Ohhh nice! Thank you for the link ^^

Just to add another factor to the ongoing discussion: artistic talent isn’t uniform and never was. Just because only/mostly “immature” art survived from a certain century of human history, doesn’t mean that there literally was no realistic art present at the time. Since you mentioned the statues already…

These are from the same era (around 200 BC), but as you may have guessed, made by different artists =P The statue is called The Dying Gaul by the way.

As for painting examples, I guess the Rothschild Canticles^[1] book illustrations represent best what most people nowadays would call medieval art. Not exactly realistic, a little goofy … perspective? Never heard of it. Proportions? Who cares. And who needs shading anyway?! As long as you can still distinguish a human from a cupcake, it’s “eh good enough”.

I guess that was also what you meant by “immature” art, because it is the same art style as those goofy weird pictures of knights fighting giant snails and rabbits riding cattle into battle and the like.^[2]

That book is dated to be around 1500–1520 so it would be easy to assume that people at the start of the 15th century didn’t have a realistic art style yet. But you know what else was made in that same era?

The Mona Lisa (1503–1506).

One dorky meme-esque style, and one realistic, modest and easy-on-the-eyes style in the same century, probably even the same decade. But they were used by different artists.

Now you might be thinking that those art styles might have been intended for their respective purpose or something along the lines: that the goofy, simple art style was used for nothing but amusing little pictures, and the more realistic style was for “proper” art, because noone in their right mind would spend 100+ hours painting highly detailed nonsense just for sh*ts and giggles, right?

May I introduce you to Joseph Ducreux?^[3]

I guess most of you will have seen that meme by now, but this is a real painting made by a real artist - and it is far from the only one. Ducreux created an entire series of similar self-portraits in … unusual poses and situations.

… so yes, at least that one guy DID indeed spend dozens if not hundreds of hours (plus material costs) painting amusing nonsense for his own entertainement. He was, in a way, the victorian era equivalent of a shitposter (and I mean that in a good sense!)

Long story short: one can’t just claim that “they didn’t have X art style in Y century” because the truth is much more facetted than that. It is way more likely that each and every era of human history has had people with insane talent who were able to create art as realistic as possible with whatever tools their lifetime had to offer, and also a bunch of “eh good enough” art or stuff that was deliberately stylized for fun. How we percieve said art today depends mainly on what artworks have survived up until now, and/or how popular the surviving art is. (Everyone and their grandma knows about the Mona Lisa, but how many of y’all knew about the Rothschild Canticles?)

If we don’t know about any realistic art from a certain period of time, it doesn’t automatically mean that there was no realistic art. It may have been lost, forgotten or it exists but it’s just not popular enough to be well-known.

Wikipedia claims they’re quite popular.

I always called it “clutter” tho I don’t know whether this is in any way official. De-cluttering an inventory means tossing the useless stuff out or packing it away.

f I created a community, would I become it’s (lone) moderator automatically?

Yes. But you can also immediatly appoint new mods and/or un-mod yourself if there are other mods present, so it is easy to give a community away when there are other interested users. It’s not a permanent thing.

What consequences, requirements and things would I need to keep in mind as a moderator?

Your community needs to be compatible wih the Fediverse Code of Conduct … but that boils down to “don’t be a dick and don’t post illegal stuff” which is pretty much just common sense. It’s not exactly hard to follow those rules ;)

Apart from that, you can set whatever rules you want. But keep in mind that the Fediverse is still a lot smaller than reddit, so if you are TOO niche / narrow / strict with the rules, you’ll have a hard time finding people who want to engage with your community. General, broad-themed communities with easy-to-follow rules have a bigger chance to thrive.

… and a personal little tip: don’t slam down the ban hammer at every opportunity. As a mod you are able to ban, silence, remove or otherwise “punish” people for bad behaviour, but that doesn’t mean that you have to do that. It’s a lot better to give users the benefit of the doubt, explain instead of punish (as they might not be aware that they did something bad in the first place), and give them a reasonable chance to fix their mistakes on their own before taking action. Post removal, bans and the like should be reserved solely for when the user in question is unwilling to cooperate OR did something obviously super shitty (like threatening other users, using slurs, posting illegal stuff etc.)

