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

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

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

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

In the world of Game Collecting, the guy with potentially the largest single collection on the planet is getting rid of his collection.

The ideal plan was for it to all go to a singular museum, which was in the works and then unfortunately fell through. Problem is the next two backups also fell through. So plan D involves the collection being split up and some of it going to the Embrace Group, and some into private collections, which was seemingly both never the plan. People who donated items, thinking that they would eventually be publicly displayed, are rightfully upset. And then the rest of his fans, such as myself, are somewhat bewildered that this is how it will end after decades of amassing a collection, and then years of saying it'll all be going to a museum.

Some would argue it misses the topic, but I'll offer the Unix text editor wars. Vi vs. Emacs is pretty much the epitome of a pointless religious war in people's favourite activity, though for some that's obviously their job.

Why do I mention it? Because most would just look at it and say: obviously none of the above, what are you even talking about? But those in the know have been heatedly debating the topic since at least the 80s.. (I'm team vi for what it's worth)

Cooking:

Aioli is made with oil and no egg. If it includes egg, it is a mayonnaise.

Many people just call everything "aioli" these days, even if it's technically a mayonnaise.

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

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

Edit (possible solution): Voyager's database should include the Enterprise D's information regarding Riker's duplication incident. While Voyager's crew already found a way to separate Tuvix, they could've searched for a possibility to repeat that process and then split back the copy Tuvix a few milliseconds into the original Tuvok and Neelix before said copy became self-aware.

systemd is fine for some

I collect coins, and there's always debates about what a coin is.

For those who don't know, a coin is usually defined as an object with legal tender status somewhere; as opposed to a token that has a face value but is issued by a non-state actor; and a medal, which is anything that looks like a coin but doesn't have any face value.

Now, aside from the expected debate over what is and isn't a state, there's also the issue of NIFC (not intended for circulation) coins. Many mints sell coins that are legal tender, but are never put into circulation, some people (often those that could be characterised as "old school") take the position that as these aren't intended to be used as legal tender, they aren't really coins.

It doesn't help that there are tiny island nations like Niue and Samoa that will basically let companies make anything legal tender if they pay them. This leads to the rather silly situation where a batarang, and a literal statue of hogwarts, are technically "coins". (I've been told this is done as a import tariff dodge as the USA doesn't charge import taxes on coins)

Are tabs worth two spaces or four?

Doctor Who has a bunch of them!

One of the big recent ones was the Timeless Child plotline. For people unfamiliar with the show, the basic premise is that the main character, the Doctor, is an alien who's species can regenerate themselves when they're about to die which saves them but they become a physically different person. This was invented back in the 60s so they could change out the lead actor, William Hartnell, when he got too old to continue in the role and it's become a core part of the show. We're now on about the 15-16th Doctor, although that number is a bit contentious too for reasons I won't go into here because that's a whole other thing.

A few years back there was a plotline where it was revealed that the Doctor isn't just a regular alien, they're something called the Timeless Child that just appeared in our universe from somewhere unknown, and was the one that gave their whole species the ability to regenerate themselves. This was widely hated, as it not only changed the Doctor from a sort of wandering hobo into a Super Special Chosen One, but it also directly showed that William Hartnell wasn't the first Doctor, there had been probably dozens of other ones before him that had just never been mentioned until now.

The internal debates that I've seen usually aren't people debating whether this was a good idea or not, they're mostly about the best way to retcon it away and never speak of it again lol.

Here's another one: Is there a "blind community?" This may sound odd since the very fact the question exists implies there is, since blind people have to get together and discuss it. So in some ways yes of course there is, but I'm inclined to say no, at least not in the sense that a lot of people define "community".

Blindness does not respect class, creed, or culture, so you have blind people from all over the map ideologically speaking who all approach their blindness in different ways. That's not getting into the difference between low- vs no-vision, or born blind vs blinded later in life, or blind people who are independent vs those that lack access to proper training. I've run into blind people who don't like hanging out with other blind people IRL because the spectrum ranges from "can't even pick yourself up when you trip without help" to "flies around the country alone with no problem."

I think the question exists because we look at deaf people who unambiguously have cultures and languages unique to them when we don't really have that.

-Guitar picks/strings

-Warhammer editions (Or competitive vs narrative play)

-using linux and the many reasons why

Synthesizers: digital vs analog.

Common opinion holds that analog (specifically oscillators, but also filters and even VCAs [voltage controlled amplifiers]) are warmer and more natural sounding while digital are cold and harsh.

The thing is, digital emulation of analog hardware has become virtually indistinguishable from the real thing, but there is a certain segment that refuses to believe their $5000 Minimoog can be so easily replicated by software (realistically I doubt Bob Moog could tell the difference anymore).

Of course some also choose to argue which is better, which is just ridiculous because they both have their uses depending on what kinds of music you're composing or just what sounds you're trying to make.

Mycology is full of them which are mostly the result of genetic sequencing and the good old "where do you draw the line between species" question but a recent and high visibility one is the Collybia shift.

