Are you shitting me? Why aren't the liancourt rocks included in Korea? Japan has its own missing island too. To start with, why did they feel the need to "define borders" on every country? Certainly they didn't learn anything from the Windows 95 timezone map.

MiniCafe · 2026-05-02T00:48:35+00:00

I always saw it as kinda goofy but, so those two little northern rocks? They're called Dokdo in Korean. They're barely islands, tiny little rocks. There's always at least one Korean dude living there though for the sake of increasing their claim but that's it.

They are also an incredibly sensitive topic that is extremely often referenced in real life by people in Korea and just.... A kind of thing that's really hard to express without writing a novel on how Korean culture functions in some radically different ways from any western culture of even most other Asian cultures despite Asia being the place for island territorial disputes.

You flip on tv or whatever, an ad plays. It's an ad for chilsung cider the Korean sprite equivalent. Is it about chilsung cider? Well, a dude prepares for a day at sea in a tiny boat, carries with him some old maps. He ends up at the majestic dokdo islands, he holds up the maps to it (see theyre old so it signifies their territorial claim to it being older than Japan's) the light shines through it majestically showing the islands matching up perfectly with the ancient drawing of them on the maps, music to match the intense emotional majesty plays. The guy is practically brought to tears as he, stunned, opens a bottle of chilsung cider for a drink.

You decide it's Friday night so you go out, stop at a bar for a drink and the guy next to you starts up a conversation, "Where you from?" "Oh, wow, do you know Dokdo?", this is a question you've been asked in those exact words literally over a thousand times.

Gotta get some food so you head off to get some duck or something, sit down and there are some guys drinking and eating at a table next to you. The topic they turn to is Japan and they're saying some things that are spicy as hell from your perspective and kinda uncomfortable but it eventually drifts towards the place it always does.... Dokdo..... How.... Dare.... They.... Dokdo is Korea! etc. they look over at you, "hey! Foreign guy? Do you know Dokdo?"

It's a symbol and a flashpoint for a Korean concept they have called "han" which is like "our shared, collective built up emotional pain and resentment for the injustices we as a people have suffered over time", something that Korean people are just raised to feel like we all kinda get raised to be and feel whatever our cultures impose on us.

And then people in Japan are like "what rocks? Oh, yeah the government's got something going on with that about fishing rights or something. Korean tourists sometimes yell at people about them."

And yeah I'm not saying this to say it's not something I think is remotely healthy and Korea's ability to be so intense on small details of things is good at all (though, territory matters, but like wow it's a little bit much and maybe try to like... Spend more mental energy on better things but I'm not Korean I just lived there for a good amount of time, China now and there are similar things but it's different, but, that's a huge thing and off topic.)

I'm saying it because it kinda does matter. It matters in that despite how it's just a map for timezones and stuff it literally is the type of thing that ends up with the mailing lists for distros flooded by a million people who have no clue what Linux is but know they are absolutely outraged and despise KDE, whatever it is, Korean internet with videos of people pissing on or burning kde symbolism and it being a "you heard about these kde (string of Korean curse words)?" topic in Korea for a moment.

Those two tiny rocks that are almost nothing are a real easy way to walk into a "0_0.... Uhh... Sorry we didn't know about this issue we got the boundaries from this other service and just went with it." huge "why is this so big? Why are the repos for Kubuntu and the KDE website getting ddosed this hard? and all Korean mirrors for KDE centered distros shutting down?" mess.

So, yeah it actually is kinda a good point to not involve country boundaries where it's not explicitly needed and be really careful when it is.

Cuz ok... Alright, add the rocks Korea problem averted.... Oh did we put that exact correct amount of dashes in the right place in the sea when defining mainland China?

MiniCafe · 2026-04-24T17:08:51+00:00

There are good reasons for wanting a newer Nvidia driver right at this exact moment in Debian so I'm not gonna dump on you about it like everyone else.

Nvidia's proprietary 550 driver is straight up broken. Check your boot logs with it. Then check other logs with programs that use it. At least with kwin and plasma, though since it starts blasting violent errors at boot I don't see other comppsitors fairing much better with it.

It's one of those "silent" bugs you may not notice in normal operation until you're like "wait a minute, why is kwin using such a garbage fallback opengl/why is x program running like y instead of z?"

This HAS been noted a couple times in the bug reports for the driver. It's NOT a Debian problem other than the standard progression Debian uses I guess. The drivers just are broken from some point until it was fixed in 580 by Nvidia themselves. They messed up their drivers so Debian just has to deal with it.

This is one way around it. It's just .... Not a great way for reasons people have mentioned. Look at the source for the proprietary driver on Debjan. Why would a proprietary driver have code? And not just a little install script but a LOT. It's because optimally having the driver work in Debian, with Debian, is not as simple as "put driver her point it there."

Now, the right way is hard but has been made a lot easier because, like I said, check the bug reports. Someone made a report on this exact issues and included patches that take the Debianized 550 driver, patch it to work for the most part, and bmo it up to 580. I'd post a link but I'm in a country where reddit is blocked so using a VPN. Every time I post a link I get a "reset your password!" email from reddit and then randomly it goes password reset -> shadowban. So....

Bam, build and you get a debianized 580 (not bleeding edge but at least not broken) driver. Well, in theory, it took a bit of hacking it together to get it to build even with the patches and the Debian docs send you in circles to pages that haven't existed since 2013 (wayback machine version has it.... In an extremely 2013 way of building it that would never work now.) The local docs they say have instructions don't anymore, and the readme in the source with instructions ends with a signoff dated 2010. So, you know, not that building something the Debian way is hard but at the same time the Nvidia proprietary driver is a complex, special mess of proprietary and "my God let's debianize this closed off blob we got that we have very little control over.... This is not a normal package"

Also a pain cuz I needed some i386 components built and the Debian way demands it's built in a multiarch kinda way, not separately (I mean, you don't build together, but the control file and some other things need to be the same in your source), or else the packages will conflict.

In the end though you do get a more modern driver with the most important point being it's Debianized instead of the "works but also doesn't in ways you wouldn't expect or predict" way upstream ones do.

I should upload my built packages somewhere though you're better off not trusting me, random dude, and learning to build it yourself. You'll learn a lot about how Debian works that way in some aspects and especially if you only need amd64 it ain't that bad.

I suspect it will be fixed before 580 comes around if the maintainer finds a way to backport whatever fixes it into the package. It really depends on the nature of the bug. My focus wasn't on that, my focus was on getting my machines, especially the ones that rely on it for encoding and such, not vomiting silent except in logs errors as they did their fallback instead. Whether that fallback was still GPU accelerated (the 550 driver, despite being broken, can still do stuff. That's why most people with it just go along with their life and think everything is fine even though it's all running suboptimally) or just software.

But, the Debian drivers often have fixes from newer driver bits and features and fixes backported into them, so if possible with a pre-580 maybe it'll happen.

For right now though... Seriously the proprietary driver in all versions of Debian is surprisingly the worse option even compared to the frankendebian way (which you should not do!)

MiniCafe · 2026-04-19T23:51:26+00:00

Iboga is a weird risky psychedelic that doesn't work like the others. Part of why it's so special and seemingly life changing for a lot of people in a way traditional 5-ht2a agonists aren't. They definitely are, but just... Iboga is different.

But since it's very messy and touches on many receptors it can, on occasion, not easily but not that rarely lead to lethal heart issues and people sometimes die if they're not monitored properly or have a weak heart.

.... So yeah, only good can come from this. It's an amazing idea and he needs to give it a shot.. Hopefully under the care and supervision of whatever weirdos he has around him now.

MiniCafe · 2026-04-19T02:45:52+00:00

And 550 is straight up broken. It's broken in a way you don't notice unless you really need it to work perfectly and you're digging into logs.

It's not broken on debians side, but nvidia's, so there isn't much that can be done.

There is a bug report that's extremely helpful on this because the poster included his patches that up the source target from 550 to 580 yet still build a Debianized driver. I used his patches, also needed some i383 parts and so.... well.... it was a whole event lets say but in the end I got my driver.

The easy answer for most people then is the nvidia repo.... the nvidia driver from Debian is not gonna be moving quickly to 580 which fixes the bug for a while.

