Completely Inconsequential Hot-Takes 2: People Take Too Long to Post New Threads

[Rynjin]

If it comes down to it, I also don't understand the appeal of a drink that you have to order half an hour ahead of time

You don't, you are again just making it wrong. Heat your water (it does not need to be to boiling; boiling is too hot). Steep tea for ~5 minutes. Add stuff to taste or drink plain.

[veti]

Ok, that's fair, but I still don't understand the appeal of black coffee. You can certainly make coffee taste good, but it's going to be some combination of cream, sugar, Bailey's, and/or reddi-whip doing the heavy lifting

There's no point arguing about tastes, if you don't like coffee then that's - you, good luck to you, we all have our quirks. But if you add all that nonsense to it, there's no drink you can reasonably call "coffee" remaining. At most it's coffee-flavoured.

You don't, you are again just making it wrong. Heat your water (it does not need to be to boiling; boiling is too hot). Steep tea for ~5 minutes. Add stuff to taste or drink plain.

If the water is more than ten seconds past boiling, it's not hot enough. (The action of boiling dissipates heat very quickly.) If you serve it in a reasonable sized cup, it should be at a drinkable (edit: sippable, not gulpable) temperature in about five minutes.

Some people, such as my brother, being crazy, make it in a pint mug. Then it takes considerably longer to cool.

[Rynjin]

There's no point arguing about tastes, if you don't like coffee then that's - you, good luck to you, we all have our quirks. But if you add all that nonsense to it, there's no drink you can reasonably call "coffee" remaining. At most it's coffee-flavoured.

There's levels to coffee quality for sure. My personal experience:

Really good coffee - tastes good black, tastes really bad if you put ANYTHING in it, it's weird.
Good coffee - decent black but better with a bit of milk; doesn't like anything sugary added to it, somehow makes the aftertaste way more bitter
Average coffee - undrinkable black, good with milk, perfect for any sweet coffee drink like a Vietnamese coffee
Bad coffee - is bad

I keep a couple of different "qualities" in my pantry for just this reason. Folger's is great if I want something sweet, better quality stuff for other different moods.

If the water is more than ten seconds past boiling, it's not hot enough. (The action of boiling dissipates heat very quickly.) If you serve it in a reasonable sized cup, it should be at a drinkable (edit: sippable, not gulpable) temperature in about five minutes.

Some people, such as my brother, being crazy, make it in a pint mug. Then it takes considerably longer to cool.

Interesting. I was always taught to bring the water to a light (not rolling) boil or just before and assumed it was because by the time it boiled it would be too hot. Didn't know it was the other way around lol.

[sktarq]

Don't get lemonade in England or Australia.

I grew up in a mix of citrus, avocado, and olive orchards (as in driveway was a farm track) in a volcanic ash basin so the well water was filtered nicely already....so lemonade in the UK is not really worse in comparison. I am deeply spoilt in this manner.

[Peelee]

I grew up in a mix of citrus, avocado, and olive orchards (as in driveway was a farm track) in a volcanic ash basin so the well water was filtered nicely already....so lemonade in the UK is not really worse in comparison. I am deeply spoilt in this manner.

So the joke here isnif you go to England and order a lemonade, you get a Sprite.

[sktarq]

So the joke here isnif you go to England and order a lemonade, you get a Sprite.

My grandmother would have knocked anyone who did that to her about the head with her cane. Then again her lemon tree swas at one end of the victory garden that was still going into 1993 in Slough of all places. Crap weedy lemons but still

[Peelee]

My grandmother would have knocked anyone who did that to her about the head with her cane. Then again her lemon tree swas at one end of the victory garden that was still going into 1993 in Slough of all places. Crap weedy lemons but still

Werner Hogg Slough? Hometown of Foregone Conclusion?

