Free Talk Friday #580

[u/CutOnBumInBandHere9]

Continued from last week's FTF here

It's that time of the week again. Speak anything on your mind! This thread is for talking about anything off-topic, be it your lives, your strava, your plans, your hobbies, studies, stats, pets, bears, hikes, dragons, trousers, travels, transit, cycling, family, colours, or anything you like or dislike, except politics

Feel free to check out our tidbits thread and introduce yourself if you haven't already.

[u/CutOnBumInBandHere9]

Apologies for being slow, but I have now updated the side threads database with the comments from here. If you come across any other systematic weirdness or gaps in the data, please let me know!

[u/TehVulpez → u/CutOnBumInBandHere9]

hi COBIBH, thanks for the new sqlite database. I have a question about the position column. do top-level comments use position=1 if they are the first count in a brand new sidethread or a "001" from a thread posted by someone other than the previous getter, or do they still use position=0 the same as reposted gets? at first I assumed that they were treated differently from looking at the start of some threads, but I'm realizing now that may be an artifact of the old CSV logs not including reposted gets. I want to be sure my CSVs are consistent with your database.

[u/CutOnBumInBandHere9 → u/TehVulpez]

Conceptually they should definitely start with 1 in those cases. There's just nothing in the code that actually does this.

New threads are "easy": just check if the submission id and first submission id are the same, then shift the position. 

In theory, non repeated gets should be detectable as well , but the problem here is that there's no easy way of making sure that the linked comment in the previous post was actually the get, and not a random comment in the vicinity of the get 

[u/TehVulpez → u/CutOnBumInBandHere9]

thank you, this is good to know. tbh I'm not doing anything fancy either, I just have a checkbox to manually set it to count the first comment lol

[u/CutOnBumInBandHere9]

Weekly side thread stats from Friday October 02, 2026 to Friday October 09, 2026. Congratulations to u/h0rseycat, u/treje, and u/cuteballgames!

Total weekly side thread counts: 11733

Top 15 side thread counters:

Rank	User	Counts	HoST Rank
1	h0rseycat	5158	62 (◮25)
2	treje	1260	122 (◮17)
3	cuteballgames	1140	7
4	Pookah	1014	45 (◮1)
5	nonsensy	704	13 (◮1)
6	atomicimploder	630	2
7	miceee	428	51 (◮1)
8	TehVulpez	419	11
9	Hans5958_	389	90 (◮4)
10	BobRoss938	97	38
11	ShadeOfNothing	57	32
12	Isaythereisa-chance	54	40
13	Antichess	50	10
14	PhosphorCrystaled	45	97
15	elyisgreat	40	49

Top 5 side threads:

Rank	Thread	Counts
1	Tug of War	1347
2	Senary (0-5)	1285
3	Compositions	850
4	Quaternary (0-3)	730
5	Hexadecimal (0-F)	664

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[u/treje → u/CutOnBumInBandHere9]

sheesh that's a lot of counts

[u/cuteballgames → u/CutOnBumInBandHere9]

Thanks for the stats!

[u/ClockButTakeOutTheL]

I know it probably doesn’t interest most of you but I showcased my mafia role ideas in a recent post, check it out if you wanna

[u/cuteballgames → u/ClockButTakeOutTheL]

I fuck with them

[u/CutOnBumInBandHere9 → u/ClockButTakeOutTheL]

Do you have a link? Reddit has decided I'm possibly underage and so won't show me any pages marked nsfw, which includes your profile page. And there's no way I'm showing them my passport or my face 

[u/TehVulpez → u/CutOnBumInBandHere9]

https://www.reddit.com/r/gamedesign/comments/1x2iz86/review_my_mafia_rolesrules/

[u/Antichess]

Dislike getting food poisoning from store bought mac and cheese

[u/CutOnBumInBandHere9 → u/Antichess]

Dislike getting food poisoning no matter the cause.

Get well soon! 