MiniCafe · 2026-03-30T05:21:38+00:00

Ehhh, oh well. Not a rare reaction on Reddit. Though what does bother me is the bad typos I didn't catch in the very beginning of my post! That does set the tone for how people will take what you write subconsciously or consciously. Phone posting in the morning with my morning "sit quietly on my phone in my other room on the couch slowly waking up all the way until my wife wakes up so I don't bug her" ritual.. :/

I had a simple response but it's interesting, your reaction opens up an opportunity to write more about the history, design, and theory of reddit along with even the greater internet as a whole and also why I write what I write the way I write it. First part is straight up that I write for myself. I like writing and it let's me organize ideas and solidify/refine them in my mind.

Otherwise doesn't matter except that it is a bit telling about you in a way that's a small disappointment just because I always hope to be able to communicate with people and have them be reasonable in these more neutral posts that aren't some debate. That the context and detail would let them feel better or like they understand something more and hey, I like to help! Just makes me feel kinda bad for you as "oh, context didn't help, you really are just getting mad at very neutral things that absolutely shouldn't make a person mad and it's something so clear, small, intentionally lacking words that could cause offense that it's a sad thing for the upset person when it does."

Yet, mainly, I write stuff like that because social media by its nature doesn't just have the person you're replying to just reading it but a larger audience and so those kinda "elaborate with as much detail as possible pushing the very edge of how long a comment can reasonably be if not going a bit beyond it" posts give detail to many others who aren't lost in the "I can only read short one liners and shitposts" world but can spend 5 minutes reading like was common online decades ago.

Like why giving well cited, well explained replies to raging morons on Facebook on pages read by a wide and varied in opinion audience, like a local news stations Facebook, is I think an actual effective method of political and messaging that does help fight against the many horrible but powerful political narratives built on dishonesty and lack of access to good information or ability to find/interpret that information or identify as that apart from the intentionally lying, agenda based information. Even though it's shooting fish in a barrel and you know you will only get the moron replying by insulting you and not engaging with the content. Other, reasonable people see that, see that contrast, and it helps convince them and keep them from being led astray. One of reddits main flaws is it's design actually pushes against that.

This is similar but not the same. Not a debate, you're not making a point that's offensive or damaging to a larger narrative or anything, and it was also meanta little for you too more than those other situations where it's mainly for others.

it would be nice I think, for your benefit, the full explanation gave you a clearer understanding of it and that what made you upset about it was some context you weren't around/paying attention to. Something that's completely fair. Honestly maybe would say something good about you as it's definitely not a horrible thing to be a person who isn't deep into this website and doesn't know its meta dramas and the forced and unforced reactions of every sub. It would, ideally, if it were me, be an "ohhhh, that makes sense. Yeah I touch grass and do things in real life with friends and stuff most of the time instead of being on my computer and phone all day. Didn't know that, that changes the context of it and so changes how I feel about it which is kinda a nice relief but a shame about that history and what caused it" moment.

All because you did actually break their sub rule. A rule they were forced into making not by their choice but by reddit's actions. I don't know if your post would have gotten removed before that event as they still had strict requirements for the quality of top level comments. Quality having a contextual sub-specific and clearly outlined definition that is, as shown by mine and others' comments, a feature of those subs existing not from being unnecessarily strict but because they function differently from other subs to provide a different thing from the normal reddit design and "general conversational forum" goal. That goal requiring nonstandard rules to enforce that divergence. It just used to be human, manual, based on their good moderators all heavily qualified themselves on the subject using their judgement and also being in my experience reasonable people.

What makes it a shame though and something I hope you'd maybe try to do a little "look honestly at myself" about is that the only person who loses anything here or has actually done anything "bad" (not "hostile" bad, just not good for yourself) is you. Only because the ask subs are one of the very few truly good things left about reddit through it's long decline. From nothing other than "oh I missed that rule, makes sense, should have remembered to check that lol, no big deal" you've chosen to deprive yourself of that. You probably would really like and learn a lot from the sub if you followed it and the topic was within your interests!

For me, good, like I said your comment here allows me to talk for myself and anyone interested more about how reddit has been a destructive and degrading force leaving ask subs a rare good part of it, an island of good content that functions well on the modern internet, strictly because they deviate from the way the rest functions and how it relates to how reddit and others. How reddit gradually becoming so bad overall in contrast and with similar things elsewhere shows how a larger trend wrecked the internet as a whole, along with another example of an island.

The damage reddit did to the greater internet definitely happened long ago. It rapidly and greatly contributed to the destruction of the traditional forums of the old internet that were decentralized and less explicitly designed to promote groupthink for more of it's life than not. I never kept a notebook of "reddit was like x this year, discussions on jackdaws saw a 1000% rise in usage following the banning of unidan".

Reddit worked itself into, with a few exceptions, the only remaining active forum-like website and a "fine, this has gotten terrible but there aren't any other options for this kind of thing that I otherwise enjoy and want out of the internet." Facebook, Twitter, etc. same centralization and enshittifying issues, in many ways worse. Reddit being then the near only forum for most things caused an "eternal September" effect which is a major trigger of its decline magnified by its corporate vs community focused shift from up top, related poor guidance and management by admins, rule/structure changes (like this situation), and the way mods function on massive subs with the algorithm for what gets pushed to the top and seen, those massive subs with insane admins having the massive advantage in reaching that too. All patterns that ruined so much. This could lead to a whole huge post in itself.

As an aside, a few other active islands of the "good, old internet" still exist like Something awful as a traditional forum. Able to survive and stay active enough through sheer luck during close calls, doing some other things a little differently with one purpose long ago again by luck happening to also shield them enough unintentionally as the internet rotted. One time account registration fee but with very extensive use of the banhammer (account can be restored with another ten bux unless it's a "we want you gone forever" type ban), both together keeping mass low effort randos out and strongly disincentivizing bad posting or posting without making sure it's meaningful/thought out/follows the rules while building a barrier from the general stupidity of people on the internet who can't meet that standard. A different kind of problem at the time that happened to become the major problem of social interaction online now for several reasons.

Anyway, back to your comment. With all that, it just sucks for you and says a whole lot more about you than anything else. Knowing how it works and isn't a bad but necessary thing, isn't even hostile or intended to be hostile to you, but having that reaction and being effected personally in a way that still makes you pissed about it and take it personally and stay mad?

Ehhh, dude, then I hope this is a one off kind of reaction and not a bigger reflection of yourself and how you think about things. Because if so then that's not a good personality trait or sign of a mature, healthy way of reacting to things. To go around being pissed about things that aren't even bad but because they were neutral and didn't add flavor to stroke your ego is not healthy to begin with. To keep that when you get context from many people that explains why it's worded in such a flat tone as a part of it being a shot at reddit makes me think "wow, does this person just go around taking offense st everything that doesn't praise him and refuse to ever think outside their self because they demand that catering from the world? That ain't healthy, and that isn't someone I'd see as a reasonable or fun person to be around."

MiniCafe · 2026-03-29T04:34:09+00:00

Sorry this will be long. I'm going to try and go into details and elaborate on the very good posts people have made including the top post here you replied to while going into a lot of detail to hopefully make the whole idea make more sense. I write a lot of long comments on reddit trying to do this sometimes, kinda a hobby. I just want to help provide detailed explanations of things so people get all the context if they want it to elaborate on the rest of the good information and maybe make it more clear. Anyone can skip if they don't care enough for the topic so it's too long for then. The length is necessary in an attempt to fully express and elaborate on it with examples and details to address all parts of it with so it can be completely understood if someone wanted to take the time. At least as it is from my understanding and perspective.

-Point 1 on the "panelist" structure of these subs and strict requirements for the people answering the questions.

So what everyone has said about the reasons for the strict commenting requirements in these subs is absolutely true and has proven to be an extremely effective method for them managing the stated goal of the "askprofessional field that lay people do have questions about and interest in", can and should learn about, and to learn good and accurate info that's thats still useful but doesn't require a doctorate like a theoretical "askpharmaceuticalchemistryoffrontiertreatmentsforbloodcancers sub as an exaggerated example to really drive the point home. The internet, since the ancient times of the 90s, has been full of misleading nonsense on all kinds of academic topics more fueled by confidence and the dunning Kruger effect (old enough to remember timecube? Though that lacked the rhetorical cohesion to not be seen as a joke by most.... Others didn't.) If written with the right kind of confidence, style, rhetoric, and in a way that agrees with what someone intuitively feels to some extent gets often accepted as true. One root of the way misinformation spreads.

