Ask Lemmy

Lots of debates about the internal arrangement of the original series Enterprise…

• Bridge: forward facing or offset?
• Engineering: primary or secondary hull?
• Shuttlebay: short or extending under the nacelle pylons?
• How big is this ship, anyway??

Exactly how planes fly. I studied a bit of fluid dynamics in grad school and my professor was adamant that any explanation is incomplete without discussion of boundary layers.

In short the explanation was a couple things. The first is how ping pong balls generate lift with translation and rotation (or vorticity). Its basically the shape of the wing that helps with vorticity (this is what generates the pressure difference above and below the wing). The second is that you need laminar flow over the wing for vorticity to take place, and this is achieved when a thin layer of turbulent air surrounds it, the boundary layer. It moves the stagnation points towards the back (encouraging laminar flow) and reducing drag.

The same process is the reason golf balls have dimples on them, to help form a turbulent boundary layer, moving the stagnation pounts, reducing drag and allowing the ball to go further.

"Tripping the boundary layer" can be achieved by increasing speed on the runway, a strong head wind, rough spots on the wing, or how you might see windsurfers pump their sail, or someone pumping on a hydrofoil board in the water.

Crabs Vs Anteaters

I'm into metal crafting and you have no idea how competitive it can get, currently the divide is between whether Bessemer or Cathode steel are superior for bintwork, it's a form of ring chained gavel produced by different metallurgical processes and it is WILD how heated discussions get, it's ridiculous considering that most practitioners are in their early teens and create the WORST drama, while us who have been at it since the 1960's have to accept the sudden influx of kids into the mold because of the success of films such as "Steel Piston" and "Hot Rod", and frankly I'm done with it and have decided to get into Wicca.

Woodworking: I have mentioned this a couple times in my lectures on this platform. Festool has a tool called the Domino. It's the shape of a biscuit joiner but it's got a router bit that it wags like a dog's tail. It cuts a deep, narrow, short mortise that pre-made loose biscuits fit into.

This tool is protected under patent so only Festool makes them. They sell two models, a small and a large. The small cost a thousand petrodollars.

It's very easy to use, it makes strong joints quickly, it's impossible to afford.

You'll find there's a crowd of purists who will spend that much on a chisel and won't hear anything about it because it's not "traditional joinery." Floating tenons are thousands of years old, but okay. You've got beginners or hobbyists who can put together the basic tools and are upset when Youtubers use Dominos in projects. Most domino joints can be replaced with dowel joints, but okay. And you get the actual cabinet makers who go "I manufacture cabinets, this lets me do it faster, and time is money." Which...fair enough.

If you don't own a plunge router, you don't care.

Synthesizers: digital vs analog.

Common opinion holds that analog (specifically oscillators, but also filters and even VCAs [voltage controlled amplifiers]) are warmer and more natural sounding while digital are cold and harsh.

The thing is, digital emulation of analog hardware has become virtually indistinguishable from the real thing, but there is a certain segment that refuses to believe their $5000 Minimoog can be so easily replicated by software (realistically I doubt Bob Moog could tell the difference anymore).

Of course some also choose to argue which is better, which is just ridiculous because they both have their uses depending on what kinds of music you're composing or just what sounds you're trying to make.

Furry Fandom:

How we represent ourselves as a fandom.

Some groups want the fandom to be more clean and family friendly. Some want it to remain weird and not always as family friendly as it currently is.

Some are more okay with using things like cheap plastic animal masks as bases for fursuit heads. Some people don't want that type of stuff and would rather see bases be either hand made or use something like a sports helmet or mask to build the base around.

Some are okay with us becoming more mainstream and companies like Netflix taking a little more interest in us. Others want corporations to stay away from us.

As for me, you can guess my stance just by the fact of me being here on Lemmy. I'd rather see a base use something not quite as corporate as a cheap plastic junk mask as a base. I would also rather keep our fandom a little less sanitized and more weird to keep the corpos from coming in and turning our fandom into a heavily censored industry.

Go: To what extent should you rely on AI reviews vs pro reviews?

AI is really, really good at Go, far better than humans, and it's pretty undeniable that it's a valid use case for the technology. It also makes it free and easy to pop a game into it and have the AI tell you which moves were mistakes.

But AI favors a "risky" playstyle, because it can read out crazy detailed variations to be able to tell when a dangerous position is actually fine. Humans trying to emulate that, without the superhuman reading capabilities, sometimes mess up and get worse results than if they used a safer strategy.

AI also can't explain why one move is better than another. Humans rely on heuristics, patterns, and proverbs to point us in the right direction of finding a move. A professional can show how to find a move through a heuristic, which is more generally applicable. There can also ofc be the factor of wanting to support the community by paying for a teacher or going to a club and finding someone to help review.

The question comes when the human professional says something that contradicts the AI, who do you listen to? I've been in a room before where an amateur was getting a game reviewed by a foreign professional (for free, but at a paid event) and after the pro criticized a move, the amateur insisted that the pro was wrong because the AI agreed with the move.

It's an interesting question, at least to me, whether or not that's inappropriate. On the one hand, you'll always have the AI's input so getting a different perspective is valuable, pros arguably earn a certain degree of their respect from their abilities, and there are the issues I mentioned above with relying too heavily on AI. On the other hand, because AI is so indisputably good, many people see it as a sort of objective standard for evaluating moves, whereas individual players may have different styles of play. If you can see reasons to play a move and the AI backs it up, then if the pro doesn't like it it could just be a stylistic preference. And of course the type of people who tend to be attracted to a competitive strategy game like this (especially Americans) don't necessarily have a lot of respect for credentials on paper or social heirarchies, as opposed to whether you can back up your analysis by objective standards.

Cooking:

Aioli is made with oil and no egg. If it includes egg, it is a mayonnaise.

Many people just call everything "aioli" these days, even if it's technically a mayonnaise.

Improv: should you lead with character relationships, game or platform? There are many vehement proponents of each, each claiming that their process leads to better improv.

Character relationships are self explanatory, "game" is kinda like the core conceit of the sketch - i.e. in "who's on first" the "game" is "names that sound like pronouns", another common one is a pile on of identical characters (i.e. the SNL Jim Carrey family reunion where all his family have his mannerisms.

And "platform" is where you build the world and the scenario (i.e. we're Goombas that live in fear of mario; we're merpeople with a foot fetish... or more seriously - the family that runs this farm, the employees that work at this hotel...)