[u/buy_me_a_pint → u/Antichess]

Get well soon, food poisoning is not fun

[u/CutOnBumInBandHere9]

Thursday thoughts: We don't really need the latest comments pinned post any more. We can just check out u/h0rseycat's user page and take it from there. 

[u/TehVulpez → u/CutOnBumInBandHere9]

returning to tradition

[u/Pookah → u/CutOnBumInBandHere9]

hey, this is faster

[u/Isaythereisa-chance]

I had a fun week in the Big Apple. I spent my off hours walking around mostly checking out the architecture. I was hoping to see a few mole people coming out of the sewers. Maybe next year. 

[u/TehVulpez]

if positive has a million counters, i'm one of them.
if positive has 5 counters, i'm one of them.
if positive has one counter, that one is me.
if positive has no counters, i'm no longer alive.
if the world is against upcounting, i'm against the entire world.
til my last breath, i'll always count up

[u/cuteballgames]

Based on vulp's new stat page, the average compositions counter has 796 counts. Is there a side thread whose average counter has more?

[u/cuteballgames → u/cuteballgames]

Hard to tell exactly but I think main is like 450. ToW is 154. Letters is 158. ORD is 267. Your Age is 234. William the Conqueror is 111. Rationals is 272. Chess is 285

[u/cuteballgames → u/cuteballgames]

Sheep is 160. Octal is 198. Powerball is 300. Alphanumerics is 181. Moredig is 242. Colored squares is 121.

[u/cuteballgames → u/cuteballgames]

Throwaways is 71 -- by far the lowest I've looked at (in the 10k+ counts range)

NRD is 266 (even with an insane 10k+ slate of for Farty (36k!) Cobibh (26k!) Clock and TNF)

[u/cuteballgames → u/cuteballgames]

Hex is 267. Binary is 231. Math challenge get their count value to parity and also their average counter hoc value to parity at the same time devil emoji

[u/cuteballgames → u/cuteballgames]

Perms is 289. 420 counting is 110. Isenary is 135. IPV4 is 173. Factoradic is 309. Ternary is 191. Quat is 211.

Obviously a big factor for comps is that it's new, so less time for strays, but it's also not intuitive at all, which I think is probably also relevant for things like factoradic (which is named unintuitively - at least less intuitively than when it was called Increasing base with no digit.)

I guess I'd suppose that there are a few the main components correlated with a higher average counters' score:

• Threads people like to run in (which are also those that tend to have higher count totals after all) will have higher average counter scores. Hence Main and Hex/Bin (the latter two with runs fueled both by basic-sides runners and parity seekers) have higher ACSes than William the Conqueror, which is a bitch to run. Note that most meme threads involve a bunch of extra typing and often have formats not conducive to copy-paste-modify running strategies

• Niche threads will have higher average counter scores — they tend to be mathematically or numerically interesting, and hence attract a few dedicated acolytes; however, they are not especially intuitive, or seem formidable/intimidating, so they tend not to get as many one-off or occasional counters — cowbin is 254. Csf doesn't even have 10k counts, but it does have several thousand, and I'd guess that it has a ACS higher than 300

[u/TehVulpez → u/cuteballgames]

I wonder if compositions would have more counters if it didn't have stuff like "c_1 + c_2 + ... + c_k, where each c_i >= 1, and k <= n" in its description. it's really a pretty simple thread but maybe that makes it look scarier than it really is lmao

[u/cuteballgames → u/TehVulpez]

truke

[u/miceee → u/cuteballgames]

Thanks to basically only me and horseycat running the entirety of the last thread that number is now up to 910

[u/cuteballgames → u/miceee]

Haha that's awesome

[u/Antichess]

OUR GLORIOUS LAND HAS BEEN INVADED!!!

https://pixelcanvas.io/@-3448,-2303,0

[u/TehVulpez]

consider:

circle of fifths

letter permutations

triangular numbers

[u/Pookah]

How about Binary Tug of War? I'm sure it would get confusing which is why I like it.

