In the Lord of the Rings fandom there’s a persistent debate whether balrogs, or Durin’s Bane specifically, have wings. The text in Fellowship is ambiguous whether what it is describing are literal wings or something else wing-like.

  • Tollana1234567@lemmy.today
    0·
    17 days ago

    SPN the show, yea people think they were suppose to be a “gay relationship” , but the new writers mde it that way, it was clear that KRIPKE never intended them to have a human-angel relationship of any kind. but people are obsessed parasocially over this.

  • save_the_humans@leminal.spaceEnglish
    0·
    17 days ago

    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.

  • Pronell@lemmy.world
    0·
    18 days ago

    Community - The slogan was ‘Six seasons and a movie.’

    We are still waiting for our goddamned movie!

  • Appoxo@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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    17 days ago

    The state of the Halo franchise.

    I am not really part of it, but I follow it to some degree.
    And it’s sad how M$ mismanaged it.

    • Pipas66@lemmy.dbzer0.com
      0·
      17 days ago

      Fr, I bought the entire Halo collection once on sale on Steam thinking “great, I’ll finally be able to finish what I started 20 years ago”, and found out you need a M$ account to play, and you can’t even make up a bullshit one, they NEED your phone number

      • early_riser@lemmy.worldOP
        0·
        17 days ago

        Ran into this with Google docs. Everyone who does any collaboration online uses Google Docs, but I don’t want to give a random internet stranger I met on a creative writing subreddit my google account name, which for employability reasons is my IRL name. So I try making an alt account, but the phone thing rears its ugly head again. Guess I’ll never improve my creative writing then. Yeah it would be nice if someone spun up a NextCloud server, but good luck convincing a bunch of non techies of the virtues of self hosting.

        And yet again, I tried setting up a nodeBB instance, but when it came time to get email notifications up and running, I had to choose a bulk email provider, and they required my phone number. Seems companies are getting wise to the fact it’s much easier to create an email account vs a phone number, so in order to pin you down as an advertising target actual human they require a phone number.

        Needless account creation to play a primarily single player game that I already bought through an online store like Steam or Nintendo eShop is also really aggravating. Y’all already know I bought your game fair and square. I’m already playing it on a platform with its own DRM. Why are you punishing me for having a lawful good alignment? Valve figured this out decades ago. Piracy is a service problem.

        • DomeGuy@lemmy.world
          0·
          16 days ago

          A worthwhile question to ask is “what are you protecting from whom?”

          If you already have a Google account, especially if you have an Android phone, the ad corp already has your real name and phone number. Creating a second Google account that Google can link back to your main keeps you from thinking that Google won’t conflate the two, but it may be enough to keep internet randos from doxxing you.

          Online accounts for singke-player games can burn in hell, though.

    • SSTF@lemmy.world
      0·
      17 days ago

      The Halo CE remake blew the lid off this debate. So many “modern” changes have split the fandom between OG players and players used to and supportive of modern game design.

      (I am firmly on the OG side.)

      • Clbull@lemmy.world
        0·
        16 days ago

        Are we talking Halo CE Anniversary Edition or the more recently announced Campaign Evolved remake?

        What solidified Anniversary Edition as a shit-tier remaster for me was how the level geometry doesn’t match up with the remastered visuals. A great example of this is in The Truth And Reconciliation, Halo CE’s third level. When you go further up the plateau, the Covenant can see and shoot you through some of the boulders if you’re in the remastered graphics mode.

  • ZMoney@lemmy.world
    0·
    16 days ago

    I’m a planetary scientist so technically this is a field, you can also be into meteorites as a hobby.

    Chondrule formation. These are spherical balls of formerly molten rock that solidified and clumped together to form chondrites, some of the oldest rocks in the Solar System that predate planet formation. Essentially these are nebular dust grains that formed when the Solar System was still an accretionary disk.

    Except, do chondrules predate planet formation? What causes them to melt while they’re floating around? How do they overcome the kinetic barriers to agglomeration? Are the terrestrial planets, whose bulk composition is thought to be chondritic, actually composed of chondrites?

    If you want to see one of the most simultaneously esoteric and bitter scientific debates, attend a chondrule formation session at a meteorite or planetary science conference. MetSoc is a great one in August, and officially I go to present my work but actually I just love the fireworks. As an achondrite person, I don’t touch this topic with a ten foot pole, but I love to watch when someone introduces a new wacky idea (space lightning? Shine from a molten Io? Extrasolar?) and you see 15 eminent greybeards rush the mic to yell their objections.

