Written by Neil Gaiman and illustrated by various brilliant artists, The Sandman series has definitely had an enlightening and positive influence on my life. Much like Dream will say, it feels like the comic speaks true words.
For me — and I struggle with having had no role model — this comic series provides exactly that, in a way.

I wonder, whether people here have read it, or bits of it, and what their opinions are.

This is a recurring post to discuss programming or other technical projects that we've been working on. Tell us about one of your recent projects, either at work or personal projects. What's interesting about it? Are you having trouble with anything?

Here in Brazil we have many unique song genres not heard past national borders. The most well known ones are Brazilian funk (completely unrelated to American funk), Pagode e Sertanejo.

Russian hardbass and British Chav Rap are good too.

A while ago, maybe like a year ago? There was a thread and two websites were linked to that were basically puzzle sites. As in the sites themselves were the puzzle and you had to find clues in the site to get to the next page. It was very cool but I managed to lose the link and was hoping someone might know what I'm talking about. We ringing any bells?

In a time of ancient legends, Androcles was a runaway slave.

He took shelter in a cave where a wounded Lion lived.

By removing a thorn from his paw Androcles cured the beast; The Lion was very pleased.

And then The Lion ate Androcles because he was a fucking lion.

Looking at the Activity page right now, there are 2 different pointers to 2 different articles about turning off auto-play on Netflix. I totally get why people are excited about this!

My question is, do we care about duplicates? Some forums ask people to notify a mod and they combine the threads. Others just let them be. Is there an official stance on this here?

Ask not for whom the cradle weeps; it weeps for you.


O sly kitten, O accursèd cat, cry,
cry for the weft and the warp of the world; cry,
cry for the sin and the sorrow and suffering; cry,
cry on the bloodshed, but more on the tears; cry,
cry for divisions, and ill-wrought connections; cry,
cry for the laughter, so far out of reach; cry.
And in crying find solace; peace——rhythm——be still.

                                               cry 
and cry——cry for the widows and widowers, woven together forever,
by weeping and painless heart-let.
   But your pain is not theirs.
   For, though burdened with truth, you will never be cut 
   by the serrated and blunted edge of polite fiction.
   Enough!


When the cat's in the cradle, the mice will play,
And I hope that they fly far——far-far away.
But the tears of the kitten forever abide,
and someday they'll catch you.
               will you take it in stride?

Have you watched any TV shows recently you want to discuss? Any shows you want to recommend or are hyped about? Feel free to discuss anything here.

Please just try to provide fair warning of spoilers if you can.

It's been a while since we had one of these. probably for good reason since clogging the site with 'do we exist' threads like this is counterproductive

'Developmental disorders' comprises autism, ADHD, Tourette's and more. (Here's a wiki article for them.)

I'll start with my asperger syndrome which was very strong autism when I was a child.

This is a question I've been thinking about a great deal in the context of changing global power dynamics. Rising authoritarianism, militarism, fundamentalism, and other ailments of our times are getting in the way of dealing with universal threats to humanity, like climate change, pandemics, and even asteroid impacts.

But nationalism has such a grip on people's psyches... Parts are nostalgic, and parts are about tribal sense of belonging and purpose. Tonight, I watched a Chef's Table episode about a young Russian chef on a mission to make Russian cuisine great again (not his words). The interesting thing is that Mukhin essentially acknowledges that he's helping Russian cuisine become great not by denigrating other nation's products, or clinging to an idealized version of his home food, but through intentionally discovering what is worthwhile elsewhere and at home. It got me thinking about what's been lost in a globalized world, what could be found in isolated places, and what it would take to let people bridge local interests and universal values.

I'd also watched Raise Hell: The Life and Times of Molly Ivins over the weekend. Ivins' writing on Texas state politics as a microcosm and foreshadowing of current U.S. concerns is essential. Then I read Citylab's old story on the paralysis of New York subway system development.

It occurred to me that the U.S. has become fractally parochial, with increasingly local or corporate interests thwarting any exercise favoring broader national or regional goods. The original framing of the nation in the U.S. Constitution has significant flaws because of the original tension between sovereign state interests, and the federal system. We're not learning from the rest of the world very well, either.

I'm curious about whether Tilders think there's such a thing as positive nationalism, capable of both unifying localities and maintaining or growing what's good about a culture in the face of potentially hostile competing nations.

• Do you think there are positive aspects to nationalism, and if so, what?

• Do you think nationalism has been, on balance, a positive or negative force in your country in the past?

• Do you think nationalism is, on balance, a positive or negative force in your country right now?

• Do you think your country could have a positive version of nationalism in the future?

• Is it necessary to exclude or mitigate influences from elsewhere in order to maintain the original nature of your national culture?

If I may ask, please include your nationality when responding.

I know my question isn't worded great! If anyone has a better edit after reading all of this, let me know!

I have a half-formed idea in my head and I want to brainstorm a bit.

Here's the idea: games as a whole have a ton of different aspects/lenses through which we can enjoy and appreciate them, and I want to know what they all are. Here are some examples to show what I mean:

I feel like there are dozens of these we could come up with if we get really specific. The diversity of gaming experiences and genres really lends itself to a broad swath of these aspects. After all, the appreciation someone gets from playing something like Katamari Damacy is very different from that which someone gets from, say, ARMA 2.

I think later it might be interesting to try to apply some sort of analysis or taxonomy to this, but right now I just want to brainstorm. What are all of the different reasons we can like games? Be as specific as you can, try to cover lots of different titles and genres so that all of gaming is represented, and feel free to critique or edit my examples as well (e.g. I think it might be worth breaking up "Narrative" into "Plot" and "Characters", for example).

Aggregated List So Far

I'll keep updating this as we go. For entries that didn't follow the table format (which I didn't intend to be prescriptive but it looks like it caught on!), I've tried to incorporate them as best as I can, but if you feel I've misrepresented something let me know! Again, I'm mostly just interested in brainstorming at the moment, and then I think we can have a secondary thread later for analysis/synthesis.

I was having a conversation with a friend today about the economics of art and the potential cost of purchasing an idea. It got me thinking, what are some other things relatively cheap to create but expensive to purchase?