u/-Clayburn

I've had Bluehost for like 10+ years. When I originally signed up, they were just basic hosting. Over the years it was constant "new features" I didn't need or want, and a bunch of upselling.

Now it's gotten to a point where they just don't work for my needs anymore. I renewed my "unlimited" plan and have a limit of 50 "websites", which basically means domains pointing to a folder. I have like 300+ domains and about 90 of them in actual use, though only about 10 are actual websites of note.

Anyway, I need something simple and cheap. It doesn't have to be dedicated or high bandwidth since I don't have anything that's in high use. But still, I want it to be reliable.

Mainly I want to cut out all the "feature" crap and just add a domain, point it to a subfolder and manage a handful of databases. And I'd need SSLs on the domains.

Any suggestions?

I was thinking about this because Hank Green recently mentioned that Jurassic Park was the first novel he read "that didn't have pictures", and I commented "Jurassic Park famously does have pictures."

Famously was perhaps an exaggeration, but thinking back I remember such a great, unique feeling every time one of these diagrams would come up in his books. It was subtle, and it was a little break in the reading. And I remember trying to figure out what it meant in the context or where it was heading or what, if anything, this was trying to tell me.

I imagine he included these to make the work feel more academic, and he probably came up with the idea because of his own medical school background and having to read a lot of academic papers. He'd even caption many of them with something like: fig. 1

Other books I've come across have a few pictures sometime, but they're usually a world map or maybe a specific illustration of a scene. I liked how these were not really items from the story usually, though maybe at times you could see them probably coming from that world somehow. It was like having an appendix except it would jump out at you at random moments.

He later pulled some similar, though weird, shit with State of Fear where he had scientific footnotes but was pretty obvious climate denial nonsense.

Anyway, what did you think when you encountered these?

I don't read much in general, so it's probably not a surprise I've never read Stephen King before. However, since he is such a famous modern author, I thought I should try it out. Plus I love a lot of adaptations from his work such as Stand By Me, The Shawshank Redemption and both The Stand miniseries (yes, even the recent one).

I also don't generally like horror, so that's probably why I avoided King specifically. He's mostly known for that genre. I decided to start with The Stand because I liked the miniseries a lot and both of them left me feeling like there should be more.

And in the novel (the 1990 updated one), there certainly is more but I'm still left with that same feeling: there should be more.

(There should be more.)

The thing that probably most stood out to me about the writing was just how good the writing is. I mean, I knew he was one of the greats, but just in terms of writing words I can't imagine anyone doing it much better. A lot of famous writers and their works seem to succeed more on the overall project, the full story, than on the writing itself. For example, I did read a lot of Michael Crichton and John Grisham when I was younger, and I'd say their style of writing is simply efficient. They don't draw attention to their writing at all, and the main takeaway is the story. You probably won't remember any lines from their books, but you'll remember certain moments. Even if you go further down that scale to someone like George R. R. Martin....he's perhaps a better writer, but even then his stuff seems to stand out more for the storytelling of it. There's more going on with themes, and POV and foreshadowing, etc. But he certainly has some good prose there too.

But King...at least with this one example so far...is all prose. It's the best prose possible, but it just never stops. It feels like a writer who knows he's the best writer in the world, and he's just showing off. And I think that's why I'm left wanting more because I'm not sure if he's that interested in telling an actual story. The ending of The Stand just sort of happens, and there's not a lot of sense to be made of it but it's broad and vague enough that anyone can put their own ideas to it.

The other thing is that I think modern sensibilities are more influenced by movies (and television). When you read an older work, the narrator is very present. Modern stuff though tends to hide the narrator for the sake of immersion in the story. (Of course there are exceptions.) I find myself personally preferring the lack of narrator, which is why I was drawn to ASOIAF with the POVs so limited to what's going on for a particular character. And even Crichton and Grisham books felt very narrator-less. The only reminder that someone wrote the story you'd be reading would be their prominent author surrogate characters deployed to state the author's opinion without the author needing to exist.

I may try one or two more of King's stories sometime. Salem's Lot was recommended to me, and I remember liking a miniseries based on the JFK assassination. But if all his writing is like The Stand, as good as the writing is itself, I don't know if I could take it.

(And if Stephen King had an author surrogate in this book, I have to imagine it is Glenn Bateman because reading a Stephen King book feels like listening to Glenn having to be the smartest person left on the planet.)

