I'll preface this by saying this post is birthed out of a small argument I'm having on Reddit, but the topic seems like a worthwhile one. (And I'm not getting much other than downvotes for a counterargument over there!)

The initial question is whether or not the death of someone who is very old (95 years or more) should be considered tragic. Some things to consider:

1. The overall health and condition of the person.

• Are they in constant state of suffering?

2. The wishes of the person.

• Do they actively wish to be dead? This might not even be out of suffering. Some people, as they get to be quite old, are just bored of their lives or want this stage to be over. Anecdotally, my great-grandmother was this way from the ages of 90 and onward. (She quite famously would greet cashiers with "I want to die.")

3. Are they still active?

• Do they still find meaning in what they are doing? For example, David Attenborough is 93 years old and is still a big presence on the world stage. Despite his great age, if he were to die, his work would still be ‘cut short.’

4. The circumstances by which they die.

• Was it sudden, or did it take a long time? Was it painful? Was it violent?

This list is not exhaustive. I welcome suggestions for what should be added to it.

There is also how we define tragedy. In general terms, it typically just alludes to an event that causes great suffering and distress. I think this is the definition that we are more concerned with. Alternatively, there is the theatrical definition of tragedy, which is more tied to the leading character suffering some major downfall at the end of the narrative. While we could construe the death of someone in real life this way, it seems to be a bit of a stretch as most of us do not live out our lives in three-act structures with a clear climax and finale. (I’m going to rule out this definition now, if not just for the sake of argument.)

Balancing all of these thoughts, I think the crux of where disagreement lies is in how we feel about death for the deceased versus our own selfish desires. Bringing this back to my anecdote, about twenty years ago, my great-grandmother passed at the age of 94. She spent at least the last 5 years of her life pleading to God to finally take her. Her health was fine. She lived in her house, alone, fully capable of maintaining it (and herself). In fact, in the year prior to her death, she was so physically active that she painted all 200 feet of her white picket fence! By all means, she was not physically suffering. She just simply wanted to go.

Then she did. I think the group consensus was something akin to, “Well, I guess she finally got what she wanted. I’m going to miss her.” It was a feeling of simultaneously being happy for her and grief for ourselves.

To which, does this make for a tragedy?

Some might call it splitting hairs, but what I am arguing is that the death itself was not tragic. What is tragic is our loss of the ability to interact with that person and the feelings of grief that follow. I cannot help but feel these are ultimately separate things that we have such a difficult time reconciling. Part of life is death, and as long as we revere life, we must also revere the last part of it. If we did this better, we might have an easier time accepting things like medical-assistance-in-dying. It is for this reason that I say, death, by default, does not necessitate tragedy.

However while death is not necessarily tragic, I do think there are a multitude of conditions that would make death sufficiently tragic. Looking back at my list above, the death of a young healthy person would be considered tragic. Suppose someone was violently beheaded; this could be considered tragic. Even suppose that the 93-year-old David Attenborough passed away, I would think his death to be tragic as he wanted to offer more to the world.

Anyway, I think I’ve rambled enough. What are your thoughts?

I'll start (for reference, I am a 14 year old Brazilian in a presumably poor house , also in retrospect this reminds me of what they tell you to do at the beginning of most English courses, which makes me feel like a cringy kid):

• Wake up (6:15, praised be alarm clocks)

• Put on the school uniform (takes 5-10 minutes)

• Have breakfast (takes 10 minutes)

• Brush my teeth (takes less than 5 minutes)

• Walk to school (6:45)

• Reach school (less than 100 meters from my home thankfully) and enter a classroom (7:00 plus a few minutes for teachers to set stuff up)

• stay in school until 12:17 (every time the subject changes, we pack our stuff and go to the classroom the teacher of the subject is in. There is also a break between 9:30 and 10:20.)

• Leave school and go home

• Get home by 12:45

• Have lunch, usually rice and beans with either meat or chicken meat in some flattened form I can't describe, usually at 1-1:30 PM.

Do... whatever on the phone (as of recently be here or in discord, along with reddit and YouTube for longer unless it runs out of battery) Edit: see here for details.

• Have dinner (usually at 8:30-9:00, same food as lunch)

• Pack the books for the subjects they teach tomorrow

• Go to sleep at 10.

During vacation/weekends I can wake up from 5-10 AM depending on how well I slept the previous night. The rest is the same, except for Saturdays my parents go and buy some esfihas to break the monotony of lunch and dinner.

I'm always curious to see what languages people speak, especially given that most communication on sites like Tildes happens in English and as such it doesn't always come up.

At one point, I was pretty fluent in Spanish, but it's been about 4ish years since I've used it with any frequency and as such I am very rusty when speaking. I can still read and write it pretty well however. The big thing is that I have trouble these days recalling vocab I knew like the back of my hand... I should read more to stay sharp.

I also took some French in college and can read it at a beginner-intermediate level, basically enough to understand threads on not super complex topics. I can write too, but require a dictionary for anything remotely complex. Speaking I'm shit however - despite having great teachers I always had a tough time with pronunciation.