0 1 10 11 10 1 0 -1 0 -1 -10 -11 -100

[u/Jalmal2]

Dislike the creature of the night

[u/cuteballgames]

Corollary: which major side thread's number 1 counter has the least high % of total counts in the thread?

[u/Antichess]

Weekly stats from October 02, 2026 to October 09, 2026. Congratulations to /u/h0rseycat, /u/CutOnBumInBandHere9, and /u/thephilsblogbar2!

Total weekly counts: 4069 (5,642,271-5,646,340)

More stats are posted on the Weekly Stats page!

Rank	User	Counts	HoC Rank
1	h0rseycat	1415	133 (◮50)
2	CutOnBumInBandHere9	1048	15 (◮2)
3	thephilsblogbar2	857	1
4	wet-gravity	344	77 (◮3)
5	cuteballgames	110	11
6	noduorg	103	36
7	Pookah	58	116
8	atomicimploder	26	10
9	Antichess	21	3
10	treje	17	37
11	ShadeOfNothing	14	68
12	TehVulpez	12	22
13	BobRoss938	8	128
14	ddodd69	7	263 (◮3)
15	Jalmal2	6	50
16	LikeItsYourJob	5	187 (◮1)
17	davidjl123	4	4
17	miceee	4	151 (⧩1)
17	Isaythereisa-chance	4	115
20	InteractionSilent772	2	3522 (◮316)
21	mistyskye14	1	26
21	Iamsodarncool	1	3251 (◮127)
21	No-Strike-3794	1	7459 (◮2027)
21	Hans5958_	1	330
21	FelipePlayz9	1	530

[u/cuteballgames → u/Antichess]

Thanks for the stats!

[u/CutOnBumInBandHere9 → u/Antichess]

I like how h0rseycat is in both first and fourth place 

[u/Antichess → u/CutOnBumInBandHere9]

oh my i messed up again. i merged the stats but forgot to add h0rseycat as an alias 🤦‍♂️

[u/TehVulpez]

tims weeney fort night

[u/BobRoss938]

Only Double Counting link is broken in the directory. Here is latest count: https://old.reddit.com/r/counting/comments/1wquyfz/only_double_counting_35000/pghsgz2/

[u/CutOnBumInBandHere9 → u/BobRoss938]

Good catch! There was a stray comment which was confusing the updater. I've removed the comment, and hopefully the bot should get to the right place next time it runs. Otherwise I'll move the link manually tomorrow

[u/TehVulpez → u/CutOnBumInBandHere9]

hi COBIBH, it's since been manually fixed, but I've noticed that every time a new rationals thread is created, the directory updater gets stuck with the factors table as the latest count

[u/CutOnBumInBandHere9 → u/TehVulpez]

That's odd. I'll try to understand why next time I'm in front of my laptop. I'm currently in a small cabin in Sweden, so that'll be on Sunday at the earliest 

[u/TehVulpez → u/CutOnBumInBandHere9]

this has also happened to the new get schedule for compositions, so it seems this isn't specific to rationals sidethread

[u/CutOnBumInBandHere9 → u/TehVulpez]

I've quickly scanned through the code on my phone, and it looks like the intended behaviour is to follow the earliest top level comment that looks like a count. I'll try to figure out if it's the ordering or the filtering that's going wrong 

[u/TehVulpez]

posting some shit like this but over tug of war

[u/TehVulpez → u/TehVulpez]

I will never forget and never forgive the downcount ruffians for when they burned down the upcounting town of Lawrence

[u/Playing_2]

Did y'all Base 17 this week?

[u/Pookah]

Some threads that need attention:

Prime Factorization 6 days ago

Pookah's Sieve: Not (Prime, Even, Divisible by 3, or a Perfect Square) 8 days ago

By age of your reddit account 10 days ago