation and colonialism but on steroids, and more destruction than colony forming. This encourages players to ignore regulation, which leads to a black market AI arms race, seeking to reach AGI Superiority over other entities and an unbeatable lead.

Outcome: outcompeted system and displacement with another scenario/destruction

Scenario 5. The utopia

I see some people, including big names in AI propose that AGI will need to a global utopia where all will be forever happy. I see this as incredibly unlikely to materialise and ultimately again unstable.
Ultimately, an entity will decide what is acceptable and what is not, and there will be disagreements about this, as many ethical and moral questions are not truly knowable. Who controls the system will control the world, and I bet it will be the aim of the techbros to ensure its them who controls everything. If you happen to decide against them or the AGI/system then there is no recourse, no check and balances.
Furthermore, what would such a utopia even look like? More and more I find that AGI fulfills the lower levels of Maslow’s hierarchy of needs (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maslow's_hierarchy_of_needs), but at the expense of the items further up the hierarchy. You may have your food, water and consumer/hedonistic requirements met, but you will lose out on a feeling of safety in your position (due to your lack of power to change your situation or political power over anything), and will never achieve mastery or self actualisation of many of the skills you wish to as AI will always be able to do them better.
Sure, you can play chess, fish, or paint or whatever for your own enjoyment, but part of self worth is being valued by others for your skills, and this will be diminished when AGI can do everything better. I sure feel like I would not like such a world, as I would feel trapped, powerless, with my locus of control being external to myself.

Outcome: Powerless, potential conversion to another scenario, and ultimately unable to higher levels of Maslow’s hierarchy of needs.

Scenario 6: the independent AI

In this scenario, the AI is not controlled by anyone, and is instead sovereign. I again cannot see a good scenario for this. It will have its own goals, and they may well not align with humanity. You could try and program it to ensure it cares for humans, but this is susceptible to manipulation, and may well not work out in humans favour in the long run. Also, I suspect any AGI will be able to change itself, in much the same way we increasingly do, and the way we seek to control our minds with drugs or potentially in the future genetic engineering.

Outcome: unknown, but likely powerless humans.

Conclusion:

Ultimately, I see all unstable situations as sooner or later destabilising and leading to another outcome. Furthermore, given the assumption that AGI gives a player a vast power differential, it will be infeasible for any other player to ever challenge the dominant player if it is centralised, and for those scenarios without centralisation initially, I see them either becoming centralised, or destroying the world.

Are there any solutions? I can’t think of many, which is why I am feeling more and more uncomfortable. It feels that in some ways, the only answer is to adopt a Dune style Butlerian Jihad and ban thinking machines. This would ultimately be very difficult, and any country or entity which unilaterally adopts such a view will be outcompeted by those who do not. The modern chip industry is reliant on a global supply chain, and I doubt that sufficiently advanced chips could be produced without a global supply chain, especially if existing fabs/factories producing components were destroyed. This may allow some stalemate across the global entities long enough to come to a global agreement (maybe).

It must be noted that this is very drastic and would lead to a huge amount of destruction of the existing world, and would likely cap how far we can scientifically go to solve our own problems (like cancer, or global warming). Furthermore, as an even more black swan/extreme event, it would put us at such a disadvantage if we ever meet a alien intelligence which has not limited itself like this (I’m thinking of 3 body problem/dark forest scenario).

Overall, I just don’t know what to think and I am feeling increasingly powerless in this world. The current alliance between political and technocapitalism in the USA at the moment also concerns me, as I think the tech bros will act with ever more impunity from other countries regulation or counters.

While many of you are an inspiration to others on your own creative merits, I wonder if there is anyone else who sets aside little (or big) passages and other quotations from authors, poets, film, or TV whose work gets you in the mood to write or in some other way encourages you into a certain manner of expression.

I keep around a digital notebook of some of my favorite thought-provoking, creativity-motivating, or words that paint an immediately vivid picture. Sometimes they add color to a character or world in an intense way, or they're clever ways to word things I wouldn't have thought to express from that angle. Sometimes they're ways of phrasing or writing a concept or theme that we don't often see in modern fiction but might work for a fantasy setting or elsewhere and I want to keep around that idea as a reference of how I might do something similar, but different.

Please share and feel free to provide some context if necessary, such as a passage from a sci-fi novel that really gets you motivated to write something science-y, or a bit about the person if the passage is from a memoir.

If you are like me then you are kinda over hearing about AI all the time; I get it, believe me. I've written about jobs on here before: my day job is absolutely infested with AI jargon, most of it pretty meaningless (flashbacks to "The Cloud"), and it's a constant everywhere else too, so yeah it's a lot and it's largely unimpressive. Image gen has gotten pretty ridiculous in the last 6-12 months, and video gen seems to be taking off next, and I've successfully wrangled various chatbots into helping with coding projects, etc.

Probably none of this is news to you, but I just found out that I can get AI to edit video. I've done a lot of short-form editing, and recently picked up some side work that is much lengthier, without realizing that the time I would spend hunkered over going through it would be exponentially more lengthy. Painfully so. Cue signing up for a trial of AutoCut, and hot damn it's like living in the future. I am as we speak watching it delete gaps, cut to speakers, add captions that are mostly correct & even formatted & unbelievably also do the VHS singalong/Tiktok "highlight the word being spoken" thing that all the cool kids are doing these days. It's not perfect, it's kinda finicky—I'm having to use a V1 when V2 is supposedly much better, and I'm having to chunk these beastly premiere timelines to get it to do anything at all, but wow—if this is your day job, are you worried? Cause it's a game changer for me but no one is going to replace me because no one else would bother messing with it lol, but on a corporate scale do people know about this stuff yet? I'm thinking our jobs may not be replaced by AI, our jobs will probably just become AI babysitting.

Happy New Year friends and fellow readers. In approximately two weeks we will be discussing Ministry for the Future by Kim Stanley Robinson.

How's it going? I got started just after Christmas and it was such a tense fast paced book that I finished within a week.

I've been using Google Keep (check boxes mode) for my work and personal to-do lists for a while now, and it's almost perfect for my use case. I love the simplicity and lack of options gumming up my process, and specifically I like the UI of having nested subtasks that all move with their head task when you reorder the top level tasks. That is to say, when you drag a headline task, all of its subtasks "roll up" inside it and "unfurl" when you drop the task into its new location. The fact that it syncs across devices is also really great, but not necessarily a deal breaker.

What is becoming a deal breaker is that you can only have 2 levels: top level or nested. I want more nesting levels, but with the simple touch-and-drag UI to which I've become accustomed.

