Hi all,

I've been trying to transition to an anti-consumption and zero-waste life for a year or two now. Just a disclaimer that I'm using "anti-consumption" and "zero-waste" really loosely here. The changes I've made so far are all pretty small, but I'll like to think, consistent and sustainable (at least for me).

Today, I wanted to specifically talk about my hobbies. I play video games, board games, read, write, paint, and do a variety of crafts (jewelry making, crocheting, sewing, card making and more). As you can imagine, my hobbies have been a very consumption and plastic waste heavy part of my life. I had games I never got to or played only once, shelves of books I never read, paint supplies I never opened, boxes of crafting material I never used and more.

My hobbies were also a very easy part to let go off. I had very limited hours in a day, so acknowledging there was no reason to buy anything in advance was already a huge change. Now, I never get anything I'm not immediately using (even if it's on sale or the last one). I also try to only buy second hand, which is really impossible when you need a specific paint colour or something, so I usually end up just making do or doing without. I also stopped watching YouTube tutorial or product comparison videos because I found they all felt like advertising. (I do still watch YT when I'm looking for something specific, like how to fix a X, just no longer browsed).

...until last night. I don't know why, but I started watching a bunch of watercolouring technique videos. Little history, I went from watercolouring pretty much every day and then sort of just stopped around March this year. Life got busy and I just didn't find the time.

And I couldn't help my notice that consuming these videos, and wandering around art supply shops and buying new paint was a huge motivation for me to paint. I wanted to try new techniques or new products. Browsing let me daydream about what I could do, what I could make. Buying something new gave me a certain excitement to be creative, to get to work.

So now I'm thinking maybe I need to adjust my balance a bit and give myself a treat a bit more than I have. Though the idea of basically buying motivation doesn't sit all that well with me...

So, I'm done babbling, anyone else feel this way? Any tips?

Sorry if this has been discussed already, I wasn't sure how to find it. I'm curious if votes on child comments affect the placement of their parent comments. Imagine this scenario:

• Comment 1 (25 votes)
• Comment 2 (2 votes)
  • Comment 3 (150 votes)

In this example, would the popularity of #3 cause #2 to be positioned above #1?

Edit: Oh the nested list formatting looks weird. Comment 3 is meant to be a child of Comment 2, if that wasn't clear.

We're at week 14, friends. Here we've got this week's user-voted record: Public Strain by Women!

Taken from @Cleb's pitch:

Noisy post-punk that sounds exactly like the image the cover depicts: Marching your way through a cold wasteland in the middle of a blizzard. It builds a wonderfully hopeless atmosphere and comes together so well.

Here's the place to discuss your thoughts on the record, your history with it or the artist, and basically talk about whatever you want to that goes along with Public Strain. Remember that this is intended to be a slow moving thing, feel free to take your time and comment at any point in the week!

If you'd like to stream or buy the album, it can be found on most platforms here.

So I've spent nearly the entire weekend watching Humans and I wanted to share what I think of it and maybe get some discussion going.

For those who are not familiar with it, the basic premise is an alternate reality present day where "synths" - robots that replaced humans in most menial tasks - are part of everyday life to the point of being a common household item. Within the first episode we learn that there are a handful of synths that are sentient - thinking, feeling individuals. The show explores the implications of that - how previously-servile machines becoming sentient would impact society. There are many parallels to contemporary issues around racism, xenophobia, fear, and I think the show does good job of handling the topic. It is a smart, well-written sci-fi drama.

So, did anyone else here watch it? What do you think of it?

PS: While the post itself doesn't have any spoilers, the comments do.

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!

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.

i mean come on how often do i write something upbeat eh?

bishop.

esskeetit.

takin off
rocketship
falling in a krater
look around
supernova
feeling upgraded
on the moon
turned into rocks
i'm integrated
i'm goin up never
coming home don't
lose your patience
takin off
rocketship
falling in a krater
look around
supernova
feeling upgraded
on the moon
turned into rocks
i'm integrated
i'm goin up never
coming home don't
lose your patience

baby mama trauma
got me all
dilapidated
only ever feel
myself when i
get sedated
on some tony
robbins shit my
giant awakened
hope we're
witnessing another
legend in the making

keep the dream alive
i'll make a home
out of chicago
get a new girl
some better friends
and pop some bottles
tryna climb this
fucking mountain and
i cannot let go
thank god i
got my heart broken
by that model.

you called me a snake
and then you took my
heart to battle
grab my neck and threw
my body down
into the gravel
buried me, in
the dirt found
oil and fossils
didn't think i'd
build a rocket and
then have a blastoff

takin off
rocketship
falling in a krater
look around
supernova
feeling upgraded
on the moon
turned into rocks
i'm integrated
i'm goin up never
coming home don't
lose your patience
takin off
rocketship
falling in a krater
look around
supernova
feeling upgraded
on the moon
turned into rocks
i'm integrated
i'm goin up never
coming home don't
lose your patience

Could we have a feature where similar posts can be linked/tagged and showup somewhere obvious, so you can access both posts from each other, linking the two. Something anyone visiting the topic can do.

So there is a link from post A to B but also B to A. You then kind of get a chain of relevant posts, like a further reading list. Maybe only showing topics that are two-three links deep, idk that's just details.

I really like the way r/AskHistorians does it where because of the moderation it's always very easy to find the comment that links previous discussion, but again that solution is not reversible, from the linked topics I can't get to the current topic.

It encourages people to look over previous posts and engage in those discussions, and to participate in a larger discussion across the site. Potentially with one topic link you can get 4-5 other topics.

It should help with answering frequent questions or concerns as it's easy to connect relevant discussion. But also pretty much any other discussion, say nuclear energy is discussed extensively here, and follow the links to the other places people have discussed it, give readers the site context for a topic, and a convenient way to look for further discussion.

I mostly see it being used by a poster who has already answered a question in a previous post and will link the reply in a comment, but this way it's far more accessible to anyone viewing the topic and not lost in the comments. Or maybe someone was interested enough to look further themselves and I've got to believe they would feel generous enough to bother linking the two topics they spent time looking for. Making it just more convenient for everyone.

Take for example this foss topic, I posted basically a follow-up topic about specific foss software.

So a comment can be posted linking the relevant topic but that can easily get lost in the fray and does nothing to link the original topic to the new one. Yeah if someone was really interested they could search the foss tag and easily find it but it's much more convenient with it linked and only one person needs to go through the process of searching.

I kind of like the idea but can see how it's very similar to the tag system and groups. In practice though I just use tags and groups to filter out stuff I don't want to see and sometimes to help with searching.
This would be a feature that focuses to continuing the discussion, and making it more convenient to do so.