This weekly roundup thread is intended for all culture war posts. 'Culture war' is vaguely defined, but it basically means controversial issues that fall along set tribal lines. Arguments over culture war issues generate a lot of heat and little light, and few deeply entrenched people ever change their minds. This thread is for voicing opinions and analyzing the state of the discussion while trying to optimize for light over heat.
Optimistically, we think that engaging with people you disagree with is worth your time, and so is being nice! Pessimistically, there are many dynamics that can lead discussions on Culture War topics to become unproductive. There's a human tendency to divide along tribal lines, praising your ingroup and vilifying your outgroup - and if you think you find it easy to criticize your ingroup, then it may be that your outgroup is not who you think it is. Extremists with opposing positions can feed off each other, highlighting each other's worst points to justify their own angry rhetoric, which becomes in turn a new example of bad behavior for the other side to highlight.
We would like to avoid these negative dynamics. Accordingly, we ask that you do not use this thread for waging the Culture War. Examples of waging the Culture War:
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Shaming.
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Attempting to 'build consensus' or enforce ideological conformity.
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Making sweeping generalizations to vilify a group you dislike.
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Recruiting for a cause.
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Posting links that could be summarized as 'Boo outgroup!' Basically, if your content is 'Can you believe what Those People did this week?' then you should either refrain from posting, or do some very patient work to contextualize and/or steel-man the relevant viewpoint.
In general, you should argue to understand, not to win. This thread is not territory to be claimed by one group or another; indeed, the aim is to have many different viewpoints represented here. Thus, we also ask that you follow some guidelines:
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Speak plainly. Avoid sarcasm and mockery. When disagreeing with someone, state your objections explicitly.
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Be as precise and charitable as you can. Don't paraphrase unflatteringly.
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Don't imply that someone said something they did not say, even if you think it follows from what they said.
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Write like everyone is reading and you want them to be included in the discussion.
On an ad hoc basis, the mods will try to compile a list of the best posts/comments from the previous week, posted in Quality Contribution threads and archived at /r/TheThread. You may nominate a comment for this list by clicking on 'report' at the bottom of the post and typing 'Actually a quality contribution' as the report reason.
Do you have a dumb question that you're kind of embarrassed to ask in the main thread? Is there something you're just not sure about?
This is your opportunity to ask questions. No question too simple or too silly.
Culture war topics are accepted, and proposals for a better intro post are appreciated.
Be advised: this thread is not for serious in-depth discussion of weighty topics (we have a link for that), this thread is not for anything Culture War related. This thread is for Fun. You got jokes? Share 'em. You got silly questions? Ask 'em.
Transnational Thursday is a thread for people to discuss international news, foreign policy or international relations history. Feel free as well to drop in with coverage of countries you’re interested in, talk about ongoing dynamics like the wars in Israel or Ukraine, or even just whatever you’re reading.
The Wednesday Wellness threads are meant to encourage users to ask for and provide advice and motivation to improve their lives. It isn't intended as a 'containment thread' and any content which could go here could instead be posted in its own thread. You could post:
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Requests for advice and / or encouragement. On basically any topic and for any scale of problem.
-
Updates to let us know how you are doing. This provides valuable feedback on past advice / encouragement and will hopefully make people feel a little more motivated to follow through. If you want to be reminded to post your update, see the post titled 'update reminders', below.
-
Advice. This can be in response to a request for advice or just something that you think could be generally useful for many people here.
-
Encouragement. Probably best directed at specific users, but if you feel like just encouraging people in general I don't think anyone is going to object. I don't think I really need to say this, but just to be clear; encouragement should have a generally positive tone and not shame people (if people feel that shame might be an effective tool for motivating people, please discuss this so we can form a group consensus on how to use it rather than just trying it).
This was really popular last week, I was really impressed with how many hardworking hobbyist type people we have here. It got me motivated to do some of my own things.
As a reminder, this thread is for anyone working on personal projects to share their progress, and hold themselves somewhat accountable to a group of peers. We can coordinate weekly standup type meetings if their is interest.
Post your project, your progress from last week, and what you hope to accomplish this week.
Also naming the thread. Tinker Tuesday or taskmaster Tuesday, or something else? I switched the thread to Tuesday instead of Monday because the culture war thread refreshes on Monday.
