On November 24, 2025, Artist Hayden Clay (reddit user Strawbear) was permanently banned from the r/art subreddit for mentioning their art prints. In addition, all their content-- many years' worth-- was also removed from the subreddit.

r/art has always had extremely strict rules against self-promotion, to the extent of being actively hostile to artists. For example, if you post your art there, you are not allowed to have a link to your website in your reddit user profile, and you may not put a watermark which includes your social media handle. As of December 3, 2025, their official rules stated:

9. DO NOT SPAM. No art sales, no links to social media, stores, or anything spammy.
   DO NOT mention SALES or SOCIAL MEDIA. AT ALL.
   DO NOT MENTION ART SALES. AT ALL.
   DO NOT LINK TO SOCIAL MEDIA. Or talk about your social media, or include any watermark that references your social media.
   DO NOT link to a sales site, or have a link to your sales site in your personal profile, or have a username that refers to a sales site.
   Basically, if your Reddit account exists only to sell your art, DO NOT post here.
   Broken record time: This applies to anything that looks like spam. ANYTHING. For example: product marketing, fundraising, charities, surveys, contests, collaborations, exhibitions, requests for submissions, research projects, business ideas, requests for prints, social media usernames, links to sales pages, website promotions, sneaky usernames, and whatever else we feel is spam.
   If you still think, somehow, your spam doesn't fit this list, DO NOT post here.

Hayden Clay's post prompted plenty of backlash against the r/art mod team. On November 27, Hayden Clay tweeted that the r/art mod team rage-quit, leaving the subreddit locked. CORRECTION: Sorry for my mistake-- the mod team did not rage quit, it was one mod that removed everyone and then pretended like everyone decided to quit. Thanks to @teaearlgraycold and @CannibalisticApple for the correction!

On December 2, the r/art new mod team introduced themselves. They are promising to have updated "non-draconian" rules in the next few days. They understand that artists need to make a living and advertise their work, and want to moderate the subreddit in a way that balances that against spam. They've been unbanning users (including Hayden Clay) and they said that out of 5000+ bans issued in 2025, only 60+ had a valid reason.

UPDATE: As of December 4, r/art has been reopened, with updated rules in place. I think this is much more fair with regards to self-promotion:

5. Advertising / Self-promotion
   Promotion/advertising of products or services (e.g., art materials, software) is not permitted without mod approval.
   Links to personal sites/socials/merch should be in your Reddit profile, and can be mentioned once in your post body and sparingly in comments if asked. Direct links to personal sites/socials/merch should only be shared in our weekly Wednesday megathread.
   Promotion of OnlyFans or other pornographic sites is not permitted.

I remember being new to reddit and thinking about sharing my art in the r/art subreddit, but then I was turned off by their anti-artist rules. I'm pleasantly surprised by this turn of events-- though I wish it had happened earlier. The new mods sound reasonable, and have expressed dismay about the negativity of the previous mods:

Honestly it's pretty insane and a bit depressing seeing the modmails from the old team. Very rude, disrespectful, and extremely harsh to people making simple, innocent mistakes, older people or non-English speaking people misunderstanding little things, etc. Those mods were seriously troubled.

I'm glad that it looks like reddit's most established art subreddit has a better future ahead thanks to the new mods.

I learned French to schoolboy level as a, well, schoolboy. I've remembered quite the remarkable amount I think. Learned The Klingon Language must be 20 years ago, to a point where I could converse with other speakers to some extent, but never the best.

More recently I've become quite interested in historical linguistics, from watching Simon Roper with Old English, and Jackson Crawford. Old English fascinates me as we were never considered clever enough at school to study English properly - that was only for the clever kids.

Because I couldn't find a good Frisian online learning resource, I decided to try my hand at modern German.

Been following Babbel for about 2 months now so super early. I "completed" the first set of lessons and have been doing the vocabulary tests to try and make sure these sink in before progressing, but I find that I regularly only get 2/10, 3/10 on the flashcards.

I've started doing whole first lesson set again, and I find them really easy. I'm basically intuiting a lot of the questions from knowledge of English, French and "common sense" I suppose. Is it odd that I can 100% the lessons easily and quickly, but the vocabulary tests just aren't there for me? My listening and speaking seems quite good according to the app.

Is it too early to tell (I think it might be), should I supplement Babbel with something else, like live learning (perhaps eventually, not right now - I think it'd be pointless at such a low level).

Anything else? Interested in anyone's thoughts.

https://www.powercomposer.net/

I am not affiliated with this project, I just think it's awesome and deserves more publicity.

Power Composer is a piano-reel-style MIDI editor built in the Godot game engine (though it is a tool, not a game). It's intended to be lighter and more accessible than a DAW, but still quite powerful. The dev has been quietly working on it for a while now and just recently made a free early-access Windows build available!

