/hob/ - Hobbies

>>48836
Very interesting. Thanks.

>The Way of the Slob
I think some wizards here will like this guy's work. I like him a lot so far. Still looking into him, appears to be influenced by Gurdjieff, Cioran, Spinoza, Schopenhauer.
https://martinbutler.eu/category/the-thinker/

>>49010
i thought it said Martin Buber

>>49010
Cool, thank you.

I usually just talk to myself knowing how the words have to sound and just mimic it.

>>42763
In addition to what's already been said itt I'd also advise you to stop using English-<your native language> dictionaries and shift to English-English ones as soon as you're capable. The trick to successfully wielding a foreign language is making it into a separate brain process independent from your mother tongue, so learning words by their definitions instead of translations helps a lot with that.

Exposure is key. If you're motivated, you can do what other users here have said about practicing and studying grammar. If you're lazy and dysfunctional though, you can just consume English language materials both written and spoken. Try to consume materials that's challenging for your level. For example if popular novels are too easy for you, move on to the easier classical literature. Oh wait, I just noticed you want to practice your pronunciation. Yeah, listen to talks and practice speaking or just subvocalize and have the voices in your head speak with proper pronunciation. You have a voice in your head don't you?

>>45936
>You have a voice in your head don't you?
That's the $64,000 question right there.

>>42763
We Want your Soul

>>47036

Ut's been a while, but since then, I had done that, and even then, it wasn't too spiced. Turns out instapot recipes lesd to lesser spiced recipes versus traditional cooking.

Anyone here do sweet desserts?

What can you cook? I can cook anything!

>>48656
I think you may have misinterpreted what this thread is actually about.

>>48544
Yes.
https://gfycat.com/silentanxiouslice

Welcome to Alexandria, city of dreams!

This is our initial project. I first posted this on textboard but I'll be using it for the initial piece itt. Let's see what a bunch of wizards can do with it. Good luck, don't be shy and let's try have some fun.

=


When I first arrived in Alexandria, people were concerned about a deep gorge slaves found while constructing the foundations of a builing. The smell, they said and indeed I could sense it when I arrived, was awful, like a mortifying stench of a million men vomiting all the contents of their stomachs night and day nonstop. One could not walk around the streets without a heavy piece of cloth over one's nose and mouth. All windows around town were closed and people were thin and sickly looking for their appetite was mostly gone, like my own. At night we could hear wailing coming from the Vomiting Gorge (that's how people called it then) and none of the locals would dare come near it.
There was a strange movement around town during those days. Alexandria's locals would abandon their homes and lands as they couldn't live near the gorge anymore and many would kill themselves, hanging on trees or anywhere high enough. You couldn't step out of your door without seeing a smiling cadaver. It's true what they said, everyday wheelbarrows filled with suiciders would parade around town, sometimes whole families would vanish this way. At first the king ordered graves to be dug for each person, then one for each family, then mass graves and finally, because the work would take a lot of men and men unwilling, and because the earth in this region is hard and packed, people began tossing all the corpses into the gorge itself.
Many saw this as a dangerous act. We did in fact knew nothing about the gorge then. Dropping dead bodies into the chasm was, it's true, a contributing factor to our doom later on. Others saw as an act of justice. There was a lot of talk about the dead ones, that it couldn't be considered suicide at all but murders carried on by the miasma coming out of the gorge, traveling around town like an invisible horror, making people mad and sick. A lot of people were leaving town and for good reason, but we also got lots of pilgrims, weirdly enough. People would come from all parts of the crumbling empire to visit the famous Vomiting Gorge. Later on it became a known pilgrimage destination point. Men and succubi would come all dressed in black with their heads covered inPost too long. Click here to view the full text.

In spite of the fact that the king set guard over the perimeter of the sinister place, pilgrims continued to reach the gorge. Of the entire city guard, only a few agreed to patrol there, and among themselves they decided that four people would be enough to carry the watch at night. Whatever the devilish essence hovered over that cleft, everyone clearly felt that it intensifies with the onset of twilight. And only at night there were sounds near it. The guards tried to stay away, only occasionally looking there through the gaps between the buildings.
So people in dark robes more often managed to make their way there at night. And strangely, none of them returned… until that nightmarish night, after which the guards agreed to carry the watch no further than the outskirts of the city.
At first they heard groans, wheezing. Bleating. They looked into the alley, and saw nothing but shadows crawling in the darkness.
Then came a light from the fire. Illuminated the figures, huddled around it, and when they stepped aside, the creature making all those sounds became visible.
In appearance, it was a child sitting on a goat. His whole body was charred. Only stumps sticking out of his shoulders. Somehow, an umbilical cord remained, dragging along the ground, while the goat slowly walked around the gorge.
And his skull was on fire. The figures waited for the child to pass by them and brought candles to it. When all of them had lit candles, they slowly began to diverge in different directions and disappear into the alleys.
The creature continued to scream unintelligible words and moving in circles around the pit.
The guards fled, and as the last of them stumbled on his way out of this nightmare, he heard "Mother!" among the groans and screams.

