I'm going to intentionally leave this vague and open-ended, because I want to hear different perspectives hopefully without imposing my own views. I've heard some people express that the world is getting much better, for example, in terms of science, technology, and medicine. Other people feel that the world is getting worse, for example, in terms of climate change or political corruption. What do you think? Or is it that we're biased towards our own time period? In other words, do you think it's human nature to think that our own generation/time period is experiencing the best or worst or most significant period in history?

I've been learning la langue française, as the language of renaissance. Also it has a lot of great authors and movie directors, and I think it's just beautiful (not as beautiful as German, but it's another kind of beautiful). So I use the method that works best for me, just take Notre Dame de Paris and translate the shit out of it. Or some other text if I'm feeling lazy to look up the names of clothes from middle ages.

As a pre-teen and teenager I was the bookish kid who was always reading, and, like many a kid, love of Mythology lead into a love of fantasy, and the idea of the direct application of "Knowledge is power" that magic offers in those tales was intoxicating. As I got older I branched out into history, which became a passion and my reading has been mostly in that realm.

Then I got Grimoires: A History of Magic Books by Owen Davies as a gift. As various magical or texts on magic, Davies outlines the difference, came up I tried to find them. Naturally, many are public domain, and can be found for free on Project Gutenberg but they can also be found fairly cheap for sale in print. So, I order a couple, and had a blast flipping through them, so I got a few more. Now I have a nice Occult bookshelf, and I smile because teenage me would be so proud.

However, I've also picked up a number of other History books on the history of the belief in magic, and the crossover between the men who advanced science and learning, and those who dabbled and wrote about magic is quite staggering, but I guess not surprising. Both are born from the desire to control and change the environment we live in, and so, in a lot of ways the history of magic is part of the history of science.

First off, I've noticed a lot of D&D chatter on here, so I figured you all would be a great resource for this. I've never played D&D but after listening to some of The Adventure Zone, I'm really getting into the idea. I want to play with a group of friends, but there are a few people who have never really played an RPG and get somewhat self-conscious playing things like board games. Any recommendations for a good starting point for this sort of situation?

I do this a lot. I did it just now. I wrote about five paragraphs on a topic, deleted it and started over, wrote about five more and did the same thing. Got frustrated. Some thoughts that went through my mind:

• "this is not concise at all. It's disorganized and needs to be re-done"

• "this is going to trigger an emotional response and that will filter how they read it, so I'll be less likely to get interesting responses"

• "maybe I should just do this as a journal entry and keep it private"

• "these thoughts are worth something, and even if they aren't super cogent, maybe they can be a starting point for a collaborative thinking process"

• "that's dumb, nobody cares about my ramblings anyway. everyone has thoughts like this, mine aren't more important"

• etc.

So what usually ends up happening in instances like this is I just don't post. Other times, I get wrapped up in trying to make a post super-high quality and it comes across as over-produced... and if I've somehow triggered an emotional response then that aspect becomes an avenue for attack.

Does anyone else experience something comparable to this? Is it a good thing for helping to maintain quality content and discussions? If not, what are strategies to improve situations like these?

Here are the top ten reddit comments from Feb of 2018, based on their character length multiplied by their votes.

E.g. the first comment has 5,144 characters with a vote of 42,457 so it had the highest rank of 218,398,808.

https://www.reddit.com/r/justneckbeardthings/comments/7wwyw5/neckbeard_crew/du4cbk5
https://www.reddit.com/r/news/comments/7xkstl/shooting_at_south_florida_high_school/du94nag
https://www.reddit.com/r/uwaterloo/comments/7w0dgv/dave_tompkins_is_overrated/dtwzhbz
https://www.reddit.com/r/AskReddit/comments/7vwkqg/hey_reddit_what_products_are_identical_to_a_brand/dtvtkzd
https://www.reddit.com/r/news/comments/80xs1v/china_bans_george_orwells_animal_farm_as_xi/duzfoko
https://www.reddit.com/r/NoStupidQuestions/comments/80h9bj/why_is_it_okay_to_cook_some_animals_alive_while/duvwgg8
https://www.reddit.com/r/AskReddit/comments/7xztxf/who_is_the_worst_person_youve_ever_met/ducsa86
https://www.reddit.com/r/AskReddit/comments/7zwebj/barbershairdressers_of_reddit_how_exactly_do_you/durco2m
https://www.reddit.com/r/AskReddit/comments/7wi1g8/what_concept_fucks_you_up_the_most/du13k9x
https://www.reddit.com/r/wifesharing/comments/7wa854/my_bf_is_looking_for_inspiration_what_would_you/duz0q9l

On the whole, there does seem to be a correlation between comment length and comment quality, especially when votes are factored in. More details here:

https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/e/2PACX-1vRC08EWmy1GgzdrIvR2p9EGUpQpIbYjp8MmvlgfNT4REbXbjxOUUdXBHMqXnF_4OGsR9PrV_-xuehlW/pubhtml

Final score: 4-3

What a game. Congratulations to the Capitals, the victory was well earned.

