Tildes is a very serious site, where we discuss very serious matters like kagi, birth control and thieves. Tags culled from the highest voted topics from the last seven days, if anyone was bemused.

But one of my favourite tags happens to be offbeat! Taking its original inspiration from Sir Nils Olav III, this thread is looking for any far-fetched offbeat stories lurking in the newspapers. It may not deserve its own post, but it deserves a wider audience!

I live in a country that's extremely dominated by the right. Leftist people are almost non-existent, and it's even often used as an insult. By leftist I just don't mean it in the anti-capitalist sense, but also for cultural stuff like not being a homophobe, racist, misogynist, etc. In fact, these are even more important qualities in this context.

I've gone through and am still going through my fair share of ideological growth. Even though I've always been progressive by the standards of my country, well, it was a low bar. So I had to unlearn a lot of things, and learn a much more critical approach. I'm a constant learner, and I'm interested in politics, so in the long run it's changed me a lot.

Another thing is that I've always had a strong egalitarian tendency since my childhood. I think this is an important trait that enabled me to grow past the conservative hierarchies. I'm really glad I did, and I plan on continuing to do so. However, this came at a personal cost I deem great.

Simply put, I have a lot of trouble connecting with people anymore. I still can connect with people at some level as long as we don't talk about politics, but it's an important area to me, and more importantly, as a human being, I don't think I will ever be able to overlook someone who grossly objectifies women every day, expresses queerphobic sentiments constantly, jokes about violence against minorities regularly, or genuinely wants pogroms to happen to minorities.

This is not a single person, but it's the general attitude of the population here. Men tend to make more edgy reactionary remarks, but women aren't that different politics-wise either. Some of my friends are left or left-leaning, but most of them are right-wingers who say and believe in stuff like that.

I've tried to be understanding, see it from a different angle, tried to consider that people are 3-dimensional. But there's a limit. Both because I grew, and because some of them regressed, I now look at these people and feel like I'm a complete stranger. As a person who bonds with people hard, this is extremely upsetting to me. Loneliness has been a burden of mine for a long time for various reasons, but in the last few years I was finally starting feel like I had found a social circle I could truly belong to. Despite all the stuff I mentioned, in personal relations, these people had qualities I found quite positive and precious at the time. For example, they were much less the stereotypical "feelings are for women" type of guys, which are extremely common here. Maybe first time in my life, I was feeling truly at home. It's probably why I struggled for years to keep it going.

For a very long time, I tried having talks with them, explain stuff to them, listen to them. They didn't work. I tried being aggressive, because they are still kind of dudely dudes who sometimes "respect" a dominant attitude, but that didn't work either. I feel like they are truly lost, and infuriatingly, unapologetically reactionary.

I fear that if I abandon them I won't be able to find a new social circle like this one. I have international friends as well, and I love them, but anyone can guess that for some stuff you want local people to bond with.

Part of my frustration is due to how most people here tend to follow comically evil beliefs. If this was just a rare occurance, I wouldn't have reacted this strongly, because I'd know there were a lot of egalitarian people. But they are an extreme minority. The dehumanization is suffocating.

There isn't much to add. This is a cost I didn't consider would come to pass, but I think I've outgrown these people, except for a few friends who I appreciate. It's demoralizing losing your social circle again at this age, to start all over. Again. But I think it's mostly unavoidable, because I am done trying to be tolerant of their evil.

Has anyone gone through, or is going through, something similar? What was or is your experience like?

This topic is part of a series. It is meant to be a place for users to discuss creative projects they have been working on.

Projects can be personal, professional, physical, digital, or even just ideas.

If you have any creative projects that you have been working on or want to eventually work on, this is a place for discussing those.

I write this topic knowing that it might get removed for being too controversial or incendiary or bring the anti-Semites out of the woodwork, in which case, I understand why this topic might get removed.