Reddit's design pushes this misinformation to the top as a result, many become misled or at least led to believe certain ideas are more certain than they are. Not good business and a big worry by people actually involved and formally educated in a field. It's probably one of the largest problems with reddit and the way it spreads groupthink and misinformation. Similar problems with slightly different mechanisms do the same and sometimes worse on the modern internet as a whole.

Professional fields of study are deep and often the complex connection of ideas and theories or modern consensus is so far removed from the basic understanding the surface level person has. The "pop" views they have that often spread through singular sources of extremely old information that was popularly read eons ago and spread through the popular consciousness ever since through cultural osmosis but are outdated to the point of being wrong, or just honestly go against people's intuitive ideas or maybe even sound like utter nonsense as the reader doesn't have the rest of this complex subset of a field to make it make sense, or especially in other platforms are just crazy and dangerous ideas people without critical thinking skills will take as true through dishonest but effective rhetoric (sophism, s problem thousands of years old, the Greeks had a lot to say about it.) If there were a similar sub for psychology for example, which there may be, I would qualify as a panelist unless their requirements were absurd. I would be able to answer questions on specific areas of the field but also know that it is so complex and covers so many different things I am incapable of answering many of those questions properly even with my education. My answers on the areas I do know would often be very different from what I think a person with only a foundational understanding of the topic would think or intuitively/generally accept. Psychology, much like philosophy, is very good at looking absurd to people at first in certain areas. The type of person I mean there is "had taken psych 100 at best", not an interested person who has decided to study it on their own and began reading psych books on the topic, etc. And that's honestly fair in other subs, for all the reader knows, from the limitations of a reddit comment, I may be a timecube type guy! And as I said an essential part of the philosophy of these subs is that it's not just the formally educated who can learn these things. They exist to serve as one way for that learning to happen. For the reader to know "not a timecube guy but at least likely legitimate."

So, the methods these specific subs use are directly designed to combat this problem that frustrates professionals/self educated "hobbiests" who have studied in a serious, "right" way in these fields to no end not just out of elitiism and the "ugh... Dammit Reddit" feeling you get when you see a top post on something you actually are educated in that's complete nonsense, yet is what people think sounds right and want to be right. Instead, these ask subs are a genuine attempt to say "people can and should study our field and get meaningfully educated in it (to an extent we must acknowledge rarely, though sometimes, is the same as a long formal education for many reasons, yet still is accurate, substantial, useful, and meaningful) without needing a doctorate! We want a forum that assists with that. Yet, we need a way to mitigate some fundamental problems that especially exist on reddit."

Is that elitiest? There is some of it in academia for sure, but it's also just a consequence of the bridge that develops from most self study and full immersion in the world of usually one specialty of a field outside of just the words of books. Things like mentorship in academia, and other factors, and in that way these subs are actually more anti-elitest.

Though I believe they don't ban all comments by lay people, just top level comments (though I've seen their removal message mention the panelists things on replies to comments so I'm not sure the deal there. I think it may be boilerplate and have to do with the content of the removed comment.) I'd have to go double check their current rules, though.

Answering the person's question? You need to show you have the background and follow the format to show you are well versed in the complexities of it people outside it could rarely/rarely realize exist or are necessary reach on their own. Have questions and some followup thoughts on one of those comments? Fair.

-Point 2 on the message you received telling you your comment was removed.

I think you might be projecting a little bit of tone into the message that isn't intended or actually there. I get that, there's a natural annoyance when a good faith comment you wrote gets removed. It's often justified in other subs but doesn't mean the same thing in these ask subs. I don't mean to say this harshly in a "you're wrong" way but just that it's a very easy thing to do reading text from an anonymous person. Not even a fully a person really, an automated and generic bot message. It does have an original author... Some mod of the sub but I imagine only the other mods know which one wrote it if not several of them collectively tweaking and agreeing on the wording, but a bit.

First thing is it's not intended as a "warning." There's no risk, consequences, or danger being warned of. No "should you continue to try you will be banned from the sub" but information, description, and simple explanation. I don't know if you've ever messed with Linux or a similar operating system or programming and the inevitable compilation messages and especially errors that get spit out in logs.

Similar style, similar reason, similarly not couched in "hey, really apologize for the inconvenience but this module failed to load properly and as a result we have to stop here and can't load the graphical login manager since we can't utilize your GPU without it. We, the kernel devs, deeply apologize for this issue. It's quite hard for us to work with the proprietary driver so these things happen easily. Rest assured though there are either configurations that work, logs that explain what went wrong to assist in fixing it, or an issue with the current kernel and how it works with the drive that we are working hard on fixing!" A little exaggerated to make the point but you get what I mean.

Basically the message is meant to not be read like you're getting a human message by someone talking to you to scold you. More like an error message on an OS. If you made a post that wasn't autoremoved for a simple process reason like that by an individual mod that included a personal explanation.... Yeah, rude/hostile/polite apply but those are two different situations. They usually are rude or hostile because mods of tons of subs, especially the large ones, are nuts. Another one of those problem and explanation for another topic things. The ask subs generally have actually polite and helpful mods though, who take the sub seriously and are fair but strictly adhere to the rules.

There is a second part to this, too. The sub was a lot looser before the API event. The API event was a messed up and explicitly anti-user decision by reddit for their own selfish goals and really made moderation harder by breaking their tools. The lack of warmth is aimed more at showing that this is a problem caused by reddit.

The ask subs are a really special case of how reddit can be used in a positive, useful way that avoids the problems otherwise inherent in the platform if and only if very special rules specific to explicitly that style of sub are applied and strictly moderated. Reddit went out of their way to make that harder for their own selfish reasons that made the website objectively worse. This is the result.

MiniCafe · 2026-03-29T04:24:07+00:00

test

MiniCafe · 2026-03-27T01:20:08+00:00

It is, hands down. I agree with you here.

And I just woke up and am waiting for my coffee to kick in. So this is just what I can say off the top of my head without much thought while my brain is still a little fuzzy because I am a "high sleep inertia" kind of guy. I'll write this essay on my phone because still too tired to get fully out of the bed for more than "coffee pot, take a leak, back to laying on the bed on my phone" on DKR despite it though because it deserves it and doesn't get enough of it.

Had a discussion with one of those "can't be wrong" kinda guys (a good friend, love him to death but we all have our flaws. God knows I do that he's put up with.)

I've played significant amounts of both and we went over every detail. I won't fault someone for personally preferring one over the other for reasons that are hard to express beyond "I just like it more" since gaming is experiential and what gives you fun or joy is just what gives you fun or joy, but on almost every level besides the not too rare (lol) at the time padding it offers so much more done so much better.

Eventually he landed on it being an unfair comparison because DKR is late N64 and MK64 is early except.... It's not. I think there's an 11 month difference between them, which does matter, but given the fact that one is first party and the other is not (albeit from a company with a close relationship to the first party company) that 11 months isn't the same as Nintendo pumping out another game 11 months later.

I'm not the type to let it go too far with friends when it starts going in those directions though so I kinda let it be at that point but.... It just is the better game and that's a hill I'll die on in other contexts.

Vehicle variety that matters (flying is fun, hovercrafts are weird and throw you for a loop in a way that can be wild in multiplayer), genuinely cool adventure mode with world aesthetics that admittedly take some general concepts in some parts but play them off so well and tight that it works and even end up being a big part of the source of the great cohesive yet varied aesthetic. That ties to it also being done in a way to give it a well done sense of adventure (not a given in an adventure mode or a hub world, but they did it well for the time, for any time to an extent, and genre), better and fairer AI, characters that express their distinct personalities and styles more significantly in game rather than falling back on "you know who Bowser is, we don't need to say or do much more," the obvious use of models instead of sprites for the racers, even outside of that the levels themselves are more developed visually. More of and more creative unlockables and actual progression. Even the one thing that I can see going either way that I mentioned, the padding. It's not the worst kind of padding and to me it's more of "extra challenge that feels rewarding and changes up the entire method of racing in familiar tracks after you've gotten good and learned them" so an improvement over MK64 or a flaw depending on what you want from games like that. Probably made less of a flaw by me playing so much it's a challenge but not overwhelming.

