@ -32,7 +32,7 @@ The study of chess openings is called **opening theory** or just *theory*. Playi
**[Elo](elo.md) rating** is a mathematical system of numerically rating the performance of players (it is used in many sports, not just chess). Given two players with Elo rating it is possible to compute the probability of the game's outcome (e.g. white has 70% chance of winning etc.). The FIDE set the parameters so that the rating is roughly this: <1000:beginner,1000-2000:intermediate,2000-3000:master.Moreadvancedsystemshavealsobeencreated,namelytheGlickosystem.
The rules of chess are quite simple ([easy to learn, hard to master](easy_to_learn_hard_to_master.md)) and can be found anywhere on the Internet. In short, the game is played on a 8x8 board by two players: one with **white** pieces, one with **black**. Each piece has a way of moving and capturing (eliminating) enemy pieces, for example bishops move diagonally while pawns move one square forward and take diagonally. The goal is to **checkmate** the opponent's king, i.e. make the king attacked by a piece while giving him no way to escape this attack. There are also lesser known rules that noobs often miss and ignore, e.g. so called en-passant or the 50 move rule that declares a draw if there has been no significant move for 50 moves.
The rules of chess are quite simple ([easy to learn, hard to master](easy_to_learn_hard_to_master.md)) and can be found anywhere on the Internet. In short, the game is played on a 8x8 board by two players: one with **[white](white.md)** pieces, one with **[black](black.md)** (LOL IT'S [RACIST](racism.md) :D). Each piece has a way of moving and capturing (eliminating) enemy pieces, for example bishops move diagonally while pawns move one square forward and take diagonally. The goal is to **checkmate** the opponent's king, i.e. make the king attacked by a piece while giving him no way to escape this attack. There are also lesser known rules that noobs often miss and ignore, e.g. so called en-passant or the 50 move rule that declares a draw if there has been no significant move for 50 moves.
At the competitive level **clock** (so called *time control*) is used to give each player a limited time for making moves: with unlimited move time games would be painfully long and more a test of patience than skill. Clock can also nicely help balance unequal opponent by giving the stronger player less time to move. Based on the amount of time to move there exist several formats, most notably **correspondence** (slowest, days for a move), **classical** (slow, hours per game), **rapid** (faster, tens of minutes per game), **blitz** (fast, a few seconds per move) and **bullet** (fastest, units of seconds per move).
{ I am still learning the beautiful game of go, please excuse potential unintentional errors here. ~drummyfish }
Go (from Japanese *Igo*, "surrounding board game", also *Baduk* or *Wei-qi*) is possibly the world's oldest original-form two-player board [game](game.md), coming from Asia, and is one of the most beautiful, elegant, deep and popular games of this type in [history](history.md), whose cultural significance and popularity can be compared to that of [chess](chess.md), despite it largely remaining widely popular only in Asia (along with other games like [shogi](shogi.md), or "Japanese chess"). There however, especially in Japan, go is pretty big, it appears a lot in [anime](anime.md), there are TV channels exclusively dedicated to go etc. **Go is a bit difficult to get into** (kind of like [vim](vim.md)?) though the rules can be learned quite quickly; it is hard to make big-picture sense of the rule implications and it may take weeks to months before one can even call himself a beginner player. To become a master takes lifetime.
Go (from Japanese *Igo*, "surrounding board game", also *Baduk* or *Wei-qi*) is possibly the world's oldest original-form two-player board [game](game.md), coming from Asia, and is one of the most beautiful, elegant, deep and popular games of this type in [history](history.md), whose cultural significance and popularity can be compared to that of [chess](chess.md), despite it largely remaining widely popular only in Asia (along with other games like [shogi](shogi.md), or "Japanese chess"). There however, especially in Japan, go is pretty big, it appears a lot in [anime](anime.md), there are TV channels exclusively dedicated to go etc., though in Japan [shogi](shogi.md) (the "Japanese chess") is probably a bit more popular; nevertheless go is likely the most intellectually challenging board games among all of the biggest board games.**Go is a bit difficult to get into** (kind of like [vim](vim.md)?) though the rules can be learned quite quickly; it is hard to make big-picture sense of the rule implications and it may take weeks to months before one can even call himself a beginner player. To become a master takes lifetime.