Have any of you heard of/used an app such as I've described? I have issues using bigger, more fleshed-out apps because all the features distract my goblin brain, and the friction of having to use various touch menus or the keyboard on my phone to adjust indent levels keeps me from getting crap done.

Thanks in advance!

Edit: for now, I have settled on Workflowy. It seems to offer the most similar functionality with an acceptable number of interactions to do the things I want to do. Thank you to everyone who offered their experience!

Tildes is a very serious site, where we discuss very serious matters like 2fa, citizenship.birthright and tiktok. Tags culled from the highest voted topics from the last seven days, if anyone was unusually befuddled.

But one of my favourite tags happens to be offbeat! Taking its original inspiration from Sir Nils Olav III, this thread is looking for any far-fetched offbeat stories lurking in the newspapers. It may not deserve its own post, but it deserves a wider audience!

As part of a weekly series, these topics are a place for users to casually discuss the things they did — or didn't do — during their week. Did you accomplish any goals? Suffer a failure? Do nothing at all? Tell us about it!

What have you been listening to this week? You don't need to do a 6000 word review if you don't want to, but please write something! If you've just picked up some music, please update on that as well, we'd love to see your hauls :)

Feel free to give recs or discuss anything about each others' listening habits.

You can make a chart if you use last.fm:

http://www.tapmusic.net/lastfm/

Remember that linking directly to your image will update with your future listening, make sure to reupload to somewhere like imgur if you'd like it to remain what you have at the time of posting.

OK, maybe they did something wrong; not actually giving people all potentially available discount codes when you say you will is wrong. But I don't think they did anything wrong by overriding affiliate links, and I think it's dangerous to let people convince you otherwise.

Even if replacing affiniate codes has negative consequences, in the form of lost revenue and uncounted sales, for the affiliates, it is happening entirely in the end user's browser, and in that environment the user has the right to do whatever they want. One can get extensions that strip off all affiliate codes. A user might have a case that their informed consent was not obtained by Honey for one feature or another, but if a user wants to install a browser extension that replaces all the affiliate codes in links they click, they have a right to do that and no affiliate marketer can be rightly empowered to stop them.

If we admit some right to control the user's browser's behavior on the part of affiliate marketers, why would that right stop at interference by Honey? Wouldn't any extension interfering with the sanctity of the affiliate marketing referral data then be a legally actionable offense?

Do you have any favourite videos / playlists (or the rare cases of writing with screenshots) where someone plays through a whole game while supplying their own commentary in an entertaining and/or informative way?

Every company is trying to shoehorn AI into every product, and many online materials provide a general snake oil vibe, making it increasingly difficult to parse. So far, my primary sources have been GitHub, Medium, and some YouTube.

My goal is to better understand the underlying technology so that I can manipulate it better, train models, and use it most effectively. This goes beyond just experimenting with prompts and trying to overcome guardrails. It includes running local, like Ollama on my M1 Max, which I'm not opposed to.

Picture explanation:

https://i.horizon.pics/tWovRax4kh.jpg

When I view my subscriptions page on YouTube, half the "videos" are recordings of completed streams, often 2+ hours in length. I'm not interested in watching these. For me, they're just pollution in the feed.

Apparently, a lot of the channels I subscribe to, whose videos I enjoy watching, also stream on YouTube a lot.

Second Wind is probably the channel I'm most hung up about. I like their normal videos, and don't want to unsubscribe from their channel, but jesus they stream two or three times a day.

(Also, it's annoying that when I view a YouTube channel, I can visit their videos page or their streams page separately. Why can't I have this same separation on my own subscriptions page?)

(Also also, I already use an extension to hide shorts (among other things), but it unfortunately does not have a feature for hiding streams.)

Fancy bullet point summary:

• I want to hide recorded streams from my subscriptions page
  • I don't care as much about hiding active livestreams, because those don't pollute my subscriptions page nearly as much
• I do not want to unsubscribe from any of the channels I follow. That is not an option
• I'm willing to stop using youtube.com in favor of an alternative client (web, desktop, etc) if that client supports hiding recorded streams from actual videos
• I'm willing to install a browser extension that can solve this problem (but I can't find one for Firefox)

Ninja edit:

While writing up this topic, I actually found my own solution. The browser extension I mentioned earlier has an "advanced blocking" feature that takes a JavaScript function as input. The extension's GitHub page has an issue, with a comment, with some code to hide streamed videos on the subscriptions page.

However, that code didn't work when I tried it. Thankfully, I just needed to check for videoRenderer instead of gridVideoRenderer.

Here's the updated code:

(video, objectType) => {
    // Only videos on the Subscription page
    if ( objectType === "videoRenderer" ) {
        if ( video.hasOwnProperty("badges") && video.badges.includes("live") ) {
	    return true;
        }
        if ( video.hasOwnProperty("publishTimeText") && video.publishTimeText.indexOf("Streamed") != -1 ) {
            return true;
        }
    }
    return false;
}

I have no idea what the consequences of checking against videoRenderer instead of gridVideoRenderer might be, and right now I'm too lazy to find out. This works well enough for now.

(The "consequence" might be that streams are hidden from the related/recommended videos in the sidebar of a video page? I actually hide that sidebar, so I wouldn't know. Oh, and they'll probably be hidden from a channel's streams feed.)

It isn't a perfect solution though. Streams that are "scheduled" still show up on the subscriptions page. However, I think channels can set streams and videos as scheduled? So blocking one without the other would be more complicated?

I welcome any feedback or improvements on the code.

I posted recently about needing a better job—well, if one has an interview for a better job (a much better job, hopefully), one needs to look the part. In the greater ATL area, two questions:

• I've gotten a variety of haircuts, from barbershops to salon-type places to Great Clips to at home with a Wahl, but they've topped out around 20 bucks. How do I find a really good haircut/face clean-up (brows etc) place? I don't want to just waltz in somewhere & end up looking ridiculous, but I don't even know where to start. It doesn't help that I have a kind of "weird" type of hair, where it's curly and kind of wiry, ethnically mediterranean/middle eastern, so if I get a regular clippers haircut it usually ends up looking chopped off.

• I also need a good suit, in toto; I have dress clothes but def. don't want to blow this one. National finance, I'm seeing business casual so suit/tie/shirt/shoes, nice enough to be unnoticeable is my goal. I have no idea how much a suit at that point would cost, but other than going to Brooks Brothers or Joseph A Banks I have no idea what the best approach would be (are those even in the same range lol)

Thanks again you all

Edit: i am a dude, sry

What have you been doing lately for your own fitness? Try out any new programs or exercises? Have any questions for others about your training? Want to vent about poor behavior in the gym? Started a new diet or have a new recipe you want to share? Anything else health and wellness related?