This weekly roundup thread is intended for all culture war posts. 'Culture war' is vaguely defined, but it basically means controversial issues that fall along set tribal lines. Arguments over culture war issues generate a lot of heat and little light, and few deeply entrenched people ever change their minds. This thread is for voicing opinions and analyzing the state of the discussion while trying to optimize for light over heat.
Optimistically, we think that engaging with people you disagree with is worth your time, and so is being nice! Pessimistically, there are many dynamics that can lead discussions on Culture War topics to become unproductive. There's a human tendency to divide along tribal lines, praising your ingroup and vilifying your outgroup - and if you think you find it easy to criticize your ingroup, then it may be that your outgroup is not who you think it is. Extremists with opposing positions can feed off each other, highlighting each other's worst points to justify their own angry rhetoric, which becomes in turn a new example of bad behavior for the other side to highlight.
We would like to avoid these negative dynamics. Accordingly, we ask that you do not use this thread for waging the Culture War. Examples of waging the Culture War:
-
Shaming.
-
Attempting to 'build consensus' or enforce ideological conformity.
-
Making sweeping generalizations to vilify a group you dislike.
-
Recruiting for a cause.
-
Posting links that could be summarized as 'Boo outgroup!' Basically, if your content is 'Can you believe what Those People did this week?' then you should either refrain from posting, or do some very patient work to contextualize and/or steel-man the relevant viewpoint.
In general, you should argue to understand, not to win. This thread is not territory to be claimed by one group or another; indeed, the aim is to have many different viewpoints represented here. Thus, we also ask that you follow some guidelines:
-
Speak plainly. Avoid sarcasm and mockery. When disagreeing with someone, state your objections explicitly.
-
Be as precise and charitable as you can. Don't paraphrase unflatteringly.
-
Don't imply that someone said something they did not say, even if you think it follows from what they said.
-
Write like everyone is reading and you want them to be included in the discussion.
On an ad hoc basis, the mods will try to compile a list of the best posts/comments from the previous week, posted in Quality Contribution threads and archived at /r/TheThread. You may nominate a comment for this list by clicking on 'report' at the bottom of the post and typing 'Actually a quality contribution' as the report reason.
Do you have a dumb question that you're kind of embarrassed to ask in the main thread? Is there something you're just not sure about?
This is your opportunity to ask questions. No question too simple or too silly.
Culture war topics are accepted, and proposals for a better intro post are appreciated.
Under what circumstances can preferences under uncertainty be modeled by expected utility? The classic von Neumann-Morgenstern theorem constructs a utility function that, when multiplied by corresponding probabilities, yields an ordering that is consistent with the ordering of the preferences of the agent.
Being able to represent choice under uncertainty via expectations is a powerful tool. As just one example, utility functions tend to be convex to capture diminishing marginal utility. Hence, by Jenson's inequality, the notion of risk aversion (the utility of a certain outcome of 1 dollar is higher than the utility of a 50% chance of 2 dollars and 50% chance of zero dollar) pops out of such models "for free". More generally, the rich mathematical and optimization frameworks that accompany expectations is made available for economic modeling.
The von Neumann-Morgenstern theorem itself relies on two core axioms of economics, a third axiom that is required to prove the existence of a utility function, and finally a fourth that is required to prove the existence of a utility function such that the expectation of the utility in each possible state corresponds to the actual preference ordering of the agent. It is this fourth axiom that is the lynchpin for the von Neumann-Morgenstern proof.
The late Daniel Kahneman, Nobel prize winner and critic of "mainstream" economics, took issue with this fourth axiom. (As an aside, his pop-science book "Thinking Fast and Slow" took (unjustified) issue with far more in economics than just this fourth axiom. He repeatedly conflates the concept of rationality and of the representation of preferences via expectations, leading the casual reader to believe that he had essentially undermined all of economics). As a simple example, the "Allais Paradox" posits two gambles that would appear to contradict the fourth axiom. In response to this shortcoming, he created an entirely new framework he termed prospect theory.