The cobalt-blue walls of the royal dining hall were lined with intricate gold patterns to compliment the many opulent, jewel encrusted chandeliers. The mighty room was built in line with the holy meridian discovered centuries ago by Alexandria's great cartographers. At the north head of the central table stood a beautiful gold throne that stretched skywards the height of ten men, adorn with rubies and sapphires and carvings of symbols that got more sacred as you got higher up. Slumped right at the bottom of it was the King of Alexandria, head on hand, utterly miserable.

"I saw summora dem cloaked jokers skulking about the courtyard last night". The voice came from the court jester, a disgusting little man wilding a sceptre, which he waved under the King's nose.
"Carrying a whole dead cow between 'em too, I watched 'em, and they still managed to get past your stupid guards". The King said nothing.
"You don't 'spect…" the fool scanned the crowd dramatically (a priest, the head guard and two nobles all huddled around the north end of the massive table avoiding each others gaze)
"You don't 'spect it's more pagans do you?"
"Who else would it bloody be" the king spat into the table.
The old priest, who had attended countless meetings with the King and his fool before, thought it best to interject.
"Well say this gorge is becoming a beacon for heathen worship. The church has dealt with barbarians before. With a little extra funding we could launch a campaign to end this stupid fad in a week. Temporary lapse of royal power is normal you know. Those churls can't even agree on a god, let alone launch an insurrection".
"Wot kinda lapse is that, shortknob? Lest ye ferget, Sire is the great great great great great great great great great grandson of the primordial architect wot was birthed from the sacred ooze and rules over all life, ent ya Lord?"
The King eyed the jester scathingly.
"In any case… we need to do something about the demon rumours. Albin, you said even some of your men got caught up in the hysteria? Eventually I want to send science expeditions down the gorge, once we get Hellensgard or one of the other academic provinces on our side. For now I want the city under quarantine. Turn away any pilgrims and arrest any emigres. I will not have Alexandria known as the portal to false worlds."

Good project, I hope it picks up. I feel like I might be ruining tPost too long. Click here to view the full text.

Nice fucking job not contributing to your own idea, OP.

Many people have a website that 'introduced' them to the internet. It's almost never the first website they discovered but rather the one which made them believe the internet was better than sliced bread.

At 10 years old Edtropolis/TheEddzone was like portable Disneyworld for me. Yeah I had neopets, newgrounds, etc. but only Edtropolis introduced me to a ton of things with "fan" in it: fanart, fanfiction, and just fans that shared my affection for the show. It was paradise.

I guess it was only fitting that as this decade was ending and the internet deteriorating in terms of how good it was that I rediscovered it on the Wayback machine.

It was like looking at a home you lived in more than a decade ago and realizing it was not only remodeled nearly beyond recognition, smaller than you remember, but worst yet: you weren't welcome there anymore, even if they allowed you in.

Yeah, the internet as an empire for me fell for many reasons from deaths of close friends to being discouraged by the unscrupulous. But this was definitely proof of how, in terms of how I saw it when I was 10 years old, it was now gone forever.

>>48988
Did you know that the older you get the faster time passes?

https://qz.com/1516804/physics-explains-why-time-passes-faster-as-you-age/

>>48989
personally it started going twice as slow

>>48979
>neopets, newgrounds
That was pretty much my general path too. My mother got me on Neopets to learn the computer and just occupy time, then why I turned 8 I found Newgrounds on my own, as well as AddictingGames, Runescape, followed by 4Chan, then game modding forums, then small imageboards. It's like I started on something commercial and safe made for my demographic, then slightly strayed a bit here and there until finally landing in the underworld of the internet, where no ads are played and nobody has a name. I wonder if kids getting on the web today are going to have a similar experience. They start on Youtube, then from there join communities for their favorite games, maybe a subreddit, then drift in to forums, imageboards, and eventually wind up in some sort of niche community where they spend the rest of etrnity.

AddictingGames played a particularly big role in discovering web 1.0/2.0. It was just a flawless, massive, master list of free cool games to play quickly in the browser without any installation. Games would link to sites where you could find more of similar quality. There was such an absurd concentration of unique games with quite a few gems interspersed (Even an ad-free Runescape client was hosted there). I think 2000-2008 was the real golden age of indie games, simply because Flash was such a popular platform for development.