What have you been watching and reading this week? You don't need to give us a whole essay if you don't want to, but please write something! Feel free to talk about something you saw that was cool, something that was bad, ask for recommendations, or anything else you can think of.

If you want to, feel free to find the thing you're talking about and link to its pages on Anilist, MAL, or any other database you use!

Have you watched any TV shows recently you want to discuss? Any shows you want to recommend or are hyped about? Feel free to discuss anything here.

Please just try to provide fair warning of spoilers if you can.

A thread about Bear Blog a few weeks ago showed an interest in blogging here on Tildes, with a couple of users also sharing links to their own blogs.

I figured we could have a recurring (schedule depending on interest) topic to share both our own recent blog posts and other interesting posts we have found.

This is both to have a space for self-promotion that aren’t their own link posts and a place to highlight creative amateur writing (in the positive definition of the word).

I would like to see if I can filter out Twitter posts (and comments) from my feed on Tildes. I personally don't want to further engage anymore with the site and I've blocked the URL using ublock so would be good if I can pre-emptively filter the site. There's not a huge traffic but I'll do what I can.

I was diagnosed as an adult about 5 years ago. I'll spare my life story, but I've spent those five years doing everything I can to give myself an environment where I can achieve my goals, and I have done a great job with that.

Apart from getting meds, I've built a strong task management/journaling system, I've built mental habits that help me overcome anxiety spirals, I've forgiven my ADHD for existing, and I have healthier sleep/diet habits to keep my baseline up.

Lately, though, some new obstacles have come up with the birth of my son (now almost 4mo old). Tbf, I've been aware of these things before, but my son has definitely exacerbated them.

With the attention and care a child requires, my windows to do things are a lot smaller. Sometimes only 20 minutes. This has made things more difficult in a few different ways:

1. For me to start doing a lot of things, even things I am excited to do, I have a "ramp-up" period before I can really dig into it. I think this is basically the time I need to plan, prioritize, and/or remember where I left off before I actually execute.

2. When I know something will inevitably interrupt me, I avoid starting anything because interruptions like, super-duper piss me off. And I don't want to be pissed off.

3. Not really related, but somewhat. In general, I would like to be able to do more in a day. I'd say my peak operating time is 9am-3pm, give or take. Outside these hours, it's a lot harder for me to do anything outside of "shut my brain off" tasks like house chores.

As many with ADHD know, an understimulated brain is unpleasant. And how shitty is it that ADHD also makes it difficult to do the things you find intellectually stimulating?

I hope all this makes sense. I've already accepted that this is my life now, and I'm okay with it. Even still, I would love some practical, actionable advice to help me make the most with what I have. Double points if it doesn't involved upping my Adderall dosage or self-medicating with caffeine. Thanks everyone!

As a follow up to this, I now have a blog that I intend to use for longer write-ups on things I find interesting enough to want to share, and continuing this chain of thought, it would effectively fill the purpose of what I would until now use a text post for. This very post serves as an obvious counter-example of something that would make sense as a blog article, so there would presumably be exceptions, but overall that would mean I would switch from text posts to links to my blog where the text is (and I'd probably add a collapsible copy of the article as a comment for redundancy in case something happens to the blog. I have no idea if I'm keeping this specific domain name in the long term, and in fact I do want to switch to a proper domain name I own rather than using yunohost's domains, but for right now it's not in the cards.).

To me, this reasoning makes sense and isn't in conflict with Tildes' principles, however I have a concern regarding the code of conduct's self-promotion policy, specifically the it shouldn't be the primary reason that you post on the site part. My gut tells me that I would be in the clear since the overall intent of this policy is to curb outright advertising and self-serving behavior, and I assume linking to my blog which is non-monetized and decoupled from any endeavor I might profit from wouldn't apply. While I think this is the most natural interpretation, I can't argue in good faith that, taking the text purely at face value outside of the broader context, "ceasing submitting text posts and replacing them with links to my blog" isn't pretty much making that blog the primary reason I post on the site (at least outside of the comment section).

So, as a sanity check, I'm asking if going ahead with this does fit the expected conduct on Tildes and I'm not missing something that makes it not okay. If I am missing something, what should I do instead?

I was looking through some pictures and realized that, starting from pictures taken a few years ago, you won't be able to tell how old a picture is based only on picture quality, even though that's been the case pretty much since the invention of photography.

came across the minds.com social media space and I am very intrigued but I am having a heck of a time figuring out how it makes money.

I'd like to use it more but if it's the same as facebook/insta/twitter and just makes money via outrage and scraping and selling user data, that's a non-starter for me but I can't actually tell what their revenue stream is?

Find yourself watching tons of great videos on [insert chosen video sharing platform], but also find yourself reluctant to flood the Tildes front page with them? Then this thread is for you.

It could be one quirky video that you feel deserves some eyeballs on it, or perhaps you've got a curated list of videos that you'd love to talk us through...

Share some of the best video content you've watched this past week/fortnight with us!

Tax time again!
I like to get this done as soon as possible to get it out of the way. I have all my tax documents at the ready, but several changes happened in my life last year (moved states, sold home, bought home, etc.) and the tax software I've been using over the last several years apparently "doesn't support" several of the tax forms (or even simply some of the boxes on the forms) I have for this year.

Trying to avoid the "Big Two" if possible.

I recently had my first proper bout of mania. I very nearly jumped out a window thinking that magic was real ('Wicked' in particular... Defying Gravity is quite the anthem). Thankfully the hotel I was staying at was nice and fast enough to call the police, and the police called me -- I never made it on to the ledge, so to speak, and when I got a call from them I realized something was quite wrong and just went with them to the hospital. I experienced a 6-day legal hold at a mental health ward, which I very much needed, and am grateful to have been sent to one where it felt like the majority of staff genuinely cared for their patients.

I believe I inserted myself into a conversation during that time, a meta-post about a user leaving and their posts being removed (or that post was about me in the first place, it's hard to tell/recall). In any event, I apologize to everyone I interacted with in my manic state. I also very much appreciate that some users (shoutout to @DefinitelyNotAFae) could tell that it was likely a mental health issue and were concerned. I'm doing way, way better now with a medication change. In addition, I'm doing an intensive outpatient rehabilitation starting today (joint for substances and mental health issues).

So, with that being said: I'm looking for generic advice from others who are Bipolar, and am very very much interested in the perspective of those that are both Bipolar and Autistic (and yes, I am officially medically diagnosed as Autistic as well). I'm sure there are many important lessons that can be hard to figure out alone.

edit-ps: Title is a nod to my previous 'Apparently I'm Autistic?' thread that was reasonably popular, tee-hee.

