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Why do D&D books have to be so expensive?
  • There's a podcast that only does 1 on 1 RP games called Party of One. It might give you two some ideas!

  • We self-selected 34/200 countries and got a generally favorable result! Woah!
  • I mean there's that, but also it's well known to Australians that their government has sold them out to be a client state of the US. On trade, allowing American military bases on the continent, and more.

  • Saddest sentence in the english language
  • Haven't there been like 10 Septembers of funding? Lmao

  • RETVRN to tradition
  • If you already have a psvr2 there is a Sony-made adapter for PC connection. Not sure if that makes 3d Blurays work though.

  • This is just an elaborate way to kill yourself
  • This is what American Exceptionalism will do to a motherfucker. Choose one of the several long hikes with actual infrastructure, dumbass!

  • This is just an elaborate way to kill yourself
  • You would want to choose your start date very carefully for any hike this long.

  • This is just an elaborate way to kill yourself
  • This really should not be your first hike, though. Maybe that goes without saying.

  • Locked
    Bulletins and News Discussion from September 16th to September 22nd, 2024 - This Megathread Is Dedicated To The Brave Mujahideen Fighters of Afghanistan - COTW: Afghanistan
  • Motorola has had extremely good value in the budget android market (at times) for the last 10 years. Nowadays they have competition though.

  • Need help with vocal and bass effects
  • The zed10fx seems to have aux levels in addition to the gain and fx knobs. This can be useful because the aux send can be used as a monitor mix which can differ from the main speaker mix (if you have a monitor). Seems a bit more versatile in that sense.

    If it's all DIY, a mixer will be good to have. If you are performing at a venue with a sound person, they will handle it and you can just plug your mic cable into their system and tell them what you want (typically just a bit of reverb).

  • Need help with vocal and bass effects
  • That stuff is for a DAW program (or a larger, more complex mixer), if you don't have internal sends you can't do it live. In-channel fx are fine for live and there is typically a separate FX knob anyway, which won't change the volume of the dry signal. On that mixer, you won't experience the problem I was describing because there isn't a wet/dry knob, there is a gain knob and a fx knob that don't affect one another. Sorry, I wrote that before understanding this was a DIY live situation.

    If you felt the need for off-board FX, you could use the FX send with a patch cable, then after the pedal put it back into another channel. You won't need to do that in most situations.

  • Need help with vocal and bass effects
  • I adjust eq for every venue... And I have a nice mic and good technique. Different rooms absorb different frequencies and have different resonances.

    Even with basic "low mid high", you can improve your sound a lot with eq.

    I do agree that one should learn mic technique though.. Eq can't fix bad technique. It can kinda fix a subpar mic.

  • Need help with vocal and bass effects
  • Somebody once told me "air is the best mixer." What that means is if you're practicing in a small room, it's gonna sound shittier than a real venue, in terms of sound quality.

    Oh, another pitfall is oversinging. If you can't hear yourself singing, the instinct is to sing louder. But this can make you sound shitty and lowers your stamina. Ideally you have a vocal monitor, but if not, position yourself so you can hear a little of what is coming from the amp. Without letting the mic feedback.

  • Need help with vocal and bass effects
  • Your keyboard amp has eq already, I assume. If you haven't, I would adjust that, prioritizing the vocal quality over other instruments if all channels share the same eq. One benefit of a "real" mixer/PA is that each channel gets its own EQ. Reverb is the second most important effect, I'd say. And delay is optional, depending on the genre.

    If your mic sucks, that also might contribute to "sounding bad." Does everyone agree the singer sounds bad on your system? If you aren't used to hearing your own voice objectively, you might be thinking it sounds worse than it actually does.

    Look into mic technique. The basic idea is you have to actually sing directly into the mic (NOT over the top, and don't hold it like a comic facing straight upwards; it should point into your mouth), making sure you are following the polar pattern of the mic.

    With a dynamic mic, there is something called the "proximity effect." The closer the mic is to the singer's mouth, the warmer the sound is gonna be, while farther away makes the sound thinner. But you have to pull the mic an inch or three away when you sing especially loudly or high pitch or you will break everyone's eardrums.

    A good baseline distance is a finger's width or two between your mouth and the mic. If you sing very loud in general, 3 fingers might be appropriate.

    And during mic check, don't just talk. Actually sing like you're actually planning to sing. Seems obvious but many singers just say check 1 2 but that's usually quieter and less melodious than singing.

  • Need help with vocal and bass effects
  • Here is an example of what delay sounds like when it's loud at two different delay times: https://youtu.be/FuStmPbG528

  • Need help with vocal and bass effects
  • Delay is like if you clap in a big empty hallway with flat walls and you hear the clap again some fraction of a second later. It's a direct echo bouncing off the wall. Rockabilly is a genre that is known for having a very loud, apparent delay effect on the vocals. Other genres also use delay, but quieter so you wouldn't notice unless you're listening for it. See below for an example of delay

    Reverb is the decay of a more complex echo as it becomes less distinct and blends together with itself. Like a sound reverberating in a cathedral or a concert hall. Although the reverb can be in a room of any size.

