Ask Lemmy

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.

-Guitar picks/strings

-Warhammer editions (Or competitive vs narrative play)

-using linux and the many reasons why

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)

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

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.

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.