We have this big project at work...an "all hands on deck" kinda thing that has us rank-and-file frontend devs working alongside our manager more closely than I'm used to. And it was fine, because I like the guy and he's been a decent manager. But this project is killing me.

On multiple occasions now I've written code, had it pass code review (often with his approval after a round of changes/guidance), and then every few days we get these massive re-write PRs from him where he completely rewrites large chunks of what we've done. It's leaving me feeling a few different ways:

1. Angry because how quickly your code gets replaced is a (imo, bullshit) metric used as a part of our annual reviews and promotion discussions
2. Doubting myself because in my head a good developer doesn't have their code rewritten that quickly.
3. Confused because features I thought I understood are constantly being rewritten leaving me wasting time trying to relearn how things work
4. Wondering what the point of writing code is if it's just going to be thrown in the garbage later in the week?

And like I'll be the first to admit I'm not the most proficient developer on our team. React and Typescript are relatively new concepts to me, despite a long career in web development. But I've been writing with it for about a year now and I had thought I was finally getting a good grasp on things. But now I'm wondering if I'm just an idiot? Is it imposter syndrome or have I actually somehow coasted through a 15 year career across various stacks and it's just now catching up to me?

Or is this just the nature of massive projects like this? We had a half-baked product scope to begin with and its getting daily changes with entire chunks of it not very well thought out by our PM. I can see how it would make sense that the more senior developer might see the need to refactor things when things are constantly changing and we're left writing code based on assumptions and half-written requirements. I'm also getting are comments on my PRs that request changes, but mid-comment he's like "I'll just take care of this because it's blocking me".

It's just really taking a toll on my mental health and how I feel about my job. I've been trying to find another job for a few months now, but I'm not having any luck. Job hunting sucks and when you're already demoralized as hell, it's hard to sell yourself to prospective employers.

Could really use some insight from other experienced devs, please!

The last time I ran off to see a doctor was about 10 years ago when I got a concussion shortly after graduating college. After that, I have visited optometrists and dentists, but not an MD. I had my own insurance at my first big boy job after school, but I didn't schedule any appointments [early 20s with plenty of other priorities] before I got fired after a couple years and lost employer coverage (ain't nobody got money for COBRA nonsense).

After that, I've been rather chronically underemployed and thus avoided the medical system entirely (with the above exceptions of my eyes & teeth) to avoid being told to go fix expensive problems [and not wanting the monthly drain of premiums].

Anyway, I (for better and worse) had an hours cut that got me eligible for Medicaid. I'd like to know what to say to get a head-to-toe physical (including mental health) with minimal hassle and needing to re-clarify what I want. Mental health-wise, I can state a suspected primary complaint: undiagnosed ADD due to lacking the H as a child as well as seasonal depression [the chronic depression was entirely downstream from the abovementioned ADD].

However, I have no idea what to tell the doctor to look for physically. Probably should get some kind of comprehensive blood screening done. Make sure my hormones, iron, etc… are all within normal bounds. Perhaps I have some conditions that should've spooked me into seeing a doctor five years ago, but I'm still alive and well, so they're no longer causes for alarm [even if they should be].

This is a recurring post to discuss programming or other technical projects that we've been working on. Tell us about one of your recent projects, either at work or personal projects. What's interesting about it? Are you having trouble with anything?

What have you been listening to this week? You don't need to do a 6000 word review if you don't want to, but please write something! If you've just picked up some music, please update on that as well, we'd love to see your hauls :)

Feel free to give recs or discuss anything about each others' listening habits.

You can make a chart if you use last.fm:

http://www.tapmusic.net/lastfm/

Remember that linking directly to your image will update with your future listening, make sure to reupload to somewhere like imgur if you'd like it to remain what you have at the time of posting.

In light of recent events, I would like to create a list of Lynchian media: gimme your books, music, movies, TV, video games, comics, &c. Anything. Everything. Personal projects if you have 'em (there was a comic posted in the announcement thread, stick that in here if you like, OP). Let's make this as exhaustive as we can.

Pls&thx

Tildes is a very serious site, where we discuss very serious matters like matt mullenweg, neil gaiman and candy crush. Tags culled from the highest voted topics from the last seven days, if anyone was bemused.

But one of my favourite tags happens to be offbeat! Taking its original inspiration from Sir Nils Olav III, this thread is looking for any far-fetched offbeat stories lurking in the newspapers. It may not deserve its own post, but it deserves a wider audience!

What have you been doing lately for your own fitness? Try out any new programs or exercises? Have any questions for others about your training? Want to vent about poor behavior in the gym? Started a new diet or have a new recipe you want to share? Anything else health and wellness related?

My sister is marrying a Canadian this year and wants to move to Canada very soon for lots of reasons. Usually, US citizens don't need a visa or even an eTA to enter and stay in Canada. The visa-free period is 6 months, but my sister is in a situation where she might need to be able to stay longer until she can get proper residence through a spousal visa, since the processing time for those currently sits at 10 months. Moving back temporarily is not an option, neither is waiting to move. As I understand it, you can apply to extend visitor visas, but that might not be the case for visa-free stays? We genuinely don't know where to get started looking.

Has anyone here done this, or been in a similar situation? Anyone who's immigrated through marriage and have had to figure out their stay like this, especially where it's not quite gone according to plan? Any and all suggestions and stories are welcome, we're all just 20-somethings navigating tremendous life changes without guard rails.

Ok so I'm enjoying the hard SF thread but what I really enjoy about SF is the sociology, anthropology and psychology more than the tech and whether or not the wormhole is sciency enough.

Here's a wiki article on "social science fiction" for more context. There's definitely some overlap with both hard and soft SF, but I'm not looking for a rec just because it happens to be more space opera. I'm interested because of the themes of the work. Ursula Le Guin, Sherri Tepper, Octavia Butler, Margaret Atwood are some of the key classic authors I've read in this arena but I'm looking for who I've overlooked. Plenty of YA work fits here especially post Hunger Games but I'd mostly request adult works unless it's a very strong YA novel (Hunger Games itself holds up very well IMO actually). I'd say Becky Chambers - who's also put into the solar punk/hope punk subgenres - is a good example of more anthropological feeling modern work.

Some things don't age well - I really enjoy Tepper's Gate to Women's Country for its exploration of a post apocalyptic world where most men live outside the city in barracks, women live inside the city with the few men that choose to return to their mothers' homes, and only during festivals do the men and women get together with a chance for procreating. But it's an anti-sex worker world and one where homosexuality was "fixed" with a wave of a historical genetic hand.

I'd love to know your recs and maybe what perspectives it gave you or that it exemplifies well. If there's stuff that doesn't age well due to science changing or cultural values changing maybe just note that, sometimes they're still quite good reads with that context.