I (probably) have aphantasia, so I only dream when I'm actually trying to make my brain dream something, so I usually only dream to indulge in NSFW fantasies to jack off and despite this barely anything makes it into my mind. (I swear someone has said something like this before, I think they said they 'did it to embrace their kinks to improve mental health', which is quite unique and pretty cool.)

Asked in the spirit of the new decade.

I am 14, so mostly growing up and realizing that the world is probably going to enter a recession when I reach adulthood which will suck for reaching financial independence.

Going through puberty, even if it's just the beginning of it and seeing one of my cats die from kidney failure and hearing that my grandma died from cancer, which is very sad :(

I'll start by saying yes and no, but the reasons for my answer are personal and familial ,so if you don't like that skip my answer.

With the year and decade coming to an end, I wanted to do a self interview/reflection. I'm basically looking for questions that address the past, present and future. Questions that help reflect or set goals are nice, but anything goes really. This was inspired by Vanity Fair's yearly interview with Billie Eilish, but I also love reflecting on the past and need for structure by setting goals for the future. Plus what better time to do this with the new year and decade coming up?

What I'd like to do is ask myself these questions on a yearly basis, but this one might be longer as I'd put questions that will address things 5 & 10 years from now.

I often run long distance as part of my workouts and lately I've been composing various axioms for how I should live. These are three axioms I find integral to my character which I try and place at the bedrock of my decision making.

0th - The thought which you cannot think is that which guides you.

1st - The world can be boiled down to two types of people: those who act and those who are acted upon. Be one who acts.

2nd - Defy social conformities via normative methods.

So I bought this laptop mainly for web browsing, document editing, note taking and programming with perhaps light gaming although that's not something I've tried yet. So, really just for school work.

Specifications

Laptop Model : Acer Aspire 3 A315-42
Laptop screen : 1080p IPS (with matte finish?)
CPU : R5 3500U
RAM : 8GB DDR4 (6GB available because of iGPU)
Storage : 256GB SSD NVMe
Wireless : Qualcomm Atheros QCA9377
Wired : Realtek Semiconductor Co., Ltd. RTL8111/8168/8411 (According to lspci)
2x USB 2.0, 1x USB 3.0, 1x HDMI port, Audio jack, 1x RJ45 Ethernet port
Battery : 36.7Wh

Linux compatibility

Everything worked out of the box, gotta modify TLP to not kill the touchpad and webcam. The touchpad seems to have a mind of its own when it comes to being detected, It seems to be a kernel bug, unsure what I'll do about it concretely but rebooting a couple of times makes it work. Nothing to install thanks to AMD's open source mesa drivers. Might need a kernel higher than 5.3 because of general Ryzen 3000 issues but I've not tried, it was already higher than that.

Operating system tested

Basically never touched Windows, directly installed Fedora 31 Silverblue.

My Silverblue configuration is :

● ostree://fedora:fedora/31/x86_64/silverblue
                   Version: 31.20191213.0 (2019-12-13T00:42:11Z)
                BaseCommit: a5829371191d0a3e26d3cced9f075525d2ea73679bd255865fcf320bd2dca22a
              GPGSignature: Valid signature by 7D22D5867F2A4236474BF7B850CB390B3C3359C4
       RemovedBasePackages: gnome-terminal-nautilus gnome-terminal 3.34.2-1.fc31
           LayeredPackages: camorama cheese eog fedora-workstation-repositories gedit gnome-calendar gnome-font-viewer gnome-tweaks hw-probe libratbag-ratbagd lm_sensors nano neofetch
                            powertop radeontop sysprof systemd-swap tilix tlp

Kernel : 5.3.15
Gnome : 3.34.1

Body and Looks

The screen back has metal, I believe it feels quite sturdy. The rest is reasonable feeling plastic. The material used just loves to imprint grease / fingers which kinda sucks - the keys being the exception thankfully. There was also stickers on the inside which well, are somewhat standard but I thought they were pretty obnoxious so I removed them.

Typing experience

It's nothing amazing but it's good enough. I'm not really knowledgeable on keyboards so that's as much as I can say on it, really.

Performance

Everything feels quite snappy but I don't game at all on this machine so I'm not pushing it too much other than while I'm compiling or doing other things. The temperature does go up to 75°C and the fans get a little loud but it's not that bad. It's mostly the bottom getting hot so it's not something you notice too much while typing. It also cold boots quite fast, in about 10-20seconds I want to say but I've not benchmarked that. It's my first computer with an SSD so there's that.

Battery life

I get about 5hours with tlp installed doing web browsing, some programming occasionally, listening to music on the speakers and chatting. Personally I was kind of expecting more from this considering it's an APU but it seems to be what other people are getting on similar setups so It'll do.

Conclusion

Overall, I'm pretty happy with this laptop considering how I bought it for 575$ on sale. I made this review mostly because I wasn't finding much information about this laptop on Linux and well, I don't know, I guess I felt like it. If you have any questions, ask up!