Usually when TV shows or movies get high praise, there's always "The acting was really good", and often times it's true but most stuff seems to have pretty good, or at least decent acting. Which makes sense given how many actors there are out in the world. Few productions probably seem forced to accept a bad actor or an actor that can't handle the particular role they were put in.

With movies, there seems to be a lot of B-movie stuff out there where the bad acting is expected or sometimes part of the charm. Lots of personal projects like The Room or whatever. On TV, it feels less common. I would think maybe some of the Hallmark stuff....but what little I've seen of it, the acting seems to be find. It's usually just dull, uninspired/cliche writing and cheap production design. The actors usually seem to be doing the best with what they have in those situations.

The only thing I could think of personally as an example would be Seinfeld since Seinfeld himself wasn't an actor, but since he's playing "himself", it doesn't seem to stick out much and he gets better at it as the series goes on.

Do you have any examples?

I've been looking back at some of my old writing exercises and there are a lot of "women in the fridge" type of moments. Some of the exercises specifically call for gruesome violence, and so I think it's common for men to write violence against women specifically because it feels "horrific" in a way that is more horrific than man on man violence.

So, I wanted to think about how to "turn the tables", but the issue there becomes very cliche and usually sexual. Most examples in media of women committing gruesome violence against men seem to be presented as revenge for sexual assault or often times sexual in nature itself (such as cutting off certain parts or violating men with objects).

Are there any examples from fiction and media that doesn't fall into this? Can women simply be violent for violence's sake without the need for revenge or sexual domination? (And even the latter seems like it might play into male fantasies.)

I want to talk a little about two notable approaches to doing backstory dumps from a particular character's POV. I think the main difference here is probably whether it's third-person limited or third-person omniscient, but I suspect both of those could be leveraged for the same techniques.

What I mean by backstory dumps is when you have a story taking place and whatever action of that moment in the story is effectively "paused" as the narration discusses the character's backstory. This usually happens early on when first meeting a character, and it seems a very common technique in writing overall. You rarely just see some character enter a scene without some kind of aside explaining who they are.

The best examples I can think of of the two approaches I'd like to discuss are A Song of Ice and Fire by George R. R. Martin and The Stand by Stephen King.

So, I think The Stand does it more typically, and probably because this seems to be a third-person omniscient POV. Each chapter focuses on a particular character, but the narrator is the one telling the story. So early on when we first meet Stu, he's talking with some others in a truck stop and after a few lines of dialogue the book goes into several pages about Stu's past.

In A Game of Thrones, we have an early scene with Bran out with his family to do some family stuff. During this, he often pauses and seems to reminisce about some stuff from his past. At most it's probably a paragraph or two each time this happens, and even though the grand total of backstory is probably similar to that of Stu's from The Stand, it doesn't happen all in one dump.

So the technical difference here seems to be the connection to the characters in the moment. The scene for Bran doesn't exactly pause, though maybe it slows for our benefit. The result is that we the audience get the sense that Bran is remembering things that are relevant to him in the moment, that certain things happening now are triggering thoughts and memories about his past, his family, the history of Westeros, etc. And the immediate action always cuts back in, sometimes interrupting those thoughts. That's unlike the situation with Stu where in the middle of a conversation, we start going into paragraphs of narrated backstory. The conversation did not slow or pause while this happens in Stu's mind. It's not likely happening in Stu's mind. It's the narrator coming in to say "Hold it right there for a second, and let me tell you about this guy Stu...."

Now that being said, I think the POV is likely why it happens this way but it doesn't have to. I think you could still have omniscient POV that scatters backstory around more precisely and only gives information that is prompted by the scene somehow. And in the same way you could probably have a limited POV where the character does basically recount their whole backstory for us in a moment. But I think the other extremes are basically more appropriate or easier for each POV, which is why they lend themselves to doing it that particular way.

What do you think? Is that a valid comparison? Is it accurate? And do you have a preference?

I will say that I really like GRRM's style in general, so it makes it a bit hard for me to read anything that isn't third-person limited, especially older stuff which tends to lean very heavily on a present narrator. King doesn't do that as much it seems, probably because he's more modern, but certainly some of his vernacular calls attention to the presence of himself as a narrator.

So because of that personal preference, I don't like the narrated backstory dumps all that much. It feels so more immersive when we're only given information that is triggered by a character action or thought in the moment. The unprompted information dumps feel a little too world-buildy or dated, and it necessitates putting the "actual story" on hold as that stuff is explained. The other method makes the backstory happen in tandem with the ongoing story, which I think if more effective overall.

