Someone on reddit came up with this idea:

a thread statistics page that would show the average age of accounts replying, the top subreddits those accounts use, the frequency of posted replies and how they group up

This would be interesting to see as Tildes scales up as a defensive measure against bots and brigading (once invite-only goes away...if it does)

Here's an article in Australian Fairfax Media: "Fears new wonder drug could lead to STI epidemic"

It refers to this article in The Lancet: "Community-level changes in condom use and uptake of HIV pre-exposure prophylaxis by gay and bisexual men in Melbourne and Sydney, Australia: results of repeated behavioural surveillance in 2013–17"

Here's the key take-away from the Fairfax article:

An international 2016 study of men who have sex with men found the chances of contracting chlamydia, gonorrhoea and syphilis were increased 11, 24, and 44-fold respectively in PrEP users. Fears have now been raised that these staggering numbers might be replicated in Australia.

One of my favorite things over at Reddit is /r/fitness's Gym Story Saturdays and Rant Wednesdays (and also /r/WeightRoom's daily threads). I don't know if we have enough gym goers people on Tildes yet for a weekly thread on your adventures in fitness, but I figured I'd put one up and see what happens.

This week I did week 2 of Pervertor for 5/3/1 and it has Boring But Big sets as supplemental work. The squat day was hell. This is probably because instead of doing typical BBB, five sets of ten at 50% of your train max, Pervertor does this at 65% of your TM. For me, this meant 5x10 squats at 235 lbs after doing the 5/3/1 sets. I just had to sit down after it was done, couldn't immediately move on to my assistance work. My lower back was especially feeling it, but quads were on fire too. Luckily, was ready to go in a few minutes, but I've never had to just sit there and take a break before workouts like that in my near three years of program lifting.

But no one ever starting lifting weights because they wanted it to be easy.

Anyway, I'm sure y'all probably have better stories than "it was hard to things." Let's hear them.

last one for today, feel like i've been littering all over tildes and i dont want to be the only thing people see on the homepage.

i normally only do these like once a week, but i kept finding words that work today.

sorry for the clutter,

cheers.

bliky at the forehead
hit the floor dead.
i give you advice
so that i feel important
tell me to stay im
a little distorted
cross-faded vision
is going contorted

take off my seatbelt
and i start to floor it
fuck all your comments
i know its abhorrent
i only go out in the
night when it's dormant
in hopes that I'll see
a brick wall and ignore it

gorgeous.

tell me, do you cry or get lonely?
Do you ever feel soulless?
Do you ever stop and reminisce?
Baby I want to feel free.
Free.

(beat.)

dagga in die bak - smoke
til the morning
i just want you back
still hear you moaning
hard to look back,
know that you happened
hard to look back,
see what we had then
knife hits the floor, saying
what the fuck man
you're a grown man how
do you function
why do you do this
you're above this
Cus I don't know what's real
Baby I want to feel free

Free

Free

Free

bliky at the forehead
hit the floor dead.
i give you advice
so that i feel important
tell me to stay im
a little distorted
cross-faded vision
is going contorted

take off my seatbelt
and i start to floor it
fuck all your comments
i know its abhorrent
i only go out in the
night when it's dormant
in hopes that I'll see
a brick wall and ignore it
it's gorgeous.

Hooktube.com used to provide a private way to view youtube vids, blocking ads, bypassing region locks, and also pulling comments and search results via the api. All you had to do was replace the you in a youtube link with hook.

No more. On July 11, this appeared on the changelog:

HookTube no longer uses YouTube api for anything, and most features (channel page, search, related videos, etc) are gone. No choice.

Which was extremely bad, but at least you could still watch videos privately right?

July 16: YouTube api features are back but mp4 <video> is replaced with the standard YT video embed. HookTube is now effectively just a light-weight version of youtube and useless to the 90% of you primarily concerned with denying Google data and seeing videos blocked by your governments.

rest in pieces
It was a good run, 1.5 years. Started as a quickly made addition to the norbot project, and within long the server had to be upgraded several times. Of course YouTube Legal was an inevitability at that point.
Special thanks to the many people who created plugins and extensions for hooktube, /g/, the five people who donated anonymously, and BitChute for working hard on a real YouTube alternative. HookTube will remain operational in the present state for those who only needed it for performance reasons. See you in the next project.

:(

Alternatives include: invidio.us, youtube-dl, the Freetube desktop app, Newpipe for Android, and you’re doomed if you use iOS. ETA: Actually, I just remembered, there’s Media Grabber for the Workflow app. And Invidio mostly works on mobile.

Batgirl background:

• A lot of Batman fans maybe be familiar with Barbara (Babs) Gordon's Batgirl. She was the first Batgirl (not to be confused with Betty Kane's Bat-girl), and is often the on-screen Batgirl of choice.
• Barbara was paralyzed from the waist down in the infamous The Killing Joke. Her forced retirement from the Batgirl mantle has always triggered mixed feelings, and she's often the top three Women-in-Refrigerators.

Oracle background:

• Barbara returns to DC comics after the events of The Killing Joke as Oracle, where she continues to fight crime in a less overt manner. She often provides much needed expertise and assistance to other vigilantes, including Batman.
• As Oracle, she is also one of the first major depictions of disability in DC comics.

Barbara's return to Batgirl:

• The New 52 Batgirl series is the first Batgirl title with Barbara as Batgirl. After a glossed over miracle cure, she can now walk and picks up her cowl again.

