What have you been listening to this week? You don't need to do a 6000 word review if you don't want to, but please write something! If you've just picked up some music, please update on that as well, we'd love to see your hauls :)

Feel free to give recs or discuss anything about each others' listening habits.

You can make a chart if you use last.fm:

http://www.tapmusic.net/lastfm/

Remember that linking directly to your image will update with your future listening, make sure to reupload to somewhere like imgur if you'd like it to remain what you have at the time of posting.

Help me Tildes! My refrigerator is leaking and I live in an apartment so I need to get a new fridge ASAP so that I don't cause water damage to my downstairs neighbors! Does anyone have a brand recommendation? All I really care about for this is avoiding brands that are known to be shitty.

I also will use this as an opportunity to replace the absolutely horrible microwave that came with this apartment. While all fridges are basically identical to me, I am very opinionated about microwaves:

• There must be a 30 second button that either starts the cooking or adds 30s more to the existing cooking
• 1-6 must be quick-access "microwave for this many minutes" buttons, so that i can press 1 and then 30 to microwave for 90s or 4 and then 30 for 4:30, etc
• I would really like a decent popcorn button that has a microphone to determine when to stop
• Multiple power levels that are actually good at being lower power (I am fine with power level 50 meaning "be on for 50% of the time" etc, I think that works pretty well)
• idk if this even needs to be said in the year 2024 but a spinning tray
• auto-stop on door open so I can press just 1 thing
• If I press 'stop' or open the microwave after it stops it's "haha I'm done" beeping sequence, it STOPS BEEPING (my current microwave keeps beeping even if I press stop and/or open the door and I hate it so so so so much)

Edit: Thanks everyone! Based on recs here I bought a fridge without an ice machine and not LG, and it will be installed on Monday! I don't live in a rented unit, but usually I just say "apartment" rather than "condo" when I'm talking about neighbors.

I didn't go for freezer on the bottom cos those all seem to be drawers and I guess I do have an opinion about fridges, which is that I don't want the freezer to be a drawer, I feel like I'd get too cold pulling things out of it. So I got freezer-on-top, fridge-on-bottom.

There was 1 microwave with all the features I wanted plus the feature I didn't know I wanted where the numbers are arranged the same as a phone instead of [12345][678910] in 2 rows (why would you reinvent how to display numbers like this????) so I bought that one, and everything will be delivered on Monday!

Hey there,

Title is pretty self-explanatory, looking for some web camera recommendations, USB obviously¹, good price to value, higher quality the better, microphone not required, but appreciated.

¹ Don't need any MDR-26/SDR-26/CameraLink connectors, or Game Boy Camera recommendations here /s

I've been mulling over this for some time. I'm what you'd call a politically or ideologically motivated person, as it contains topics close to my heart and I'm trying to do my best about them. However, I mostly don't personally follow "the news". I still hear or read things due to my friends and family, or because of places I browse like Tildes. But even here, I filter out most news topics.

Part of this is due to the health problems I have, as they leave little mental energy to spend on stuff, and I'd much rather spend that energy to build something rather than get demoralized. So, what I do instead is to check out specific topics I care more about, and possibly academic articles.

With this being said, I've been observing people around me and how they interact with the news. I'm trying to assess how much following the news regularly impact their political activity. I mean contributing to some sort of political goal. Based on my observations, I'm not convinced that regular consumption of news, in the form of visiting a news website (or several), is what is presented to be.

So, I decided to flex my ideological analysis muscles a little. Here's a rough sketch of my thoughts on the ideology of being a news outlet, whether it's a giant corporation or a single person.

I think there are two levels to the ideology of being a news outlet.

1) The News System

A) How to Market Yourself

1. You are the most important source of knowledge about the topic you choose. This most often includes a city, country, continent, a political concept like "the west", or the world in general.
2. You are the objective source of knowledge on this topic.
3. Consuming news regularly is the responsibility of every citizen. Thus, they should buy your products or visit your website. Doing otherwise is shirking one's duty, and it's morally reprehensible. It's equal to being ignorant.

With this level, you establish yourself as the epistemological source of news about the topic, and you attach moral feelings of duty, guilt, shame, etc. to consuming your product. However, it's also a wider ideology. You don't only sell your news, you sell the news. That means you're also marketing the idea of news to people. This is how you establish the moral case, that is vital to selling your product. It's also important for prestige, which shouldn't be underestimated. There is not only an economic motivation but also a social motivation to selling the idea of news, presenting yourself as a bringer of truths.

B) How to Keep Them in the Loop

1. Humans are problem-fixers, because ignoring problems would mean they or their loved ones could suffer from them in the future. So, they are emotionally motivated to seek and try to fix problems. So, if you present them a problem, they will pay attention to it.
2. Cities, countries, continents, etc. are vast. There are always problems, no matter how big or small. You can always report on them.
3. If you face with the criticism of getting too small on scale, you can say you are just putting a human face on a widespread problem.

By utilizing the points above, you can ensure that you are always selling your product. You also ensure that you are feeling like you are contributing to the world, by "bringing the news to people". This way, you ensure both your financial success and your moral standing, your sense of meaning.

2) The Problems

The problem with the system created by the approach above is several-fold, and it doesn't depend on the factuality of the news being reported.

1. This system ensures there is always bad-news to be reported every single day, possibly even every single waking hour.
2. The constant source of bad-news demoralizes people, and quite possibly affects their mental health. A cursory look at Google Scholar with the keywords "doomscrolling mental health" is enough to show that this is suspected by the psychological literature too.
3. This stream of bad-news alters a person's perception of city, country, world.

For example, if you look at the subreddit for a city, quite often you'll see it filled with news of crimes and such, with people in the comments lamenting or raging about it. But the daily life in such cities is very rarely one of being riddled with crime.