I'm currently re-watching all episodes of Detectorists and it's one of my favourite tv things ever, so I thought maybe Tildes would be interested. Detectorists is a single camera sitcom about two men and their friendship around their metal detecting hobby.

Here's the link to the BBC Four webpage for it: https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b06l51nr

Some review sites -

Rotten Tomatoes 100% (few reviews), 99% audience score: https://www.rottentomatoes.com/tv/detectorists

IMDB 8.6 : https://www.imdb.com/title/tt4082744/

Guardian review (because she writes about it far better than I can): https://www.theguardian.com/tv-and-radio/2017/dec/09/detectorists-rich-portrait-unremarkable-lives-gone-slightly-awry-mackenzie-crook

Detectorists is about nothing and everything. Made with palpable love, it’s about people and their passions; camaraderie and community. As a portrait of male friendship, it is closer to documentary than drama, delving beneath the topsoil of mid-life ennui via the sparsest of exchanges. You won’t find a laughter track, or smart-arse punchlines or an oh-so-subtle veil of irony here; instead of begging for your attention, Detectorists is notable for its avoidance of snark. It’s the drama least likely to culminate in alpha plonkers blowing up cars, taking down baddies or ravishing beautiful women.

Instead, it lingers lovingly over dewdrops on grass, magpies on gateposts, scudding clouds and gently fluttering leaves. Even an alfresco wee takes on a painterly aspect, viewed solely through the steam cloud billowing from behind a sunlit tree. Meanwhile, the camera makes high art out of Lance’s face in closeup, crestfallen as he unearths a scaffolding bracket instead of an Anglo-Saxon nugget, and from Andy’s silent incredulity when a colleague jokes about Richard Attenborough when he means David.

Radio Times review https://www.radiotimes.com/news/tv/2017-12-13/detectorists-series-3-review/

If all British programmes took this much care over their tone, look and overall distinctiveness, the golden age of television would never go away.

Modern comedies are often predicated on cruelty: laughs are hard, clanging or sharp as barbed wire. In its quiet, undemonstrative way, Detectorists has ploughed its own furrow. Buried in its field of fun are evergreen truths about life, and the things we don’t say but should. So if kindness and companionship are unfashionable, I know which side of the hedge I’d rather stand.

You know: something that sticks out to you in a bad, unignorable way -- like a "sore thumb" -- every time you see/hear it.

Maybe its apostrophe misuse, maybe it's using cliches like they're going out of style, maybe it's b  a d k e  r n i  n g, or a lack of parallelism perhaps bothers you.

Whatever it is (and it doesn't have to be writing related), let us know. Also, most importantly, why do you think it has such a profound effect on you?

"What do you want to do/be when you grow up?" is a question we've all been confronted with, willingly or not, throughout our lives. It's intercultural, except for the increasingly rare instances where it's culturally or familialy expected that you'll continue a family trade.

And then there are those of us who just can't pick the one true direction, or thought we had it right for a while, then abruptly got bored/burnt out and had to find a new career or calling. I've personally had no fewer than eight different or only tangentially related "careers", sometimes overlapping with hobbies, and I'm floundering a bit to find the next one.

I was just introduced to the "multipotentialite" concept today - see the TED Talk, Why Some of Us Don't Have One True Calling for details, and https://puttylike.com/ for the speaker's site and book information. As the video mentions, polymathy was once highly respected in the Renaissance, but it's been devalued in favor of increasingly narrow specializations in the industrial and information economies.

This thread is for the bewildered, the career peregrinators wandering with or without aim, who've been branded as flakes or losers, or are suffering anxiety/depression because the heavens haven't opened up and rained down purpose and meaningful work.

Tell your story to the extent you're comfortable, ask questions and seek support.

• What is it like to discover a passion?
• What is it like to find yourself losing that passion?
• How did you accommodate the change?
• What carried over successfully from prior careers?
• Did you experience pressure to stay with just one thing?
• Have you had disrupted relationships with family, partners, or friends as a result of these changes?
• Do you feel that you've made unique contributions due to broad experience and/or interdisciplinary knowledge?
• Do you feel discriminated against in the job market for lacking a clear career path?
• Did you suffer damaging mental distress before or as a result of making a career change?
• Is it exciting or frightening to make a change, and has it become more or less so with repeated changes?

This is also open to the people who were seemingly born knowing precisely what they wanted to do - were you successful in pursuing it, or did you have to make accommodations, perhaps discovering something else?

This is sort of a "backlog post" but for real-life: take care of something small that, for whatever reason, you've left unaddressed for too long.

Maybe it's something that keeps ending up on your to-do list but never gets resolved. Maybe your desk is cluttered. Maybe you haven't vacuumed your carpet in a while. Maybe your fridge could use a cleanout. It doesn't have to be cleaning themed, but that's what's coming to mind for me right now, so you can probably guess what mine will be.

Whatever it is, take a few minutes to resolve the issue, then tell us about it here.

• What was the issue?
• Why do you think it kept getting put off?
• How do you feel now that it's done?