What are your preferences? Do you have any examples of this done well one way or the other? I'd be particularly interested in a third-person omniscient POV that pulls off something more like A Game of Thrones in revealing backstory.

We're all likely aware of the biggest one: the military-industrial complex. The US spends nearly a trillion dollars on the military. About 40% of this goes to for-profit defense contractors who give money to campaigns, hire former politicians as lobbyists and overcharge for basic goods and services.

While the military is the largest, this seems to happen across the board. Education has a big for-profit textbook scheme behind it, and I think one state recently bought a bunch of Trump bibles or something for its curriculum.

However, why does this have to be bad? The companies in question only care about profit, so if we were to accept the corruption, could we not at least require something positive from them?

The military is an easy example because so much of it is just waste and unaccounted for, and much of America's military actions the last several decades have been questionable at best.

So could we not promise these companies the same amount of money, but tell them to build like bridges and libraries around the US? Or can't we create a public healthcare system and pay current insurance companies whatever they're making now just to sit and do nothing? It'd be the same cost to us, but at least we could have healthcare.

So what is it about profit incentive that forces bad, if not the worst, outcomes? Why can't we just offer rich people billions of dollars in exchange for providing something good for society?

Hi everyone. We have a small Democratic Party in a rural conservative area. It was sputtering along with a handful of members for years, mostly older and conservative Democrats. Recently though several progressive/leftists came into the party, myself included. None of us are officially DSA, but I'd say most of the membership now aligns mostly with the DSA particularly because several of the conservative Democrats left, though there are still a couple.

We're in the process of reorganizing and growing the party since it was mostly inactive before. There are almost no funds, but the previous chair had been self-financing the party herself. Now with the handful of conservative/establishment Democrats removing themselves from the party, we don't have those traditional funding sources anymore.

I thought maybe some folks here would have some good ideas for fundraising for leftists since a lot of our ideas/values go against monied interests it seems like fundraising can be difficult. We've made an effort to buy food for each of our monthly meetings for everyone because we know it's hard for working people to attend and participate already, so the least we can do is feed them. That costs about $100 to $150 per month, though. We always have a donation jar available too but that usually gets $20 or less each month.

We're looking to prioritize fundraising now as we've gotten through a lot of our basic logistical hurdles, and like I said I wanted to see if anyone here would have some ideas for fundraising from a leftist perspective where perhaps traditional donors aren't readily available because they see us as the enemy.

Any advice and suggestions would be appreciated. Even though it's a rural conservative area, I think we can make a big impact focusing on working class issues here.

Our local Democratic Party is split on this issue.

I think most of the group seems to want to ignore Trump (and Republicans to some extent). They believe that we should focus on the problems facing people and what we as Democrats could offer (or have done). So their philosophy is don't whine/complain about Trump or what Republicans are saying and doing.

However, there are a lot of Democrats in the party who seem to be obsessed with Trump, and their thinking is that everybody hates Trump and we would gain voters and rally our base by bashing him all the time. They also think that it would win over Republicans who are annoyed with him.

We are in a very conservative area, if that matters. This would apply to the party's messaging on social media, at events, etc. Is it more strategic to go on the offensive against Trump in particular and Republicans? Or would we be better served ignoring them and focusing on our values exclusively? (Or is there a middle ground and what would that look like?)

In the old days, armies would make latrine pits. Once they got full, they would cover them up and dig a new pit. Would the contents of the pit be mostly solid or would it be a sewage-like sludge? If the latter, how long would it take for the contents to solidify or dry out so that it's as hard/sturdy as the rest of the ground around it?

I'm an amateur, so I don't know what I'm doing and my computer probably isn't the best for this. I have a movie I downloaded. I have a 4 GB version, but it's MKV and won't work in Premiere. So I found a 264 that should work, but the only one available is 10 GB. If I try to drag it onto the sequence, the whole thing freezes. Maybe it'll work if I leave it be for hours, who knows. But I thought well maybe a proxy would work. I tried creating a proxy from Premiere, but run into the same issue. It seems stuck on "Creating Proxy Jobs" and nothing happens. I thought I could make a proxy manually in Media Encoder, so I open it and I chose YouTube HD 720 thinking that would make it easier to manage compared to the HD 1080p original. That file came out 17 GB.

Any advice? What should I be doing here to make it work right?

When I was growing up, it was common place for the school buses to drive through town on a particular route and pick up kids, then go to each school and drop them off. This is a small suburban town. I imagine things are different in big cities.

