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    1. Medieval Myth Busting - Arrows vs Armour, using historically accurate reproductions from time of the Battle of Agincourt (1415)

      MEDIEVAL MYTH BUSTING - Arrows vs Armour from Tod's Workshop YouTube Channel Other extra videos in the series: Find out More - The Battle Find out more - The Armour Find out More - Medieval Arrows...

      MEDIEVAL MYTH BUSTING - Arrows vs Armour from Tod's Workshop YouTube Channel

      Other extra videos in the series:
      Find out More - The Battle
      Find out more - The Armour
      Find out More - Medieval Arrows

      edit: Tod also re-uploaded the previous video with better sound:
      Find out More - Medieval Arrows*

      12 votes
    2. Untitled II

      I wanted to write about self-forgiveness because it's such a hard thing for me to do. Past mistakes and trespasses stick in my mind for decades, and it's so hard for me to shake them. This work is...

      I wanted to write about self-forgiveness because it's such a hard thing for me to do. Past mistakes and trespasses stick in my mind for decades, and it's so hard for me to shake them. This work is an attempt at expressing that difficulty.

      Down in the foothills the peak is so perfect
      Covered in pure white snow
      Nary a tree in sight
      The peak carves a visage in the sky
      In the clouds
      It just is, it exists peacefully in its austere authority
      Calm, serene
      Impossible
      Yet I yearn to climb
      To ascend
      Down in the foothills among the trees
      The greenof the hills
      I make my preparations
      Breath
      Training
      Gear
      I practiceand I meditate
      I meditate upona life
      A life of mistakes and triumphs
      Each breath preparing and steeling
      
      It's time to begin my climb
      Each step and the air, the precious vital air, thins
      Lungs emptying and muscles weakening
      And yet I continue
      Not quite undaunted, but I continue
      The views are stunning
      Yet I don't see them, eyes ever on the peak
      Visualizing success, not the process
      It's so cold
      Bitterly, viscerally cold
      There's no air
      Even a yogi must stop for air
      But there's no air
      The ground slick with snow and ice
      Snow and ice with the oxygen I need
      Sealed away in the mystery of the bonds
      Just as beautiful as it is inaccessible
      
      But I continue my climb
      Slipping and falling, the rocks cut and score
      Gashes and bruises amass
      I take a moment and reflect
      Is it worth it?
      Shall I ever ascend?
      And as I slip into meditation, I slip down the mountain
      All progress lost
      The world turns around, up and down
      I lose my breath
      And land, dizzy and hurt, down the bottom
      Even further from the peak than when I started.
      
      11 votes
    3. Peter Kay's Car Share

      This is another British comedy that I think people will enjoy. The title is weird: Peter Kay is the stand up comedian, but he's playing a character in this sitcom. IMDB calls it "Car Share", but...

      This is another British comedy that I think people will enjoy. The title is weird: Peter Kay is the stand up comedian, but he's playing a character in this sitcom. IMDB calls it "Car Share", but BBC calls it "Peter Kay's Car Share". It's British, so weirdly small number of episodes: only 12 (and this includes all the specials).

      The setup sounds like it's going to be unbearably claustrophobic, a series long bottle episode. A supermarket sets up a car sharing scheme, and we watch John and Kayleigh share a car as they drive to work everyday. But this creates intimacy and we get to learn about the characters. It's heartfelt and lovely. It's well acted, and I think it's very funny.

      https://www.imdb.com/title/tt4635922/

      https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peter_Kay%27s_Car_Share

      https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p02n62v4

      4 votes
    4. Feature Idea: Tildes Playlist - Would it be useful to have some sort of automated, easy to use, media categorization?

      My use case: I watch videos (YouTube) and listen to audio (Podcasts) as a major part of my weekly media intake. I would love some sort of generated Tildes Playlist . IANADev, but it sure would be...

      My use case:
      I watch videos (YouTube) and listen to audio (Podcasts) as a major part of my weekly media intake. I would love some sort of generated Tildes Playlist . IANADev, but it sure would be nice if Tildes was able to parse, scrape, and categorize media posted as topics and in comments. Then present them to me with a date filter, and allow separating audio only and video media. Maybe something like tildes.net/?tag= but at tildes.net/playlist. I guess it would be nice to be able to sort media by tag as well.

      Possible other use case:
      Accessibility?

      I see that some videos are already being tagged "videos." So there already is some organic interest in this special category, right?

      What do you all think, is this useful?

      From a dev perspective, is getting that correct enough difficult? Does Embedly categorize audio only and video?

      edit: in the playlist view, there should of course be a link back to the topic or comment where the media was found. Also, @Deimos, I certainly don't want to take Tildes away from the text-first/only direction of the site, but sometimes I am doing stuff conducive to audio/video media intake like cooking, driving, etc. It would be cool to be able to easily consume it then, and come back to comment later.