Another example is USA citizens' perception of crime. "The violent crime rate fell 49% between 1993 and 2022, with large decreases in the rates of robbery (-74%), aggravated assault (-39%) and murder/nonnegligent manslaughter (-34%)." However, more and more people in USA think crime is getting worse. I suspect the news-cycle bears a big portion of the blame.

To drive the point home, I suspect this constant stream of bad-news might be feeding into conservatism, as "a meta-analysis (88 samples, 12 countries, 22,818 cases) confirms that several psychological variables predict political conservatism: death anxiety (weighted mean r = .50); system instability (.47); dogmatism–intolerance of ambiguity (.34); openness to experience (–.32); uncertainty tolerance (–.27); needs for order, structure, and closure (.26); integrative complexity (–.20); fear of threat and loss (.18); and self-esteem (–.09). The core ideology of conservatism stresses resistance to change and justification of inequality and is motivated by needs that vary situationally and dispositionally to manage uncertainty and threat."

So, there is enough reason to suspect that constant stream of bad-news, which should elevate people's feelings of uncertainty and threat, should be feeding into conservatism.

3) Solution?

This is an open-ended topic, and I'm not claiming to have solved a very complex topic in a few hundred words. However, one thing that I found to work is limiting and choosing what I consume. By the ways I mentioned, I limit what I see and I try to focus more on topics I care more about.

There is support from the literature too, that suggests partial news avoidance can benefit mental health and well-being (more on the topic can be found on Google Scholar with "news avoidance mental health").

Obviously, following news isn't a black or white situation, and for moderation there is no single size that fits all. But I think it would be better to keep in mind that news outlets benefit both financially and socially from establishing their regular consumption as a moral principle. Honestly, I think constructing a good understanding of ideology and history is more important than that, as it provides a more solid base to judge things from, but that's another day's topic.

This thread is posted weekly - please try to post all relevant Israel-Hamas war content in here, such as news, updates, opinion articles, etc. Extremely significant events may warrant a separate topic, but almost all should be posted in here.

Please try to avoid antagonistic arguments and bickering matches. Comment threads that devolve into unproductive arguments may be removed so that the overall topic is able to continue.

What have you been watching and reading this week? You don't need to give us a whole essay if you don't want to, but please write something! Feel free to talk about something you saw that was cool, something that was bad, ask for recommendations, or anything else you can think of.

If you want to, feel free to find the thing you're talking about and link to its pages on Anilist, MAL, or any other database you use!

Add awesome game deals to this topic as they come up over the course of the week!

Alternately, ask about a given game deal if you want the community’s opinions: e.g. “What games from this bundle are most worth my attention?”

Rules:

• No grey market sales
• No affiliate links

If posting a sale, it is strongly encouraged that you share why you think the available game/games are worthwhile.

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This is a recurring post to discuss programming or other technical projects that we've been working on. Tell us about one of your recent projects, either at work or personal projects. What's interesting about it? Are you having trouble with anything?

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What's the thing that was promised, not delivered, and just really upsets you?

For me, it's "The Doors of Stone" promised by Patrick Rothfuss. Every couple of months I think about how badly I'd love to read this book and it just really makes me angry. When I first read The Name of the Wind, I was awestruck. I just freaking loved this book. The Wise Man's Fear was a wait, but when delivered, it really satisfied me. Now, it's been 13 years!! Some days I think to myself, "I'm not even going to read his stupid book when it comes out." But, I'm kidding myself. Of course I'm going to read it...if he or I don't die first.

The plan only costs $1 a month. Apple can almost certainly eat that cost, and anyone who cannot complete their monthly exercise challenge because of illness or injury can probably still afford the $1 to keep the plan going.

The monthly challenge in the Fitness app is tailored to each user based on their exercise habits, right?

I've been on a hunt for a new monitor for over a year now. Something that can be for personal use and WFH with these specs:

• 4k
• 144Hz
• MiniLED
• <=34" (no curve)
• Built-in KVM switch

Having briefly experienced the INNOCN 27M2V, I expected a "perfect" monitor on the horizon.

Soon after I stumbled into a blog post announcing BenQ's reveal of a monitor that featured all the specs I wanted. I've finally got my hands on that monitor today having waited ~6 months.

First impression was the size. This monitor is a thicc boi. Made me think of a television, but not as heavy as I expected. I mounted it on my monitor arm (VESA 100) without problems.

The OSD is nifty and easy to navigate. There are 5 "quick menus" (ALPHA, BRAVO, etc.) that let you customize settings for each and quickly switch between them. These menus can be customized to select 3 "favorite" settings (e.g. brightness) so that you don't have to dig through the entire menu.

• What you see when you initially open the OSD
• Customizing quick menu favorites

After tinkering a bit, I've fired up Prince of Persia The Lost Crown. I've set the display profile to use the per-configured "Fantasy" color mode (with mini-led enabled). Honestly I don't know what I'm doing these settings, so I don't know whether this monitor is calibrated at all, but it was gorgeous. I don't think any picture I take will demonstrate how good it looks.

I don't have much to say about the KVM yet. But I connected my keyboard+mouse to the monitor, then connected the USB to USB-C to my desktop. I also connected my work laptop (USB-C to USB-C). Everything works, but it'll take a couple of days of normal use to see if there are hiccups. I like switching between desktop (waking from sleep) and my work laptop then vise-versa. I'm curious to see if the "auto scan" works like I want it to.

Unfortunately, I've discovered 2 "stuck" sub-pixels. According to BenQ's dead pixel policy, this is "acceptable". One of the sub-pixels (green) is almost in the center of the screen and I zero in on it almost immediately. I'll reach out to their support regardless because I prefer not to have defects at this price ($1199.99). If I'm lucky I'll discover another stuck sub-pixel.

BenQ's Specs