So does Kahneman's work prove the death-knell for expected utility? I don't believe so. There is a trick for resolving Allais' Paradox while retaining the expected utility framework: switching the "real-world" probabilities into an equivalent measure. A simple re-weighting of the probabilities generates expected utility that is consistent with the actual preference ordering, and it is not difficult to construct a general re-weighting that accomplishes this for any "gamble" in which at least one state has a higher utility than the alternative. Put in such a way, the fourth axiom is actually not necessary for expectations to be an appropriate representation of preferences. By adding the single line "under some probability measure" to the von Neumann-Morgenstern theorem, the entire analytical toolkit of expected utility is back at our disposal.
Be advised: this thread is not for serious in-depth discussion of weighty topics (we have a link for that), this thread is not for anything Culture War related. This thread is for Fun. You got jokes? Share 'em. You got silly questions? Ask 'em.
Zvi Mowshowitz reporting on an LLM exhibiting unprompted instrumental convergence. Figured this might be an update to some Mottizens.
Transnational Thursday is a thread for people to discuss international news, foreign policy or international relations history. Feel free as well to drop in with coverage of countries you’re interested in, talk about ongoing dynamics like the wars in Israel or Ukraine, or even just whatever you’re reading.
The Wednesday Wellness threads are meant to encourage users to ask for and provide advice and motivation to improve their lives. It isn't intended as a 'containment thread' and any content which could go here could instead be posted in its own thread. You could post:
-
Requests for advice and / or encouragement. On basically any topic and for any scale of problem.
-
Updates to let us know how you are doing. This provides valuable feedback on past advice / encouragement and will hopefully make people feel a little more motivated to follow through. If you want to be reminded to post your update, see the post titled 'update reminders', below.
-
Advice. This can be in response to a request for advice or just something that you think could be generally useful for many people here.
-
Encouragement. Probably best directed at specific users, but if you feel like just encouraging people in general I don't think anyone is going to object. I don't think I really need to say this, but just to be clear; encouragement should have a generally positive tone and not shame people (if people feel that shame might be an effective tool for motivating people, please discuss this so we can form a group consensus on how to use it rather than just trying it).
Trying out a new weekly thread idea.
This would be a thread for anyone working on personal projects to share their progress, and hold themselves somewhat accountable to a group of peers. We can coordinate weekly standup type meetings if their is interest.
@ArjinFerman, @Turniper, and myself all had some initial interest.
Post your project, your progress from last week, and what you hope to accomplish this week.
This weekly roundup thread is intended for all culture war posts. 'Culture war' is vaguely defined, but it basically means controversial issues that fall along set tribal lines. Arguments over culture war issues generate a lot of heat and little light, and few deeply entrenched people ever change their minds. This thread is for voicing opinions and analyzing the state of the discussion while trying to optimize for light over heat.
Optimistically, we think that engaging with people you disagree with is worth your time, and so is being nice! Pessimistically, there are many dynamics that can lead discussions on Culture War topics to become unproductive. There's a human tendency to divide along tribal lines, praising your ingroup and vilifying your outgroup - and if you think you find it easy to criticize your ingroup, then it may be that your outgroup is not who you think it is. Extremists with opposing positions can feed off each other, highlighting each other's worst points to justify their own angry rhetoric, which becomes in turn a new example of bad behavior for the other side to highlight.
We would like to avoid these negative dynamics. Accordingly, we ask that you do not use this thread for waging the Culture War. Examples of waging the Culture War:
-
Shaming.
-
Attempting to 'build consensus' or enforce ideological conformity.
-
Making sweeping generalizations to vilify a group you dislike.
-
Recruiting for a cause.
-
Posting links that could be summarized as 'Boo outgroup!' Basically, if your content is 'Can you believe what Those People did this week?' then you should either refrain from posting, or do some very patient work to contextualize and/or steel-man the relevant viewpoint.
In general, you should argue to understand, not to win. This thread is not territory to be claimed by one group or another; indeed, the aim is to have many different viewpoints represented here. Thus, we also ask that you follow some guidelines:
-
Speak plainly. Avoid sarcasm and mockery. When disagreeing with someone, state your objections explicitly.
-
Be as precise and charitable as you can. Don't paraphrase unflatteringly.
-
Don't imply that someone said something they did not say, even if you think it follows from what they said.
-
Write like everyone is reading and you want them to be included in the discussion.