Halloween has always been one of my favourite events of the year. I loved dressing up (though we always had to wear a winter coat over our costumes), I loved going trick-or-treating with my friends, and I loved sorting through our pillowcase of loot at the end of the night. I remember entire streets decorated as graveyards and how lively it was with kids everywhere. A few houses down from us, a neighbour set up a haunted house in their garage every year, and it ended with a warm hot chocolate with little marshmallows. We always planned to hit that house when we started getting cold.

When my partner and I starting handing out candy, we were in a relatively newly developed neighbourhood, and had very few kids. We handed out full sized chocolate bars and chips, the best prizes when we were trick-or-treating! We took turns answering the door and just loved to see the costumes. We counted Darth Vaders and witches and whatever was popular that year. It was always a lot of fun.

We stopped handing out candy about two years ago, mostly because I didn't want to get Nestle candy, which was the nut-free stuff that we usually got, and because it felt wasteful. There are a lot of drives right after Halloween where people basically dumped pounds of chocolate (either trading them to their dentist, or using them to make Halloween art). At work, every parent would bring in bags of candy to share. It was honestly just too much, especially considering the individually wrapped plastic. I've also started noticing that everyone is starting to sell plastic "Halloween candy reusable" bags, and I just really dislike that.

We're always looking for an alternative because I still really want to take part in Halloween again. This year, we again decided against handing out candy, and I'm already missing seeing the little trick-or-treators and their costumes, and their joy in getting a little treat.

Time for a story.

Some of you might remember that I was planning on going abroad. I intended to visit New York City with one of my best friends, setting foot in the United States for the first time in my life. I have had reservations about the actions and the state of politics of the US for a while, but I'm by no means an activist; I largely settle for small discussions regarding this topic, online or among friends. This means that I had not considered the current administration as a deterrent to my week-long trip.

For the sake of what I'm about to talk in the rest of this post, some additional personal details are needed for context. I am a EU citizen and a second-generation immigrant, child of a parent born in North Africa. I was fortunate enough not to have to go through having to acquire a "real" visa as my country is part of the ESTA program. This program is a fast track of sorts that allows a non-citizen to get clearance to get into the US by providing information through an online form. As I went through that automated process, I arrived at one step that worried me: they asked about being a citizen of another country. Now, I have both an EU ID and passport but I have double-nationality from my parent and so I also have ID and (an expired) passport from that country.

That country is not unstable or known to host terrorists or extremist organizations but I was wondering if I would be lumped in with immigrants from more troubled countries and so I hesitated to put that information at all. But then I figured that it would be a bad idea to lie and then have to explain why I lied if they figured out. And I didn't visit that country for a decade. So in the end I did input that info. This decision stayed with me and caused me anxiety until the end of the 72 hour waiting period. I thought about being denied while having already spent roughly a thousand bucks on the airplane ticket and the hotel. Fortunately in the end everything went through. That put my fears at ease.

Let us fast forward to the day of the trip. My friend and I had the good idea to stay up really late the night before even though our flight was outrageously early. I think I slept for 3 hours if that. And during the 8 hour flight I absolutely could not sleep despite my best efforts. This is just me setting the stage for some heavy sleep deprivation.

Arriving at JFK, we eventually stumble upon the horribly long queue for customs. When we got to an officer, my friend went first, giving his passport and scanning his fingerprints. I went just after him, doing the same. However, the officer seems to have an issue. They close their booth and ask me to follow them. My friend's watching and is like "wtf is going on", the only thing I manage to say is "welp later I guess", maybe not realizing what is going on.

My passport withheld, I'm led to a waiting room... and told to wait there, no reason given. The officer tells me that "it" should be quick. As I scan the room, I mostly see Arab or Asian people with an additional one or two white-passing people. I sit and get my phone out to message my friend where I am and what I was told, when an agent immediately tells me that no phone is allowed. I can only imagine how panicked my friend was getting at that point.

An hour passes.

With still no reason given for what I'm going to call an arrest, I then had had time enough time to see people go through, leave and for others to take their place all the while I listened to the officers talk to each other and interact with the visitors.

The ratio of people stayed mostly the same, meaning the majority was comprised of Arab and Asian people, roughly half didn't speak English at all. There were two types of processing. The first one was people waiting 20 minutes and getting called to a counter in the same room, getting their passport back and being allowed to leave. The second one was people waiting at least half an hour and getting summoned to go with an officer to an ominous corridor, staying at least half an hour and then being allowed to leave.

The officers at the counter chatted within themselves in a friendly manner, typing on their computer at the same time, a nice front immediately shattered by how they talked down to everyone. One elderly person went to get something in their luggage placed at the opposite end of the room when two officers yell at them to sit back down. An asian person was using their phone unaware of the restriction when an officer warns them: "Don't use your phone. Don't use your phone! Hey! Don't use your phone! Oh for the love of- DON'T. USE. YOUR. PHOOONE." Apparently talking slowly to a visitor in a foreign language means they can obviously understand what the office is saying and that they're just acting like they don't understand. And more variations of cliché American cop tropes.

A half hour passes - still no reason given.

