Hello, fellow Tildrestians. Having just joined, I found that Tildes was a substantial improvement from the standard Reddit fare. Hooray for substantial conversation!

I’ve always been a long time lurker, and I’ve never been confident enough to start threads. So, ~talk, this is a vent thread for your problems and your worries. Not for the fact that you stubbed your toe, but possibly stuff that might worry you. If this doesn’t go well, then I will probably remove this thread in emberassment.

But if it does, then perhaps we can all propose solutions to others problems. Perhaps we can comfort each other with advice and tips. It could be a stupid idea, which, if it is, let me know, but it could be a chance to actually not be the circlejerking redditors some of us once were.

And if this in the wrong group, also do let me know.

I read some things about the philosophy and I'd really like to go deeper into it, but the book is so hard for me to read! I can't make sense of much of what I'm reading, maybe it's the vocabulary I'm not sure... Is there a more accessible book about absurdism?

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Black Mirror Season 3 Episode 3 - Shut Up and Dance

After a virus infects his laptop, a teen faces a daunting choice: carry out orders delivered by text message, or risk having intimate secrets exposed.

Black Mirror Netflix link

Warning: this thread contains spoilers about this episode! If you haven't seen it yet, please watch it and come back to this thread later.

You can talk about past episodes, but please don't discuss future episodes in this thread!

If you don't know what to say, here are some questions to get the discussion started:

• How does the title relate to the episode itself?
• Are there any similarities between real life events and the episode?
• Are there any references or easter eggs in the episode, such as references to past episodes?

Please rate the episode here!

Almost every content provider online tries to access some of your personal info, whether it's to keep itself afloat, improve functionality, or create profits. In 2014, Google made [89.4%] (https://revenuesandprofits.com/how-google-makes-money/) of its profits from advertising, all of which attempts to target users with their interests (though Google does allow this to be disabled).

What do you do to try and protect yourself from data collection? What software, programs, or browser extensions do you trust to protect you, and not just also monitor your activities?

If you don't do any of this, why not? To what extent do you think companies should be allowed to use your data?

Is anyone else here into web serials or serial fiction more generally? I was first introduced to the medium through Worm, probably the most well-known web serial out there at this point, and I loved it. (Well, okay, if we're getting technical I was probably first introduced to it through fanfiction, but it didn't register to me then that this was a medium used by original works as well.) I've worked my way through a few other serials since reading Worm, and I've continued to enjoy the format. Does anyone have recommendations for web serials (or printed serials!) they like?

For me, I'm currently reading Hate Would Suffice, a story about a teenager and a world frozen in ice. It updates almost daily with chapters around a thousand words long, and while it's a pretty new one I'm thoroughly enjoying it so far.

Osaka defeated Serena Williams in two sets, but her victory over her idol is marred by controversy. Williams was flagged with conduct violations due to alleged coaching signals, which Williams vehemently denied and was voicing her displeasure with Ramos, the chair umpire. A warning was followed by a point penalty, followed by...a game penalty. Which is indescribably huge in a match on this big a stage.

It's unfortunate for Osaka, she played incredibly and deserved the win. Williams had to console her during the award ceremony as the crowd booed in protest of the interesting official decisions. I can't imagine a "worse" way to win your first Championship.

I've never seen anything like this in the sport. It was really jarring honestly. Hopefully both competitors move on and things are sorted out.

There's a lot of anime and, from what I've experienced, people who are fans watch a lot of it. It's a daunting task to keep track of what you've seen, what you've thought of it, what to anticipate coming up, and discovering more that you might like.

What site, app, home-grown system are you using to organize your anime life?

I started by reading Banks' scifi, the Culture novels. I fell in love with them, and since I've read every one of those books multiple times, I decided to make the jump into reading his mainstream fiction. I started with The Wasp Factory, and I'd be interested in what you think about that book, if you've read it. If not, go read it! It's good!

I’m not recommending this for Tildes or anything, I just wanted to know your thoughts on it.

For those who are unfamiliar with it, on Medium, you can “applaud” articles and comments. To do this, you hold down the clap button, and depending on how long you hold it down, the more applause you give (up to a limit of 50). The best example would probably be if you go on any Medium article and try it yourself.

I’ve never really seen any discussion on it, so I was interested in hearing your thoughts.

I think the idea of essentially having to convert time holding down a button to a number of likes is interesting.