On an ad hoc basis, the mods will try to compile a list of the best posts/comments from the previous week, posted in Quality Contribution threads and archived at /r/TheThread. You may nominate a comment for this list by clicking on 'report' at the bottom of the post and typing 'Actually a quality contribution' as the report reason.
Do you have a dumb question that you're kind of embarrassed to ask in the main thread? Is there something you're just not sure about?
This is your opportunity to ask questions. No question too simple or too silly.
Culture war topics are accepted, and proposals for a better intro post are appreciated.
As the Soviet Union fell apart, dissident writers in Central Europe came to power, but some had mixed feelings about their newfound purpose.
A story about what happens when a literary underground is catuplated into power - and forced to act our their philosophies and stories in real life. Just published recently on my substack by yours truly!
I wrote this substack post due to my growing frustration with European innovation landscape compared to the US. We seem to follow technological development with at-least about a decade gap. Particularly when it comes to medical research, but others also. That is, if activist groups and political lobbying even allows it to be developed (see chatgpt being banned in Italy).
There is also regulatory burden when it comes to research. In the past year only, it has become exceedingly difficult to do any animal experiments in the Netherlands. This makes sense given the aim of completely 'phasing out' animal research by 2025 . I really hope the new minister of agriculture (Femke Wiersma), from the farmers party, can put a stop to this. I do not understand how supposedly intelligent people believe that animal research can be 'phased out'. Indeed, it is very easy to challenge them on this and receive no satisfying reply. This to me makes it seem more like 'feels over reals' sort of thing. I think a part of the regulatory burden is in part to ensure that the science aligns with ideology, which is perhaps why some places in the US are possibly worse than others.
I am not sure how much this explains. Of course with animal research its easy to say that it explains all of it. But things like GDPR and the research ethics stuff (for human research) seem more influenced by safetyism and ass-covering to me. Here, caution and risk avoidance have become virtues, which makes sense given the median age. I always remember back to the AstraZeneca debacle. Some very very small increase in chance of clots for a certain age group and if you were in this age group you could not get the vaccine full-stop. No matter if the statistics showed that things were actually on the net, positive, or whether you were tired of living under abject tyranny and saw this as a way out. You, as an adult could not make a decision regarding your own well being. Faceless bureaucracy did this for you. Likewise, currently when running any human experiment, it doesn't matter if you want to very much participate in an experiment.
If you have 3 kidneys and the MRI can see this, people can identify you and so this is personally identifiable information and therefore your 'informed consent' means nothing. I see 'consent' as a legacy of classical liberalism. We are paying lip service to it. But actually the consent of the paper pusher, is much more important here than that of the individual.
I really think the current trajectory is ruinous. As I finished off in my post, there are very real consequences to being left behind on the technology game.
Be advised: this thread is not for serious in-depth discussion of weighty topics (we have a link for that), this thread is not for anything Culture War related. This thread is for Fun. You got jokes? Share 'em. You got silly questions? Ask 'em.
Transnational Thursday is a thread for people to discuss international news, foreign policy or international relations history. Feel free as well to drop in with coverage of countries you’re interested in, talk about ongoing dynamics like the wars in Israel or Ukraine, or even just whatever you’re reading.
The Wednesday Wellness threads are meant to encourage users to ask for and provide advice and motivation to improve their lives. It isn't intended as a 'containment thread' and any content which could go here could instead be posted in its own thread. You could post:
-
Requests for advice and / or encouragement. On basically any topic and for any scale of problem.
-
Updates to let us know how you are doing. This provides valuable feedback on past advice / encouragement and will hopefully make people feel a little more motivated to follow through. If you want to be reminded to post your update, see the post titled 'update reminders', below.
-
Advice. This can be in response to a request for advice or just something that you think could be generally useful for many people here.
-
Encouragement. Probably best directed at specific users, but if you feel like just encouraging people in general I don't think anyone is going to object. I don't think I really need to say this, but just to be clear; encouragement should have a generally positive tone and not shame people (if people feel that shame might be an effective tool for motivating people, please discuss this so we can form a group consensus on how to use it rather than just trying it).
Aaand we're back... yet again!