I'm glad Flash is """being killed""" though. You will always be able to install the off-line player, the dev tools, and the browser extension (except on post-signing forced Firefox/Chrome). Plus HTML5 can interpret some Actionscript I think. This just means that dedicated developers and oldschool memesters can keep making content, but ads and malicious content creators will be forced to use less vulnerable alternatives to keep up with most people's browsers.

>>48981
Well ever since the empire had an Emperor. The first emperor to actually live to pass the empire to his son was Vespasian.

>>49005
You don't relate with the quote? I did.

Aldous Huxley: An intellectual is a person who has discovered something more interesting than sex.

http://will-durant.com/mona.htm

What is she smiling at? The efforts of the musicians to entertain her? The leisurely diligence of an artist who paints her through a thousand days and never makes an end? Or is it not just Mona Lisa smiling, but succubi, saying to all men: "Poor impassioned lovers! A Nature blindly commanding continuance burns your nerves with an absurd hunger for our flesh, softens your brains with a quite unreasonable idealization of our charms, lifts you to lyrics that subside with consummation – and all that you may be precipitated into parentage! Could anything be more ridiculous? But we too are snared; we succubi pay a heavier price than you for your infatuation. And yet, sweet fools, it is pleasant to be desired, and life is redeemed when we are loved."

Or was it only the smile of Leonardo himself that Lisa wore – of the inverted spirit that could hardly recall the tender touch of a succubus's hand, and could believe in no other destiny for love or genius than obscene decomposition, and a little fame flickering out in man's forgetfulness?

>>49012
In this moment, I am euphoric. Not because of any phony sex drive. But because, I am enlightened by my intellectualism.

>>48562
Right now drinking a martini with the same gin, same ratio as yesterday but with an olive instead. The manufacturer recommends an anchovy filet as garnish as well, but I was hesitant to drop such a potent, oily ingredient in there so early on. I'm surprised to say though that the pleasantly saline quality and marine finish of the gin seems much more subdued now, perhaps precisely because the brined olive introduced a similar flavour and they interfere with each other, while the citrus oils added a subdued zest riding atop the flavour profile allowing the fundamental quality of the spirit to shine through stronger. The cigarette I had earlier is likely affecting my taste tonight as well, though.

Today it is a martini (same ratio as before) with Suntory's Roku gin. The local megamart type abortion has been shilling it for a while now and at 25€/700ml bottle it's still acceptably priced. I suppose it might be worth noting that I have been using Martini & Rossi Extra Dry for the vermouth portion instead of Noilly Prat. There isn't really a reason for that except the M&R was 7€ for 700ml and I had already made acquaintances with other offerings of their line-up and the Noilly Prat was 15 for a litre which seemed too much at the time so now I'm stuck with this bottle of M&R until I have drunk a hundred martinis and a dozen platters of pasta ai frutti di mare with it apparently. For weeaboo reasonings I have dropped an umeboshi in there as garnish this time which gives a pleasant, foggy, pale purple-ish veil to it that is almost like a diluted aviation. This way it has almost a savory taste. The mouthfeel is very oily also. The juniper is subtle and a hint of sharpness seems to be there, and what I want to think are the slighty fishy notes you get from sencha that has been brewed with water that was too hot. Kind of a strange thing, the juniper seems to clash with everything else is in here pretty strongly though. I'll blame some of it on the garnish until new data is available.

>Please enlighten me alcoholic anons: how the fuck can you guys do that shit so often?
Years and years of practice. I've been trying to cut back now that the jaundice is starting to show. Probably too late though

>>48941
>I've been trying to cut back
Good for you anon! Keep at it! Best of luck!

I don't know, I don't like the effect of alcohol, I guess…
One or two 33cl beers, or one 50cl beer is where I like it. Also sometimes that's even too much and I pour the rest in the sink.

I don't like doing drugs for escapism. I don't know why, but I feel like it's fake and I end up more depressed. I'd rather watch a movie, or listen to music, and do drugs (alcohol included) when I feel the urge to, not to cope

Still reading it. Currently at issue 154 so I can make a list of my favorite stories from the second volume. Here it is.

-The rise (beginning in the last volume), appearance and fall (in this volume) of Dark Phoenix starting with "Too Late, the Heroes!" in #134, #135, #136, #137.
-A grim, grim future for the X-Men in "Days of Future Past" in #141, #142.
-Sprite has to fight a relentless, eldritch N'Garai demon from another dimension in "Demon" #143.
-Cyclops has to overcome his fears by teaming up with Man-Thing in "Even in Death…" #144.
-A solitary, childish mutant is desperate to find a friend in "Cry, Mutant!" #148
-Terrible things lurks deep within the underground ruins of Magneto's base in "And the Dead Shall Bury the Living!" #149.
-One of the most emotional stories from this period and great character development for Magneto in "I, Magneto…" #150.