That was 30 years ago. Now they do pick up and drop offs at the closest school. So basically if the kid goes to a school 1 mile away, they get dropped off by parents at a nearby school, where a bus takes all the kids that get dropped off there to the different schools in the system so they can get where they need to go.

This seems inefficient even though they say it's so we can "avoid the drop off lines" at the actual school he's going to. But wouldn't this just create another drop off line at the closer school? And the drop off lines are probably long because this bus system seems so inefficient. A lot of parents figure if they have to drop the kid off at a school anyway they might as well drive a little bit further to the actual school the kid goes to.

So what's the norm in your district? And what's ideal these days? Should we have school buses picking up and dropping off directly at kids' homes? Should that just be the approach for young kids while older kids get a more standard city bus type schedule but with school buses? Or does it make sense to drop off kids at a nearby school facility and then bus them wherever they need to go in the district?

(I imagine larger cities have a single school for multiple grades in a district. Our town is one school district with multiple schools for different grades scattered all around town.)

Edit: Please stop saying "magnet". I have no idea what that is.

It took a while to get through, mostly because after Dark Forest things just seemed too out there for me. I needed a break, a return to reality, before getting into Death's End.

I haven't read the approved fanfic stuff, but I've heard about it. So maybe I'll check it out at some point.

Overall I have really mixed views on this. I did watch the Netflix show before hand, and I think I overall appreciate how they've handled the adaptation. Doing a straight adaptation wouldn't work, and a lot of what didn't work overall in the books for me was the Chinese-centric aspect of it. I understand that's just the result of the author being Chinese, but for a story like this, it demands to be international.

What I did like about it was the scope. I think that's the best point in its favor and makes everything else forgivable because like it's literally impossible to tell a story like this. It's so rare that it even happens, so kudos for even trying. I like the imagination involved in giving some real thought and substance to what society would look like in 200 years, 400 years, 18 billion years....and even what extraterrestrial societies would look like (at least a little bit).

I loved the Da Shi character, and when he was gone that was the hardest to read because he seemed like the only grounded human character to connect with. Ye Wenjei was also relatable in a very human way, even if she was a bit of a villain. Besides those two, everyone else felt like a cardboard cutout. And the scale of the story makes it hard to care for any one person (which is maybe the point too except....)

One of my biggest complaints is at the end as everything comes down to Cheng Xin. From books 1 and 2, we were conditioned to understand multiple people would come and go with this story. That's the nature of it, but it seemed like a cheap shortcut to just have Cheng Xin be a new throughline from here on out, and other super crazy coincidences like how only the same handful of people kept showing up. Wade, Cao Bin, etc. I feel like the main players of humanity's story would change considerably over centuries, even if some of them can hibernate.

My biggest complaint is the incel crap. It started in Book 2 (probably some stuff in Book 1 but innocuous enough I didn't notice). Lui Ji and his stalker obsession with the girl, who he basically imprisons and has a kid with was a big red flag. But Book 3 seems to double down on it with this weirdo Tianming who buys some girl he never even kissed a star. And okay, I'm willing to believe there are weirdos like Luo Ji and Tianming in the world, and don't mind those characters. But what bothers me is how the author portrays this because it's all ultimately heroic and Lui Ji is some wise old samurai, and Tianming is this hopeless romantic savior of mankind (and Cheng Xin is touched forever by this gesture, instead of properly creeped the fuck out that this guy has been obsessed with her for 10 years or whatever). I think this also plays into a lot of the complaints about society losing its masculinity and the whole "weak men create hard times" thing. And the thing with Wade, where this guy was a literal sociopath that Cheng Xin should have had the plug pulled on as soon as he went into hibernation. Instead by the end of the book, she seems to respect him for his...let's say tenacity. Just disgusting stuff, disgusting message. But ultimately very minor in a very big book of stuff, so I'll overlook it.

Another disappointment was that Book 1 didn't seem to matter by the end. The first book is what drew me in, so it's sad to see the 3rd have very little connection, if any, to the original. I kept thinking that the Three Body Problem would come into play somehow, that having three suns would help Trisolarans discover multi-dimensional technology or lightspeed, or maybe 3 suns change some fundamental laws of physics. But nah, it just didn't matter. And the Trisolarans themselves by this point are straight up liars, despite a key feature of their species being their utter transparency. Also the dehydrating and rehydrating was such a cool thing from their society, and how humans connected with and learned about them through the VR game....but none of that mattered anymore. This made it seem like they weren't even the same Trisolarans from Book 1 and could just be any generic alien threat.