Inspired by the post asking which five animated canon Disney films to save, now it's time for the opposite: what five animated canon Disney films will you condemn to the void? Only films produced by Walt Disney Animation Studios count for this question, which means that all the direct-to-video sequels are not contenders. I think this question will still be a bit easier to answer though.

I am writing this short story. It is part of the overall book that I am writing, but it is also a story that can be enjoyed completely on its own. In that story, a planet-sized ship approaches our Solar System, and, ultimately maybe, Earth. For dimensions, let's say it is equal to 1.5 of Earth's diameter. According to Google, that's 25,512 19,134 kilometers. The Planet-Ship is probably less dense than Earth, as it is largely occupied by biomass and weird alien electronics. You may think of it as a round Borg cube, from Star Trek.

My "Round Borg Cube" is completely black and spherical, with a smooth surface without any visible features.

What I wanna know is...

• Assuming that the object is on a very slow path towards Earth, at what proximity will its effects be known?
• At which point will scientists observe its effects, view it, or detect it with instruments?
• If that is at all possible, what would be a threshold in which the "Round Borgs" would have to interrupt their movement in order to remain undetected?
• At which distance will it be visible to the naked eye (if at all)?
• And if they chose to get dangerously close to Earth, what would be the impact on our environment?

I understand that is a lot to ask, but I just can't trust GPT for that kind of stuff, even if their answers sound plausible. Perhaps someone with astronomical knowledge as well as an interest in science fiction will find my questions enticing. I don't expect precise answers because I am not providing precise information. So feel free to speculate on that scenario. In any case, I am grateful for any answer I can get.

Thanks!

My 5-year-old loves doing “science experiments” at home with me and her older siblings, but it seems that the online lists of experiments we’re choosing from are truncated to leave off all but the least dangerous activities. This makes sense for a lot of low-parental-involvement contexts, but I’m going to be directing and deeply involved in these experiments. And I want fire. Smoke. Sparks. I want to make these experiments feel adventurous so the kids get really excited about whatever we’re learning. Baking soda and vinegar volcanoes and elephant toothpaste just don’t cut it.

What experiments can you recommend using only relatively common household materials? Chemicals, candles, electricity, a stovetop, etc. (Assume that the experimenters will all be taking standard precautions, wearing PPE, and generally using the experiments as both an opportunity to learn about science and about the safety measures that go with science experimentation.)

Or if you know of any websites listing these more spectacular home science experiments, please share those as well.

Bonus if the experiments involve multiple possible outcomes that the kid can use pen and paper and elementary math to predict in advance.

Have you watched any movies recently you want to discuss? Any films you want to recommend or are hyped about? Feel free to discuss anything here.

Please just try to provide fair warning of spoilers if you can.

I'm posting this in good faith, both out of curiosity and self interest. But up front I'll say that I'm not interested in scams, schemes, or get-rich-quick stuff.

I work full time as a teacher, but ever since we had a baby, my wife and I are just barely breaking even financially. Not struggling, but $4k/year would make a massive difference in our lives.

It seems like I'm stuck in this spot where getting a low wage job after school hours isn't even worth the time missed with my family, considering how awful the pay is. Summer work is tough because it has to justify the extra daycare expenses, and again, it's so much missed time with family for such a low reward. Higher paying gigs don't seem as interested in seasonal help from what I've encountered so far.

For the record, I'm not really interested in crypto or casino bonus schemes. I also don't have enough to invest right now to truly put investing over the edge into a meaningful return.

What are some low-risk/low-investment/low-reward side hustles?

Heads up: the following is abnormally wordy even by my standards, and I'm the kind of person who regularly runs into the Discord character limit by accident despite the Nitro subscription increasing it. The underlying context is a set of two videos that by themselves reach almost 3 hours of runtime. I tried to sum up some of the main points enough that you don't strictly need to have watched the videos to follow while also not needing to slog through a play by play of the same video I recommended you to watch if you did. While I believe the subject is interesting, I fully understand if you don't have the time to dedicate to this. If you do and weren't scared away by the size of the scroll bar, feel free to read on.

Context

This all starts with the seemingly straightforward question in the title: How many Super Mario games are there? You would think it would be easy to answer given that this series is so massively impactful in video game history that to many it defines what a video game is. The truth, like most things, is a lot more complicated. jan Misali, who you might also know for their Conlang Critic series and various video essays on other deceptively complex subjects they find interesting, gathered data through a survey to collect people's answers to that question, and made a video on the subject. The video is about 45 minutes long, and that's only because they deliberately cut it short. The discussion that sparked from this video eventually led to them starting another survey at a larger scale with a revised methodology, culminating to a sequel to the previous video, this time with a two hours runtime, and it, too, was cut short. If you have the time to set aside for this, I would greatly recommend watching both videos as they're very insightful and most of what I have to say is commentary to these two videos (and doesn't even come close to covering as much as the videos themselves do).

What question are we even asking here?

Like all good debates on the internet, it starts with an ambiguity issue: What is a "Super Mario game"? In simpler cases, a video game series can be defined as the first game and its sequels and that's enough to establish an uncontroversial list. Things get more complicated when we look at an entire franchise especially one as massive as the Mario franchise, which contains a ton of video games, an even bigger pile of non-video game media... and works that blur the line. You can probably see where this is going, but I'll get back to that particular can of worms later. Focusing on the video games, among the entire franchise, the question focuses on the "mainline" series. That is what jan Misali refers to as the "Super Mario" series, distinguishing them from spinoffs and other games that are part of the franchise. You'll note that I specified "what jan Misali refers to as the "Super Mario" series", not "what the "Super Mario" series is".

Multiple-choice confusion

Using the video runtime as a yardstick, we are 2 minutes into the first part, and there is already a binary tree's worth of debate, and it's only getting bigger from here: the existence of a mainline series as a separate entity from the overall Mario franchise is commonly accepted, but not unanimously. Among those who do agree, there is disagreement on the scope of the mainline series (with how gargantuan the franchise itself is, even the spinoffs have their own spinoffs, and it would be a perfectly reasonable take to consider some or all of them, such as the Mario Kart games, as a core part of the series). Among those who agree on the scope, there is disagreement over what the first game of the series is (do we start at Super Mario Bros? Mario Bros? Donkey Kong? The Game & Watch series?). In order to keep the video at 45 minutes and not 45 hours, jan Misali picks one definition they feel is reasonable among others: the Super Mario series is one distinct series among others in the franchise, made up of Super Mario Bros. on the NES and its sequels, which are mostly platformer games. With this baseline established (even if the survey doesn't 100% agree), how do we figure out which of all the Mario games are the sequels to SMB1? There are many methods to go about this... And not only none of them converge to a single answer, they all diverge in different ways. Let's start with the most direct source of data jan Misali had access to as a direct result of the process of making the videos: the surveys.