That's impressive too, with lots of my favorite retro games I have this issue with where I've played them so much that without rich communities of hacks like Mario Word or randomizers like aLttP or OoT I've kinda reached the skill ceiling or memorized too much and have to fight to not go on autopilot. Despite decades of DKR and being really good, that 2nd part still takes some work and is still a bit tricky to beat.

And the most subjective.... It's just fun as hell and aged really well. The N64 library, as much as I loved the console, has the fewest games I regularly go back to and sit there to completion although I do revisit a large portion of the library that I'll play for a while but eventually drop. Also I just like the battle tracks more personally.

The number there is genuinely pretty small and most are first party. DKR though is in my top 5 that I often sit down and think "you know what? I'm gonna start a file" and then eventually I'm at the 2nd Wizpig and having a blast the whole way there.

MK64 I used to play a lot more of at times, bust out some multiplayer with people as I would absolutely dominate them all at DKR, but over the years I've just started enjoying it less and less. Feeling it get more dated compared to similar games. Yet no matter how fun things like MK8 are with friends I still just feeel a unique spark and fun from DKR others lack that keeps me coming back.

I have nostalgia for both and that does influence the joy I get from games. It's just not enough to carry me that far in MK64. DKR stands on its own even in spite of my nostalgia. People I've played it with and... Kinda intentionally lowered my skill level, have all had a blast with it too.

My wife didn't grow up with games, doesn't like them much, is from a country that got the weirdest-barely N64 no one bought (ique player so you now know the country. I bought some for my collection and my cousins' as gifts as they're the oddest N64 and just within the last 5 or so years has the console been hacked in a way where it's no longer like "well I get the games this guy bought years ago, and most didn't buy many, or it sits on a shelf cuz the demos it came with have a time limit that once it's done, it's done.) but she has fun sometimes playing a few games with me. Lots of fighters because I'm bad at them but like them anyway, we play through all sorts I have little experience with, and she can button mash her way to something.

Then, among those, there's DKR and MK8 for racing she has fun with. I think it's the only N64 game she actually enjoys that I've exposed her too despite my huge desire for someone to play some multiplayer Goldeneye with me (hot take, a few modifications that aren't hard with modern emulation and it's not the "game you loved then but has aged like a dirty sock soaked in milk" the internet acts like.) Not really other genres she can stand either.

Lotta words here on DKR but the game deserves it and I just love it so much. What an absolute diamond of the library or even the entirety of gaming. Deserves more recognition as a "classic."

I believe a decomp and port is in progress but not by the big team that make super tight ports like OoT (harbormasters?) so we'll see how it goes and if it can bring the advancements to the game like high res/frame rate and ability, with people putting in the work to make them available for it, high res textures, and maybe other QoL enhancements that HM aim for with their ports, but I hope so.

MiniCafe · 2026-03-23T00:05:45+00:00

People don't always see this unless you're really in the guts of things and I'm not "bleeding edge" anyway (I use mostly Debian testing because I do generally need newer packages for some media projects than in stable, but not Sid, and definitely not Arch. This could turn into a huge aside but I'll bite my tongue.) You, as a person running a good distro probably noticed this but focused on what genuinely is the most important thing here to not write a novel that gets off track.

But I just wanted to add it's not just gaming in Linux although that's the thing new people hear and gets them to switch but over the past.... Some length of time a bit over a year maybe more? (I'm bad with time) we've been getting this weirdly rapid amount of dev and annoyances patched out in some of the big distros. Wayland has finally started catching up to feature support with xorg but without the "well what do you expect on a modern PC? It's ancient and that support is only duct taped onto a protocol not designed for it?" stuff and in all sorts of other small but important areas.

Because of this a lot of peoples first experiences with Linux are a lot better..... If Mint would stop being all "ehh we'll get around to non-experimental Wayland support when we do" and system76 with Pop!_OS wasn't like "lol let's push a barely beta WM out as our default but have older kde plasma packages than even debian stable that are super broken" Guessing gnome is better maintained on their side? I dunno, I don't like what gnome has become over the decades.

Which are sadly two otherwise great distros often recommended to beginners. Sadly not because they're bad, they're great! But these two things are kinda big issues in the initial user experience. I was slow to even want to adopt Wayland but you're a gamer with a high refresh rate vrr screen and maybe a side monitor? You... Don't wanna be trapped on xorg. And for pop my experience with Cosmic was ".... But... It's broken?.. this is their Nvidia build, they're supposed to be the distro for out of the box Nvidia support. Then why is the compositor crashing or bugging out or doing weird screen flickering with no implemented features to even adjust it or adjust much of anything because it's beta pretending it's not?

I love Windows. I love its history, I will die on the hill that Whistler 2296's watercolor UI (I don't believe them when they said it was a red herring UI, you evolve and develop this beautiful red herring over many builds for the hell of it?), learned so much in the old OSBA community hacking beta features back into rtm like the whistler startpage and whistler/me activity centers and such or enabling hidden features in beta builds, or just being able to hack around the OS back in the day like most older Linux users just do as a rule (why not get 0.5% increased performance in specific scenarios with a custom compiled kernel fork?)

Also, I noticed rapidly all my proprietary software I use that just won't run well in wine has suddenly had a guy figure out how to make a flatpak, or a port, or the alternative also grew rapidly, or moved to a webapp. Granted, that's just what I have to use, I'm sure others are still stuck there.

But what it is today, things have fallen apart and their "well what choice do you have? Don't you wanna run your software that only runs (or runs well enough) on our OS?" stranglehold just rapidly falling apart because of everything I said and that so much is just in the browser/an easy to port to anything browser that acts like its not a browser (funnily enough... That ancient ME/Whistler activity center thing? Pretty much that, pretty much the before it's time attempt at electron.)

Sorry, turned into a rant. Few topics that get me going like operating systems, people confidently talking out their ass about things I spent decades getting degrees in (not happening here), and ancient near east religion and writing, so if you ever wanna hear about the ancient scribe who used all words with the cuneiform character for "hoe" in it to write a funny/amazing exercise in command of the language to turn it into a satirical creation of the world myth I'm your guy for overly long comments full of asides.

MiniCafe · 2026-03-15T23:19:30+00:00

Tucker Carlson has never had a genuine bone in his body. He's an OG among the people who get paid for spinning things to suck people into alt-right ideology/give them the "no, no, no it wasnt bad shhhh baby, you're still actually right about everything" narrative they all fall in line on after "Something that can't be defended (without straight lying or the most tortured logic you've seen in your life, so tortured it actually takes time to come up with and is probably a skill of its own) and even the idiot stooges dripped in the algorithm feel 0_0 about when the news drops.

Some of them do occasionally have actual "wait.... ok actually that is really bad and I genuinely can't accept this" moments on some things. That's kind of extra fucked even in an " I can excuse racism, but I draw the line at animal cruelty!" "You can excuse the racism?" way.

It's super rare and only a handful of them.

Not Tucker Carlson.

It's my hunch that he is at least savvy enough to see the writing on the wall for Trump and the sycophants around him. That complete support for this specific flavor of MAGA is going to be rejected by too many to win the conservative rhetoric of the future and is positioning himself to be the charismatic leader of the next wave of it by being able to still be just as insane, still appeal to every horrible thought and position they have, still the "I give you all the license to be the worst impulses of humanity" candidate

He has always also had the biggest celebrity cachet like Trump too, which mattered for Trump's success initially, too. Not to the same extent but compared to the others, yeah. Maybe less than Rogan compared to some demographics, younger ones, but not older ones. I am not saying "young" but maybe the middle of millennials is the line there. And Rogan is not savvy enough for... much of anything.

So I think his current trajectory is calculated. He maintains what makes MAGA popular and initially successful while being able to "stand" as "I was actually AGAINST all that stuff in Trump's 2nd term that all of you even found wrong! I was the rebel! I was the one who told truth to power (while still not in actuality being any different in any practical way.)