The lost of Oracle:

• Though it's great to finally see Barbara with her own Batgirl title comic, and her struggles to be Batgirl again. And it definitely doesn't hurt that she was written by Gail Simone. It seems the lost of Oracle was greater than the return of Batgirl.
• The Batgirl mantle has been carried by a few people at this point, specifically Cassandra Cain and Stephanie Brown, both of which are in the New 52 and Rebirth continuity. To put it pointly, Batgirl is replaceable.
• Oracle is not, and has not been replaced. In a world where information is the best tool and weapon in fighting crime, Oracle's role is more important than Batgirl's, which is basically one of might.
• Oracle was a show of determination and will. Barbara may have been forced to retire as Batgirl, but she chose to continue fighting against crime. Loosing the use of her legs didn't affect the use of her mind.

Any other fans of Batgirl/Oracle have thoughts on this? Is re-empowering Barbara as Batgirl, minimizing her contributions as Oracle? How do you feel about the representation of disabilities and/or women in comics in general?

nevermind.

my stoep is warm.
my stoep is warm.
can't keep my calm
it should probably raise alarms if
my stoep is warm
my stoep is warm
that there's a problem
and I dont know how to stop it

fucked up his arm
with bleeding scars
that kid's an addict he
has no idea how to quit
Insha'allah
One day he'll stop
If he ever dulls the edges of
the shards of broken promises

'llahu-allah
'llahu-allah
That a broken-legged lamb
can still hobble into Providence
i hear the caw
i hear the caw
woke up in a sweat and
saw a raven at my doorstep

(beat.)

messed up inside
messed up inside
only when he's fucked up
does he really feel alive
the pain you feel
the pain you feel
is the happiness you had before
So pay it up boy, that's the price.

my stoep is warm.
my stoep is warm.
can't keep my calm
it should probably raise alarms if
my stoep is warm
my stoep is warm
that there's a problem
and I dont know how to stop it

fucked up his arm
with bleeding scars
that kid's an addict he
has no idea how to quit
Insha'allah
One day he'll stop
If he ever dulls the edges of
the shards of broken promises

the stoa's hot
the stoa's hot
how you gonna run from
a problem that's inside your head

it's going dark,
it's going dark
beautiful curse if you
find that you woke up again

Months ago I decided I was going to build my own underwater remotely-operated vehicle. I got sidetracked by a kitchen remodel, but since it is now complete I will have some free time to start working on my vehicle. There are some decent videos out there where others have done the same thing, some are wildly complicated and others are basically built from items out of a scrap bin. I am hoping to land somewhere in the middle.

During the bit of research I have performed, I discovered companies selling very high-end parts, the likes of which you would find on a highly funded/sponsored deep sea expedition or a government project. I didn't find a whole lot of middle ground really, either you DIY or you dump a ton of money into it.

My plan is to use PVC for my hull. I had thought about constructing it similar to the Russian Typhoon-class submarine, with two pressure hulls within an outer hull. That would allow the electrics to reside in dry compartments while I use the void space for ballast. I even found RC submarine ballast systems on eBay which would allow me to take on water and dump it remotely so I could trim it out on the fly.

The general opinion, I have discovered so far, is to make it neutrally buoyant. As much as I would like to add that ballast tank system I may need to just keep it simple for my first attempt. Tethers also seem to be an issue, adding too much weight when they get to a certain length and if you do not take steps to make them buoyant. I thought pool noodles, but learned from someone else that they become water logged and are a bad choice. Then there is power, the trend I noticed is keeping it onboard in the form of a battery pack, but I would like to keep it ashore and just add a wire to the tether so I can not have power to worry about.

So far I have an Arduino board, some old laptops, and some rivers to explore. If we had a makerspace or hackerspace nearby I would be all set. I did search, and the closest is an hour away, which is disappointing since I know I am not the only person into ridiculous projects/hobbies around here! Anyone on here into things like this?

I've been consuming the darkness that is wartime histories from the past three or four centuries and I feel like I've encountered a lot of people who had what they believed to be justifiable reasons to launch wars against other powers. There are people who thought they had divine right to a particular position of power and so would launch a war to assert that god-given right. There are people who believed in a citizen's right to have some (any) say in how their tax money gets used in government and so would fight wars over that. People would fight wars to, as John Cleese once said, "Keep China British." Many wars are started to save the honor of a country/nation. Some are started in what is claimed to be self-defense and later turns out to have been a political play instigated to end what has been a political thorn in their sides.

In all this time, I've struggled to really justify many of these wars, but some of that comes with the knowledge of what other wars have cost in terms of human carnage and suffering. For some societies in some periods, the military is one of the few vehicles to social mobility (and I think tend to think social mobility is grease that keeps a society functioning). Often these conflicts come down to one man's penis and the inability to swallow their pride to find a workable solution unless at the end of a bayonet. These conflicts also come with the winning powers taking the opportunity to rid themselves of political threats and exacting new harms on the defeated powers (which comes back around again the next time people see each other in a conflict).

So help keep me from embracing a totally pacifistic approach to war. When is a war justifiable? When it is not only morally acceptable but a moral imperative to go to war? Please point to examples throughout history where these situations have happened, if you can (though if you're prepared to admit that there has been no justifiable war that you're aware of, I suppose that's fine if bitter).