I just wanted to let folks know that, over the past few decades, there's been a growing interest in reviving old sword-fighting techniques. It's broadly known as HEMA (Historical European Martial Arts) and it includes a very wide range of systems, all based on surviving manuals. For the 17th and 18th we've got a ton of surviving material on a wide range of swords from basket hilted broadswords to smallswords. These later period manuals tend to be a lot easier to approach than the medieval stuff, and there's a lot of on-line instructional material as well as modern sparring-safe simulators in production. While there's not much specifically naval until the 19th century, the methods apply pretty broadly within a specific time period. I'd recommend Roworth as a general introduction.
u/Delicious-Gap-6678
The idea of making fun of pretentious dojos and grifters trying to make money off people once had some merit to it. But looking at this place now, there is post after post of regular people filming themselves solely for their own training. Or even worse some yinyang secretly filming them screwing up. These are just ordinary people trying things. Not fraudsters. Not "masters" abusing students. Just regular people who are trying to improve themselves or try new concepts. And the grifters have moved to THIS side of the fence, where they troll and farm with whatever backyard practice video they can steal. It's vile. Anyone here who's actually practiced real martial arts or contact sports has sucked at some point. Some of us have been fat or out of condition. All this place is doing now is making it less likely that people will be willing to improve themselves, for fear of some secret camera at the gym ready to mock them as "cringe."
While I hated the "AI" plotlines of Picard, it may have been accidentally prescient. I have a deep and growing suspicion that the new illustrious leader of Paramount, David Ellison, will use this beleaguered franchise as the testing ground for a new AI "enhanced" mainstream TV show. He's the son of Oracle founder Larry, of course, and he's been humping the leg of AI for years now. With the failure of nutrek, I fear him and his AI assistants are going to conclude this is a great time to unleash the full power of slop on us. I mean, why the hell wouldn't he? The more he can say Paramount is on the AI rocketship, the more the stock goes to the moon. The recent gains are all fueled by expectations for "AI cost savings." Which means slop. This would explain why actors, producers, etc. aren't hearing anything about what they're planning. Because it doesn't involve any of them. It's already been written by chatbots and they're playing with prompts to get something to carpet bomb us with.