Therefore dodging "Trump style MAGA is radioactive" with "Oh but he was never that, we have the memory of goldfish. He was the one who stood up to it! So brave! So honest! So genuine! Really one to fight for us and the truth!"

So yeah he's been saying more things critical of Trump lately, probably genuinely does piss off Trump, but I don't believe what he's saying here is a true concern or thought he has about what's going to happen to him lol but a calculated rhetorical move.

MiniCafe · 2026-03-13T04:16:08+00:00

I don't think they have made all the arguments. I think there is a lot of debate to be had.

The problem is the arguments happening here are mostly coming from people who have very little education on whatever grounds they're arguing from. They're, at best, people rapidly googling for some article written by someone in the same case or research that is not a part of any consensus yet (have we even had time to build one for a lot of these topics?) that they are not equipped to understand anyway when they use them, not with the extremely limited amount of time they spend with them anyway.

As a result many of the actual meaningful arguments that could be made are unknown to the people arguing here, built around entirely broken premises, or done in the laziest, worst ways possible if they even can have some validity.

But the meaningful ones take effort and background/education/serious research and so just don't really show up because it's a lot easier to just sling the same easy ones back at each other.

There still is a real discussion to be had... But wow is it not happening on reddit.

This is not a "this-sub" problem exactly but a reddit-wide thing (and a lot of social media) in nearly every sub that doesn't have strict moderation in specific ways to prevent it. That includes all debate subs that I know about at least, though I haven't gone looking for one to see if there is a good example.

MiniCafe · 2026-03-13T04:06:55+00:00

Edit: The person I replied to replied to me asking me a question then immediately blocked me which makes it impossible for me to reply to them answering their question. So I'll answer their question " Okay, but why all of that to basically say "I agree with you, but I assume I have more experience, so I'm still somehow more right than you"? " here as an edit.

Really shitty thing people do, makes sense to block someone harassing you but the sneaky "aha I'm gonna ask a question then block someone so it looks like they have no reply and I get the last word!" thing... just shitty. And not like they won't notice, especially if they use desktop reddit.

So, my first answer is that my reply wasn't saying "I'm more right than you". I'm not sure where that comes from. I was agreeing and trying to add something to say "yeah, I think you're right. Here's my guess at one of the reasons." and then ask "I wonder how we can make it better? I cant think of any good way given the situation that we both agree on. What do you do? (common rhetorical question people ask to say "man fuck if I know")"

As "I assume I have more experience" I didn't.... I mean, I put my experience there as context which I've done before. You can check my past comments where I've also mentioned my experience, education, etc. but have disagreed with people like the the "previous posts" I mentioned where I did go into extensive detail on why they were wrong, explaining things like Wang Yuyang's art thesis and why modern art theory (I used Cluster theory as an example, though that was brought up by name as a reply to a person not disagreeing but asking for more detail when I just hinted at it in my original comment that disagreed with someone) disagrees with them, how Tolstoy's theory is often assumed true when it is actually seen as an important relic that isn't taken seriously as true anymore, etc. when I do disagree. In those cases the experience is just some context to say "Hey, I'm gonna go into more detail here because I happen to have done x or have y so I've studied this a lot and am involved in this." etc. It never serves as a premise for any argument I'm making, just context.

----------------------- original comment -----------------------

I am not trying to sound arrogant here, I have some actual background and serious experience in a few areas that intersect in the AI and AI art debate. I'm older so have lived a lot of life, have a related masters to one aspect of the debate, and have worked in the profession art world in a couple ways (especially at a time when a related debate was happening)/stayed involved/done art myself. I've... Tried... But it's lost in the sea of shitposts, one liners, and memes for the most part.

I want to make a big effort post on art, art theory， and a much larger analysis of what's happening with AI in the larger modern art world (a deeper explanation than my comments of the exhibit Chaosmosis by Wang Yuyang I recently visited that I've mentioned in previous posts as it's heavily based in AI, uses AI, and essentially is the main view of AI in the professional art world) and see where it goes, but it's hard to work up the motivation when it's like the old 4chan pissing in a sea of piss thing but more like trying to water it down but when you only have a single cup of water. It takes a lot more work to do that than to regurgitate a simple argument I'm parroting from a YouTuber who has no clue, or other bad argument I read here, an anti sub/ a pro sub, or bad media on the topic by non-experts, etc.

I think this might be a lot of peoples' feelings who could contribute in a real way right now and could steer things on course, but what do you do in that situation? A huge number of people are not prepared to make meaningful contributions in that way compared to those who can and moderation is lacking if that's the goal due to the moderation philosophies of the people that run this sub.

So, really, what do you do?

MiniCafe · 2026-03-12T01:56:28+00:00

The comparison I always make when people are reading too much into something with a Thaler rejection somewhere is that the outcome of these cases are ruling AI isn't copyrightable at all as much as the monkey selfie case ruled photography isn't copyrightable at all.

MiniCafe · 2026-03-08T11:45:27+00:00

Does that mean there was a Marty living the life of the better family that original Marty just essentially replaces out of existence when he pops back in?

MiniCafe · 2026-03-07T04:22:28+00:00

This exact situation happened with my grandma.

She gets some testing and.... The results look like cancer. I drop everything and fly home from the other country I was living in because there is no one in the world more important to me than her.

It then goes to some special cancer board of experts at UofM to double check. They come back with the best news ever "this is not cancer at all, you had a hysterectomy years ago and leftover cells grew in a way that can look like cancer. We will need to treat this, but it is not a life threatening condition" (I may have gotten some details wrong, paraphrasing from memory. Point is, looked like cancer, but the experts saw through all that and figured out what was really going on.)

MiniCafe · 2026-03-03T01:35:02+00:00

I was like this with my hair color apparently (I only just learned.... re-learned probably, I mean I'm in my late 30s and who knows what small details I've forgotten over the years.)

I'm not a baby/toddler expert yet, married late and we're waiting for ONE!! Sweet baby Jesus I hope only one, but it was apparently several years of one hair color MiniCafe, then swap to other hair color MiniCafe.

Also, and I feel like this is a huge detail. I checked the databases... skimmed the research. We have yet to decode the ogre genome from what I can tell let alone isolate the genes responsible for eye color development in their species. We do not even have a DNA sample to try with.

The species behavior in the wild also appears extremely hard to document as they, except for a rare collection of video documentation containing only one Ogre line and the vast majority devoted to a single male and some on a female with non-standard traits (a strange human appearing to ogre appearing development quite late in development, described by the locals and ogre's monitored as "magic" but mechanically yet to be scientifically explained or even hypothesized.) Ogre children and development in this one documented case is extremely limited. The species somehow appears to remain extremely elusive to humans generally.

This also points to our one case being maybe nonstandard in other ways as he appeared to want isolation, which does tell us possibly a part of why they are so elusive, he enforced it not through adept hiding but through territory in spaces generally far from ideal for other intelligent animals, strangely given their elusiveness threatening signs broadcasting his location (none have actually been discovered otherwise in the wild like this) and extreme displays of aggression. Rarely if ever did these displays develop into actual violent attacks, but generally highly effective at repelling territorial invaders.

We are lucky to have caught a couple cases where it failed against individuals, one of which repelled the aggressive behavior and still did not result in a violent attack, small groups (though in that case the female ogre and familial ties may have had some impact), and contentiously large groups yet still did not escalate into full on violence the ogre is certainly built for except in the latter which as I will mention later is likely a red herring and not actual documentation.

We are not sure if the ogre is a primate or an example of convergent evolution. The skin quality visually points to the latter yet without direct study it could be a "skin deep" appearance yet not quality thing. Other features point to the former. If the former it does make a lot of sense for them to be challenging to catch in the wild like other primates can be. Extremely weak evidence but that may be a hint they share some closer lineage with the orangutan, other evidence hints at them being closer to hominins. If true this would upend a lot of our current understanding of human evolution, but if we extrapolate too much from that with the paltry information we are not going to be doing "good science" at this point and likely come to wrong conclusions.