[sktarq]

As in home of the UK Office, and the movie 'An Education'
Yeah spent a fair amount of time there as a wee flumph

[Draconi Redfir]

I guess in a literal sense, but only because the titan Azeroth would be up and about and doing evil stuff.

the titan Azeroth is evil? I thought she was more of a good-aligned character.

[Peelee]

As in home of the UK Office, and the movie 'An Education'

Damned autocorrect. I meant to type Wernham Hogg, the company in the UK Office. And Foregone Conclusion is the bad David Brent was in, and which the UK Office final episode/movie David Brent: Life on the Road focused

Yeah spent a fair amount of time there as a wee flumph

I'm sorry.

[Keltest]

the titan Azeroth is evil? I thought she was more of a good-aligned character.

The old gods were trying to corrupt her. Without the titans intervention, they would have succeeded.

[Draconi Redfir]

The old gods were trying to corrupt her. Without the titans intervention, they would have succeeded.

ahh okay.

Well maybe the Trolls would have inadvertently stopped it. pretty sure they were narrowly winning that fight.

[Fyraltari]

Don't get lemonade in England or Australia.

I believe you hve made a typo. Let me fix that for you:

Don't get in England or Australia.

[Peelee]

I believe you hve made a typo. Let me fix that for you:

aaaAAAAAAaaaaaathe French!

[Draconi Redfir]

I really feel like there should be a hard line between "Criticism" and "Insults".

One is saying "this thing you did is not to my taste for [x reason], the other is saying "you suck" while providing nothing of substance.


If you want something you say to be viewed as Criticism, you should A: Not insult the individual, B: Point out what part of their work you dislike, and C: Offer any amount of guidance or idea as to how what you dislike could be mitigated.

"I wasn't a fan of this video, you relied too much on the dissolve effect, there was a lot of background noise, and the subjects you covered weren't interesting to me. Perhaps you should try and expand your editing skills, looking into audio filters, and look into [X topic] instead?" is criticism.

"Your vids suck bro" is you being a dinkhead.

They are not the same.

[Ionathus]

I really feel like there should be a hard line between "Criticism" and "Insults".

One is saying "this thing you did is not to my taste for [x reason], the other is saying "you suck" while providing nothing of substance.


If you want something you say to be viewed as Criticism, you should A: Not insult the individual, B: Point out what part of their work you dislike, and C: Offer any amount of guidance or idea as to how what you dislike could be mitigated.

"I wasn't a fan of this video, you relied too much on the dissolve effect, there was a lot of background noise, and the subjects you covered weren't interesting to me. Perhaps you should try and expand your editing skills, looking into audio filters, and look into [X topic] instead?" is criticism.

"Your vids suck bro" is you being a dinkhead.

They are not the same.

Indeed. And sometimes the latter can masquerade as the former if you put enough pseudo-intellectual language on your insults or couch them in "critique" language.

I took part in a theatre festival recently where audience members are allowed to post reviews and boy howdy let me tell you, the general public's opinion of the artistic process₁ is worth about as much as a fart in a hurricane to me. Most people don't know how to provide meaningful critique, so they latch on to things they liked and decide those were good, and things that weren't to their personal tastes are bad. And that's the ones who are earnestly trying to give good feedback: the worst ones are the jerks who are clearly just there to tear down anything if they think it'll make them look smarter.

Honest critics, who have experience critiquing, are a lot better at approaching the work in the right mindset -- i.e. "what did the creator set out to accomplish, and in my opinion, did they achieve that goal?" Ideally you can trust them to set aside their personal taste (or at least acknowledge when taste is causing a bias), and you can trust them to approach it with the intention of "breaking down" the mechanics of the work to better analyze them, rather than "tearing down" just for the lulz.