{ There is a nice non-bloated site hosting everything related to go: Sensei's Library at https://senseis.xmp.net/. ~drummyfish }
Music is an auditory [art](art.md) whose aim is to create [pleasant](beautiful.md) sound of longer duration that usually adheres to some rules and structure, such as those of melody, harmony, rhythm and repetition. Music has played a huge role throughout all history of human [culture](culture.md). It is impossible to precisely define what *music* is as the term is [fuzzy](fuzzy.md), i.e. its borders are unclear; what one individual or culture considers music may to another one sound like [noise](noise.md) without any artistic value, and whatever rule we set in music is never set in stone and will be broken by some artists (there exists music without chords, melody, harmony, rhythm, repetition... even without any sound at all). Music is mostly created by singing and playing musical instruments such as [piano](piano.md), guitar or drums, but it may contain also other sounds; it can be recorded and played back, and in all creation, recording and playing back [computers](computer.md) are widely used nowadays.
Music is an auditory [art](art.md) whose aim is to create [pleasant](beautiful.md) sound of longer duration that usually adheres to some rules and structure, such as those of melody, harmony, rhythm and repetition. Music has played a huge role throughout all history of human [culture](culture.md). It is impossible to precisely define what *music* is as the term is [fuzzy](fuzzy.md), i.e. its borders are unclear; what one individual or culture considers music may to another one sound like [noise](noise.md) without any artistic value, and whatever rule we set in music is never set in stone and will be broken by some artists (there exists music without chords, melody, harmony, rhythm, repetition... even without any sound at all, see *Four Minutes Thirty Three Seconds*). Music is mostly created by singing and playing musical instruments such as [piano](piano.md), guitar or drums, but it may contain also other sounds; it can be recorded and played back, and in all creation, recording and playing back [computers](computer.md) are widely used nowadays.
**Music is deeply about [math](math.md)**, though most musicians don't actually have much clue about it and just play "intuitively", by feel and by the ear. Nevertheless the theory of scales, musical intervals, harmony, rhythm and other elements of music is quite complex;
@ -10,7 +10,7 @@ Music is an auditory [art](art.md) whose aim is to create [pleasant](beautiful.m
{ I don't actually know that much about the theory, I will only write as much as I know, which is possibly somewhat simplified, but suffices for some kind of overview. Please keep this in mind and don't eat me. ~drummyfish }
Our current western music is almost exclusively based on major and minor diatonic scales with 12 equal temperament tuning -- i.e. basically our scales differ just by their transposition and have the same structure, that of 5 whole tone steps and 2 semitone steps in the same relative places, AND a semitone step always corresponds to the multiplying factor of 12th root of 2 -- this all is basically what we nowadays find on our pianos and in our songs and other compositions. 4/4 rhythm is most common but other ones appear, e.g. 3/4. Yeah this may sound kinda too nerdy, but it's just to set clear what we'll work with in this section. Here we will just suppose this kind of music. Also western music has some common structures such as verses, choruses, bridges etc.; lyrics of music follows many rules of poetry, it utilizes rhymes, its own rhythm based on syllables, choice of pleasant sounding words etc.
Our current western music is almost exclusively based on major and minor diatonic scales with 12 equal temperament tuning -- i.e. basically our scales differ just by their transposition and have the same structure, that of 5 whole tone steps and 2 semitone steps in the same relative places, AND a semitone step always corresponds to the multiplying factor of 12th root of 2 -- this all is basically what we nowadays find on our pianos and in our songs and other compositions. 4/4 rhythm is most common but other ones appear, e.g. 3/4. Yeah this may sound kinda too nerdy, but it's just to set clear what we'll work with in this section. Here we will just suppose this kind of music. Also western music has some common structures such as verses, choruses, bridges etc.; lyrics of music follow many rules of poetry, they utilizes rhymes, rhythm based on syllables, choice of pleasant sounding words etc.