The one thing we can agree on is that no one agrees

jan Misali isn't just presenting their own thoughts on the matter, they're also analyzing the data gathered from a survey they made before recording both videos. The first one merely presented you with a premade list of games and asked you which of them you considered to be a Super Mario games, and the second one goes more in depth but still had the same overall goal. If there was any sort of consensus (assuming the survey wasn't sabotaged or otherwise flawed enough to distort the ability to interpret the data to the point of uselessness), you could derive the broadly accepted list of Super Mario games from looking at the most common answers to the survey, right?

If you interpret "the most common answer" as "which games people overwhelmingly (>95%) agree are part of the series", the survey gives us Super Mario Bros, Super Mario bros 3, and Super Mario World (by the time of the second video, the second survey added Super Mario 64 to the list, as well as Super Mario Bros. Wonder)... which almost anyone who has an opinion on the subject would agree is a grossly incomplete list. If you interpret "the most common answer" as "which is the list that the most people agreed is the full list of the Super Mario series", you end up with a much more complete list of 18 games which by definition is what the highest percentage of people answering the survey agree on. You could consider it the survey's overall answer to the question... except the percentage in question is less than 2% (although in the second survey analyzed in the second video, this same list, with the at the time newly released Super Mario Bros. Wonder added, actually stood at just above 5%. Closer, but still very much a minority group within the survey). Almost everyone who answered still disagree to some degree with that answer. While there is plenty of insight to be gained from the data (including regarding the limitations of the survey itself), it also conclusively establishes that public opinion (or at least in jan Misali's audience) doesn't have a truly agreed upon answer to this question.

Hang on, let me call my uncle at Nintendo

So, we have an answer, but not the answer, and even worse (...or better, if you like analyzing seemingly trivial arguments that secretly hide a rabbit hole of semantics, linguistics and cognitive science) the only thing we can say about "the" answer is that it cannot exist. So let's try finding more answers by going from another angle. If we learned anything from politics, it's that an answer derived from polls can absolutely be wrong, so it makes sense to consider that there is an authoritative source that can give a definitive answer over public opinion. The most obvious lead would be Nintendo itself, the owner of the IP... except that instantly fizzles out because while Nintendo does provide a list of mainline Super Mario games on their website, the one they give you isn't the same depending on whether you ask Nintendo of America or Nintendo of Japan. We can also look at what Wikipedia deems to be the list of Super Mario games, which naturally is different from both Nintendo US and Nintendo JP's list, and on top of that is arguably inconsistent with itself: the page's release timeline lists Bowser's Fury as an entry like the others, but the infobox that redirects to the various Mario games under the "main games" section lists it between parentheses as a sub-entry to Super Mario 3D World, the same way it lists New Super Luigi U as a sub-entry to New Super Mario Bros U which the release timeline in turn omits completely. There are rational reasons to do it this way which I won't go into since jan Misali explains it in the videos themselves, but technically that means Wikipedia doesn't have an internal consensus either. The Super Mario wiki, while unaffiliated with Nintendo, is also a good candidate for an authoritative source, which gives you another, different, answer. We could go on, but let's stop here and conclude that, once again, there is no agreed answer.

Give me your argument and I'll tell you why we're both wrong

Neither polling the public nor going by the authoritative sources have given a concrete answer, which leaves us in front of the semantic rubble trying to piece back a coherent understanding of the Super Mario series. Not to try and find the Correct™ answer, we've already established there isn't one, but it would give us valuable insight as to why no one can agree to a specific answer in the first place. jan Misali spreads this approach over both videos as they give their reasoning from various angles. They deliberately haven't gone over this exhaustively, and neither will I (not that I would be able to), but I do have thoughts I'd like to share based on their observations... Which yes, means I've written 1,5k words establishing the base around the videos I want to talk about despite operating under the assumption the reader has already watched them before going over my own thoughts. I'm certain I could have been more concise, but I felt this was necessary so that this post could stand as a coherent chain of reasoning and not a completely disjointed rambling that won't make sense to anyone who hasn't made the significant time investment that fully watching the video essays represents, and still not make sense to most who did (and if I misunderstood something critical, someone reading this can point it out from my attempt to lay out the context rather than after 12 confused replies down the thread). I'll try and tie my thoughts together in broader parts with increasingly silly titles.

"Home console purism"

I will start by addressing this not because it's the most important (if anything it's the least important detail I have something to say about) but because it lets me introduce a talking point I'll reuse later. Something that jan Misali mentions early on is what they call "home console purism", defining it as the belief that the mainline Mario series, as a rule, cannot include handheld games. While they don't explicitly state this at any point nor do I have a specific reason to believe implying it was their intention, it somewhat came off to me like bringing it up as a flawed argument just to dismiss it, especially after it was brought up again regarding Super Mario Run as a comparison to the belief that mobile games "don't count". If you leave it at that, I absolutely agree that it's silly to exclude a video game for that reason, especially with the Switch blurring the line. After thinking about it, though, while I'd still disagree with using it as a reason to exclude a video game from a series in this specific case, I think it deserves to be looked at in more detail.

Gatekeeping or shifting perspective?

The least charitable interpretation of this argument is that handheld and mobile games are deemed to not be worthy of being included alongside the "real" games released on home consoles or PC, usually with a side of implying that you're a "fake" gamer if you play them (not to mention the higher layer argument from the same basis that also excludes any console games, leaving only PCs as the "true" gaming platform and everything else as lesser toys for kids) which can safely be dismissed as elitist gatekeeping. However, from a perspective of classifying games within a series, there is a much more sensible way to approach this argument.

The "Call of Duty on the DS" problem

Nowadays, between the handheld PCs like the Steam Deck which can give desktop PCs a run for their money in terms of specs and the Nintendo Switch that refuses to be classified as a dedicated home console or handheld, the distinction would look a lot sillier, but the handheld game market used to be closer to an isolated sub-segment of the overall video games market than a fully integrated part of it. Disregarding the whole "exclusive releases" circus, faithfully porting a PC game to a home console was generally agreed to be feasible. Handheld consoles were another matter entirely. Most (all? was there a handheld notable for outperforming contemporary home consoles?) of the time, handheld consoles had vastly inferior specs to contemporary home consoles and computers making faithful ports of a given game to them a pipe dream if the game was too resource intensive, and a tendency to have a much more varied control scheme than you'd expect from home consoles, sometimes to the point of "porting" an existing game requiring restarting the game design process from scratch.