Or, to quote Rich Burlew, it's the difference between "this didn't work for me, for XYZ reasons" and "THIS SUCKS, I'M HELPING"


1. Which isn't to say I don't value the public's opinion about the performance as a whole! The audience doesn't have to know all the complex artistic themes you were working with to know whether or not you succeeded in telling your story: it's the same reason "I'm a good communicator -- other people just suck at listening!" is a ludicrous sentence. It doesn't matter how knowledgeable you are about the craft of storytelling if that doesn't translate to a digestible message for your audience. However, just because the audience can tell you "this isn't working as a story" doesn't mean that they can tell you how to fix it -- usually their ideas for solutions are the worst you could possibly get.

[Fyraltari]

aaaAAAAAAaaaaaathe French!

Where!?890

[enderlord99]

Where!?890

At the intersection of Conch and Coral.

[veti]

I really feel like there should be a hard line between "Criticism" and "Insults".

Yep, though as Ionathus points out, there's also a category of "honest feedback", which arguably falls somewhere between the two.

Another thing that's not just insults is "trolling". Nowadays the word seems to have lost its meaning, it's become synonymous with arbitrary rudeness and viciousness, but real trolling is neither of those things.

It's an art. Real trolling is neither rude nor (particularly) unkind. I'm pretty sure it still happens, all the time - indeed, I saw at least two clear instances of it only yesterday - but it goes unremarked because there's no word for it any more.

I'm talking about posting (say) a list of mistakes in a movie, and including "This scene is ridiculous because it depends on the spaceship's shadow falling across another ship - but both ships are in vacuum!".

[Ionathus]

I'm talking about posting (say) a list of mistakes in a movie,

Careful, now. If somebody invokes Cinema Sins in a thread about lighthearted rants, I'm not sure I'll ever be able to stop

[Draconi Redfir]

"This scene is ridiculous because it depends on the spaceship's shadow falling across another ship - but both ships are in vacuum!".

what does being in a vacuum have to do with casting a shadow?

All that needs to happen is one ship being closer to the nearest light source then the other.

[Fyraltari]

what does being in a vacuum have to do with casting a shadow?

All that needs to happen is one ship being closer to the nearest light source then the other.

You're taking the bait.

[Peelee]

Where!?890

California.

[Mystic Muse]

Every Fromsoft game I've played would be improved by having a got-dang map.

Except Elden Ring which had said map.

[Draconi Redfir]

You're taking the bait.

ahh, i see.

[Bohandas]

Or like if you took some of the snarky deliberately inaccurate trivia from the Things I May No Longer Do While Playing thread and played them totally stonefaced straight? Like managed to claim without cracking up that Ponyo was based on an H.P. Lovecraft novel or that the King in Yellow was definitely a character from Clue, not from a novel, or that the original ending of The Wizard of Oz had Dorothy being killed so that the wizard could harvest her brain, heart, and spine but the studio changed it because they decided it was too much of a dowmer

[Rynjin]

Every Fromsoft game I've played would be improved by having a got-dang map.

Except Elden Ring which had said map.

The only one I feel like needed a map to navigate was Bloodborne. The rest are linear enough concentric loops contained within small areas that a map is pretty much redundant.

Mind you it'd be nice to see a visual representation of all the loopbacks, especially in DS1, but I doubt an overworld map like ER has would have helped you at all.

[ZhonLord]

Here's a hot take about this forum:

When making a new post or editing one in regular browser, the additional options remain present. Show your signature, and automatically parse links.

But when using the mobile version of the site, the additional options are only present when making a post - not when going back to edit an error. And those additional options are locked to yes for parse, and no for signature.

So if I want to correct an error using my phone for a post, I am punished by my signature vanishing after I complete the edit.

WHY?! WHY MUST I BE PUNISHED FOR USING MY PHONE TO MAKE MY POSTS LEGIBLE?! IT'S NOT A BIG SIGNATURE, LET ME KEEP IT!!!

[Bohandas]

I never use the mobile version of anything, I always set my phone to load the desktop version. Mobile versions are always lacking key functionality

[Peelee]

I never use the mobile version of anything, I always set my phone to load the desktop version. Mobile versions are always lacking key functionality

PREACH, FRIEND! lameness filter override