  • TotallyNotSpez@lemmy.world
    0·
    18 days ago

    Star Trek (Voyager): Was it murder to split Tuvix back into Tuvok and Neelix?

    I’ve got a long and complex possible solution to offer regarding this ethical clusterfuck, and I’m willing to elaborate if someone’s interested to hear it.

    • SSTF@lemmy.world
      0·
      17 days ago

      They should have just kept replicating Tuvix with the transporter and using him as fuel.

    • leftzero@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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      17 days ago

      They used a transporter, so yes.

      Every use of a transporter where someone is disassembled is murder, or possibly suicide.

      • starik@lemmy.zipBanned
        0·
        17 days ago

        Yes, they could have just printed out a new copy of Tuvok and Neelix, and left Tuvix alone. The restriction that you can’t just make copies never made sense. Are there souls in Star Trek? Is the soul the thing that is actually be “transported” into a new body substrate?

      • CheeseNoodle@lemmy.worldEnglish
        0·
        16 days ago

        Alternatively we’re just data (as muteable as a save file) so neither of them died at any point as Tuvix was a valid continuation of both their continuities, similary when Tuvix was split again Tuvok and Nelix also constituted valid continuations of Tuvix’s continuity.

    • LoveRainbow@lemmy.world
      0·
      17 days ago

      The Riker split depended on a plant on that one particular planet. Maybe it cannot be replicated.

      Fully embracing that technology would have loads of chaotic outcomes…maybe they forbade it or something? Ripe for abuse…the ability to make infinite free clones or people…

    • Tollana1234567@lemmy.today
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      17 days ago

      they did it again LTD. anyways, janeway practically groomed 7 of 9, not in a sexual way but trying to mold her into a daughter she never had.

    • ZMoney@lemmy.world
      0·
      16 days ago

      So I was under the assumption that every time they beamed someone up or down they murdered them and an exact copy appeared elsewhere.

  • AstroLightz@lemmy.world
    0·
    18 days ago

    Programming and Linux. Oh boy, what to pick…

    Terminal text editors: VIM vs Emacs is the main debate there. (There are others but these are ones people argue the most about)

    Linux Distros: Arch, Debian, Mint, CachyOS, …

    Init Systems: Systemd vs OpenRC. Honestly, probably the most toxic debate on this list.

    Programming Languages: Python, Shell, but the heated one is C vs Rust

    A non-exhaustive list of ones I couldn’t think of a category for:

    • Tiling vs Floating Window Managers
    • Chromium vs Gecko-based browsers
    • Bash vs Zsh vs Fish

    I love computers and Linux, but man, the amount of toxic in-fighting and gatekeeping is a real turnoff. Just use what you want. At the end of the day, we are all nerds doing what we love.

    • Random Dent@lemmy.mlEnglish
      0·
      17 days ago

      I am team…

      • Nano

      • Arch

      • Systemd, I don’t see what the fuss is about that TBH

      • I don’t wanna even touch that one lol

      • I like the carousel kind of things like Karousel or Niri

      • Gecko (Librewolf, Floorp etc.)

      • Zsh

      But yeah I agree, everyone should just do what they want. Having lots of options is one of my favourite things about Linux.

      • dreugeworst@lemmy.ml
        0·
        16 days ago

        heretic! the only dogmatically correct setup is

        • helix
        • fedora
        • systemd
        • rust
        • whatever fits your workflow
        • gecko
        • nushell
      • chunkystyles@sopuli.xyzEnglish
        0·
        17 days ago

        actually prefer Windows

        I don’t understand. I recognize the words, but in that order, they make no sense.

        • early_riser@lemmy.worldOP
          0·
          17 days ago

          Nobodymost people on Lemmy don’t prefers Windows. FTFY

          Linux users need to stop assuming everyone is wrong for needing things that Linux can’t do at all or doesn’t do well. I need accessibility. Linux doesn’t do it well. Over a decade and a half of trying to make it work has proven that. Some people need Adobe or MS Office (even though many may not like it), and Linux doesn’t do that at all. They’re not wrong, their needs differ from yours.

          And it doesn’t matter whose “fault” it is. Apple fanboys do this, too. If an OS doesn’t offer something you need, that’s where the conversation ends. They don’t care what internal politics at the vendor or lack of community interest by Linux devs or whatever lead to the thing they need not working. All they care about is that it doesn’t work.

          And no, they’re not going to take night classes to get a comp-sci degree so they can code the drivers that their peripheral needs.

