site banner
PaperclipPerfector  1mo ago (text post)   2474 thread views

Friday Fun Thread for October 31, 2025

Be advised: this thread is not for serious in-depth discussion of weighty topics (we have a link for that), this thread is not for anything Culture War related. This thread is for Fun. You got jokes? Share 'em. You got silly questions? Ask 'em.

2
Top Bottom Old Controversial Comments
Jump in the discussion.

No email address required.

Last week I learned Nvidia cards could apply AI upscaling to video playback. The process is so fucking fiddly that I had to reinstall Windows just to make sure nothing was interfering with it, and the results are... strange.

Movies are fine. I haven't played with them much. It still can't save "Tony vs Paul" from the early days of YouTube because it's 240p and it only works on 360p and better. Let's hope Google's own upscaler can tackle it. It's weebery that I was more interested it.

Some anime looks phenomenal. You can see that it's an upscale, but it's a good anime-tuned upscale that recognizes that this specific video is supposed to have a limited color palette and clean lines and redraws the image with bold, contrasting strokes. 480p has never looked this good.

Other anime (same studio, same artist, same video stream format, same resolution) looks worse. You have to toggle the switch off and on just to see that it's working, and it's a very subtle effect, not like going from nearest neighbor to Lanczos interpolation is. It's almost like it's using a generic movie upsampler.

What is this place?

This website is a place for people who want to move past shady thinking and test their ideas in a court of people who don't all share the same biases. Our goal is to optimize for light, not heat; this is a group effort, and all commentators are asked to do their part.

The weekly Culture War threads host the most controversial topics and are the most visible aspect of The Motte. However, many other topics are appropriate here. We encourage people to post anything related to science, politics, or philosophy; if in doubt, post!

Check out The Vault for an archive of old quality posts. You are encouraged to crosspost these elsewhere.


Why are you called The Motte?

A motte is a stone keep on a raised earthwork common in early medieval fortifications. More pertinently, it's an element in a rhetorical move called a "Motte-and-Bailey", originally identified by philosopher Nicholas Shackel. It describes the tendency in discourse for people to move from a controversial but high value claim to a defensible but less exciting one upon any resistance to the former. He likens this to the medieval fortification, where a desirable land (the bailey) is abandoned when in danger for the more easily defended motte. In Shackel's words, "The Motte represents the defensible but undesired propositions to which one retreats when hard pressed."

On The Motte, always attempt to remain inside your defensible territory, even if you are not being pressed.


New post guidelines

If you're posting something that isn't related to the culture war, we encourage you to post a thread for it. A submission statement is highly appreciated, but isn't necessary for text posts or links to largely-text posts such as blogs or news articles; if we're unsure of the value of your post, we might remove it until you add a submission statement. A submission statement is required for non-text sources (videos, podcasts, images).

Culture war posts go in the culture war thread; all links must either include a submission statement or significant commentary. Bare links without those will be removed.

If in doubt, please post it!


Rules


Recommended Posts And Communities

Recommended Realtime Chats