Is it advisable to copy-paste content from Reddit to kickstart new communities (given that the link source to the original content was added as well when making new posts)?

Well … as a last resort, yes. Original content or stuff from non-reddit sources is always preferable as it gives users of the Fediverse an incentive to visit communities here instead of going to reddit, but copypasted content is still better than no content at all, so if you can’t find interesting / worthwile stuff elsewhere, then copypasting from reddit is okay-ish too.

OC is still way better tho.

Amen. As a DM it is completely fine to generate challenging “food for thought” situations for their players, but when you start to play against your party and actively sabotage their characters, decisions or playstyle, it’s time to step down as a DM.

That’s actually a good question. I’m no dental expert mind you, but looking at the highly different diets some species have even compared to close relatives, I wouldn’t be surprised if that happened to extinct species as well. I mean, look at bears for example - grizzly, polar bear, brown bear … panda. Suddenly there is a vegan in the group, but with the same type of carnivore teeth.

Fron what I’ve read, there are differences in breeds (alpacas for example have very small canines compared to other species), females have smaller canines than males (on average), and they’re also usually removed / clipped for domesticated camelids (example with an alpaca: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vyXSrIUkFNg)

cast stuff like detect good and evil.

My long-term players have learned to not rely on that dumb spell anymore … because the way I handle this as a DM is purely about the intent of the characters in question, independendly from their actual actions. Examples:

• A witch-hunter who tortures and then burns women at the stake. A person who factually and personally brings suffering, pain, fear and death into the world as per his actions. What’s his intent? Well, if he just enjoys torturing women and takes the job of a witch-hunter as a convenient excuse then he’s certainly evil. But someone who is brainwashed into thinking that burning “witches” will save their souls from eternal hellfire and suffering, actually has “good” intentions and doesn’t think what he is doing could be evil. Sure it sucks that there is blood and fire involved, but what is a broken bone or two and a little bit of temporary pain compared to an eternity in hell? The spell would tell the caster that this is a “good” dude even tho he factually does the same as the other guy.

• An adventurer going to kill a dragon that has plagued nearby villages for ages … surely that’ll be a hero, right? Well, if he does this FOR the villagers, to save them and prevent future suffering, no matter whether it is dangerous for hmself, then he has good intentions. If someone does this purely out of spite because he happens to hate all things scaly, or purely out of greed because he wants the bounty / plunder the dragon’s hoard and he just doesn’t care for the villagers or his co-adventurers, then the spell would “detect” him as being evil, even tho both adventurers factually do the same in the end.

Of course this isn’t optimal either (the optimal solution would be to just not have that dumb spell in the first place IMHO) but it can make for nice little story twists if the obviously evil villain of the story has an ulterior motive and gets detected as “good” ;) The players might get an explanation AFTER the game, but while they’re still in the middle of an adventure, they have to figure it out on their own.

Headcanon forever accepted. This is aweseome!

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In addition to what others have said already: make peace with the fact that you WILL make mistakes, that the first few tries WILL look weird and that you WILL forget an allegedly important step. This is just part of the learning courve and happened to literally everyone who ever learned to make meals in the history of cooking, so do not compare the first ever flattened sushi roll you made with something a master chef with 30+ years of experience is able to do or the heavily photoshopped pictures on food blogs.

You will learn from those mistakes, and you will gain more experience over time. Small progress is still progress.

Also, it can help to only make PART of a recipe yourself when you’re still a bit unsure how all of it works, like for example buying premade pizza dough and only add the sauce and toppings yourself, or buying premade pie dough and only make the filling. One step at a time.

… and you can’t even remove ads from your own channel. As a content creator I was happy to find a “disable advertisements” option in the settings menu - my channel isn’t monetized anyway, so getting rid of those super intrusive ads sounded like a win/win situation.