          “What’s that, you need a claw hammer but I gave you a ball peen hammer? Pfffft, just become a blacksmith and forge your own hammerhead, it’s not THAT hard.” --Every Linux user

        • hoch@lemmy.world
          0·
          17 days ago

          I prefer Windows. Every experience I’ve had with Linux has been a nightmare.

    • thethunderwolf@lemmy.dbzer0.comEnglish
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      17 days ago

      neovim, opensuse tumbleweed, idk, idk, floating, gecko, bash

      my experience is limited tho, and im not strongly opinionated

      i like the vi/vim/neovim editor control scheme, not tried much else, nano seems ok too from my occasional use of it

      i use opensuse tumbleweed because its rolling release but still pretty stable and installation is easy but allows a lot of customizing, many other distros are good for many other things too, fedora popos and mint are great easy desktops, debian and nixos are great for servers, arch gentoo void nixos and artix are great desktops for nerds, etc. the bad ones are ubuntu (canonical is weird and corporate and makes bad decisions), manjaro (the devs are incompetent), and omarchy (it preinstalls nonfree software (including nordvpn (ew)), ai, and more nonfree software (including chatgpt (even more ai ew) and twitter))(as you might be able to tell i really hate it, its just an installer for some moron’s desktop setup, thats what nixos is for you fucking twat, and its crappily opinionated with crappy opinions)

      ive only used systemd distros (opensuse, ubuntu, fedora, debian, raspbian) so idk whether systemd alternatives are better, i just know that systemd is pretty bad in many ways

      and im not that much of a programmer, but pretty much all languages are good and useful (except that javascript is useful but not good)

      i like floating wms (i use kde plasma) because tiling is a bit annoying (sometimes i want a window to be a particular shape) and because tiling is usually in wms that are not des, ive tried sway and hyprland and the mostly keyboard based control was nice but it not being a de that provides all of that useful stuff was annoying

      gecko is better because its more libre, the corporation behind it is dedicated to libre rather than being one of the world’s biggest and evilest megacorps, and it incorporates more pro privacy design. i use librewolf. gecko is poorly separated from firefox tho so im quite hopeful for servo engine now that ladybird is vibe coded slop being rewritten in rust by the cult

      i like bash because its the typical well known linux shell that many online resources are about

  • Tar_Alcaran@sh.itjust.works
    0·
    18 days ago

    Are larp arrows supposed to have a flat foam tip, or a rounded foam tip?

    Either side will claim the other had blinded a dozen of their friends, impaled their cattle and poisoned the well!

    • helpImTrappedOnline@lemmy.world
      0·
      18 days ago

      Hmm, if both side claim the other blinded their friend, than perhaps both are capable of blinding friends. The obvious solution is to have no friends.

  • Zonetrooper@lemmy.world
    0·
    18 days ago

    Have a couple different ones:

    Star Wars:: How many Clones were actually in the Clone Army (and, by extension, how large are the setting’s armies in general)?

    The original wording used in 2003’s Attack of the Clones is (perhaps deliberately) ambiguous, so from that point on fans have forever debated this. On the one hand, there’s arguments that the visible cloning facilities and formations on-screen suggest literal interpretations of “unit” as “soldier”, and armies of a few million at most. On the other hand, fans have also pointed out that a galaxy-spanning conflict being fought by fewer troops than fought in World War 2 is ridiculous, and the casualty figures given would mean the entire clone army had been wiped out many times over - unless “units” can be taken to mean a much larger formation of troops.

    Expanded Universe materials (both pre- and post-Disney) have given figures supporting both sides.

    Eve Online: Was the game better or worse in the era of “Rorquals online”?

    Context is, at that point in the game’s history, much of the game’s economy was driven by very large mining capital ships - Rorquals - systematically stripping in-universe resources at high speed.

    Proponents suggest that the presence of vulnerable ships out in space doing things promoted conflict, and that this induced conflicting player groups to raid each others’ territory, creating game content. Detractors argue that Rorquals inevitably existed under the protective umbrella of existing large player groups, meaning only those groups could effectively harvest resources, creating a positive feedback loop where strong alliances got stronger and everyone else got wiped out.

    (Personally, my answer is ‘both’ - but most of it has to do with other game changes besides Rorquals.)

    Railfanning: Is coal-fired steam locomotives going away a good or bad thing?

    Coal-fired steam is undoubtedly cool. you get the authentic sensations and smoke clouds that oil-firing really doesn’t provide. Many who favor it bemoan old coal-fired locomotives being converted to run on oil, sometimes also arguing the locomotives should be preserved as historically used.