The goal of this thread is to coordinate development on our project codenamed HighSpace - a mod for Freespace 2 that will be a mashup between it and High Fleet. A description of how the mechanics of the two games could be combined is available in the first thread.
General Status of the Project
Between just being busy with life, and my general predisposition of jumping into a project and not really finishing it, I can't really promise that this time around will see more consistent updates than the last time. The good news is that if you kind of thought this project is cool, but you're afraid of joining and flaking out - don't worry about it. As you can see I'm no better, and the half the reason for this project is to have a community activity for TheMotte's tinkerers and artists.
The biggest update is a change in the approach to writing / art direction. Originally I was hoping we'll get enough people to hop in, divide jobs according to our strengths, and manage the project by some dialogue / mindmeld / flat-hierarchy mechanism. Writing specifically not being one of my strengths, I figured I'd leave everything vague, so someone better can have more freedom. That didn't pan out, so it became obvious that I'll need to take charge here, but the other problem was - I really didn't know where I want to go with the story, or even more broadly with world-building. Then, the other day, when I was stuck on a flight with nothing better to do but to daydream, I was hit with a sudden bout of inspiration. Ever since I had that thought about all my favorite space operas boiling down to Americans talking about their place in the world, I thought someone should make a non-Western Star Trek. I even had some vague ideas for a Gulliver-Travelsesque "fly around the universe bumping into various civilizations that satirize current-era humanity" story, but I never put pen to paper, and it's not really the kind of thing that works well with a space shooter, so it was of no use here. I don't even remember how I made the connection, but somehow I thought about Attack On Titan, and how well they pulled off the feeling existential threat, and I figured that that's the missing piece - some good old fashioned existential horror wreaking havoc, and a scrappy pack survivors trying to make it through.
So here's the setting: Sometime in the far far future - no one even knows when anymore - humanity conquered the stars and colonized the galaxy. All was well until the aforementioned horrors showed up. No one knows what they are, and what their greater goals are - not least because nearly all historical records were lost to the apocalypse they brought - but they do seem to seek out sentient life and "consume" it, assuming it's shape and behaviors in the process, but never getting it quite right, leading an uncanny appearance, as if to mock their victims with their existence. The once-glorious empire of humanity was annihilated, all that remains are nomad fleets and deeply hidden colonies. Several generations passed since this apocalypse, and the survivors got quite good at surviving, either by deploying superior tactics, or by becoming expert at hiding. Their current situation is stable, but they must maintain iron discipline at all times, and any slip will likely result in tragedy.
...and then it struck me that a post-apocalyptic Eastern European (that's where I'm from, so that's what you're getting) Star Trek with incomprehensible horrors looming at every turn is, yet again, a mashup between Freespace and High Fleet. Perhaps I shouldn't be surprised.
Updates
Not much to show off yet, but the whole Demo Scenario is getting revamped to reflect the changes in the setting. The current idea is as follows:
Someone did make a slip. A logistics taskforce flew right into the hornets' nest, and are now being pursued by the Incomprehensible Horrors. Captain Playername receives their distress call, and as the nearest ship, rushes in to help. Reinforcements are on the way, but will need time to assemble. The logistics guys can't jump to another system due to [McGuffin, or some clever Subspace jump mechanic I'm yet to come up with], so they opted to scatter throughout the system in an attempt to buy time and minimize casualties.
The player is in command of a mid-size carrier, and has to rescue as many friendlies as he can find, before the IH's get to them. Each successful rescue gives the player a new ship at their command (in case it's one of the escorts), and/or resources like bombs/specialized ammo (when it's one of the transports), but generates more aggro (which itself has trade-offs - more aggro on you means less on the relatively defenseless friendlies). All this culminates in an assault on the IH super-capital ship, that is the source of all this trouble. This will resemble an arcadey boss-fight, where fighters will need to take apart some critical components of the enemy ship, so the friendly capital ships can approach it safely and finish it.
I think a scenario like this will be more manageable. The previous one (where the player would have to hunt down pirates raiding freighters coming to/from a mining colony) would require a pretty complex AI, while here I'm planning to go with a pretty basic "chase the thing with the highest aggro" approach for the enemy.