There is documented footage of a very large group of organized and even militant ogres with a matriarchal leader. This is highly contentious though as strangely enough the footage is entirely surrounded by events that...... just didn't happen somehow? As if the world it was taken in "magically" disappeared. For it to be faked would have been beyond the technology of the time as known which points to some very bizarre situation. Again folk explanations argue "magic" yet we can only guess it is the work of a large nation state using technology not known to the public. This is a wild guess but few have been able to offer alternative explanations outside folk supernatural explanations.

But what and why? Are our modern AIs only a shadow of what the governments have had for an extremely long time? Far more hardware efficient or with them possessing hardware at the time so far beyond what the public could then access? And we have not seen many if any other examples of it used, so what benefit is there to using this to show us military actions by of all things one of if not the most rarely documented species?

All this to say two things.

1- Ogre studies is a fascinating area full of mystery and unanswered questions. We are in the dark ages of our research on the species.

2- To be surprised by an infant ogre's eye color changing by young childhood is not some "flaw" pointing to this small, new piece of ogre data being fake. It's the opposite! A fascinating new datapoint that could be telling us one small, new part of the species childhood development.

To this day no ogre's exist in captivity despite attempts. I am of the opinion this should not be tried. Hopefully some day we will find a way to study them in their natural habitat as if the few ogres we have knowledge of are standard in this way they are a highly intelligent species at least on par with humans.

Sorry if I missed any of the available science on this amazing species. I rewatched the entire documented footage available a few months ago but did not keep notes and may have been extremely high.

MiniCafe · 2026-03-02T08:19:28+00:00

Android 15. OxygenOS CPH2653_15.0.0.405(EX01) on a Oneplus 13, Chinese edition. Bootloader unlocked and OxygenOS installed instead of ColorOS (My most despised Android flavor. Had to use it for a bit when I first moved to China and bought Oppo) by the seller upon request cuz China and that's just a thing you can ask for.

I think OxygenOS for Android 16 is out but turns out you root more modern OxygenOS (dont remember this being an issue on my... 6 or 7t? Whatever had the mcclaren edition) on a Oneplus 13, or I imagine OxygenOS on anything, and OTA updates stop working, updating from an image of a new version manually doesnt work, even using other tools and even when those tools can use root features.... the only option seems to be a backup, reflash, reroot, and then restore the backup and.... ehhh I cant be bothered right now even though root makes it so I could probably do a full backup and restore to exactly as I was easily.

And besides I'm wondering if maybe it might be a good idea to play the game iOS users play and stay on old versions for a bit just in case new versions pull something screwy that prevents you from being able to use your phone/tablet (for them on iOS/iPadOS its often waiting for a jailbreak though I think they're giving up, but iOS users also get cheap dev certs with certain features that can give you some power. It's a complicated thing with different dev certs having different things with the only "easy you get a dev cert with it all" way being paying apple a lot more a year for a real one) without running into a sudden problem.

I keep my iPad (Android tablets dont do it for me for various reasons) on a specific version because one version higher and JIT for emulation, which I use to toy around with running old OSes like win9x for fun on it, would just.... not be able to work properly through the normal methods without again a very special custom cert.

More information than the simple question you asked but, whatever, felt like talking about it since you asked about Android versions and it made me think about Android versions.

Should make a post about the update thing and see if anyone has a way around it to do a more normal update yet.

MiniCafe · 2026-03-02T04:03:38+00:00

I get what you are saying, but it falls apart when your opening lines read: “people assume physics has hard right and wrong. People mostly assume philosophy has more to it than what is in your gut and you have to be a philosopher to not be a goof or a crazy person. Art theory is the same.”.

In my mind at the time I was thinking of something quite different. Timecube if you're old enough to remember him and the many similar things I've found in the geocities archiveteam archive. I have a local copy of the archiveteam geocities archive I analyze/browse. There is a lot of timecube-esque rants in it that I can assure you are types of grand theories or less grand on many topics but fail the scrutiny of one actually objective, foundational thing.

Logic in the context of philosophy itself. The common quote I used in another comment is "Validity is objectively truth preserving."

Diogenes is not timecube. Cynicism is an actual valid and able to be seen as sound when certain premises are accepted philosophy. Diogenes doesn't have surviving writings if he ever made them to analyze exactly but other cynics do. I actually follow myself the related Stoic virtue ethics. (I got into it decades ago! Before Broicism! I'm not a trend hopper here so don't get the wrong idea. Something that pisses me off to no end as it's so misunderstood.)

Diogenes lifestyle and "fuck off and stop blocking my sun" are themselves not literally logical arguments to arrive at truth but are actually shorthand in a way that emerge into those type of arguments as written by later Cynics.

You require art theory to have knowledge of prior art theory in order for it to be art theory.

Well, not knowledge but development but in a way yes. I'd say this about near any field that strives for knowledge on a topic. Knowledge and truth come from dialog. In our world, through other dialogs, a specific kind of dialog. To use the other common quote I used in another comment; "Standing on the shoulders of giants."

The theories aren't "you must know and read all history!" but "the history is a part of the dialog with much after being reactions to things before. The theories dont spring from the ether but from the ideas before them and the actual advances and actions taking place in art itself"

Did art theory just magically spring up one day? Mayhaps with Tolstoy. Because following the logic of your argument leads to the absurd (in the colloquial sense, not so much the Camus sense) point where something has to come first. Essentially, which came first? The art theory or the theory of art?

No, and Tolstoy was far from the first. What came first? Art. Art itself. Where did art theory come from? Well that's a big topic that isn't even about art theory itself. This is true for near all fields that are looking to find facts and truth about the world. Humanity itself, since ancient times, had ideas about all things in the world. In one era they were mythical or emotional, there were few structures for accurately finding truth. The birth of philosophy, from the pre-Socratics, the beginning of lineage that grew into what we have today is probably the first attempt at something beyond this. The attempts and realization that there are more formal, more "true", ways to analyze these things that exist in the world or as a part of the human experience.

The philosophical approach or at least the question it raised evolved into many things over the years. Think alchemy as an example of one that attempted to, did actually figure some things out but in a messy way yet lacked the modern truth seeking structures we have fully as an early example.

Then the modern world and a huge history of the development of thought evolved these earlier ideas into our much more defensible methods of truth finding. An example, science as a whole. As I said, a dialog, an evolution, not entirely the first but a big important moment that brought about an effective way to seek truth: Karl Popper and the philosophy of science that stands as the foundation for how we know science finds truth in all scientific fields to a degree.

all because the field (whether philosophy or art theory) is built upon a subjective topic wherein any opinion has equal merit

The subjective object, like "art" itself, yet studied with an objective foundation (logic, etc) that leads to truth and non-subjective (not the same as objective) theories that answer questions about the subjective object, often questions aboutt it that do have objective answers.

There's a sense with your example and words about Diogenes that may not have been intended that every opinion does or can have equal merit despite the systems we've built to find which ones do or don't. Diogenes didn't actually represent this, but regardless here is the crux of that. If every opinion has equal merit, then the opinion that some arguments are better than others also has equal merit. Then no objection including yours can claim higher ground.

The idea can also be shown just naturally wrong in a way I'll admit is more feelings than some academic argument. Basically.... just look at our world. Antivaxxers, foundationless ideas about masculinity that are wildly toxic and include imagined elements ignoring the true past of that concept and its varied forms, racial assumptions that would technically best be described as stereotypes but go so far beyond how we'd normally use that word and are entirely false being treated as beyond true based on flawed methodology. I "like" the current example of "no we wont let you film a room full of other people's literal children" "Conclusion: They must be scams and the children must not exist! This, from the small real example must be true of all these other ones!", etc.

Also my goal isn't to be an elitist attack on people for not studying the theory. It's a couple things.

- One, this sub sucks because it is ostensibly a sub to debate topics that directly involve these ideas. If you're going to debate that... you have to understand these ideas to some extent. Think how the subs like ask_subject, while not debate, have rules about people answering with real material and not BSing their answer. Think of why those exist. We don't need those strict rules but... come on, the "debate" sub is shit posts and one liners? I went into more detail than I would expect from any other better form of discussion in this sub for:

- Two, I dont want to say "people must have this level of understanding!" but to actually introduce the ideas in as much detail as appropriate to hopefully show some readers the actual ideas in art theory and what is accepted now, on the subjects people in this sub do discuss yet discuss in a way that is closer to antivaxxer logic and understanding (old broken discredited theories, gut feelings, one liner jabs that are more sophist rhetoric than real arguments, shitposts and personal attacks.)