      13 votes
    5. New Tricks For An Old Z-Machine, Part 3: A Renaissance Is Nigh

      From the article: For all that Curses entranced me, however, I never came close to completing it. At some point I’d get bogged down by its combinatorial explosion of puzzles and places, by its...

      From the article:

      For all that Curses entranced me, however, I never came close to completing it. At some point I’d get bogged down by its combinatorial explosion of puzzles and places, by its long chains of dependencies where a single missed or misplaced link would lock me out of victory without my realizing it, and I’d drift away to something else. Eventually, I just stopped coming back altogether.

      I was therefore curious and maybe even slightly trepiditious to revisit Curses for this article some two decades after I last attempted to play it. How would it hold up? The answer is, better than I feared but somewhat worse than I might have hoped.

      [...]

      [Curses] was designed, like his beloved Crowther and Woods Adventure, to be a place which you came back to again and again, exploring new nooks and crannies as the fancy took you. If you actually wanted to solve the thing… well, you’d probably need to get yourself a group for that.

      [...]

      All of which is to say that, even as it heralded a new era in interactive fiction which would prove every bit as exciting as what had come before, Curses became the last great public world implemented as a single-player text adventure.

      More

      5 votes
    6. Fortnightly Programming Q&A Thread

      General Programming Q&A thread! Ask any questions about programming, answer the questions of other users, or post suggestions for future threads. Don't forget to format your code using the triple...

      General Programming Q&A thread! Ask any questions about programming, answer the questions of other users, or post suggestions for future threads.

      Don't forget to format your code using the triple backticks or tildes:

      Here is my schema:
      
      ```sql
      CREATE TABLE article_to_warehouse (
        article_id   INTEGER
      , warehouse_id INTEGER
      )
      ;
      ```
      
      How do I add a `UNIQUE` constraint?
      
      8 votes
    7. Nits - an introduction to a criminally unknown band

      Anticipating their new album that came out today, I've been on something of a Nits trip lately. (It's more pleasant than it sounds, I promise!) Since I think these guys should and could be better...

      Anticipating their new album that came out today, I've been on something of a Nits trip lately. (It's more pleasant than it sounds, I promise!) Since I think these guys should and could be better known, I thought I'd spread the gospel a little bit.

      Throughout their almost five decades of existence, Nits (or The Nits) have been critically acclaimed, yet have never really conquered the charts. There are various likely reasons for this. For one, they exist in that difficult-to-market realm of "art pop" and have continued to reinvent themselves and their sound from album to album. As a Dutch band, they have also never had the backing of a major British or US label, and although the songs are primarily in English, perhaps the singer-lyricist Henk Hofstede's accent has also sounded too non-native for the masses.

      If you do know Nits, you most likely know them from their minor 80s hits Nescio (1983) and In The Dutch Mountains (1987). Those two songs capture their 80s style pretty well in terms of their sound and lyrical content, and the videos are also great examples of their visual style.

      These two songs came out during what was actually their second distinct musical period. Their first four albums, released between 1978 and 1981, were riding the new wave wagon, a good example of which is the song Tutti Ragazzi (1979). But I would say that it was with 1983's Omsk where Nits really started to display their full potential and began to solidify into a core three-man unit of the aforementioned Hofstede, drummer Rob Kloet, and keyboardist Robert Jan Stips who had produced their earlier albums but now joined the band fully. There have been other members over the years, but these three are the main contributors; Hofstede with his voice and story-like lyrics, Kloet with his wide range of beats and rhythms that cross musical genres, and Stips who brings in a particular depth and space in which the songs can breathe freely.

      In addition to the two tracks I mentioned earlier, other songs from their 80s and early 90s output that I would recommend as an introduction include A Touch of Henry Moore (1983), Sketches of Spain (1986), Radio Shoes (1990), and Giant Normal Dwarf (1990).

      There has always been an undercurrent of melancholy to Nits's music, but it tends to be balanced with their quirky sense of humour. In the 90s, however, the melancholy started to take over, and Hofstede's lyrics became increasingly focused on the human condition while the music dropped some of its overt playfulness. Some wonderful pieces from this period include Cars & Cars (1992), Mourir Avant Quinze Ans (1994), Three Sisters (1998) and Ivory Boy (2000). This period also witnessed a major change in the lineup, as Stips departed the band in 1996. He joined back seven years later, from which point onwards they have been a three-member band.

      While the evolution of their style has been gradual, I would say that by the late 2000s, Nits had moved into their fourth major period. Whereas their influences have always clearly included artists like the Beatles (the band's name is sort of a nod to them), Talking Heads, Leonard Cohen, Paul Simon and Bob Dylan, I feel Nits have more recently toned down some of their earlier experimentation and focused more on the qualities that made their influences such great songwriters. From this latest period, take a listen to The Flowers (2008), Distance (2009), Love Locks (2012) and Flowershop Forget-Me-Not (2017).

