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naraburns  nihil supernum  1mo ago (text post)   4312 thread views

Quality Contributions Report for November 2025

This is the Quality Contributions Roundup. It showcases interesting and well-written comments and posts from the period covered. If you want to get an idea of what this community is about or how we want you to participate, look no further (except the rules maybe--those might be important too).

As a reminder, you can nominate Quality Contributions by hitting the report button and selecting the "Actually A Quality Contribution!" option. Additionally, links to all of the roundups can be found in the wiki of /r/theThread which can be found here. For a list of other great community content, see here.

These are mostly chronologically ordered, but I have in some cases tried to cluster comments by topic so if there is something you are looking for (or trying to avoid), this might be helpful.

Particular thanks/congratulations this month to @Rov_Scam, who double-tapped two weeks and the Main Motte category this month, carrying nearly 20% of the total report. Some of you may recall that one of the ways I whittle down the list is, if you have multiple QC nominations in a single month, each comment included in the final report weighs against including an additional comment in the report. Nevertheless, the primary driver of the AAQC report is community feedback, and of the dozen or so comments @Rov_Scam had nominated, every comment included here was in the top ten posts of the month.

Quality Contributions to the Main Motte

@Rov_Scam:

@problem_redditor:

@comicsansstein:

@roystgnr:

Contributions for the week of October 27, 2025

@FiveHourMarathon:

Contributions for the week of November 3, 2025

@OliveTapenade:

@Hieronymus:

@Rov_Scam:

@BahRamYou:

@Amadan:

@BreakerofHorsesandMen:

@clo:

@Bartender_Venator:

Contributions for the week of November 10, 2025

@aqouta:

@Agentorange:

@Dean:

@Rov_Scam:

@FtttG:

@faceh:

Contributions for the week of November 17, 2025

@BahRamYou:

@teleoplexy:

@Rov_Scam:

@FiveHourMarathon:

@DirtyWaterHotDog:

@ABigGuy4U:

@Dean:

Contributions for the week of November 24, 2025

@self_made_human:

@FiveHourMarathon:

@Dean:

@thejdizzler:

@Iconochasm:

@problem_redditor:

@georgioz:

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"If I had more time, I would have written a shorter letter."

If I'd expected a nomination I'd have tried to be a little less rambly. That was supposed to be a "I've been a bit too pessimistic about Blue Origin, here's a correction, my bad", but I kept seeing more to add and I couldn't think of anything to cut.

So, screw it, here's more to add, for anyone who was interested in the prior post:

The first LandSpace Zhuque-3 launch just reached orbit, then failed its booster recovery. For them this is excellent news on the whole.

Great news: new rocket designs tend to fail their first flight as often as not, and it's always a relief to see "not", especially with a design that's trying to be cutting edge with stainless steel tankage and methane engines. For comparison, their Zhuque-2 failed on both its first launch and on the latest of its 5 launches since.

Bad news: they could have been the third institution ever to manage a powered orbital booster landing, mere weeks after Blue Origin became the second; now there's a decent chance of them being beaten to it.

Good news: they came really close to being second, with the returning booster crashing right next to the landing pad, despite Blue Origin having roughly a 150% head start. At this rate they'll almost certainly manage a landing faster (relative to company founding) than either Blue Origin or SpaceX did. Older Chinese launch vehicle designs were infamous for dropping expended boosters near populated villages with little control while spraying carcinogenic orange smoke; even if LandSpace takes a while to perfect their landings, a clean methane fire right over a dedicated landing zone is a perfectly reasonable outcome.

Bad news: the landing burn appears to have turned the entire booster into a fireball from one failed engine ignition. Half the point of clustering several engines on one booster is supposed to be that you can recover from a single failure, as happened to a SpaceX Dragon 1 cargo mission back in 2012.