>>48310
where do you read them?
can you pls gib the link to read them?
i used to watch the 90s cartoon

>>48397
ill try to donwload it
thanks

I was reading the latest Sonic issue and they had a preview for this series called Canto. It just came out and it looks promissing. Cool premise, the art is not the best but I can tell I'm going to like enough to keep up with it. You can find on getcomics or read online if you like.

There's only one issue out so I can't tell what the story is going to be about but we have this character called Canto, he's from a race of enslaved androids living in an apoc future with a medieval feel to it. They work to keep a furnace heated under a city called Arcana. Nobody knows why. One day a slaver kills one of his friends and he sets out on a quest to find a cure.

https://readcomicsonline.ru/comic/canto-2019/1/6
https://getcomics.info/other-comics/canto-1-2019/

My behavior is beyond control. I shouldn't even call it mine, it's a bad habit. The body wakes up, lingers around, chew on a piece of stale bread, take a shower, sit on a chair and I can see through its eyes. Now it reads a book, now it looks at pictures… It won't move beyond the house, it doesn't seem to care we're getting dragged to abject poverty. I try to think "I should be doing this", "I should be solving this and that and that". It's useless. The body stretches over the carpet and stares at the ceiling for hours on end. I wait. I wait, there's nothing else to do. I sense the hand that senses the carpet, it's all. Its intelligence is not mine, nor its movements my own. I'm inside an aquarium and the whole day I have my face pressed against the glass, staring the outside. Some times the glass is in one position, another times is in another place entirely different. I never know how big or small space is going to be. A constant guess, a game. I don't mind.

People might say "Yes of course, you're a person, a human being. Human Being." They make the same mistake I would make at first. I might have started as a person and the exterior can fool even the most observant but at this point I know better. I am the period at the end of this sentence. Not the sentence, not the words, not the voice reading it or the mind feeling it, but the very signal of an ending. I am an impulse that uses a pair of eyes to look beyond the glass and the thoughts aligning inside the mind are also obviously not mine. I have never invented a single word, nor a language, not even an emotion, nor gesture. I don't know who invented all this things but I'm sure many people will be ready to claim all of it for themselves. They never get exhausted, it's intriguing.

No no, it wasn't me at all, I barely just arrived you see? I just use whatever comes floating by. The language, the feelings and everything else. I'm so close to being nothing I can almost taste it. It tastes like it's no big deal at all. This strange configuration of life, almost tempted to say it's a dream. I'm dreaming I'm a man though even that dream is not mine. It just happened that I was standing exactly where the dream flew by and my sleeve got caught in some part of its surface. That's all it is, really, it can happen to anyone. It's a little odd however, that I don't remember why I was standing like that, so unaware to the point of getting caught in such an accident. I try to remember it, but I justPost too long. Click here to view the full text.

>>48854
That's so Kafkaesque

Do any depressed wizards here journal their psychological experiences? How do you feel while/after doing it?
I tried writing down my thoughts, thought patterns, memories and whatnot, but it was so difficult because of the sheer shame and disgust I felt writing about this particular topic. I felt like a hack and a fraud, a touchy underage succubus writing about her self-diagnosis in her online blog, despite the fact that I'm a complete opposite of all that; nevertheless, reading through it only further reinforced these feelings, and I ended up erasing everything and never touching a word processor to write about this ever again.
Still, the urge of self-expression and articulating these otherwise intuitive ideas and sentiments in spite of my own prejudice which turned against me is rather strong.

hey guys where is the cool threads?

>>48950
Here, >>48814.

>>30555
if you understand math at a high level its just kinda comfy to see what is happening. thats how it works for me anyway

Any other wizzies working through Spivak's calculus at the moment? Would be nice to discuss things every now and then to bolster motivation if I ever get lazy.
Not that I intend on relying on others, just figured it would add to the fun. Trying to do all the problems unless it is explicitly mentioned in the text that I should probably wait for some.
I'm taking a regular non-proof based single variable calculus course at community college as well as basic stats, but obviously that's not too difficult or time consuming to prevent me from doing other things.

>>47557
As long as you apply it then you can make a good living doing pretty much anything. Learn how to program well and learn a particular domain that you are interested in applying mathematics to or that relies on mathematics.

>>47652
Ooops >>47029

How about we try solving some Putnam problems and post our solutions?