My friend tries to approach the room to get information and I hear an officer asking firmly for him to go away. (Un)fortunately an officer finally summons me. They lead me into a room and I'm invited to sit down. The officer apologizes for the wait, and then begins an hour long interview. They are very friendly and ask what places I intend to visit, they ask me about my childhood, my parents, my relation to my other country, my education, my hobbies, my jobs. Then I'm asked to unlock my phone. They go through every app and ask me to explain what they all do. They capture my Facebook name, contact names, what is open in my browser, and more stuff that I can't see.

I cannot describe how distressing it is to see an officer of the law go through your phone. I could not predict if they would stumble problematic material or if they would interpret things the wrong way. This is why I hate people that say "oh I don't care about privacy, I've got nothing to hide". You think I have anything at all to hide?! I am a law-abiding citizen of my country, I have never harbored any intention of committing a crime in my entire life, I can't harm a fly for heaven's sake!

And finally after all of this I am allowed to go. I get to my friend and hug them and try to get out of this place as fast as possible.

Maybe you're wondering if I tried to oppose any of this? Hell no. Not using my phone, waiting without reason, giving an ungodly amount of personal information and give access to my phone to a stranger, I did not fight through any of this. Why? I was afraid. I was an alien going through customs in the Patriot Act era. It was very clear to me that if I tried to block any of this process I would not go out of that airport to the US. I have my principles in privacy, but I did not want to waste a literal thousand bucks and more of my time.

So I went along.

Here's the IMDB page for The Souvenir (distributed by A24). https://www.imdb.com/title/tt6920356/

IMDB users give the score as 6.6, and the user reviews are stuffed full of people who hate it. The critic reviews are almost entirely positive though.

Here's the Cherry Picks page for The Souvenir. https://www.thecherrypicks.com/films/souvenir

They use reviews from "female-identifying and non-binary film critics", and as a result the film gets good reviews.

I find the reviews surfaced by Cherry Picks to be more thoughtful, more considered, and more useful to me than those surfaced by IMDB or MetaCritic (even though they all pull critic reviews from many of the same sources).

I've found some great films via Cherry Picks.

Turn of Mind is a mystery. It's for the most part written in journal format. Interestingly it's a journal that sits in the house of a person with Alzheimer's disease.

Jennifer White was an orthopedic surgeon in Chicago. Once brilliant, Dr. White is now in the later stages of the disease and the journal is written in by family members and housekeepers to help her remember who she was and who she is. A fractured portrait emerges of a cold and strong minded woman who has had a full life that she remembers in bits and pieces. Amidst the pages is mention of a neighbor, Amanda, who has been murdered. Slowly things come together for the reader while Dr. White's disease progresses into confusion.

Yet she still has moments of lucidity, remembering the details of her profession, where she was considered one of the best and most respected hand surgeons in the country. Her deterioration is something she's at times very aware of, and it is this that makes the book so powerful.

The narrative often lapses into Jennifer's past memories of both her parents and her children. This adds authenticity to her mental condition but also made me impatient for what seemed to be more important details. As Jennifer is interviewed by police officers and pulled into interaction with her grown son and daughter, we can begin to understand the horror of this disease, especially regarding how hard it is to trust people who may be trying to manipulate the sufferer for their own purposes.

I'd put this near the top of my list for books enjoyed in 2019. It brings to mind The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night Time by Mark Haddon, narrated by an Aspberger's spectrum person. Turn of Mind is a hard book to read, but it's even harder to put down once you get into it.

Channel 4 describe the programme "Series that captures the work of police, probation, prison, prosecution and parole".

Here's a link to the first episode: https://www.channel4.com/programmes/crime-and-punishment/on-demand/64655-001

Crime and punishment is a documentary series that looks inside prison to tell the stories of the criminal justice system from the viewpoint of those involved.

The first episode spends some time talking about the unjust "Imprisonment for Public Protection"[1] sentences (these are no longer given by the courts but there are thousands of prisoners still imprisoned on them), how they went wrong, and the awful effect they have upon prisoners. It's a difficult watch. It shows how severely the mental health of prisoners is when they're on this type of sentence, including their serious self harm.

Episode two talks about pressure inside prisons and how that results in "riots", about how prisoners use the only power they have available to them.

I like the programme because it avoids judgmentalism. The prisoners are not reduced to the bad guys; the officers are not simplified to the good guys. You hear a little bit about some of the offences committed by the prisoners

Here's a Twitter thread from someone working in the English NHS. She works in forensic services as a psychologist. https://twitter.com/SarahE_Davidson/status/1173707912981700608

I guess Channel 4 On Demand have geo-blocking. I don't know if it's available on other services, or on torrent.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Imprisonment_for_public_protection

For those that aren't familiar with it, Kind Words is a recently released "game" where players can write a message about a difficulty they're facing or something that's troubling them. Other real people in the game can then respond, letting that person know that they're not alone. Players can also write un-addressed messages of positivity in the game, which are spread to other users via paper airplanes.

I figured we could have a thread on Tildes with our own version of the game via comments.