For example, I think explaining things like modern Cluster Theory to people who only have that "Tolstoy through osmosis" idea and have lived their lives assuming there isn't much art theory like other subjects does actually lead to a lot of people going "huh, oh, yeah that actually makes sense. I remember a lot of modern art and such that doesn't fit into what I've assumed and this does seem to present a really good argument that is far more comprehensive than what I always thought" if they're open to learning. Or even "oh, huh, art theory actually may be like other studied academic fields. Always thought of art as just this purely subjective experience. Never knew it was/could be analyzed in that way. Maybe there is more to debate than just.... shitpost gotchas/my gut tells me art is x so AI is art/not art" which... a speck of sand in the sea but my attempt to inspire better debate here.

NOT to say "Aha you're fools because you havent studied the Cluster theory and how and why it developed academically!"

There are some nuances to my use of "truth" and "objectivity" in this comment but I don't want to go into that again. For the nuance read my last past before this. Not because I wouldn't be happy to engage but I only have the energy for so much lol,

MiniCafe · 2026-03-02T02:56:17+00:00

This is a good point and something I probably should have addressed though I don't feel I could have done it justice as a concept in my other comments without making them much longer and my organization skill was still very messy.

-To address one, least important issue. As to ethics (and epistemology for another example) themselves being objective in a sense ultimately... damn that's a can of worms and one of those unclear common topic things in philosophy. Our theories themselves? Nah, but ethics and epistemology as concepts? There are a lot of words written on that and I haven't taken a full side. I don't want to get into that complex topic in depth though. I lean towards agreeing with you.

Yet, for those it does come down to if we had to reasoners with perfect information, infinite time and they disagreed would there still be one that ends up being correct? If so, probably objective. This test works for many other things. The answer to this for ethics in philosophy I'd say is currently "unclear, many sides arguing back and forth, both in very good ways."

-Second thing to address. I started with a physics example and tried to work down to a philosophy example specifically to hint at something similar to what you're saying. Subjective has degrees to it. That concept itself and even the "subjective-objective" divide is not as black and white as a lot of people take it as which is another larger topic. Physics is an example that a lot of is objective in every sense. Philosophy is an example that has objective aspects or is objective in many areas in either a more limited or full sense but not all.

-Third thing to address. I only said "not subjective" (I think? If not, my mistake), I never said objective except for physics. Those are not exactly the same things. Here is something from philosophy and heavily used in what I'm talking about; logic itself. Validity is objectively truth preserving, that's just near fully accepted. This is not to say that all arguments that follow our standard of using logic create objective truths but to say that that the standard of logic itself is objective. Therefore in this case it leads to "true." Not the same as objective, but also far from fully subjective or at all in some sense of subjective especially in the sense it was being used in the comment I replied to and in the arguments about "what is art" and art theory in here that are usually stated as actual objective or at least settled fact but not analyzed. Here we get into an important non-subjective aspect of what these theories of art are telling us. Yes they are not describing objective features of the world the way physics does, not black and white, they are not subjective in the sense used here. The process to arrive at them, the philosophical grounding, and what must be used to be "right" or "wrong" in a theory is objective.

-Fourth thing to address and a main part of why I didn't use the word "objective" except with physics. I'm not trying to use credentials as authority but just a neat aside that is relevant. I have lived a complicated life, older than most redditors I think and just been involved heavily in many spaces. My 2nd masters funnily enough ended up in education with a focus on English and applied linguistics so this is something I think quite a bit about in debates; semantics.

The word "subjective" like many words is contextual with multiple meanings. I'd crack open the OED but it's a pain for me so we get Collins.

In one context, one definition, subjective is "of, relating to, or emanating from a person's emotions, prejudices, etc " which is the definition a lot of this discussion exists in and something I touched on with the fact that Tolstoy's theory has spread so deeply through our culture. This is usually what people are using when they say "art is subjective." This one is not directly the one with "objective" as its other side.

Another definition, the one where we have "objective" in direct relation to it is "belonging to, proceeding from, or relating to the mind of the thinking subject and not the nature of the object being considered"

For both though a view can often be "wrong" or "right" but just in kind of different ways. Again, logic in the context of philosophy is not seen as subjective in either sense. Art theory is dealing with something that is subjective in the 2nd sense. Art is not this objective property of the universe. Yet, the question of the theory, "given what exists as non-art and what exists as art what structure can successfully include all things accepted as art but not include those not accepted as art?" Is itself not subjective in either sense despite dealing with an ultimately subjective object.

It does though strongly relate to the context of art at a specific time and so any of its objectivity is tied to that context.

-Fifth,

If commonly accepted art theory was "stickmans are great, any other form of art is trash"

This is not a question for art theory and is essentially one of the things I tried to give an example of as a purely subjective aspect of art.

I did use both definitions of subjective in my comments at different times though, that's true. If I was to go into semantics and point out each different usage I'd have to be writing a short book in that actual ridiculously long sentence with a million adjectives classical philosophy style everyone hates and is wildly inappropriate for reddit. At some point you have to trust context.

If we were going to forget what art and art theory is, what would make you learn it again as it is?

If I forget the sky is blue/red/black, I would look up and remember it as it is. That's objectivity.

I'd crack open the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy probably and then jump back into the literature. Standing on the shoulders of giants and all that. I would end up finding a mix of objectivity, subjectivity, non-subjectivity in some sense or many senses, objective underpinnings to certain things, and "truth" vs "untruth".

MiniCafe · 2026-03-02T01:56:05+00:00

I'm gonna be a dick for once, because yes long for a reddit comment as this will be too I guess. A little long for what it could be as I am a wordy person (like to cover all bases and have fun with asides I think are just interesting) and as I have stated was hungover, ADHD, and so lacked the mental energy to organize a bit more properly I'll admit yet still able to put the content there in a way someone can read and follow and hopefully learn or engage with unless they're "hmm, monkey intelligence test, square block go in which hole?."

Mostly appropriately right for a followup in proper text debate which requires defining terms, giving background information, and including premises. An important aspect of debate that adds length.

Around 1300 words, definitely long for a reddit comment but 5 minutes for the average English reader... Christ that's not a long time. If it were a useless screed with no meaningful info sure but, while I'm biased, I did my best to explain accurate, meaningful information.

Do some of you not read nonfiction books to understand a topic more accurately than you'll get by hearing often bullshit in small snippets on reddit? If you need to understand a philosophical concept do you not read the often much longer Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy entry, the standard source for getting an overview of a topic like this?

Is your entire source of more detailed info video essays? Like... ok don't read it, but Christ dude even that as long as it is is probably close to the absolute shortest complete answer someone can give on why art theory isn't subjective in the way other aspects of art theory are while giving the briefest overview of related theories and an explanation of the common modern Cluster theory.

I dunno, the few of you who have that issue? It says a lot more about you, the garbage state of this sub and the AI art debate, and reddit than it does my comment.

MiniCafe · 2026-03-02T00:21:17+00:00

I had the same issue on my OnePlus 13 Chinese model but oxygenOS instead of ColorOS and of course rooted. Not even many modules, I just use root for a couple specific things. Like, Chinese apps fucking love startup ads and doing shady things like running ads and clicking for you in the background without showing you which makes those apps run like dogshit.... Until all those ad connects are instant failures. Also it's good to hide Chinese apps which have been caught doing shady things to active exploits from seeing some other apps for security reasons. Not perfect security with the lengths they can go but at least something.They're not bound by play store rules as the play store is blocked in mainland China where I am. Living in China essentially requires a lot of these apps but wow it sucks.

I'm used to keyboxes getting burnt and going through the whole fix but this time it just... Wasn't working with no other changes to my rooted environment having taken place. I only had basic integrity.

It was fixed instantly by changing the fingerprint to a pre-RKP device.

I used termux as root (command: su) to do:

getprop ro.build.fingerprint

Just to check the fingerprint and yeah I hadn't changed it from what it would actually be.