**Why are we using this specific scale n shit, why are the notes like this bruh?** TODO
@ -27,7 +27,7 @@ Our current western music is almost exclusively based on major and minor diatoni
_|___|___|___|___|___|___|___|___|__
```
*Tones on piano keyboard, the "big keys" are white, the "smaller keys on top" are black.*
*Tones on piano keyboard, the "big keys" are [white](white.md), the "smaller keys on top" are [black](black.md).*
OK so above we have part of a piano keyboard, tones go from lower (left) to higher (right), the keyboard tones just repeat the same above and below. The white keys are named simply A, B, C, ..., the black keys are named by their neighboring white key either by adding *#* (sharp) to the left note or by adding *b* (flat) to the right note (notes such as C# and Db can be considered the same withing the scales we are dealing with). Note: it is convenient to see C as the "start tone" (instead of A) because then we get a nice major scale that has no black keys in it and is easy to play on piano; just ignore this and suppose we kind of "start" on C for now.
@ -35,7 +35,7 @@ Take a look at the C note at the left for example; we can see there is another C
Other important intervals are **tone** and **semitone**. Semitone is a step from one key to the immediately next key (even from white to black and vice versa), for example from C to C#, from E to F, from G# to A etc. A tone is two semitones, e.g. from C to D, from F# to G# etc. There are 12 semitones in one octave (you have to make 12 steps from one tone to get to that tone's higher octave version), so a semitone has a multiplying factor of 2^1/12 (12th root of two). For example C2 being 65 hertz, D2 is 65 * 2^1/12 ~= 69 hertz. This makes sense as if you make 12 steps then you just multiply 12th root of two twelve times and are left simply with multiply by 2, i.e. one octave.
Shogi, also called *Japanese chess*, is an old Asian board game, very similar to [chess](chess.md), and is greatly popular in Japan.
TODO
Similarly to [chess](chess.md), [go](go.md) and other similar board games, [LRS](lrs.md) sees shogi as one of the best games ever as it is legally not owned by anyone, is relatively [simple](kiss.md), cheap and doesn't even require computer to be played.
Shogi, also called *Japanese chess*, is an old Asian board [game](game.md), very similar to [chess](chess.md), and is greatly popular in Japan, even a bit more than [go](go.md), the second biggest Japanese board game. Shogi is yet more complex (and [bloated](bloat.md)) than chess, has a bigger board, more pieces and more complex rules that besides others allow pieces to come back to play; for a chess player shogi is not that hard to get into as the basic rules are still very similar, and it may offer a new challenge and experience. Also similarly to chess, [go](go.md), [backgammon](backgammon.md) and similar board games, [LRS](lrs.md) sees shogi as one of the best games ever as it is legally not owned by anyone (it is [public domain](public_domain.md)), is relatively [simple](kiss.md), cheap and doesn't even require a computer to be played. The [culture](culture.md) of shogi is also different from that of chess, there are many rituals connected to how the game is conducted, there are multiple champion titles, it is not common to offer draws etc.
{ Lol apparently (seen in a YT video) when in the opening one exchanges bishops, it is considered [rude](unsportmanship.md) to promote the bishop that takes, as it makes no difference because he will be immediately taken anyway. So ALWAYS DO THIS to piss off your opponent and increase your change of winning :D ~drummyfish }
The game's disadvantage and a barrier for entry especially for westeners is that the **traditional design of the pieces sucks big time** as the pieces are just same-colored pieces of wood with Chinese characters on them which are unintelligible to anyone non-Chinese and even to Chinese this greatly visually unclear -- all pieces just look the same on first sight and the pieces of both player are distinguished just by their rotation. But of course you may use different, visually better pieces, which is also an option in many shogi programs.