A minor complaint that is probably more of a personal one is the way the whole book relies on theoretical physics as if it's literal. I don't prescribe to the idea that theoretical physics is intended to be thought of literally. There is no 4th, 5th, 11th dimension. These are just mathematical allegories we use to understand the universe at a scale we can't naturally comprehend. Same with lightspeed/time. So it seems like the author took a lot of these ideas that aren't intended to be literal, and made a story as if they were.

I liked the droplet massacre of the space fleet. That was very well done, and terrifying. I liked the various ships escaping and their philosophies and the encounter with the 4th dimensional Ring things. I wasn't so sold on a lot of the Earth politics, and it mostly felt unrealistic just to make the story happen the way the author wanted. Sophon was also strange because it seems like by Book 3, the Trisolarans weren't consistent anymore, like the author didn't know what to do with them and what they believed in, what they were like, etc.

Also, one idea I had that I kind of wish would have happened was that I was expecting AA to have male gametes. Because of the constant explanation of Cheng Xin not being able to tell people's gender and that the society was so androgynous, I thought that AA would turn out to be either non-binary or a trans woman. So that when the two of them got lost together at the end of the universe, Cheng Xin would discover they would be able to procreate. Instead, it just seems like random space dudes show up conveniently for them. Overall I wish there would have been more exploration of transhumanism beyond "Well all the guys look like girls now. Ugh." Already today in the Common Era we have GPL-1, neural implants, "looksmaxxing", etc. So I'd be interested to see how humans will physically change in 300 years with the help of technology and drugs.

But overall I suppose I enjoyed it and am glad I've read it. I think it's an important cultural work, but it has a lot of flaws. These flaws are also probably important cultural items though, reflective of our time and the author's biases as a result of being who he is when he is where he is.

Also, does anyone else think he originally intended Ding Yi to marry Yang Dong just so she would be named Ding Dong? Once the book became a serious sci-fi masterpiece, he scrapped that.

Edit: Flat earthers FTW!

I just finished reading the 3 Fairy Tales (which is really just one fairy tale if we're being honest), and I wanted to think about the possible meaning and put it down in writing to see if my guess turns out to be true.

(I'll be avoiding Reddit until I finish to avoid spoilers. Also, this contains spoilers for up until that point in the 3rd book.)

So my guess is that the purpose of the fairy tales is to clue Humanity into a way to do a "safety notice" so they don't get eaten up by the Glutton Fi--I mean, so they don't get zapped by a big evil space civilization.

Deep Water is a different perspective because he's in 4th dimensional space, and it's why he can't be "measured" by 3 dimensional technology. The bubbles from the soap represent the warp bubbles that create little passageways into 4th dimensional space. Using these warp bubbles can likely disrupt/block the photoid, shielding our Sun/Earth from attack.

I think the umbrella with the dragon bits probably means something, but I don't know what. The "always spinning" is probably a clue to it being some sort of space station thing.

The weird town of Ha'ggismoleskin or whatever is probably something too. At first I thought Storyless Kingdom was Earth and the other thing was Trisolaris, and the meaning is something about using Trisolarian technology (like the sophons or folding/unfolding higher dimensions) to protect ourselves. I still think there's probably something to that, but I can't figure out the specifics.

I'm also guessing that the reason Trisolaris is a greater threat to the dark forest lurkers is that they have extra dimensional technology, which is a possible defense for the photoid attack. However, since the attacks are described as "casual", I'm not sure how anyone would know or care about this. Originally I thought maybe it had something to do with being a 3-star system, but I can't imagine what that might be and it seems like a single or binary star system would be "more dangerous" by being more stable and able to progress more consistently without suffering civilization resets and catastrophes that are common with the 3-body problem. (And that would be a nice tie-in to the original concept of the series.)

I couldn't figure out anything for the Prince Ice Sand and Needle-eye stuff, and maybe that is just to make it disguisable as a real story. If everything was allegory for the intergalactic situation they're facing, it would probably be too on the nose and the Trisolarians would figure it out. Maybe the painting stuff relates to the extra dimensional tech, though, basically saying that other civilizations can "paint you" out of existence as easily as looking at you, unless you have a way of using extra dimensions to distort the perspective so they can't properly "see you". But then who is Ice Sand? Maybe just a general warning that some humans or a human might try to side with the alien overlords, so be vigilant.