Congratulations are also in order for the Golden Knights, who reached the finals in their first year as a team and dominated throughout most of the playoffs.

One of the common issues that I've run into on reddit as a moderator is that lots of people put in a link and then put a bunch of text into the text area, and then they have a text link with no link.

I realize that you may have built things already in a way that is fundamentally not supportive of this, but I wonder about allowing both to coexist within one post?

I went through the topics and did not see a previous on on this, so I am curious what your current favorites are, from both a single player experience offline (no pvp or multiplayer mode) or MMORPG wise?

Bonus points for new MMORPGS and undervalued titles which are just fun and engaging to play. I have to have the ability to get up and walk away at a moments notice for work purposes, so pvp and requirements that I spend a lot of continuous time are hard to find in a fun game, even if I do not get called away like that for days at a time. I am into strategy more than FPS, but all are welcome!

Okay, it's been a little while since the last speedart thread, but I think we are ready for another one! All the same rules apply.

Remember, the purpose of this thread is not necessarily to create a masterpiece, but to encourage people to dedicate some time each week to improve their art as well as providing critique and support. Thus this thread is open to all either as constructive critics and/or artists!

There is no official theme, but if you are looking for inspiration checkout this month's Pictures of the Day over at Wikipedia Commons.

Now grab your materials, set a timelimit, and get creative!

I'm currently in a "how can I improve and refocus" and wanted to see what this group thinks since either seems we have some pretty thoughtful and techy people here.

I have toyed around for years with different techniques. I got really into GTD and used several apps focused on that even writing my own JavaScript app to use with Google sheets.

I've used spreadsheets, OneNote, Wunderlist, plain text files.

What do you use to keep your tasks moving forward and how do you use these tools to manage your tasks and get work done? I found spreadsheets are nice because you can do a lot of scratch work but it's hard to "check them off' but many "check them off" tools don't give you a lot of scratch workspace. OneNote is cool but I can't stand the Microsoft environment and it doesn't seem to give a lot of indication how best to use the tool. Maybe I should do a training....

When I was younger I would spend hours reading books, Wikipedia articles, magazines, and news articles. I loved to read and do nothing else.

But I've found that I now have much more trouble starting and continuing to read. My eyes almost completely glaze over most pieces of text, and I almost have an aversion to focus on reading. I still enjoy reading, but ever since I've entered the world of video games, Youtube videos, and social media, I've read less and less. I don't want to say that these things are bad, but definitely easier to get into and to "enjoy".

I still read, and continue to amass a large list of things to read, but it's been harder than it used to be to do so and to get something of substance out of it.

Have you ever wondered how little of a difference of input lag you can perceive? With this tool, you can find out.

The screen is split into two halves, and one of them has an artificial amount of input lag (default 50 ms, you can change it) added to the mouse cursor. Figure out which side feels laggier and click on it. After 25 trials, it will show your results. If you can consistently score at least 18/25 correct at a certain amount of lag, then you can probably perceive it. I can go as low as 20-25 ms on my 144 hz monitor.

Be sure to edit one of the files as shown here to disable v-sync, or if you trust me you can download my copy.

Guide can be found here

Right now, the guide assumes you aren't dual booting. This is because I've never really dual booted off a single HDD, so while I probably could include it in the guide, I don't feel comfortable without first testing the process.

This guide also sets you up with BTRFS, but you can still use ext4, just requires changing two lines.

I'm currently using 24 hour sort, and it's great, minus one thing - threads older than 24 hours just disappear. Perhaps a better implementation would be to keep the threads showing up underneath the <24 hour ones, but prevent them from being bumped up by new posts.

Example - if I go to ~comp right now, there are only 5 posts. Older ones, imo, should still be visible, just no longer bumping.

This week, two governments in Australia have taken steps towards negotiating treaties with the native Aboriginal people:

• Victorian Parliament votes on law to negotiate Australia's first Aboriginal treaty

• Indigenous treaty a step closer after Northern Territory government makes historic pledge

Meanwhile, one government says no:

• South Australia government decides not to go ahead with Aboriginal treaties

It's interesting that the two governments moving forwards are Labor Party governments, while the one that's stopping the process is a newly elected Liberal Party government. It's hard not to draw the conclusion that this is a politically partisan issue.