Actual changes since last version
I started writing the map generator. Currently rescuable ships are spawned randomly throughout the system, and I'm now working on having the enemy spawn in their pursuit (far enough away from the friendlies to no immediately detect them, close enough that they'll get picked up by patrols sooner or later). I fixed a few bugs, but apparently introduced a whole bunch of new ones (random crash to desktop with a mysterious message, for example).
Now Hiring:
Slapper-in-chief
Do you have a sadistic streak? Did I get on your nerves while posting here, and now you really, really want to slap me? This is your opportunity!
If you're not up for joining in a creative capacity, one thing that I think would help me greatly, is someone to smack me if I start slacking around. The feedback I got from @netstack helped me a lot before, so like that guy that hired someone to slap him every time he opened Facebook, I figure that regular interactions where I report on what I did, what I'm planning to do, get screamed at for not meeting my deadlines, and get some feedback on what I accomplished would help me to stay focused.
The usual
Other than that I'll still need help from other creatives, including:
- developers: “mission” code, “strategic” system map code
- artists: 2D (user interface), 3D (space ships, weapons explosions) (@FCFromSSC, still interested / do you have more time nowadays?)
- writers: worldbuilding / lore, quests, characters
- testers: the way the any program works always makes sense to the developer, so feedback from people who aren't me is always appreciated. This is a pretty easy way to get involved, though it does require an initial investment of buying Freespace2, at least until we manage to turn it into a proper total conversion, and use only our content.
A small note for potential contributors:
Don't be afraid to ask questions however small, or silly you might find them. This is literally one of the primary functions this thread has. The Hard Light documentation is... there... but it's not great, and between that, the peculiarities of LUA, the FS2 scripting API, RocketLib, and other parts of FS2 modding, it really might not be obvious how to resolve issues you run into. I might not be able to answer all questions, but I've dabbled in all these things, so there's good chances I'll be able to help.
This weekly roundup thread is intended for all culture war posts. 'Culture war' is vaguely defined, but it basically means controversial issues that fall along set tribal lines. Arguments over culture war issues generate a lot of heat and little light, and few deeply entrenched people ever change their minds. This thread is for voicing opinions and analyzing the state of the discussion while trying to optimize for light over heat.
Optimistically, we think that engaging with people you disagree with is worth your time, and so is being nice! Pessimistically, there are many dynamics that can lead discussions on Culture War topics to become unproductive. There's a human tendency to divide along tribal lines, praising your ingroup and vilifying your outgroup - and if you think you find it easy to criticize your ingroup, then it may be that your outgroup is not who you think it is. Extremists with opposing positions can feed off each other, highlighting each other's worst points to justify their own angry rhetoric, which becomes in turn a new example of bad behavior for the other side to highlight.
We would like to avoid these negative dynamics. Accordingly, we ask that you do not use this thread for waging the Culture War. Examples of waging the Culture War:
-
Shaming.
-
Attempting to 'build consensus' or enforce ideological conformity.
-
Making sweeping generalizations to vilify a group you dislike.
-
Recruiting for a cause.
-
Posting links that could be summarized as 'Boo outgroup!' Basically, if your content is 'Can you believe what Those People did this week?' then you should either refrain from posting, or do some very patient work to contextualize and/or steel-man the relevant viewpoint.
In general, you should argue to understand, not to win. This thread is not territory to be claimed by one group or another; indeed, the aim is to have many different viewpoints represented here. Thus, we also ask that you follow some guidelines:
-
Speak plainly. Avoid sarcasm and mockery. When disagreeing with someone, state your objections explicitly.
-
Be as precise and charitable as you can. Don't paraphrase unflatteringly.
-
Don't imply that someone said something they did not say, even if you think it follows from what they said.
-
Write like everyone is reading and you want them to be included in the discussion.
On an ad hoc basis, the mods will try to compile a list of the best posts/comments from the previous week, posted in Quality Contribution threads and archived at /r/TheThread. You may nominate a comment for this list by clicking on 'report' at the bottom of the post and typing 'Actually a quality contribution' as the report reason.
Do you have a dumb question that you're kind of embarrassed to ask in the main thread? Is there something you're just not sure about?
This is your opportunity to ask questions. No question too simple or too silly.
Culture war topics are accepted, and proposals for a better intro post are appreciated.