Before genetic testing, Collybia was a genus characterized by smallish pale-spored mushrooms with convex caps, no ring, and gills which are broadly attached to the stem (the simplest shape the average person would imagine for a mushroom), this became one of the classic "statures" of mushrooms "Collybioid". As we sequenced Collybia species, they were slowly moved into other Collybioid genera like Collybiopsis and Gymnopus. Eventually this resulted in most of the Collybioid mushrooms being moved out of Collybia, leaving only the earliest-discovered mushrooms in the genus which were tiny parasitic mushrooms that weren't really Collybioid at all.

Here's an average "Collybioid" mushroom Gymnopus sp.

Then things got worse, a recent paper did a study on genus Clitocybe which is another genus which has a classic stature named after it, "Clitocyboid" which refers to smallish pale-spored, funnel-shaped, mushrooms with gills that run down the stem. This paper discovered that nearly everything we had been calling "Clitocybe" actually belonged in Collybia meaning that most mushrooms in Collybia are now Clitocyboid instead of Collybioid. This has resulted utter chaos which has some mycologists considering invoking the "common usage" rules in taxonomy to put the new Collybias back into Clitocybe to make things less confusing. This chaos has been compounded by the fact that iNaturalist has already accepted this name change, but only for the mushrooms explicitly studied in the paper and not their known relatives which has resulted in the Blewits being split between Collybia and Lepista (which itself was a recent name change from Clitocybe that everyone was still adjusting too).

Average nondescript Clitocyboid (no ID because these are nearly impossible):

A Blewit, AKA Clitocybe/Lepista/Collybia nuda:

Lots of debates about the internal arrangement of the original series Enterprise…

• Bridge: forward facing or offset?
• Engineering: primary or secondary hull?
• Shuttlebay: short or extending under the nacelle pylons?
• How big is this ship, anyway??

In Blade Runner, whether or not Deckard is a Replicant.

Programming and Linux. Oh boy, what to pick...

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Female Space Marines. I'm gonna leave before this thread explodes.

Should the hobby continue to be about both the act of printing and tinkering with printers, or is there a reasonable place for people who want “3D printing” as a hobby but not “3D printers” as a hobby. As part of this, is it okay for a company to lock down its firmware and prevent people from using their printer over a network without going through their software first?

Bambu Lab has made remarkable progress in “mainstreaming” 3D printing but they’ve done so at the expense of a lot of the “soul” of the space. Unlike many of their consumer-facing predecessors and competitors, they are closed-source and proprietary. They make a good product, but you don’t get to have control over it the same way you do with other brands. And that just means other brands are likely to follow suit, now that Bambu Lab has shown it to be an effective strategy.

I mourn the loss of common purpose the hobby once had, but at the same time I do think it’s a natural progression for something new and complex to eventually become consumer-grade. Look at how computers have evolved into rectangles we keep in our pockets.

Furry Fandom:

How we represent ourselves as a fandom.

Some groups want the fandom to be more clean and family friendly. Some want it to remain weird and not always as family friendly as it currently is.

Some are more okay with using things like cheap plastic animal masks as bases for fursuit heads. Some people don't want that type of stuff and would rather see bases be either hand made or use something like a sports helmet or mask to build the base around.

Some are okay with us becoming more mainstream and companies like Netflix taking a little more interest in us. Others want corporations to stay away from us.

As for me, you can guess my stance just by the fact of me being here on Lemmy. I'd rather see a base use something not quite as corporate as a cheap plastic junk mask as a base. I would also rather keep our fandom a little less sanitized and more weird to keep the corpos from coming in and turning our fandom into a heavily censored industry.

I still play a little old school Doom and earlier this year the creator of one of the main engines people use (GZDoom) got some flak for using some AI in his coding, causing a lot of people to switch over to a fork (UZDoom).

I don't miss many things about the old site but the niche communities are one of them. If anyone wants to dive into years of minutiae covering everything from big drama to slap fights you should check out
https://old.reddit.com/r/HobbyDrama/

Punk/metal/goth/hardcore subcultures and the nature of gatekeeping, poseurs, “selling out”, politics, social causes, and scenes that started out as youth culture now approaching 50yrs of development and have oldheads who never left as well as their grandkids joining up. For the most part the 90s “sell-out” idea that finding mainstream success is betrayal is gone so long as the band continues to be who they always were, some bands are naturally talented and will breakthrough into broader appeal. Gatekeeping can keep a community safe from predators trying to gain access to spaces where youth and intoxicated adults are just trying to have a fun time without having to fear exploitation. Sometimes youth come in trying way too hard and miss the point, sometimes the oldheads forget they were try-hard kids at one point too and are missing the point. In the past year I’ve run into a 65yo in the pit next to sweaty teens and watched a Millennial mom take her 5yo daughter to the edge of the stage and gently lower her into a crowd of tattooed, mohawked, crusty strangers who came together and made sure she floated safely to her dad. Also seen some boneheads get their shit rocked, so for all the debates and bickering we’ve never forgotten what’s really important. Best time I’ve had in the scene in nearly 20yrs.