      This brings us to today's album, Knot, which is something like the group's 25th studio album. Or maybe 26th. Or something else, depending on your definition of a studio album. In any case, as I understand it, this new work was largely parsed together from hours of improvisation, and it does sound like that. The eleven tracks feel like mood pieces, fairly static paintings, captured moments. But I have of course only given the album a handful listens so far, so this is an early impression still. In any case, here's the album opener Ultramarine (2019).

      I hope this little write-up will be of interest to some of you and that perhaps the linked music speaks to you on a level that pushes you to dig in deeper. If you use Spotify, the "This Is Nits" playlist is a pretty good next step to take.

      If you do take a listen, I'd be curious to hear what you think of the music. Or if you knew Nits before, I'd love to hear what you think my little introduction here missed, misinterpreted or should have emphasised more. And what's your view of the new album?

      7 votes
    8. How can I deal with corrosion from saltpeter (salt from the ocean) on my desktop computer?

      Also called niter. I live near the ocean. Around here we call this "salitre": salt from seawater that becomes airborne, shortening the life span of every electronic. Desktop computers are...

      Also called niter.

      I live near the ocean. Around here we call this "salitre": salt from seawater that becomes airborne, shortening the life span of every electronic. Desktop computers are especially susceptible.

      The only thing I hear in that regard is to just never turn off the computer, since doing so would allow the corrosion to take place at a lower temperature, without circulation, etc.

      But electricity is not cheap, and I put this machine together myself so I don't have to worry about voiding the warranty.

      And keeping the AC on 24/7 is both expensive and unhealthy.

      12 votes
    9. Fitness Weekly Discussion

      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...

      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?

      10 votes
    10. The donation goal for November has been (more than) reached! Let's talk a bit about how to handle "extra" donations

      As noticed yesterday, the donation goal meter in the sidebar made a huge jump upwards yesterday due to an extremely generous (and anonymous) donation of 0.3 BTC. Again, if that person is reading,...

      As noticed yesterday, the donation goal meter in the sidebar made a huge jump upwards yesterday due to an extremely generous (and anonymous) donation of 0.3 BTC. Again, if that person is reading, thank you!

      When I added the goal and Financials page about a week and a half ago, I explained that I thought it was probably too high to reach yet, but it was intended to show the progress we're making towards the point where the site is truly fully sustainable (and that progress is already great for the site's size).

      But now thanks to that generous donation, we've already surpassed the first monthly goal, which honestly wasn't something I was expecting to happen for a while. Because of that, I want to talk a bit about how we can handle the "surplus" in cases like this.

      My general feeling is that when it reaches the next month, any amount above the goal should probably "roll over" to the next month, starting us out at a higher point than the normal baseline from monthly recurring donations. For example, as of right now we're about $574.10 above this month's goal, so December will start out with that much in addition to the monthly contributions. This feels the most fair to me in terms of keeping the impact of larger donations and ones made after already reaching 100%, so that people don't feel like some of their donation is "wasted" or that they should wait until next month to donate so they can help with a goal.

      There are definitely some edge cases with this that might get weird, but they mostly only come up with extremely large one-time donations or constantly surpassing the goal, and those are both problems I'd be happy to have.

      I'm also probably going to tinker with the design of the goal bar a little over the next couple days to be able to show progress beyond 100%, since just having an unchanging full green bar there for the rest of the month would be boring.

      Let me know if you have any thoughts about this overall—it's a pretty minor concern overall, but I thought it would be good to have a thread about it anyway, partially as a celebration of hitting the first official goal ever set so quickly.

      As always, thank you very much to everyone that contributes to Tildes through donations as well as all the other ways (being active on the site, promoting it to others, helping with the open-source code/repo, etc.). It's hugely encouraging to me to have so many people helping support the site already.

      79 votes
    11. Free-wheeling hypothetical: President Pelosi ... how would that work?

      Admittedly highly unlikely ... but also becoming less inconceivable by the day. She is 2nd in line after Pence. So, let's just say, 3-5 months from now, They swear in Pelosi as the next POTUS....

      Admittedly highly unlikely ... but also becoming less inconceivable by the day. She is 2nd in line after Pence.

      So, let's just say, 3-5 months from now, They swear in Pelosi as the next POTUS. What does that do to both Repub and Dem Primaries? What does it mean for the next election? Does the US keep itself together long enough to have an election?

      Heck, while I'm asking, what about a President Pence in 3-5 months. That's at least an order of magnitude less unlikely. How would that play out?

      PS: Somebody recently started a 'what do you daydream about' thread ... so, you-know ... this.

      8 votes