    On the hand, other fans point out that coal firing creates a very real fire hazard risk; there have been multiple brush- and forest-fires started or thought to be started by coal-fired locomotives. There’s also issues with coal becoming harder to get as use in power generation dwindles, and these fans would prefer to convert to oil rather than not run at all.

    Most people just see a steam locomotive and go “Cool!”

    • calcopiritus@lemmy.world
      0·
      18 days ago

      I like to think that there are exactly as many clones as that one copy-paste that lists every one of them. That way it truly lists all of them.

    • Bahnd Rollard@lemmy.world
      0·
      18 days ago

      EvE Online response as a player who was there for that era is still playing. I think the game is in a much healthier place now that most of the course correction patches have passed. Surgical Strike and Scarcity changes were needed to make the power blocs burn their stockpiles, but it happened slowly and almost killed the game (no one liked space austarity). Now with diminishing returns on capital reps, capped jump fatigue timers and filaments to allow for random travel the umbrellas can be pierced much easier and players have to adapt.

      • Zonetrooper@lemmy.world
        0·
        17 days ago

        Also someone who played through that: I agree.

        Nostalgia Rorquals Online have a very rose-tinted view of the time. Sure, there were more ships in space… but a lot of those “ships in space” came in the form of an entire cap fleet landing on your cruiser roam the second you tackled a Rorqual. Fatigue timers and diminishing returns were absolutely needed.

        I think the current crop of issues wouldn’t be fixed by just going back; they can be traced to other factors, like Citadels encouraging players crowding together.

      • Maestro@fedia.io
        0·
        17 days ago

        Tangential question: Is EvE viable or fun to play casually without subscription?

        • Bahnd Rollard@lemmy.world
          0·
          17 days ago

          Early game, absolutely. The most important thing is to find people to play and talk with. The first few months are about getting your sea legs and trying all the things you may want to do. Skills are time gated not activity gated, and learning the rules of engagment are important (in-game, social and meat-space).

          Personal note, the most useful thing I teach my new corp mates is “How not to be seen” and how to navigate your person in a way people cant (or have to put a lot of effort) into stopping you.

  • Nibodhika@lemmy.world
    0·
    17 days ago

    In the Lord of the Rings fandom there’s a persistent debate whether balrogs, or Durin’s Bane specifically, have wings. The text in Fellowship is ambiguous whether what it is describing are literal wings or something else wing-like.

    Never knew about this debate, but IMO the text is not ambiguous:

    suddenly drew itself up to a great height, and its wings were spread from wall to wall

    That’s very literal. Looking into the subject it seems that people think those are metaphorical wings, but I don’t see anything near that phrase that justifies thinking it’s metaphorical.

    But also, at the end of the day, it’s a moot debate. Balrogs are Maiar, them having wings or not is as important as the color of the shoes of some other character, they’re spiritual beings that adopt some physical form, which they can change at will.

    • hakase@lemmy.zip
      0·
      17 days ago

      In that same passage we also get that “Gandalf flew down the stairs”. Literal, unambiguous evidence that Gandalfs have wings.

    • lime!@feddit.nu
      0·
      17 days ago

      there’s another shouting match in the comments about this already, and i’m of the opinion that he establishes the wings as a simile earlier with “shadows like wings”. so i agree that it’s not ambiguous but in the other direction.

      • Nibodhika@lemmy.world
        0·
        17 days ago

        Shadow like wings doesn’t mean he doesn’t also has wings. And if he had shadow wings before how does he spread them afterwards?. Also, Tolkien is not one to hold adjectives, if he had meant shadow wings he would probably have written shadow wings. I read that more like he had shadow wings and later opened his real wings.

        In any case, like I said also, it’s mostly a moot discussion, might as well discuss the color of Frodo’s shoes in that scene.

        • lime!@feddit.nu
          0·
          17 days ago

          it’s an interesting discussion for the sake of understanding how people read. like, when i read “shadows like wings”, i see a cloak of darkness surrounding the beast. and when those “wings” are spread “wall to wall” in an enormous cavern, i see the beast magically snuffing out all light.

  • OsrsNeedsF2P@lemmy.ml
    0·
    16 days ago

    There’s this guy on https://2004.lostcity.rs/ who is always buying and selling items for >15% the trade values, and the forums have hundreds of posts complaining that he should be banned from using the markets. Which is impressive, considering the entire community is like 200 people