  • Need help with vocal and bass effects
  • I usually route vocals into a vocal fx channel and make that channel 100% "wet". This is so the unchanged vocal and the fx volumes can be changed independently. Typically I would use EQ and compression on the dry channel, then delay and reverb on the FX channel. Delay can be subtle or it can be very, very loud depending on what you want stylistically.

    Dry means no FX, wet means effects only. Sometimes people will set the wet/dry slider to a number in the middle and have it all on one channel, but I don't like that because in that case, you lower the dry volume every time you increase the wet volume. A separate fx channel doesn't have that problem.

  • Need help with vocal and bass effects
  • You can get by with the built in FX in any DAW. May I ask what program you are recording into?

    Edit: just realized you meant for live sound. Most decent mixers have vocal FX built in. EQ at minimum. Delay and reverb are next most important, but a little reverb goes a long way for live sound. You can also get a vocal effects pedal if you want access to change it mid performance. The info below is still useful though, understanding what delay and reverb.

    Personally I found that my mixer's built in FX were more than enough for me, but obviously some genres have more peculiar needs. I do gigs with only eq pretty often. EQ will get you very far, and live rooms have natural delay and reverb just based on the geometry of the room.

  • "Will no one rid me of these turbulent regulators?"
  • This tweet would be suspension worthy before X times.

  • It appears that POLITICS are happening in the Sao Paola mayoral race.
  • ‪Sophia com PH 💛‬ ‪@sophifn.bsky.social‬

    ·

    2h

    So the guy speaking is Pablo Marçal, he’s a grifter life coach who is rising in the polls by just spreading fake news and bating opponents with cheap tactics and posting clips that go viral on IG. The guy who hit him is Datena who is a famous “news anchor” kinda? But for those programs that only+

    Sophia com PH 💛

    ‪@sophifn.bsky.social‬

    +speak about crime and violence and that kind of stuff. If you watch Elite Squad 2 he is kinda like Fortunato. So they’re both running for mayor for the city of São Paulo and Marçal is talking about how Datena is not a man because he threatened to slap him in the last debate and didn’t. Then chaos

  • Latest would-be Trump assassin is a Neocon warmonger
  • He was caught before he fired any shots. His rifle was sticking out of the bushes 2 golf holes away lmao.

  • Putin wants Russian gamers to have a Steam and Steam Deck alternative

    In 5 to 15 years, Russian :gamer:s could have a portable console.

    No paywall. Lots of glib jokes about the russia-ukraine war and balconies in the article though.

    3
    A dark vision of the future

    It's 2034, on the morning of January 25th in New York City. I wake up, roll out of bed and quietly open the window to let the 70 degree dirty air inside without waking my 7 roommates (all sleeping in here with me, of course). Then I check my VR glasses to see where the cheapest Wendy's breakfast sandwich surge pricing is and put it in Googazon Maps. The subway was abolished in 2028, but the cheap Wendy's today is only a 40 minute detour from my car commute to Manhattan. I have to take a second detour around the Bronx because the levies broke again today. I catch a morning war report from President Hunter Brandon's State Department to make sure the highway wasn't bombed by American Zionist drone strikes.

    5
    Radicalizing my lib parents on Israel/Palestine as often as I can get away with (and you can too) Feb 26

    cross-posted from: https://hexbear.net/post/1928681

    > The rest of this story has been in the hexbear megathreads, but I'll probably compile it into a post someday. It's mostly me using facts and logic, along with ethos and pathos and Norm Finkelstein's book Gaza to convince them that Israel is a genocidal ethnostate. > > Report: February 26th 2024 > > I am still continuing to radicalize my parents on Israel/Palestine as often as I can get away with. Today, I explained to them what white phosphorous is and how often Israel is using it. And where it is manufactured (it's the USA, folks, in good old St Louis, MO). > > If you don't know already, white phosphorous is > ::: spoiler NSFL description of a banned weapon that Israel uses weekly > this sticky goo that bursts into flame on contact with the air, then it burns the skin of the victims and poisons you by entering the holes that just burned up, causing liver damage and eventually multiple organ failure. > ::: > Also mentioned that Israel destroyed nearly every hospital in Gaza, so no treatment for those women and children burned with chemical weapons. > > My mom searched "white phosphorus israel" and saw that Israel did a white phosphorus attack on a Jabalia refugee camp on October 31, killing 195+ civilians (they're all civilians, it's a FUCKING REFUGEE CAMP). > > Source here, debate perverts: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/31_October_2023_Jabalia_refugee_camp_airstrike > > I asked my dad "What you are supposed to do when evil wins and your country is funding it?" (Thanks JT for the excellent framing device). He had a long think about that one.

