• ABC: Same-sex penguin couple at Sea Life Sydney Aquarium become parents

• SBS: Sydney's very own gay penguins have welcomed their first baby

• Sydney Morning Herald: Love birds: Sydney's same-sex penguin couple welcomes baby chick

• Daily Telegraph: Same-sex penguins Sphen and Magic foster baby chick

This is a follow-up to this previous topic posted here a couple of weeks ago: Same-Sex Penguin Couple Fosters An Egg In Sydney

One of my biggest hobbies and passions over the last 10 or 15 years has been essentially all of the above. I'm not the smartest or the most well-read lady out there by any means but I enjoy exploring the more shadowy realms of discourse. There's lots and lots of dross but occasionally a nugget of something magnificent, and over the years it's eroded away my original scientific materialist atheism completely and my thinking now is more animist, panpsychist, deist. I've spent years off and on experimenting with (actual, not stage) magic, and though I was never super committed to the full ceremonial experience like others I've seen, it's become a part of how I think.

So I was wondering if there's any here that don't fit into the typical scientific materialist box in one form or another. And if so, what're you reading or experimenting with right now?

Currently I'm reading through Conversations with God and it's persuaded me to start practicing loving-kindness meditation. I've only been at that a few days but I'm interested to see what impact it has on my daily life. It's definitely true that up until these past few days I've never actively focused on trying to love myself and others, which kind of surprises me when I think about it. But that sort of thing isn't really something I see emphasized in our culture or in my own little circle.

How about you?

We've all got our interests and things we spend a lot of time thinking about, but often they require either an external or internal catalyst to spark a comment or a post in and of itself.

What would you like to talk about? What interests or preoccupies you? What do you think is neat, or terrible?

19 weeks and there's another classic record discussion to be had: The Beatles by The Beatles!

The Beatles, also known as "The White Album", is the ninth studio album by the English rock band the Beatles, released on 22 November 1968. A double album, its plain white sleeve has no graphics or text other than the band's name embossed, which was intended as a direct contrast to the vivid cover artwork of the band's previous LP Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band. Although no singles were issued from The Beatles in Britain and the United States, the songs "Hey Jude" and "Revolution" originated from the same recording sessions and were issued on a single in August 1968. The album's songs range in style from British blues and ska to tracks influenced by Chuck Berry and by Karlheinz Stockhausen.

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 the white album! 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.

Don't forget to nominate and vote for next week's obscure record in response to this comment!

I've been thinking about my experience on Tildes with news and articles. It's mostly been seeing high quality content and discussion that I'm happy with. However for the sake of this, I want to discuss avoiding something negative.

Lately I've noticed news and articles with headlines that I feel are biasing in nature and potentially inflammatory.

I would guess that we're all pretty familiar with this method in general. At some point when a forum/aggregate becomes large enough it provides an profitable opportunity for third parties to distribute content. Or an individual is pursuing their fulfillment of a personal ideal.

I have a few suggestion to handle the issues productively.

News sources that put a higher priority on traffic versus their reputation tend to do so consistently. It would be valuable for users to be required to tag the parent domain when posting external links to allow users to discern sources case by case using tags.

Blocking something a news source versus <inciting-phrase> has the benefit of allowing higher quality sources mentioning the same topic to have an impact on the user. That's potentially very valuable in encouraging informed perspective.

Linking news and articles for commercial or personally motivated reasons is posted on subs that have a marginal relation. E.g. Posting a story on Mike Pence denouncing all white men working in agriculture in an agriculture sub. The connection can certainly be made but I don't think that's a good way of organizing that information. I think it would be more productive to post that in a news or news/political thread. Having the ability to choose when we see and engage with that type of content is important. It benefits the individual and encourages healthy and engaged communities.

Blocking users ( I wasn't sure if this existed ) Alternatively, a system for linked content reputation per user. But I think that's a bad solution overall.
I meant filtering users content and comments as a preference for users. I'm not talking about site wide.

I'm curious if other Tilde users agree with my issues or suggestions.

When you label a comment, at the moment, you don't get any sort of feedback or indicator that you did so (or at least, I didn't). Maybe after you label a comment, and after Tildes has successfully registered the label, it could display something? Maybe like a little green circle or replacing the word "label" with something like "successfully labeled!"?

Yesterday @talklittle posted the topic Halloween game sales are live. What are your Horror/Halloween-themed recommendations?. There have been some good recommendations and whatnot. If you like horror games and weren't aware of the ongoing sales, go check out the comments for some recommendations.

Being the meta-killjoy that I am, I started this sidebar about the top comment. tl;dr: I don't think this type of content engenders Tildes's discussion forward community.

Fell free to read the whole thread of comments for some civil discussion on the matter, but I do want to open this up to all of Tildes: should this type of comment be policed on Tildes?

Also: do you think this type of comment is good? Do you agree with me that it's retroactive to Tildes's goals? Am I just a big killjoy? Given that the comment I'm calling into question is the top comment of that topic, I'm probably David in this arena but I want to hear it from everyone else.

today's different -

or at least, this part of it.

a lot of the posts i been making the past couple months have been out of this empty kinda want to write something.

as per the usual, i came to starbucks to work on some shit, but i felt something in my chest, got some inspo, and here we are again lmao.

fair warning ahead, this is one of my more...idk, "brazen" posts. i dunno, superficial as hell save for one or two bars. enjoy it or not - love you anyways.

peep the inspo at the bottom

esskeetit.

seeing all these people walking
round arm in arm
while im sitting in my house in
the dark - pop bars
crash cars - cop cars
hella sirens in the distance
blood in the moonlight glistens
bishy getting distant
what's going on in your
head causing dissonance?
what's weighing up with suicide
in equivalence?
still hooked on to
the past in imprisonment?
keep looking back at
what you had and you're missing it?

-.

fuck that - cut that
sideswipe - bone crack
i wouldn't go back
despite all the flashbacks
i still got hopes
want my life back
i do this shit 'cus
my soul went bad
layin in a bed full of
pressed pills and porn mags
filling up a pool with
self-hatred and cognac
pistol labeled "lovers"
and the bullet "no contact"
wanna ski slopes 'til
my eyes go all black

-.

i don't hate that girl
i hate my self
don't hate this world
i hate my self
spent red candles
on my shelf
lost 21 grams when
i weighed myself

ave satani
my fear and my secrets
my tears and my blood
my devotion and regrets
my love and disdain and
my pain and forgiveness
these things are my own
and my self is my weakness
so bring my destruction
and make me a demon

bishop.

inspo:

https://youtu.be/ShI6axFfqj4

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2p09lM19FpU

https://youtu.be/9M1PY4lTY3g

bonus: https://youtu.be/DxvLc2a6Iao

Humanity has wiped out 60% of animals since 1970, major report finds

Don't misread the headline like I did when I saw it! This isn't about extinctions: we haven't killed off 60% of species. We have reduced the population of all animals by an average of 60%.