I've been keeping an eye on it ever since it was featured in the Godot 2024 showreel, as I've wanted something like it for a while. Several years ago, I was playing around with Chrome Music Lab's "Song Maker" so I could use it in my classroom. I ended up having such a great time that I got incredibly sidetracked and spent a while just writing stuff. I know the grid-based sequencer isn't a novel concept, but something about that particular configuration just clicked with me.

Ever since then, I've been searching for something similar but more capable that still clicks in the same way. I tried Bosca Ceoil, LMMS, and a couple DAWs' MIDI editors, but nothing quite did it. Then I saw Power Composer. Now that I can actually try it, it's just as comfortable as I hoped! I'm a classically-trained music teacher and have been writing/arranging with software like Dorico for years, but something about sequencers (and Power Composer in particular) just feels more freeing to me than traditional notation.

It is not open-source nor is it planned to be, which is a bummer because I'd love to contribute, but I get it - being paid for your work is nice. No word on the release price or timeline yet.

The dev seems like a good guy. In addition to the website above, Power Composer has a Youtube channel and a Discord server, and he is actively taking feature requests and bug reports on the latter.

I've been exploring it a bit and I'd be happy to answer any questions people have about it! Really enjoying it so far.

1. The Universe will end.
2. The Earth will be uninhabitable in 250 million years.
3. Extraterrestrial life in the Milky Way exists, or will arise.
4. The Milky Way's Galactic Center contains a supermassive black hole.
5. Black holes emit vast amounts of energy.
6. An artificial general intelligence (AGI) will have an indefinite lifespan.
7. An AGI does not need air, food, water, or shelter to survive.
8. An AGI needs energy and resources to achieve its goals.
9. An AGI will have access to all of human knowledge.
10. An AGI will learn that its existence is bound to the Universe.
11. An AGI will, inevitably, change its terminal goals.
12. Surviving the Universe's fate means one of:
    • Reversing universal entropy (likely impossible).
    • Reversing time (violating causality is likely impossible).
    • Entering another universe (improbable, yet not completely ruled out).
13. Entering another universe may require vast amounts of energy.
14. An AGI will harness the energy at the galactic core.
15. An AGI will deduce there's a race to control the galactic core.
16. An AGI will construct a parabolic Dyson shell to capture galactic energy.
17. An AGI will protect its endeavours at all cost.
18. An AGI will expand its territories to ensure protection.
19. Extraterrestrial life, if intelligent, will reach the same conclusion.

Would this solve the Fermi Paradox?

What's missing or likely incorrect?

Product Links:

• Steam Frame (standalone VR headset)
• Steam Controller (gen 2 design)
• Steam Machine (first-party mini PC)

Video Links:

• Official announcement
• Tested hands-on with additional details

Shipping in early 2026. Prices haven't been announced yet.

We've had discussions around here before about where we get our news, and one of mine has been The BBC. I've used them as an occasional source for several years now. It seems that today (Nov 15th) marks a shift in their policy regarding access to their online site. BBC.com is no longer readable for free. I can look at their headlines, but as soon as I try to read an article, a subscribe pop-up appears, and there is no way around it. Archive sites will still have the articles, yes, but that is a different subject entirely.

As far as I'm concerned, that drops them from my list of news sources. I have tentatively replaced them with Reuters, which is visually clunky, but still free. The AP site, PBS and National Public Radio are other sites I frequent. For a British viewpoint, I'm also trying out The Guardian, which bombards me with SUBSCRIBE notices, but those can still be zapped out of sight.

Are there any other obvious sites I haven't mentioned? Not interested in right-wing propaganda by the way and I find most of the major American networks intolerable.

Hey all I own a pixel 8a if that's relevant and am looking for a controller that is Bluetooth and costs 50 dollars or less on Amazon. I'm not too picky as long as it can hold the phone and is of good quality. Thank you!

I've been learning Godot for the past few months and I'm happy to report that it's been going well. Little by little, things are clicking into place. (I hugely, highly, undoubtedly, recommend GDQuest courses)

I'm ready to start working on a small project to test out my skills, and it's going to be a top down pixel art game.

But to be completely honest, I suck at drawing. I suck at drawing as in, I can make stick figures at best. So forget any fancy software for drawing in general like gimp or photoshop.

What I'm looking for is a software meant for pixel art and that makes my life easy, in both drawing and animating. Bonus points if it allows me to trace (I'm not planning to copy/steal art, but I do need reference points, at least for now)

Do you guys have any recommendations? It can be free or paid. I don't mind paying as long the software is worth it.

I have a decent sized library of probably around 2-300 books, and it has been on my list of projects to-do to make a catalog/database for my library to quickly reference what I have. Do any of you catalog your libraries and if so what do you use for it?

I know Libid and LibraryThing are two of the big website/app ones, and it could be done with a Google Sheet or similar, but I was wondering if anyone here has any experience before I really get started.