    0
    Radicalizing my lib parents on Israel/Palestine as often as I can get away with (and you can too) Feb 26

    The rest of this story has been in the megathreads, but I'll probably compile it into a post someday. It's mostly me using facts and logic, along with ethos and pathos and Norm Finkelstein's book Gaza to convince them that Israel is a genocidal ethnostate.

    Report: February 26th 2024

    I am still continuing to radicalize my parents on Israel/Palestine as often as I can get away with. Today, I explained to them what white phosphorous is and how often Israel is using it. And where it is manufactured (it's the USA, folks, in good old St Louis, MO).

    If you don't know already, white phosphorous is

    NSFL description of a banned weapon that Israel uses weekly

    this sticky goo that bursts into flame on contact with the air, then it burns the skin of the victims and poisons you by entering the holes that just burned up, causing liver damage and eventually multiple organ failure.

    Also mentioned that Israel destroyed nearly every hospital in Gaza, so no treatment for those women and children burned with chemical weapons.

    My mom searched "white phosphorus israel" and saw that Israel did a white phosphorus attack on a Jabalia refugee camp on October 31, killing 195+ civilians (they're all civilians, it's a FUCKING REFUGEE CAMP).

    Source here, debate perverts: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/31_October_2023_Jabalia_refugee_camp_airstrike

    I asked my dad "What you are supposed to do when evil wins and your country is funding it?" (Thanks JT for the excellent framing device). He had a long think about that one.

    1
    PSA on bumping Mutual Aid posts

    Comrades, on a recent mutual aid comm post, I received 8 upbears on my bump comment and zero other bump comments. This is a ROOKIE MISTAKE! Don't just give me heckin comment upvoterinos, BUMP IT YOURSELF! The more people that see mutual aid comm posts, the more mutual aid happens. You don't necessarily need money to contribute in this regard.

    Comment mutual aid poats to bump for active sort. Also upvote the post, which helps it show up on Hot.

    19
    YSK: Nobody is stopping you from making homemade Sour Warheads soda

    I heard that the official sour warheads soda isn't sour and at least one user on here is sad about it.

    You should know that Malic Acid and Citric Acid (and also Lactic Acid, often used in sour beers) are available as concentrated food-safe powders. You can use them in mixed drinks, including turning that boring apple, grape, watermelon, or lemon-lime soda into something you really shouldn't pour down your throat. Nobody is stopping you.

    For people who aren't spice-lords or sour-lords, here is a video with some more "normal" and less extreme culinary uses for acids from America's Test Kitchen on YouTube.

    Invidious private version of the video link: Why Acids Are as Important as Salt | What’s Eating Dan?

    0
    Is there a spectrum of how much people care about their own gender? Do any other people feel ambivalent about their own gender?

    CW: I will discuss body dismorphia, or the (seeming) lack thereof I feel when thinking what it would be like to have been assigned the wrong gender. Also I describe sexual roles and thinking about having different anatomy.

    Ok, so I've previously read Trans Liberation by Leslie Feinberg and I care about gender insofar as it takes to ensure all gender nonconforming people get healthcare, feel safe in public life, etc. I also will/have changed my language as much as it takes to make my trans comrades feel comfortable. With that out of the way:

    I am a cis male, and I guess I am mostly okay with the body I've been given. I prefer to be called him, but I would only be a little annoyed if someone used she/her or they/them to describe me. If I try to imagine my body with a vagina and developing breasts in puberty with my current state of mind, I don't feel very much discomfort. I don't feel particularly attached to the role of penetrating another partner as a gay guy who enjoys bottoming more than topping. If I was forced to wear dresses to church growing up, I don't imagine I would be very distressed.

    I do value the relative ease of building muscle that comes with having a male hormonal profile, and I guess dealing with having a female hormonal profile could be alarming, but mostly because it's not what I'm used to. But before puberty, I also wasn't used to having a bunch of testosterone.

    On some level, I understand that it can be traumatic to be the target of violence and hate speech, or to be denied medical care. I'm speaking from a position of relative privilege.

    Does this mean I'm possibly non-binary? Or something else? I feel content to be assumed as male, but I don't feel that strongly about it. And the title question again, does anybody else who is cisgender or otherwise just not have strong feelings about their own gender?

    23
    ExpressVPN uses dark pattern UI design to prevent cancellation

    They hide subscription management under an unlabeled arrow next to your subscription number. Then you have to click cancel auto renewal THREE YES THREE times before it says subscription canceled.

    I tried and failed to cancel twice not knowing this. Never use ExpressVPN.

    0