The problems that come to mind are that you could easily automate it, and that it could suffer the “5 star” rating system problem, where the majority of people will either dislike something enough to rate it 1 star, love it enough to rate it 5 stars, or not care enough to rate it at all (or in this case, give it 50 claps or nothing).

News article from the BBC: Chief Rabbi publishes first LGBT guide for orthodox schools

An adapted summary in the Jewish Chronicle: the Chief Rabbi's groundbreaking message to Orthodox schools on LGBT+ pupils

Background: Ephraim Mirvis is the Chief Rabbi of the United Hebrew Congregations of the Commonwealth. This guide therefore applies to all Jewish Orthodox schools in the Commonwealth (the United Kingdom, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, India, and so on).

Needing a down weekend, the spouse and I settled in to watch TV, and discovered that Starz' series, Counterpart - spoiler warning, is one of the better series we've seen in quite a while, let alone among science fiction stories. Though The Expanse wins for sheer SFX pyrotechnics and breadth of technical scope, it's wonderful to sit in for a deep, thoughtful drama like Counterpart. The series focuses on character, story, world-building, plausible plotting, and avoidance of the usual alternate universe cliches. Counterpart is a genuine Cold War Noir spy thriller which happens to occur in a science-fictional setting, and the writers have managed to avoid or refresh the tropes of both genres in ways that ask interesting philosophical questions. It's quiet, slow, and meticulous in a way that most current television writing seems to have abandoned. There's tense action, but no primary colored-supersuits, no scary aliens, no gaudy laser beams, just... a split of history that leaves two distorted mirrors, reflecting each other.

J.K. Simmons' performances in the roles of Howard (Prime) and Howard (Alpha) are mesmerizing in a way that outmatches Tatiana Mazlany's Orphan Black characters. There's a slow unveiling of the respective parallel worlds' history, with continuing evolution and interplay of characters and relationships, which brings to mind the best of series like The Wire or The Americans.

To the extent that Counterpart borrows from literary canon, the most significant underlying influences are John LeCarre's find-the-mole games in the Smiley series, China Mieville's The City and the City, and Philip K. Dick (particularly, The Adjustment Team).

The really guilty pleasure, and the lightweight pressure relief from the grimdark of Peaky Blinders or Counterpart, was a spit-and-giggles Canadian production called Letterkenny. I didn't have high hopes, but the 22-minute episodes are exactly what my brain needed to get over the daily doses of blah.

The opening credits of each episode refer to the fictional rural Ontario town of Letterkenny as follows:

There are 5,000 people in Letterkenny. These are their problems.

The plots are barely coat-hangers, with most of the comic tension spent on interactions among the Hicks (farm people), Skids (creative-but-disaffected Internet subculture wannabes), hockey players and Christians - a/k/a small-town tribes recognizable anywhere in North America. The portrayals are caricaturized enough to be both humorously offensive and humorously sympathetic simultaneously. [Could be some toxic racial/gender meta, but mostly, the treatment of women and minorities is in keeping with the setting.]

The banter, and the utter Spock-like deadpan of Wayne (the toughest guy in Letterkenny)'s Hick character are the stars of the show. Some people have complained that the rapid-fire use of heavy dialect in the dialogue is impenetrable; that actually helps with comic timing. When your brain catches up to what was actually said, it's like receiving a two-by-four between the eyes of funny. I've got a bit of home-team advantage in the midwestern North American dialects area, and usually get it on the first run, but it's good enough to re-watch happily if the spouse needs a do-over. Transcripts are available, but watch the show before looking.

We now have a new battery of in-jokes and gag lines to add to our secret spousal language - "Hard no.", "That's what I appreciates about ya", "...and he was never the same after that."

There's really nothing quite like Letterkenny, and it's exactly smart/dumb enough to make fantastic comedy. Two seven-episode seasons are currently available on Hulu.

So this is the dumb post of the day. Bear with me.

All I can say about art (like paintings and sculpture) is "is cool", "I like it", "it makes me sad" and look like a complete idiot totally out of place. (On the other hand, I can deliver a nuanced analysis of graffiti and hip hop so yeah it's all about the background.) I want to take my partner to a museum and start saying fancy shit like "oh you see the lines here these remind me of Donatello's style of light and shadow". Like I know it's possibly the dumbest thing to want but I really would like to learn more about it and be able to give informed opinions on art pieces.

Anyway, any recommendations? Maybe some youtube videos or some books? Or should I just say that everything past 1400 is derivative?