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?

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.

It's time to do away with the recurring weekly threads about US politics, about Israel and Palestine and other similar threads that clearly do not need weekly recurring threads.

Those who do not wish to see topics on those events should unsubscribe from the relevant keywords for their own browsing, as all of us with other interests unsubscribe from those keywords.

There is no flood of this content that makes gathering things in weekly threads relevant.

No content is drowning on tildes, as no group has issues with too many posts.

It's uninviting to folks who are actually contributing submissions to the site to be told they shouldn't be making these, but should rather make them in empty, dead posts. That is not fair to them, nor is it a good look for the site.

These dead recurring threads should be done away with. They serve no function. The experiment has shown they are not needed, are not used and are simply auto-generated robotic clutter.

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.

All previous Save Point topics

If you don’t want to see threads in this series, add save point to your personal tag filters.

Tildes is a very serious site, where we discuss very serious matters like recurring, wifi and james earl jones. Tags culled from the highest voted topics from the last seven days, if anyone was conducting research.

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!

The news has been talking about the burst of mosquito activity, thanks to warm weather and moisture everywhere. In our typically bug-free home, we've lately been swatting a half dozen flying insects a day, mostly flies and fruit flies, and a mosquito here and there.

I'm not necessarily scared of West Nile, Eastern equine encephalitis, or dengue virus, but I'm wondering if anyone has any good tricks for dealing with all these bugs.

How are you dealing with mosquitoes and flies at home?

As part of a weekly series, these topics are a place for users to casually discuss the things they did — or didn't do — during their week. Did you accomplish any goals? Suffer a failure? Do nothing at all? Tell us about it!

As I write this, I’m using a $10 foot massager from Temu that my wife bought. I thought it was totally stupid but it gets nightly use. We lie on the couch and just let it run.

Edit2: it looks like the LINGTENG one on Amazon - probably white labeled from same factory, nothing special about it but we like the simplicity.

What has anyone else found surprisingly useful?

Edit -

Here are some things that came in mind as I was walking around:

• Different type of mason jar lids from masontops for sprouting, cold press coffee, pouring spout for watering plants, etc.
• ifixit kit - originally used for phone fixing now used for prying random stuff - the Ifixit jimmy is really useful, and it’s great to have all tools in one place
• Shoegoo - originally used for shoe fixing now used for fixing bike parts - time to invest in a glue gun
• YouTube premium - I originally got a family plan so that my mom wouldn’t watch so many ads, but now it’s an integral part of my passive learning system - languages, guitar, sports, etc.
• hydrogen peroxide - I got it for wound disinfecting but it has only ever been used as a stain remover.
• cheap Muji mini umbrella - way more used than my fancy Davek

I've been reconsidering things about honesty in the wider context of politics. I think honesty is at the heart of a good faith approach. You have to be both honest about the limitations of your own thoughts, you have to seriously consider the opinion of the person you're talking to, and you shouldn't attack their person in any way.

It's assumed in ethically liberal communities that honest and constructive conversations are the way to go to get political power, in the positive sense. "They go low, we go high." This is, of course, true in some contexts. An entirely bad faith approach to people would result in alienating potential allies. Having a good faith approaches also gives you some sort of moral argument, which you can leverage.

With this being said, this claim, that it is the only way, is extremely insufficient in several dimensions.

First of all, there are a lot of situations where bad faith approach, where you ridicule and attack your opponent, mock them, or even lie about them, etc. work. A recent example is the Couch Fucker bit about J.D. Vance. It's obviously not true, but it was a very useful piece of propaganda. It just caught on, because he really did seem like the kind of guy to do that. A similar example was misinterpreting a certain search, and saying he was searching dolphin porn. Again, he looks like the type to do that. A third example is the AI-generated images about the MAGA crowd bringing fake semen cups to support J.D. Vance. It's not real but it caught on, because the MAGA crowd contains a lot of people that seem that self-unaware and cultish.

Second, the "good faith first" approach ignores a key dimension of politics—the conflict. "Ideal citizens" in liberal democracies, or people looking up to liberal democracies and their ideals, like to imagine that a properly ethical, positive, constructive dialogue-based approach will triumph over bad actors. Gestures widely at the world This is simply not true. There are a lot of situations where such people fail.

The reason for this is that conflict is not "clean". It is conflict. It can be hard or soft in a wide spectrum, but one would have to ignore pretty much reality itself to claim there are only soft conflicts in the world. The good faith approach, which I outlined above, assumes that you can still overcome the hard conflicts with their "clean" approach (unless it's open war).

This is not true either. There are a lot of, and increasingly, bad faith actors in democracies or semi-democracies that are undermining them in every way they can. They want to take people's rights away, make them poorer, conserve or institute hiearchies, and a lot of them also want to kill you. A major chunk of the far right population would be delighted to genocide the people you love and yourself. And a bigger chunk of the right-wingers are sympathetic to them.

This is not a war in the conventional sense, but it's a serious hard conflict. So, the stakes are not just losing an election and then putting up with some leaders with "differences of opinion". Stakes are much higher. If or when they succeed, a lot of people will suffer at the hands of these weirdos. Some of them will even directly or indirectly get killed.

In light of this context, approaching bad faith actors in bad faith is within reasonable ethical limits, and it's the strategically sound option. This is, again, not a black-or-white thing. Not every situation requires the same strength or variety of bad faith response, neither ethically nor strategically. A context-sensitive approach is required.