I am just hoping that tildes has a better capacity of engaging in such a charged topic, at least more than reddit.

onto my question:

Like anyone else who watches the news, I have been pretty aware of what is going on in the latest escalation of the Israel-Palestine war. I would not claim to be the most educated person ever, but I'd like to think I at least understand the broad-strokes.

And I consider myself generally a progressive person (not a liberal) so I personally am not a big fan of the Israeli govt. And yes I do condemn Hamas, I don't care what your struggle is, Oct 7th was a terror attack and only makes the situation worse for the people you claim to be freedom fighters for.

Having said all that, and seeing how much control Israel seems to have on the western powers, or specifically U.S., I will admit, my thoughts sometimes veer towards "they really do control things" and shit like that, but then 10 seconds later, I realize how ye-like that sounds and it's the exact same kind of thinking that led to the Holocaust. But then I also wonder if that is not entirely my fault and more because of the Jewish leaders who insist on making fervent support of Israel a strong part of their identity, thereby linking any criticism of the Israeli govt with criticism of Jewish people (or at least the Jewish leaders in the media who are supportive of Israel) rather than distancing themselves from a right-wing government.

So yea, I guess my question is: I don't think its entirely unreasonable to think that Israel has a surprising amount of control over western powers (specifically U.S.) but that sentiment in and of itself also veers dangerously close to antisemitism for my liking so I wondered how folks on here approach it?

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So I've been dealing with a sprained ankle for the third summer in a row. This time, however, I have been told I cannot bear any weight on my foot. I need some help with exercises I can do. I spent the second half of April and all of May doing nothing (but my PT exercises) and am tired of it. I went into the pool yesterday to "swim" but the kicking action of swimming was too painful, so I spent 45 minutes just floating in the pool until my friends and I were tired of being in the pool.

For more context: I'm hypermobile and injure really easily, but am also overweight. I used to be a professional folk dancer, and still have a ton of muscle/strength from that, even though it's been 13 years since I last performed professionally.

walking, swimming, dancing, and hula hooping have been my past workouts that I've loved doing, but for obvious reasons, I can't do any of them right now. So any advice is greatly appreciated!

The May 2024 Backlog Burner event is officially over!

Over the course of the month of May, 13 participants moved 105 games out of their backlogs.

There were 7 bingo wins (5 Standard and 2 Golf).
Congratulations to @aphoenix, @CannibalisticApple, @Durinthal, @Eidolon, @kfwyre, @Weldawadyathink, and @Wes!

Also, congratulations to all other participants as well: @Carrow, @J-Chiptunator, @Mendanbar, @Notcoffeetable, @semsevfor, and @Shevanel

Finally, appreciation to those who didn't play any games but still popped in to talk about them with us: @brews_hairy_cats and @Wafik

It has been an absolute blast doing this with everyone. Thank you all for participating.

Use this topic to post your final bingo cards, give recaps of your games, and share any thoughts you have on the event itself.

Reminder: the Backlog Burner will now run on a regular schedule during every May and November. Our next event is only five months away!

Highlights:

• We averaged 8.1 games per person and 23.7 games per week
• There were 203 comments posted across 5 different topics
• Four different games were each played twice: Chop Goblins, Life Is Strange, Okami HD, and Wizard of Legend
• We played games that started with every letter of the alphabet except for K and Z
• @J-Chiptunator: "I played more games seriously than I did for the past 5 years"
• @semsevfor: "I started something Ive been putting off for 14 years"
• @aphoenix completed a Bingo Golf win with just 5 games
• If you would like an unequivocally definitive guide to Boomer Shooters, then @Shevanel has got you covered
• Likewise, @Wes has got you covered should you be in the market for Soulsborne mods
• It wasn’t until I compiled the final game list that I realized the game is called (the) Gnorp Apologue instead of Analogue

Quick links:

• Backlog Bingo Site
• Week 1 Discussion and Event Guidelines
• Week 2 Discussion
• Week 3 Discussion
• Week 4 Discussion
• Week 5(ish) Discussion