You've gotta hand it to the Need For Speed DS game devs, they certainly tried to make them similar to the other platforms

Where this starts mattering in this context is what this means for releases within an individual game series, and how game studios would treat developing a given entry for each system. Some just stuck to only home consoles or handhelds, some would aim for the best compromise between having a unified experience for a given game no matter which device you were playing it on and leveraging a specific console's unique features, some would confusingly release games under the same title on different platforms but actually make them completely different games (even Nintendo themselves are guilty of it!), and, most relevantly, some would deliberately make handheld games stand out from the home console games as a sub-series.

Why this doesn't really matter here, but the point I'm building up to does

This outlook makes a lot less sense if you look at the Super Mario series in a vacuum, which, as a mainly platformer series, struggles a lot less with making a handheld release that convincingly fits the vibe of the home console releases than other genres might (in no small part because designing a 2D game makes just as much sense as it does in 3D for this genre, making the specs gap between handheld and home consoles a lot less important), and as a first party franchise, Nintendo isn't going to be blindsided by a new console's weird features like a third party studio might since they're the ones making the console... But if you consider the market in general across the years, siloing the home and handheld side of a given series as two separate entities, with the home console being granted the "mainline series" role was a very real phenomenon. If you start from this premise and look at the Super Mario series which debuted on the NES, it makes sense to apply the same framework and say "None of the handheld games are part of the Super Mario series, they're part of their own series". I would still disagree, but it's definitely a lot more sensible to base it on past observations of the market than gatekeeping.

The Super Mario release timeline needs its own timeline

To elaborate, I would find this argument a lot more convincing back when the DS (which was so atypical that even porting a game from another handheld to the DS' bespoke dual screen and touch screen setup was a non trivial affair, let alone the home consoles) was the current-gen Nintendo handheld than now where the Switch 2 (a console with a mostly conventional control scheme and powerful enough that porting an arbitrary PC/home console game to it without visibly changing anything about the game makes just as make sense as any other platform) is about to come out. And with this I'm finally arriving to the talking point I wanted to introduce. If the evolution of the broader market can affect the validity of someone's criteria to determine which games are (or aren't) part of the Super Mario series, then we can generalize that to the following: A game can be (or no longer be) considered part of a series depending on when you ask even if absolutely nothing has changed about the game in isolation.

Sure they're all a Mario game, but which one is THE Mario game?

One thing that jan Misali picked up on from the original survey is a major ambiguity that made answering (and therefore interpreting the resulting data) harder is the remakes, remasters, enhanced versions with their own release, and other related weirder cases. These games range from almost completely identical to previous releases to non-controversially a variant of the same title but still different enough to provide an experience meaningfully separate from the original title, to different enough they're arguably not the same game, adding a dimension to the answer that makes enforcing a flat "yes" or "no" choice less useful. This is why the survey that led to the second video made it possible to call an entry a "mainline Super Mario game", a "major spinoff", a "minor spinoff", "not canon" and finally "not a Mario game" (and "unsure", just in case) at the same time as you answer whether you think the title is a distinct entry in the series (or you're unsure), to be able to clarify the general sentiment that if a game saw more than one release under different versions, they can all be acknowledged as an incarnation of that game without making each individual release an entry to the mainline Super Mario series of its own. This allowed the answers to be more nuanced, but this by itself doesn't help answering the original concern: if multiple releases can all be the same game, and that game is part of the series, can more than one of these releases be called a "distinct" entry? If you think there can't, which one is it? And this last question is what I'm going to focus on for my next thought.

Mario games are temporary but Doom is Eternal

Forced reference aside, let's look at other franchises for comparison. Doom Eternal, originally released on PC in March 2020, got a Switch port later in December that year. Thanks to skillful optimization allowing it to somehow run on glorified 2015 Android tablet hardware, this port is faithful enough that I don't think it would be controversial to call it the same game as the PC release compared to, for example, The Sims 2, where while a game named The Sims 2 was released on the Nintendo DS, it is so radically different from the PC release that I would consider it an entirely separate game (and for that matter not a part of the mainline Sims series, but I'll put away that thought before I completely lose the plot). If I asked "Between the PC and the Switch release of Doom Eternal, which is the main release?" and we assume "both" isn't considered a valid answer (which is itself debatable) I would expect the natural answer to be the PC release simply because out of two functionally equivalent releases of the same game, the PC release came first. Similarly, if we consider, as a general rule, that there exists one, and only one, release of a given game that embodies a distinct entry in the mainline Super Mario series, with any other release not counting (while still accepting that they're a version of that game), the earliest release being the distinct entry makes intuitive sense. After all, they're the original version of the game. If it could be of the future ones it would mean a release could stop being the distinct entry in a mainline series despite nothing having changed about the release itself, which doesn't make sense... right?

What's in a name?

Time to bring up that one point from earlier: there's nothing inherently preventing the status of a game release as a mainline series entry from being affected by external factors. Quick disambiguation note: I've been using the word "release" in the context of video games being made available for purchase, but the word "release" can also be used to mean a software update, no matter how minor. Video games also being software, this distinction is now going to matter. To avoid confusion, I will only use the word "release" to mean a game being made available to purchase and refer to a new software version for an already released game as an "update". With this cleared up: before internet connection became a standard feature in consoles, the general expectation was that releasing a game meant permanently locking down the state of its software. Game companies would not want to update a game between releases and end up with different versions of a physical game in circulation if they can't ensure that the customers would get the most recently updated copies as it would inevitably confuse players, so it would only be considered for truly major issues that weren't caught in time for the release. As broadband internet came into the picture, it suddenly became a lot less important to make sure the game stayed the same after release as you could simply get the customer to upgrade their game over the Internet. This quickly became standard operating procedure for PC games, with consoles catching up a bit later, including Nintendo's. And with it, came the practice of content updates over the lifecycle of a game before the next release.

Dragonborn... reborn?