I can't believe people still argue over whether or not Balrogs have wings when the text unambiguously says they do. You can have wings and also have a shadow that looks like wings.

His enemy halted again, facing him, and the shadow about it reached out like two vast wings.

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

Like two vast wings but then he explicitly says its wings were spread, clearly stating it has wings. To be the most generous you could try to say the wings are made of shadows, but based on the text they're clearly still wings.

Yes, Balrogs have wings.

In the Sonic fandom, there’s a debate over which is the “authentic” Sonic: the Western version or the Japanese one. It’s not about design, but rather personality, values, and attitude.

The thing is, the differences between the two are very subtle. Unless you’ve been in the fandom for years and have seen enough material on the subject, they’ll seem exactly the same to you.

My opinion is that "It doesn’t matter"~♪. At this point, there are countless versions of Sonic (the classic, the modern, Sonic SatAm, Sonic X, Archie Sonic, IDW Sonic, Fleetway Sonic, Sonic Boom, Sonic Prime, Movie Sonic...), all with their differences, but in general they share the, let’s say, “essence”* of the hedgehog, and that’s what matters.

*(If you’re not from Latin America, you won’t know how funny it is that I used that particular word)

Exactly how planes fly. I studied a bit of fluid dynamics in grad school and my professor was adamant that any explanation is incomplete without discussion of boundary layers.

In short the explanation was a couple things. The first is how ping pong balls generate lift with translation and rotation (or vorticity). Its basically the shape of the wing that helps with vorticity (this is what generates the pressure difference above and below the wing). The second is that you need laminar flow over the wing for vorticity to take place, and this is achieved when a thin layer of turbulent air surrounds it, the boundary layer. It moves the stagnation points towards the back (encouraging laminar flow) and reducing drag.

The same process is the reason golf balls have dimples on them, to help form a turbulent boundary layer, moving the stagnation pounts, reducing drag and allowing the ball to go further.

"Tripping the boundary layer" can be achieved by increasing speed on the runway, a strong head wind, rough spots on the wing, or how you might see windsurfers pump their sail, or someone pumping on a hydrofoil board in the water.

Go: To what extent should you rely on AI reviews vs pro reviews?

AI is really, really good at Go, far better than humans, and it's pretty undeniable that it's a valid use case for the technology. It also makes it free and easy to pop a game into it and have the AI tell you which moves were mistakes.

But AI favors a "risky" playstyle, because it can read out crazy detailed variations to be able to tell when a dangerous position is actually fine. Humans trying to emulate that, without the superhuman reading capabilities, sometimes mess up and get worse results than if they used a safer strategy.

AI also can't explain why one move is better than another. Humans rely on heuristics, patterns, and proverbs to point us in the right direction of finding a move. A professional can show how to find a move through a heuristic, which is more generally applicable. There can also ofc be the factor of wanting to support the community by paying for a teacher or going to a club and finding someone to help review.

The question comes when the human professional says something that contradicts the AI, who do you listen to? I've been in a room before where an amateur was getting a game reviewed by a foreign professional (for free, but at a paid event) and after the pro criticized a move, the amateur insisted that the pro was wrong because the AI agreed with the move.

It's an interesting question, at least to me, whether or not that's inappropriate. On the one hand, you'll always have the AI's input so getting a different perspective is valuable, pros arguably earn a certain degree of their respect from their abilities, and there are the issues I mentioned above with relying too heavily on AI. On the other hand, because AI is so indisputably good, many people see it as a sort of objective standard for evaluating moves, whereas individual players may have different styles of play. If you can see reasons to play a move and the AI backs it up, then if the pro doesn't like it it could just be a stylistic preference. And of course the type of people who tend to be attracted to a competitive strategy game like this (especially Americans) don't necessarily have a lot of respect for credentials on paper or social heirarchies, as opposed to whether you can back up your analysis by objective standards.

I've gotten quite into doing pub karaoke for the past three years. It started as me going to monthly nights at my local, then following that particular KJ after they cancelled future gigs with her, to befriending and following a few other hosts.

There's three particular debates:

• Who produces the best karaoke backing tracks? There are a lot of websites/platforms that produce licensed karaoke tracks, such as Karaoke Version, Sing To The World, Sunfly, Karafun, Mr Entertainer, Zoom Karaoke and a few others. I think some can be more hit-or-miss than others. Karafun are generally good with lyric readability but their app/service is kinda shit if you don't have an internet connection.

• Should the host get on the mic and sing at all? Some i know are the kind who like the sound of their own voice a bit too much and tend to hog the mic, but there's also one I know who rarely if ever sings himself.

• As a host, should you play songs between singers. I can understand spacing out singers when it's quiet, but if it's busy and you have a few dozen singers waiting for their turn, you're just gonna piss people off if you play full songs between each act in my opinion.

Thats not a debate in LoTR Fandom. Debate would imply one side has a leg to stand on. No wings.

D&D vs PF2 really brings out the uhh, loudest of each community