I also thought there seemed to be a connection between the painted canvases of people and the dehydrated Trisolarians. And maybe Deep Water is a reference to Gravity and Blue Space still out there "exiled" but possibly returning as heroes (and they are who made the 4th dimensional bubble discovery).

Sorry I won't reply right away. I'm disabling notifications and probably won't be on Reddit until I finish, but once I'm done it'll be nice to come back to this thread and talk about this.

I like the suspense that comes from dramatic irony, but I've noticed that my own writing usually lacks much of it. And thinking about it, it seems that this is particularly a problem with limited POV. When you're writing a specific character's POV, it's often hard to let the audience know something without revealing it to the character.

So are there any particular tricks for handling this? Any examples of popular works that do it well?

One thought that comes to mind if having multiple POVs would allow you to set up the information with a different POV so that a specific character won't know but the audience will. But what if you're not changing POV or aren't able to logistically make the change work in a way that could do that?

Otherwise, I imagine the goal would be to drop "hints" so that the character sees these clues but doesn't grasp the full meaning. Then you hope the reader works it out or at least suspects it.

What do you think?

Granted, I'm not familiar with his entire filmography. Also, pretty much all performances in The Leftovers are incredible, but especially his and Carrie Coon's.

What's perplexing about his though is that every time he pops up in something, he plays such a weirdo. I really loved him in the Watergate show, and he brought such a weird energy to it that really hit the mark for the satire they were going for. He's in the Devil Prada 2 and they give him this weird balding hairpiece. And he's a weirdo in Fallout.

Seeing him do this stuff reminds me a little bit of Jon Hamm in that he's incredibly well-known for the serious suave Don Draper in Mad Men, and then he's out there doing black face on 30 Rock and Reverand Richard Wayne Gary Wayne in Kimmy Schmidt.

I don't think actors should have to be typecast, and I imagine it's fun to do diverse roles. But it's very strange to see someone this good at a dramatic role basically not do them more often. Even when you cast Cate Blanchett in Borderlands, she brings a serious gravitas to the role whether it's called for or not. Justin Theroux is like a reverse Cate Blanchett though where he seems to bring some weirdo nonsense energy to every role he does....except The Leftovers which he knocks out of the park with a perfect dramatic performance throughout it. There's no way you'd think that guy and the Fallout or Watergate dudes were even the same actor. He plays his comedy roles in a way that makes you think he's a literal clown and couldn't possibly play something serious.

It's great, but confusing.

My house I bought in 2018 has a commercial area attached to it. It's a single property. I pay a single tax bill on it. However, it has two addresses, one for the residence and one for the store.

I bought the place for $160,000. Maybe it's gone up in value since then, but I couldn't imagine it being more than $230,000 or so. (We did do some renovation on the commercial side since that was out of use since the 80s.)

However, I'm having difficulties with property insurance. They want to do two policies because of the two addresses, but they're not really distinct property. They are attached and also legally a single property.

My latest quote is $3,500 for the residence and $6,500 for the business. That's a $10,000 premium, and with two policies it means two deductibles.

What are my options? I'd just like some simple policy that covers the building for damages, a single premium and nothing extra. And if it can't come in at a reasonable price (like $3,000 or lower), then there's little reason to insure it. It would be better to save the $10,000 and just pay for damages myself as needed.

I'm curious how important being there in LA is for child actors in particular. He's very young and wants to be a "YouTuber" because that's all he knows right now about performance. So I want to try to get him introduced to acting. For actual casting and auditions, though, should we go out to LA? Would that be a significant help or not?

I run a local community organization. We had a member donate a 65" TV, which we intend to use so we can have a Zoom option during our meetings. We don't have a lot of money, so I'm not looking for some high-end corporate video conferencing system.

We have the TV. We know we need a TV stand for it so we can roll it around to the best location (and we can use it for presentations too).

The question is around the video conferencing element. I don't think the TV would have a built-in Zoom or other app that would work for this. So that means we likely need a PC interface or something. I'm thinking a simple mini-PC, though we've also considered getting a tablet for other purposes so maybe we could find one that could do double duty (though tablets aren't really designed to have peripherals like TVs and webcams, etc.) Then we need the webcam. Would any basic one do? We also need a mic, or would a webcam with a built-in mic work? I figure if we get some kind of Bluetooth mic, then we can pass it around the room as people speak so it's clearer on the Zoom or place it in the middle somewhere so the mic isn't getting feedback from the TV though maybe that will still be a problem. Anyway, specific solutions for the webcam and audio piece would be appreciated.

Hoping to keep this all under $500. Let me know what you think.