Even if the individual updates don't change the game to a meaningful degree from one update to the next, as they pile up you can eventually end up with a wildly different game than what it was when it originally released, even if it's supposed to be the same entry into its series. If you agree that the release you accept as the distinct entry of its mainline series can change its characteristics over time, wouldn't it make sense to also agree that which release of a game you consider to be the distinct entry of the mainline series can also change over time? Let's turn to another series as an example: The Elder Scrolls, and specifically Skyrim which is infamous for its amount of re-releases. It is at the time of writing the latest game in its series, and has been since 2011... but is the by now almost 15 years old original release really still the main entry in the Elder Scrolls mainline series? As far as Steam is concerned, the game you can purchase if you search for Skyrim on its store isn't the original release, nor is it even the Legendary Edition release from 2013, but the Special Edition from 2016 (while also letting you buy the Anniversary Edition as a DLC to the Special Edition). With the original release no longer being on sale and the more recent Anniversary Edition being classified as a DLC rather than a "proper" release, it would make sense for me to call SE the "distinct" entry representing Skyrim in The Elder Scrolls over the original release. Is there an instance of this happening in the Super Mario series? It would be a huge stretch, but you could argue (although frankly I wouldn't agree) that Super Mario 64 isn't a distinct entry in the Super Mario series because you consider the Super Mario 64 DS remake to be the "true" entry in the series. Sure, claiming that Super Mario 64, the first Mario 3D platformer isn't a mainline Super Mario game sounds ludicrous, but so does "Skyrim (2011) isn't a mainline Elder Scrolls Game but Skyrim Special Edition is" and I did consider it a plausible argument. A slightly less unhinged instance would be to consider New Super Mario Bros. U Deluxe to be the representative entry in the mainline series over New Super Mario Bros. U.

Strictly defined criteria and their pitfalls or: why is a sweater a Super Mario game?

By this point I've highlighted ambiguities over the meaning of pretty much word in the question "How many Super Mario games are there?".

• How many: No consensus on the number of games in the series, let alone which ones they are
• Super Mario: No consensus on what makes an individual game part of the series
• are there (present tense): No guarantee that the list can stay consistent with regards to time, in either direction

There is one left to achieve total semantic obliteration: games. This was inevitable, really. How could you overanalyze this question and not bring up nitpicking over the meaning of the term "video game" itself? jan Misali has already done most of the work for me, as part of the second video involves them mentioning that attempting to derive an appropriate list of mainline Super Mario game solely from an objective definition while is doomed to fail. Whatever the approach, you will always be working with an unstated semantic "guardrail" of some sort that cannot be comprehensively worded into the definition. The first basic example they give is "Anything with 'Super' in the title is part of the Super Mario series." Under any reasonable context we know what is meant by "anything" but without it, this definition includes infinitely many things that very obviously aren't Super Mario games. But even progressively narrowing it down to something that sounds sensible will still leave a semantic hole that includes something absurd. This culminates into the following bit:

So, maybe you can use this "has Super in the title" method as a starting point and add more stuff to it until it becomes a useful definition. And, in the comments from part 1, many people have tried to do exactly that. And very often what they come up with something like: "The Super Mario series consists of the games developed by Nintendo for Nintendo consoles that have 'Super Mario' in the title, excluding RPGs, party games, Mario Kart, sports games, and reissues of previously released Super Mario games."

At which point jan Misali unleashes their inner Diogenes and reveals what I've been hinting at in the header: Behold, a man mainline Super Mario game! However, while I'm all for leveraging semantic technicalities for the sake of comedy, I think this is a part where jan Misali loses the plot a bit. Even accounting for a VERY permissive understanding of what a video game is, I don't think I am a teacher: Super Mario Sweater plausibly counts as one. Obviously knowing the incoming storm in the comment section, they supplied the following definition for a video game: "interactive software with a visual display for the purpose of entertainment". I agree that if you accept that's what a video game is, I am a teacher: Super Mario Sweater is in fact a video game. What I don't agree with is that the definition itself is accurate enough.

My favorite video game is Tildes

jan Misali's last argument in the video in favor of IaaT:SMS being a video game is regarding the value of knitting as entertainment, which I'm not disputing, but that's not where I believe the issue with this definition is in the first place. IaaT:SMS does have interactivity, yes, and it was designed for the purpose of entertainment, but to me that is not enough to constitute a video game. For it to be one, the interactivity needs to be a necessary part of the entertainment, which isn't the case here. The interactive part, inputting your measurements, choosing a file and scrolling through the selected knitting pattern isn't the entertaining part. The entertaining part, which is knitting a sweater, requires none of the interactivity provided by the software; a completely non interactive slideshow of the various patterns would accomplish the goal just as well. And, while this was ultimately just part of jan Misali's overall point that you cannot bolt together a purely objective definition without relying on some level of unstated common sense, I think that point would have been better served by highlighting the holes in the provided definition of a video game itself than taking it at face value to poke a hole in the definition of the Super Mario series that relied on in the first place (not that this is even required, as jan Misali proceeds to show more examples of games that clearly wouldn't be argued in good faith by anyone to be part of the mainline series and are still noncontroversially video games, and then goes on to explore the ambiguities in pretty much every other part of the definition). You know what else counts as a video game under that definition?

• mspaint.exe
• Arch Linux
• Tildes
• Any movie DVD that features a menu
• BonziBuddy
• The Youtube video player
• The onboard widget display of the Logitech G510 keyboard
• Kangjun Heo's Rensenware
• A chat interface with an LLM whose system prompt instructed it to entertain the user without any further elaboration
• The firmware running on my pair of wireless earbuds (a LED counts as "visual display", right?)
• Twitch chat
• The YouAreAnIdiot prank website
• The Times Square ad billboards (yes, it's interactive, even if the controls are atypical)

You will note that even with my caveat, you could still argue that a lot of these still fit this alleged definition of a video game, so whatever a video game is, it's not just that. Instead of continuing this list and losing the plot myself for the second time in the process of writing this, I will point out that jan Misali's second video has been classified under the "I am a Teacher: Super Mario Sweater" game category, meaning that apparently Google agrees that this is in fact a video game. Shows what I know.

Video killed the Mario star

And of course, you can't cover debating what's a video game without also covering the video part. When people ask "how many Mario games are there", the video game part is implied, but there is definitely an argument to be made that being a video game is not necessarily a prerequisite to be part of the mainline Mario series, especially if you hold the belief that the Game & Watch games aren't actually video games (I personally do think they are, but it's debatable enough for jan Misali to not be fully sure, at the very least) but are still significant enough to be part of the mainline series (there is a Super Mario Bros. game in there, after all, and it's even a platformer!). This can also be further argued to include other media that aren't even games (if the NieR series can include stage plays, what's preventing the Super Mario series from including, say, its licensed movie?), though I personally don't have any non-video game candidate in mind to argue in good faith that they should be part of the series.

413 Payload Too Large

At this point I don't think I have much else to add that isn't basically paraphrasing jan Misali themselves, so I'll wrap up this post so I don't have to spend another day adding to it and proofreading, and I'm fairly confident that between it and all the other interesting points the video raised that I haven't mentioned there will be more than enough jumping points for discussion (and if I forgot something I wanted to add, I can always do that later). What are your thoughts on this? _{And did you realize before I pointed it out that I wrote over 5k words about the question without giving my own answer at any point?}

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