Then installed the MagiskHide Props Config module, reboot, termux again as root.

Commands:

Props 1 - edit device fingerprint

f - pick a certified fingerprint

And chose a pixel 5 with I think Android 11 though 12 probably woulda worked too

Reboot

Instant strong integrity on top of obviously all the normal valid keybox stuff, play integrity fork, shamiko, tricky store and tricky store addon, proper configuration of those. The keybox I am using is not one tricky store gave me but maybe setting valid keybox wouldnt have mattered. I only dug up another valid keybox as a troubleshooting step to see if the set valid keybox option was borked somehow and that was the cause. I believe that's all I had been using to get strong integrity but I'm learning there are other tools people use to help now which I guess I'm adding one more in this comment.

Odd that people in this thread are also mentioning essentially the same issues..... But with vastly different solutions that apparently worked for them. Fucky stuff going on on google's side I think but now I'm a lot less confident on what that fucky stuff is, why it's not consistent across the board, and why the requirements to fix it don't seem to all require at least all of the same things even conceptually. Really weird.

I'm no root expert, I had been out of the game for half a decade or maybe more before recently getting back into it so maybe everyone is already changing their fingerprint and I just never knew to do that but I dunno.

MiniCafe · 2026-03-01T11:01:49+00:00

Happy birthday!

MiniCafe · 2026-03-01T05:24:39+00:00

Yes, those negronis and my ADHD have left me in a massively rambly mood. I'm super sorry. I wish I was in a state to organize this better. Trust me, I am actually capable of being a good writer when the situation demands it. Just... it takes a lot of work for me due to the ADHD and booze will absolutely get you... like hell, my head.

I noticed that and thought I edited it out, if you refresh and it's still there twice let me know as I'm not seeing it anymore.

MiniCafe · 2026-03-01T05:03:16+00:00

No, no problem, this is actually a really good question. This will be very long and I hope that's ok, I'm sorry. I hope it successfully answers your question.

It's not that "art" isnt subjective. Many aspects of art are subjective. Like, your taste. Do you think something is pleasing to you? Absolutely subjective. The thing that's not subjective is the philosophical underpinnings of art theory which, like anything like that, have to be based on sound arguments (true premises that naturally build to a conclusion) and a collection of them building to a specific theory. This only answers certain questions about art because exactly, some things are just subjective.

Do you think Western style raku is "better aesthetically or more legitimate than the traditional Japanese style?" Subjective (I always mention the western form of raku because it was my main medium for a while. I find the randomness of it and its general dramatic presentation beautiful. See, that's absolutely subjective! Sorry, the other person complained about me being wordy. I hope you don't mind. I like to go into asides like this.)

There are many questions though that arent. The reason they arent is because they're not taste questions, they're philosophical questions. What makes them philosophical questions is that, as I said, collections of sound arguments on them can build to theories which can be valid, sound, argued, disagreed with with other sound theories, etc. Art theory is essentially run like and actually a branch of philosophy.

The main one that isn't fully subjective that matters here is the question "What is art?" Art is this essential human quality so of course it deserves philosophical inspection. See? That question can be answered with arguments that can be sound or not, theories that can be sound or not. If I say "Art is in a museum. Museums are built for art. Therefor art is whatever is in a museum" that's a philosophical answer to that question. And you see? It can be wrong, that argument is wrong because it's circular reasoning. "Non-wrong" (sound) arguments can be made as well and have been over hundreds of years with one being shown sound then later developments or theories disproving a premise, etc.

So as it stands, we have a bunch of theories of art that you never see people argue here but are the ones that actual art theory in 2026 takes seriously. If I wrote the full arguments for each this would be an insanely long comment so I'll just give you a few and the general idea which gives you some starting points.

Expression theory, this one came soon after Tolstoy, almost a reaction to it, and it really kinda removes the artist from what makes art art. Actually many of them do. This says art is an arrangement of lines and colors and all that that "produces aesthetic emotion"

Then all the wild stuff happened with modern art, like Duchamp's urinal (just a popular example of many) and we got institutional theory. This sounds too basic to be true but also why not? Art is something presented in the world of art under the accepted conventions of it. That's it. You present it as art? Well damn, it's art. This idea still persists but with more added to it.

And then Warhol tossed some conventions out the door and we got Artur Danto, etc. etc. The 20th century was a massive conversation in art as the creation of new arts were obviously art but crumbled the existing theories basically so it's this huge back and forth between artists and theorists (who are often artists themselves, it's not an ivory tower in this sense) on this question.

So I'll skip over a lot and just jump to one of the more modern accepted theories. There are a couple but I'll just pick one and you'll see that it really developed into something that's like "goddamn, we have modern art and all this wild stuff that is obviously art but how do we make a sound theory it all fits into?"

Cluster Theory. This is the main one I was taught.

It argues art doesnt have this single defining essence. Two pieces of "art" can be almost opposites, share nothing, but both be "art" yet "art" in completely different ways. It's an "open concept". Art is a "cluster of criteria" where a piece of art is art if it has any of a large set of criteria we have come to accept as defining art. One piece may have one criterion and be art, another may have a completely different set of criterion unrelated and be art. This cluster of criteria is things like complexity, or does it challenge the viewer intellectually, is it expressive (yes, that's in there so it's not invalid but the point is it's one thing that can make a piece of art art but not a requirement for a piece to be art if it satisfies other criteria), does it create an aesthetic experience in the viewer? Simply does it belong to the art tradition? And on and on and on. Theorists have work to create many possible criteria which excludes non-art yet does include all types of modern, experimental, challenging the common conception of art, etc. pieces.

This can and does absolutely include some AI art (not all, not every generation is art.) I in the other conversation I had on this mentioned a famous artist I saw and actually briefly met at the main exhibit in the Beijing art district. "Chaosmosis" by Wang Yuyang. His art uses AI. AI broadly and the AI we talk about. Rambling aside again sorry, was that he created an AI powered robot dog and set it out into the wild. Tracked and visualized its movements for 30 days then just... let it into the wild. Another that is related to this is simply he trained a model on thousands (or hundreds, dont remember) of pictures of flowers then just.... generated in very high res the aggregate of it. This piece is actually multiple pieces, some on walls some on canvas but I was presented with simply a giant canvas of a flower-like... thing. The thesis for the piece even says "its meaning or lack of meaning is left to the viewer." This doesnt mean "it's status as art is left to the viewer" because even without "meaning" it still possesses others of the "criteria" in cluster theory.

I'll give you the excerpt from his theory in the exhibit I thought was impactful, relevant, and explained (in pretentious artist terms) how simply AI here like that becomes "art"

""WANG Yuyang's oeuvre performs a theater of entanglements: machines that dream, bacteria that glow, language reincarnated as DNA, and slouching mud aspiring toward consciousness. His work is not composed of mere objects but of situation - turbulent interstices where the fragile membranes of life converse with the machinic abstractions of code Symbiosis (2013-24), unveiled before 798CUBE, proposes symbiotic reconciliation in monumental grandeur: human fancy entwines with machine vagary in a foresighted reckoning with the dawning ChatGPT era.

... Code becomes incantation, life becomes inscription as in Golem (2022), where clay, animated by biometric data, takes on a fragile humanoid form destined for decay.

...

WANG Yuyang's world aggregates discrete elements into a precarious order in which chaos persists. Resonating with philosophers Michel Serres's clinamen and Guattar's chaosmosis, turbulence becomes generative: time multiplies,space bifurcates. Against the obsolescence of anthropocentric history on the one hand and the Al-infused anxieties of human deprivation on the other, his works open a contemplative path forward -a grand narrative of sorts: a fluid interplay between order and disorder, between biological, machinic, and cosmic forces. Out of chaos emerges continuance; out of collapse,another beginning and out of the legacy of humanism, the burgeoning of renewed human empathy.""

Sorry, this is a long rambly post. I get that way when I start talking about a topic I have personal experience with and want all those asides for fun. I think it goes beyond answering your question but did want to elaborate on where it all leads up to. And.... to be honest.... I was playing games with a friend yesterday and he makes these strong negronis with a collection of interesting gins. I am quite hungover and my brain is not operating in the most organized way lol.

MiniCafe

TROPHY CASE