This context-sensitivity, in other words flexibility of mind, is at the core of what I'm trying to illustrate here. Black-or-white thinking about having to choose between good faith and bad faith leads to ruin. It's a spectrum. A person ought to assess the situation at hand, and respond properly.

For example, on Tildes I try my best to approach topics from a place of good faith. I think this approach on Tildes mostly works, because a) people here in general try to operate on good faith b) people here seem to try to distance themselves from populist and rash arguments c) it's left-leaning to an extent, and definitely very anti-far right, so less insane opinions.

I neither would want to be bad faith here nor would see any point in it. However, on places like big social media sites (Reddit, Twitter, etc.) I don't really see the point. They are rife with fascists and fascist sympathizers. I saw plenty of naive people -I've been those people- try to explain things earnestly to them, assuming that their opinion is simply based on ignorance and misunderstanding, and not on active ill-will and a conscious choice to hurt people.

Before any objections, I will say that I am aware of the nuances. Not every right-winger is the same (and I have not made that claim), and even among far-right people there are ones who can be persuaded, because they simply are ignorant. But in vast majority of the time, these actors are operating on bad faith. They are not interested in constructive arguments, they are interested in spreading their filth in order to hurt people.

Keeping this in mind, it can be seen that a better counter to their claims is some variety of bad faith. In other words, more ostracization by labeling them things like weirdos and incels. More couch fucking, more dolpin porn, more cups of cum.

A year or two ago when the decay of social media became a popular topic of discussion, there was a lot of talk about a resurgence in the use of RSS readers. My impression recently was that the RSS renaissance hadn't really materialised in the end, but I realised that if it had it would be pretty hard to tell.

So, Tildes users: do you use an RSS reader currently? If so, is that a recent decision? Tell me about your experience.

snuffed out
like meaningless leaves and ashes
one fell moment and it's all gone
only the suffering remains
and you see, you see it at that moment
all that talk about prosperity, humanity, kindness
it was all a ruse
the only truth was capital and power
the only things that mattered to them

the statesmen and the masters
they had convened together
built the looming and dark tombs of delusion
and they did not give a damn about to-be-corpses
they still do not

over fifty thousand
they were killed, butchered, murdered
they are still unmourned to this day
they are still forgotten
many of them are still lost in the rubbles
millions more made to wander
suffering at the mercy of the monster

do they not deserve avenging
shouldn't their pain be inflicted thousandfold on the usurpers
the throne makers and takers of the rich and the corrupt
their blood does not belong to them
not anymore

gods of the new world
here's a declaration
you are not infallible
but our hatred is everlasting
as long as you exist
the spectre will never vanish
even if it takes millenia
we are going to make people forget you were ever human
you shall not be any more than ancient evils of dust
your memory shall be one of a joke, a bygone idiocy
and whatever you built, it will come falling down
much harder than the tombs you raised
the blood you spilt will haunt you down to nothing
and in that moment
when the last memory of you is forgotten
when everything you created is ashes
the void shall truly embrace you
remember this promise for the rest of your life
in your most intimate, safest moments
feel this cold breath of the cosmos on your neck
it is ours, for we are the harbingers

Texts, documents hint at convicted witness bail bond business owner Scott Hall's wide ties to Coffee County breach, Trump allies ahead of trial

Hall played a part in various post-election events, and he's taken a plea deal. He will testify in the Georgia 2020 election trials.

https://www.11alive.com/article/news/special-reports/ga-trump-investigation/scott-halls-witness-trump-case-georgia/85-ad5ca637-6272-448b-8f52-c0c8aba74ef0

Hall's alleged involvement following the 2020 election reaches beyond the small south Georgia county. This includes personal relationships with those close to the former president.

Several media outlets, including CNN, have reported that Hall is related to David Bossie, chairman of the conservative group Citizens United who briefly led the former president's post-election legal challenges. Bossie's name appears in the Fulton indictment.

In late November 2020, David Shafer introduced Hall to a group of individuals including Robert Sinners, a current spokesperson for the Georgia Secretary of State's office who then worked for Trump's campaign. In the email, Shafer said Hall was "looking into the election" on behalf of the former president at Bossie's request.

This is described in Act 4 in the indictment, though Sinners is referred to as "unindicted co-conspirator Individual 4" by Fulton prosecutors. Sinners has since disavowed the post-2020 election activities that took place in Georgia.

Hall may also know about the letter former Justice Department official Jeffery Clark wanted to send that alleged the agency "identified significant concerns that may have impacted the outcome of the election in multiple States, including the State of Georgia."

Have you watched any movies recently you want to discuss? Any films you want to recommend or are hyped about? Feel free to discuss anything here.

Please just try to provide fair warning of spoilers if you can.

Looking for ideas - we're two adults in our mid-30's, no kids. We'll be leaving a wedding on a Monday in Ipswich but our flight home from London isn't until Friday. We'll be spending a week in London beforehand so we'd like to explore the countryside.

The only thing we've (sort of) landed on is seeing/staying in the Cotswolds, and touring some castles (holy crap there's a ton to chose from). We're not big drinkers/partiers but I'd like to be able to go hang out in a real English pub and stay at a Lord-of-the-Rings kind of inn (I already found the inn that the Prancing Pony is based on - thought not sure if we want to stay there).

Other random thoughts. Unfortunately our schedule doesn't seem like it'll line up with any Premier League games. Not planning on renting a car but can if we absolutely must. Would kind of like to stay in one spot since it's only 3 nights.