Turns out this only disables “interest based” ads so my viewers still get shoved ads down their throats, just that those are entirely random now instead of custom-tailored towards their interests. Thanks, youtube - very helpful and exactly what I wanted. /s

You know, that’s actually a fair point. Especially since one of them also heavily relies on online competitions against the rest of the world, where you need to be as aggressive and brutal as possible to even survive the first few rounds. That is bound to promote and reward a specific mindset over time …

Since you specifically mentioned “cow farts”, you were probably thinking of this: https://www.dw.com/en/fact-check-is-eating-meat-bad-for-the-environment/a-63595148

tl;dr - cattle produces a lot of methane while digesting stuff

then quickly finished my tasks in 30 minutes

Sounds hella productive to me. For your job, it doesn’t matter whether it takes 8 hours or 30 minutes as long as all assigned tasks are done at the end of the day. For your personal wellbeing, private situation and overall productivity, being done in 30 minutes matters greatly as you now have 7.5 more hours to yourself while being just as productive as before.

Maybe I was lucky in my community selection?

It absolutely depends on the communities in question. I’ve been an active member of the ‘Breath of the Wild’ sub for years and even tho there was of course still the occasional troll / bot, the sub as a whole was positively wholesome. At the same time I occasionally posted in a Pokémon-related sub of similar size, and even simple, innocent questions were mass-downvoted, insults thrown left and right for the most basic and irrelevant reasons, and they had so many scammers that they needed to keep a list of “trustworthy users” for online trades.

I will not directly link examples to avoid giving reddit free traffic, but one particularily striking example were posts made by people who didn’t like the games in question:

• “I don’t really like BotW”

Topmost answer: “That’s okay. Keep in mind that BotW is very different from former Zelda games and the new formula isn’t everone’s cup of tea. If it is [XYZ] that bothers you, there are these in-game solutions to make your life easier: (listed those things) …and if you are looking for a more Zelda-esque experience, there are these games: (list with alternatives and explanations about how they’re different plus the pros and cons of those games)”

• “I don’t really like Pokémon Sword/Shield”

Topmost answer: “Get fucked”

PS: Sadly that sub went down the drain in the meantime as the “wholesome” people seem to have left and what remains of the former community are the trolls, bots and jerks. It honestly saddens me a bit, but at the same time I’m glad that I jumped ship before it happened.

No joke; scientists are working on such a thing: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mosquito_laser

Sleep mode in dim light: While flies seek out a place to sleep in the light of a single tea candle, you can still see them. Incredibly useful to get rid of flies in small spaces like a caravan or a tent. Possible explanation: They just lack vision, so their only option is to chill at the closest surface.

Seems to work on mosquitos as well BTW. Whenever one of those bastards made its way indoors, I turn off the lights, point a flashlight at the brightest wall in the room and wait. In most cases the mosquito will land somewhere on the bright part of the wall eventually (might take a few minutes tho) and can be swatted.

I totally need to try out that water bottle trick tho. That sounds like a neat, poison-free alternative to hunting the buggers down yourself.

Personally, I don’t mind ads that are not extremely obnoxious. A clickable link on the sidebar advertising something or a random picture here and there - no problemo, as they’re easy to ignore.

What I can’t stand are the extremely intrusive ones - pop-ups that obscure half of the screen with such a tiny little X in the corner that you need to click it in a pixel-perfect manner so you won’t “accidentally” open the ad itself. Ads that play music at full volume without warning. Unskippable ads in videos. Sites that greet you with “we noticed you’re using an adblocker” and just won’t let you view the actual site content. Ads that make the rest of the site lag like hell or freeze entirely. Rapidly flashing ads in neon colors that almost make you have a seizure by looking at them. Those can GTFO and if my adblocker isn’t able to / allowed to hide them, I simply won’t use the site in question anymore and that’s it.

To make an IRL comparison: I don’t mind at all if there are advertisement brochures just lying around on a counter while I’m in a mall, because I can decide on my own whether or not I want to take one of those. But if there is an employee blocking my way, screaming at the top of their lungs and slapping me across the face with said brochure, and I am not allowed to knock them out cold, then I’ll never set foot into that store again, ever.