The game's disadvantage and a barrier for entry, especially for westeners, is that the **traditional design of the shogi pieces sucks big time**, for they are just same-colored pieces of wood with Chinese characters written on them which are unintelligible to anyone non-Chinese and even to Chinese this is greatly visually unclear -- all pieces just look the same on first sight and the pieces of both player are distinguished just by their rotation, not color (color is only used in amateur sets to distinguish normal and promoted pieces). But of course you may use different, visually better pieces, which is also an option in many shogi programs -- a popular choice nowadays are so called *international* pieces that show both the Chinese character along with a simple, easily distinguishable piece symbol. There are also sets for children/beginners that have on them visually indicated how the piece moves.
@ -45,7 +45,7 @@ Back in the days (90s and early 2000s) web used to be a place of freedom working
As the time marched on web used to become more and more [shit](shit.md), as is the case with everything touched by [capitalist](capitalist_software.md) hand -- the advent of so called **web 2.0** brought about a lot of [complexity](complexity.md), websites started to incorporate client-side scripts ([JavaScript](javascript.md), [Flash](flash.md), [Java](java.md) applets, ...) which led to many negative things such as incompatibility with browsers (kickstarting browser consumerism and [update culture](update_culture.md)), performance loss and security vulnerabilities (web pages now became Turing complete programs rather than mere documents) and more complexity in web browsers, which leads to immense [bloat](bloat.md) and browser [monopolies](bloat_monopoly.md) (greater effort is needed to develop a browser, making it a privilege of those who can afford it, and those can subsequently dictate de-facto standards that further strengthen their monopolies). Another disaster came with **[social networks](social_network.md)** in mid 2000s, most notably [Facebook](facebook.md) but also [YouTube](youtube.md), [Twitter](twitter.md) and others, which centralized the web and rid people of control. Out of comfort people stopped creating and hosting own websites and rather created a page on Facebook. This gave the power to corporations and allowed **mass-surveillance**, **mass-censorship** and **propaganda brainwashing**. As the web became more and more popular, corporations and governments started to take more control over it, creating technologies and laws to make it less free. By 2020, the good old web is but a memory and a hobby of a few boomers, everything is controlled by corporations, infected with billions of unbearable ads, [DRM](drm.md), malware (trackers, [crypto](crypto.md) miners, ...), there exist no good web browsers, web pages now REQUIRE JavaScript even if it's not needed in principle due to which they are painfully slow and buggy, there are restrictive laws and censorship and de-facto laws (site policies) put in place by corporations controlling the web.
Mainstream web is quite literally unusable nowadays. What people searched for on the web they now search on on a handful of platforms like Facebook and YouTube (often not even using a web browser but rather a mobile "[app](app.md)"); if you try to "google" something, what you get is just a list of unusable sites written by [AIs](ai.md) that load for several minutes (unless you have the latest 1024 TB RAM beast) and won't let you read beyond the first paragraph without registration. These sites are uplifted by [SEO](seo.md) for pure commercial reasons, they contain no useful information, just ads. Useful sites are buried under several millions of unusable results or downright censored for political reasons (e.g. using some forbidden word). Thankfully you can still try to browse the [smol web](smol_internet.md) with search engines such as [wiby](wiby.md), but still that only gives a glimpse of what the good old web used to be.
Mainstream web is quite literally unusable nowadays. { 2023 update: whole web is now behind [cuckflare](cloudfare.md) plus [secure HTTPS safety privacy antipedophile science encrypted privacy antiterrorist democratic safety privacy security expert antiracist sandboxed protection](https.md) and therefore literally can't be used. Also Google has been absolutely destroyed by the [LLM](llm.md) AIs now. ~drummyfish } What people searched for on the web they now search on on a handful of platforms like Facebook and YouTube (often not even using a web browser but rather a mobile "[app](app.md)"); if you try to "google" something, what you get is just a list of unusable sites written by [AIs](ai.md) that load for several minutes (unless you have the latest 1024 TB RAM beast) and won't let you read beyond the first paragraph without registration. These sites are uplifted by [SEO](seo.md) for pure commercial reasons, they contain no useful information, just ads. Useful sites are buried under several millions of unusable results or downright censored for political reasons (e.g. using some forbidden word). Thankfully you can still try to browse the [smol web](smol_internet.md) with search engines such as [wiby](wiby.md), but still that only gives a glimpse of what the good old web used to be.