Great news: even if they have a little work on robustness and landing to do, this rocket may be economical for them already; if they've hit their payload targets (hard to be sure yet; their first flight was a "mass simulator") then they've already doubled the payload of the Zhuque-2 and are up to roughly half that of Falcon 9, which they're expecting the Zhuque-3E to meet (at roughly the same price, too) after engine upgrades and a vehicle stretch.

One of the possible outcomes of the "new Space Race" has always been another Pyrrhic victory, this time for China: flags and footprints, Apollo style, followed by a series of cancellations of and creations of economically unsustainable programs, Apollo/Shuttle/Constellation/SLS style. That possibility is looking more and more remote. The next attempt at a new booster design landing, from a different Chinese launch vehicle, is expected later this month. Chinese institutions may take 3rd and 4th place in the reusable booster race.

Surprised my Years of Rice and Salt got AAQC'ed but not my OOTP post.

It is certainly interesting to see what catches people's fancy!

One of these days, I'm tempted to do a sort of review-post of the sort of trends seem to go into getting into the AAQC. A sort of 'So You Want To Write An AAQC...' tips / tricks / observations effort post.

My incredibly selfish ulterior motive would be to encourage people towards the sort of posting styles I enjoy, regardless of any statistical rigor.

As it should be.

I got one, and only one, AAQC a few years ago, and it was when I had to actually explain what I thought was an American, and what wasn't, and why I thought that.

Doomed to be a replyguy, I guess. There's worse fates in this world.

It was good stuff.

My only QCs have been for chewing the scenery over historical trivia. I cringe a bit when I look back.

"The point I am trying to make is that cheap, mass-produced slop has existed in the music industry for as long as production costs were cheap enough to justify it."

This conversation felt way too cute to me. Lots of describing Record Industry Facts as if they're more important than they are. Plus stuff like the following.

If the record companies wanted to, they could have always signed as many of these musicians as they could, pay for a recording session, pay the musicians a low flat fee, and completely spam the market for little cost. If they get a hit or two out of the deal, great. If not, they're only out ten grand.

Hearing that the requirements have gone from a group of trained people and ten thousand dollars to something a kid can do on their phone for free did not make me feel the way I think it was supposed to here. By this logic everyone concerned about AI visual art can just relax. After all, visual media companies could have always hired infinite boardwalk sketch artists to spam the market, but they didn't.

I think that @Rov_Scam has a point - one example is Spotify. According to this article, 80% of artists on Spotify have fewer than 50 monthly listeners, and only around 50% of tracks were played more than 500 times. So in that sense, there already exists more music almost nobody ever heard of, that you could conceivably listen to in your lifetime even in specific subgenres. And yet it did not move the needle too much for established artist.

According to this article, 80% of artists on Spotify have fewer than 50 monthly listeners

It's good to be above average.

Sure, those poor slobs cannot hold water to famous Sadie Winters. "Her" luck was that she was created in a few minutes by famous producer Rick Beato as part of CBS report on AI music. She now features in youtube music and has her own Spotify track. I guess this luck and nepotism means, that she is better artist than vast majority on Spotify.

she is better artist than vast majority on Spotify.

This but for real. The vast majority of modern music is such utter crap that such a middle of the road fairly cliche AI generated track can easily accomplish that.

In the video comments someone said "The AI created a song that has influences of The Cranberries, Enya, The Corrs and The Cardigans, and a dash of Whigfield." and my first thought was that even The Corrs had more personality. There is however one artist that immediately comes to mind as a comparison: Hillsong United with Oceans (Where feet may fall). It's fitting in an ironic way that IMO the closest "real" artist is a rather cringe intentionally crafted, overpolished and smoothed worship band straight out of a Christian megachurch.

I got a bunch of QCs, but they're all low voted. I wonder what the net upvotes per QC record in either direction is here.

And three cheers for @Rov_Scam, one of the guys keeping this place interesting.

It’s a great pleasure to see my ranting spawning several other AAQCs. My thanks to @Rov_Scam and you!

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