Here's how I figure it will work. We'll have three post types:

Request: share your situation in order to get kind words in response
Response: offer kind words to other people who have posted here
Airplane: write general thoughts of goodwill for all the readers of the thread

Please begin your post by naming its type in bold font. For those posing Requests, please let people know if you would rather receive public responses or PMs.

Example post:

Request: Sometimes I find myself wondering if there's any point to anything. It feels like I'm working so hard at meaningless stuff, just to get by. Anyone else feel this way?

That isn't my request, just an example of what someone might type.

Remember that the point of the thread is to let people know that they are heard and that they are not alone!

Let's all be kind!

This is a British cookery show. They take a bunch of people who cook for a living but who have basic skills. These people are paired with a chef who has four Michelin stars and eighteen restaurants. They visit different restaurants around Europe to have competitions to cook that restaurant's own food.

Things I enjoy about it: it does a good job of showing that people who have somewhat fucked up lives will always find a place in cheffing. They could have stayed in the UK but they decided to go around Europe.[1] There's a couple of incidents of poor behaviour being corrected (some of the women chefs are ignored and spoken over by some men, the women stand up for themselves and get an apology).

Things I don't like: there's some cheffy bollocks around the pressure and discipline of a brigade; it's still a reality-show competition and that introduces some artificiallity; they send people home each week and I always hate that aspect of programmes.

It's available on Pirate Bay.

Here are some reviews which I think are fair.

https://www.theguardian.com/tv-and-radio/2019/jul/30/the-chefs-brigade-review-a-cookery-challenge-worthy-of-willy-wonka

https://inews.co.uk/culture/television/the-chefs-brigade-bbc2-episode-1-review-jason-atherton/

[1] I can't describe how pathologically awful Brexit has been for the UK. :-(

Since it's the peak of tropical storm season again, this thread is open for all to share stories and thoughts about weather experiences. Not necessarily concerns about climate change, but the incidents you've had personally, and whatever you've learned about preparation, resilience, and recovery.

I'm no longer a Florida resident, but my contacts are blowing up with concern over Hurricane Dorian.

I've been watching the storm on this nifty site, which has great tools and visualisations to satisfy the most avid weather geeks.

Dorian is likely to be another devastating, small-region, high-intensity buzzsaw, like last year's Hurricane Michael, which practically erased towns in the Florida panhandle, or the 1935 Labor Day hurricane. [I'm not really a good person - I'm having more than a little schadenfreude that Donald Trump's Mar-a-Lago resort is near the center of the storm's predicted path. But I'm not the only person who thought of that.]

According to the Insurance Information Institute, Florida has nearly $600 billion dollars of single family housing at risk from a Category 5 hurricane, leaving aside loss of life and injury.

Mythbusters is back, but in a tweaked format.

Adam Savage fronts with a team of six young people. Jamie, Kari, Tory, and Grant are absent, only appearing in video flashbacks to the previous show.

Mythbusters with kids could have been horrific, but they've managed to make this entertaining and informative. They've increased the amount of STEM stuff. We see people doing a bit of math while planning something out. The kids are smart, and the show allows them to be smart while also being children. Adam is a great fit, being a big kid himself but also filling the role of a pseudo parent and giving friendly advice (often around safety, such as the tag strap used to manoeuvre huge steel plates).

The old show had a some problems. They'd have too many pre-break "what's coming next" and post-break "here's what happened before", and they'd chop up the myths being tested into tiny little bits. They still do that, but not nearly as much.

It's a fun, entertaining watch, and it's safe for families to watch together.

For me, saving money has been pretty tough but my goal is to maintain a minimum of 4 months pay in the bank in case of hard times. My fiance started her MBA and we have been fortunate that we can pay for it outright instead of adding on top of our loans. In the past year I have gotten a bit into churning and using the rewards to help partially pay for vacations throughout the year which has helped a bunch.

I'm interested to read about any goals we are working towards and also talk about different savings strategies!

For those of you who may be unaware of 'flow', here is how it is described in Daniel Kahneman's Thinking Fast and Slow:

Fortunately, cognitive work is not always aversive, and people sometimes expend considerable effort for long periods of time without having to exert willpower. The psychologist Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi has done more than anyone else to study this state of effortless attending, and the name he proposed for it, flow, has become part of the language. People who experience flow describe it as "a state of effortless concentration so deep that they lose their sense of time, of themselves, of their problems," and their descriptions of the job of that state are so compelling that Csikszentmihalyi has called it an "optimal experience." Many activities can induce a sense of flow, from painting to racing motorcycles - and for some fortunate authors I know, even writing a book is often an optimal experience. Flow neatly separates the two forms of effort: concentration on the task and the deliverate control of attention. Riding a motorcycle at 150 miles an hour and playing a competitive game of chess are certainly very effortful. In a state of flow, however, maintaining focused attention on these absorbing activities requires no exertion of self-control, thereby freeing resources to be directed to the task at hand.

For me, I would say getting into a just difficult enough programming problem or working on a data analysis can put me in this state where hours can slip away in the blink of an eye. The same thing for a game of Civilization V can do the same thing for me.

Where are your beliefs and principles born from? What does it take for them to change? Do you have a conscious way that you manage and shape your own belief, or does it just happen? How much control over it do you think you have? Do you think that's different from the control others have?

Years and Years is a British political near-future soft SF programme. Being British it's one short series - 6 episodes, 1 hour per episode. Mainstream broadcast SF isn't going to push all the boundaries, but this has some neat ideas. The political stuff feels realistic enough to work.

Emma Thompson is always impressive and she does excellent work here as a populist, fascist, politician. Jessica Hynes plays Edith with suitable intensity.

Here are a bunch of links:

https://www.imdb.com/title/tt8694364/?ref_=fn_al_tt_1

[spoilers] https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/review/years-and-years-1220415

[spoilers] https://variety.com/2019/tv/reviews/years-and-years-review-emma-thompson-hbo-1203243714/

[spoilers] https://www.theguardian.com/tv-and-radio/2019/may/14/years-and-years-review-a-glorious-near-future-drama-from-russell-t-davies

I'm in my early 50s and have been seriously considering going to school. I have performed manual labor for most of my working career, and though I truly enjoy it, my body cannot keep up anymore. A few years ago I began looking for work in an office environment, and after a a demoralizing year of submitting resumes, I landed a minimum wage job in a small customer support office inside a larger organization. The work was soul suckingly boring. I applied to other departments and received job offers, but management would not let me leave customer service because I have a way of deescalating difficult situations. I was eventually offered the customer support manager role, but I refuse to manage people. Since the company would not let me move out of customer support, I left them and took a long vacation. That is where I am at now.

I am afraid that an educational investment will not pay out the dividends that I am hoping for. I don't have all the time in the world anymore. I guess I am looking for career / school advice, or if not advice, similar journeys.

For example: knowing that you should eat healthy but still buying junk food.

It can be something internalized, externalized, or a mix of both. It can be from your own cognition, society, your career, your field of study--anything is fair game.

• What is the contradiction/dissonance?
• How does it impact you?
• What do you do, if anything, to address or mitigate it?

I often have a really hard time getting myself to wake up and get out of bed in the mornings in time to go to work or whatever else I need to do. I was hoping people might be willing to share any good strategies they use to get themselves up and going every day.

Someone asked me this recently, and I wasn't sure how to answer. Not because I can't self-identify things I've accomplished, but because it can seem boastful to openly express them.

For this thread, I want to remove any and all social restrictions on boasting. Talk yourself up! Be loud and proud! Navel-gazing is not only allowed, but encouraged!

I chose the title based off how the question was phrased to me, but I'm really interested in what you consider to be your most positive achievements and characteristics. As such, consider the following series of questions as a jumping off point:

• What are you most proud of in your life?
• What are your biggest accomplishments/successes in life?
• What are you good at?
• What are your unique talents and skills?
• What makes you individually awesome and stand out from others?
• What significant hardships have you overcome?
• How you have you changed your life, others' lives, or the world for the better?

I'm interested in a game that you still loved or enjoyed in spite of its significant flaws or issues. "Best" and "worst" are, of course, based on whatever subjective criteria you choose.

• What made the game bad?
• Why did you keep playing it?
• What enjoyment or appreciation did it give you?

I don't have a lot to say yet; I'm on episode 9 so far. That series has been on my watchlist forever, so the moment I saw it pop up on Netflix I jumped on it.

It's as awesome as described. Moreso. It's funny and quirky. Despite watching two 12-year-olds hang out, it doesn't feel like a kids' series at all (the humour is quite adult, similar level as Futurama). It knows when to make fun of itself. It's pushing all my buttons and I'm having a lot of fun watching it.

My biggest laugh so far has been Mabel's "Scout's Honor" shirt. In my head I was waiting for the punchline and loved seeing the delivery.

Solid recommendation so far. And the theme song is so fucking catchy.

For example: I've got mild issues with what I'll call "big dark things within emptiness." I'm sure there's probably a very specific term and associated subreddit for this, but I don't particularly enjoy searching it up.

An example would be looking at a planet in Celestia or Google Earth, especially the unlit side. Another example would be seeing the hull of a submerged ship underwater. I have no idea why these kind of things give me the willies, but they do.

Intellectually I think it's absurd and will often try to will myself to ignore the nonsense feeling based on completely unthreatening stimuli, but that doesn't seem to alleviate my instantaneous lizard-brain reaction. For whatever reason, I can't get past it.

It's been this way for a long time, too. I can remember when I was very young, I had a picture book about space. It had shots of all the planets, most of which I was fine with, but there was a close-up of Jupiter in shadow that I would deliberately avoid looking at.

Another book had a very dark picture of a giant squid that caused the same reaction in me. I remember memorizing the page numbers for these two photos so that I could skip them whevener I looked at the books. If I ever opened the book to a random page, I would crack it ever so slightly so that I could peek the page number to make sure it was safe.

Do you have something like this? Some absurd fear, phobia, or aversion to something strangely specific or benign? When's the first time you realized it? Has it stayed that way over time?

Howdily-doodly Tilderinos.

I want to say "See Title." But I feel like that kinda defeats the purpose of this site, so I'll expound a bit.

Looking around me now, I see couples walking around. I see young men strutting down the street; rushing to and fro; or making their trek somewhere on a bike. I see young women on these rent-a-scooter things that Bird and other companies offer; walking beside their friends; or sitting with their books.

And I can't help but reflect on how much our adult lives are built around doing romantically isolating things. We sleep 8-hours a day; social progress here is only made in dreams that we occasionally wish to remain in. We work 8-hours a day; and as far as I understand it, relationships with colleagues are wholly discouraged. That leaves us 8 hours to cook, eat, maintain a home, relax, participate in hobbies, enjoy friends, and enjoy family.

Our society feels, to me, very live-to-work; not that I have an alternative to the status quo to offer.

That being said – Tilda Swintons, how did you meet your significant others?

edit: "howdilly" => "howdily"

We've had a few threads recently criticising the direction of various shows cough Game of Thrones cough and @Amarok suggested a thread celebrating the good stuff on TV instead. Personally, television is by far my favourite means of visual storytelling, a good TV show can go into the kind of depth and complexity that the more time-limited format of movies just can't touch.

A few of my favourite shows then, in no particular order:

House MD - recently rewatched this and it definitely stands the test of time. Sure, there are a few weak episodes here and there but on balance it's solid. Hugh Laurie absolutely nails the role of Sherlock Holmes Greg House and the supporting cast are excellent too. It has one of my all-time favourite endings of all television shows, even knowing what was coming I still ended up a little moist of eye by the end. Also they grade the colour with increasing desaturation throughout season 8, almost to the point of it being monochrome - until the final scene is in glorious, bright colour and I love little touches like that. TV shouldn't just be actors reading lines, there is a whole medium to tell stories with (Game of Thrones also did this kind of thing well).

Detectorists - BBC show about two metal detectorists. Gloriously paced, slow and gentle but insistent in telling it's tale, with really strong characters. Finishes beautifully, at just the right time. A gem of a show, it's very well written and nearly flawless throughout. Mackenzie Crook (writer, director) was offered more seasons but he declined because the show was finished and that takes guts to do but I love that he did. Also features Diana Rigg (Olenna Tyrell) who is never not brilliant.

Buffy The Vampire Slayer - I mean what can you even say about Buffy. Might have been the last show where my friends would meet up for a watch party every week, hanging out for hours discussing it and enjoying herbal cigarettes for the evening. Streaming is great and so convenient but in some ways I do miss TV being an event. There was someone very special about getting everyone together once a week to share in that world, and especially with Buffy because the characters were so close in age to me (I'm slightly younger than Alyson Hannigan and I had such a crush on Willow). Sure, it had it's wobbles (the entire Adam story arc, for example) but also some of the best TV moments of the 90s/early 2000s. Once More With Feeling and Hush are fan favourites for a reason.

Hannibal - Produced by Bryan Fuller, who is always good, but absolutely outdoes himself here, and Mads Mikkelson is terrifying in the titular role. Visually it's stunning, the plot is engaging and deeply disturbing, the characters well drawn and believable (Hannibal particularly so, which is all the more horrifying) and the sound design is absolutely astonishing. I bought a whole new sound system literally just for this show and it was totally worth it. Sound design is one of those things which you only notice when it's particularly bad or particularly good and Hannibal is definitely the latter. It's such a well-rounded piece of television, it uses colour and light and sound and all the tools in the TV maker's box. the ending is a little on the weak side but they got axed early - Bryan Fuller had five seasons planned but they only got three.

I could go on, but I won't because I'll go on for ages! Please add a couple of your favourite shows and maybe we can all find a few new things to watch.

Maybe you mislearned a fact in elementary school. Maybe you misjudged someone's character. Maybe you took a risk thinking it would pay off and it backfired. Maybe you made the complete wrong call, maybe at the wrong time, and maybe for the wrong reasons. We've all made mistakes, errors, and slip ups. We've all had to learn some things the hard way. And we've all had beliefs we were certain of flip, change, or decay--either over time or in a single, often difficult moment.

So, with all that in mind:

• What's something you were completely wrong about?
• How did you find out you were wrong?
• What was it like to confront that?
• Were there any repercussions?
• Has that experience changed your outlook now?
• Can other people learn from your situation from the outside, or does the new understanding come from the experience itself?
• Are you better off because of it, or did it cause some harm?

I work for a school in China and they are going to have an art festival soon. Today they were setting up some of those pictures where you can stick your face in it and take a photo. They did this to The Last Supper and it’s a very big picture set up right in front of the main gate for all the children to play with. They cut out Jesus’ face and most of his disciples’. All of the expats that work for my school were outraged and told the administration to take it down right away. At first the administration said they would just glue Jesus’ face back on. But this just made people angrier, so they promised to take it down in the morning when they could get some workers to do it.

So what cultural misunderstandings have you experienced? How did you deal with it?