I skim-read multiple news aggregators daily, and for weeks now, every single day, 75% or more of the news is specifically about Covid-19.

By comparison, it is worth reminding younger readers that we didn't even know about the Spanish Flu until ~30 years ago. During WWI, we (humans) suffered the deadliest pandemic of the modern era, and it took 60-70 years before anyone even noticed.

If you didn't grow up before the Spanish Flu became common knowledge, that may be a hard thing to grasp ... but during the late-80s and into the '90s, there was this slow, years-long trickle of news from medical researchers, historians and (FFS) archeologists (?!!?) about how there might actually have been a massive global pandemic during WWI that no one knew about.

Today in Wikipedia, there is just one little tidbit about how various things like (intentional) under-reporting and co-mingling of flu deaths with war casualties, led to it being nicknamed "the forgotten pandemic" ... which doesn't really capture that sense of "Holy Fuck"-ness when you discover that up to 100 million people died of the flu one year, and no one even noticed.

Okay ... at any rate .... you get my point. In 1919, the news intentionally under-reported it worldwide (except in Spain ... hence the name), in part to help prevent panic.

Today, the news media coverage is just incredible. Nothing on Earth happens any more, except Covid-19. A few thousand people die (I'm sorry, but yeah, more people die in car accidents), and the Media loses its mind.

OTOH, honestly, it's mostly been pretty good, accurate, up-to-the-second coverage (as best I can tell), really driving home the message of "we know it sounds lame, but wash your hands, dammit ... a lot", and etc.

So ... thoughts? This constant in-your-face media coverage ... good or bad? How much is media causing the panic vs just reporting on it?

1. Definition

By fiction, I mean:

literature in the form of prose, especially short stories and novels, that describes imaginary events and people. (Google)

2. Introduce Yourself!

I understand we have at least one professional writer in the house (I cannot remember your username, sorry!), and several aspirant writers.

Every once in awhile, I get the urge to suggest some collaborative threads exercises, but it's hard to gauge interest without a better notion of how many fiction writers we have.

With that in mind, I make this call for introductions!

Please try to include:

• Have you ever made money writing fiction?^[1]
• First writing language(s): Examples: English, Portuguese, German, etc
• Other writing languages(s): same as above. English is implied.
• Formats^* : Examples: Short story, Romance, Play, Screenplay, etc
• Genres^*: Examples: horror, science-fiction, fantasy, etc.
• Main themes^*: Examples: relationships, violence, artificial intelligence, etc.
• Link to Writing Sample(s) on Tildes or Ghostbin (either as text or markdown)
• What do you expect to achieve with your writing (anything, either subjective or objective)?^[2]
• Apart from ~creative, where do you go for feedback?
• Are you looking for collaborations of any kind? Yes or No.

Footnotes

^[1] The purpose of this question is not to assess the quality of your writing, but rather the position writing occupies in your life. Is this something you do in your free time, or does it have a central role among your other activities? I do not pretend to know how and why everyone writes, this is just a starter. Feel free to share as much as you want.

^[2] For example: self-expression, philosophical investigation, external appreciation (nothing wrong with that), financial rewards, political or societal change, any combination of those.

^* In order of importance

What have you been watching and reading this week? You don't need to give us a whole essay if you don't want to, but please write something! Feel free to talk about something you saw that was cool, something that was bad, ask for recommendations, or anything else you can think of.

If you want to, feel free to find the thing you're talking about and link to its pages on Anilist, MAL, or any other database you use!

As part of a weekly series, these topics are a place for users to casually discuss the things they did — or didn't do — during their week. Did you accomplish any goals? Suffer a failure? Do nothing at all? Tell us about it!

I'm sure it comes as no surprise to anyone familiar with what I generally submit to tildes that videos, history and history.military are my favorite topic tags... but some of the other slightly more obscure ones I also enjoy (all music related) are live, soul.blue_eyed, singer_songwriter, and cover_songs.

What about you all? What are your favorite topic tags on tildes?

p.s. If you provide the associated https://tildes.net/?tag=topic_tag links to the ones you mention so that we can all peruse them, that would be greatly appreciated. :)

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?

What have you been doing lately for your own fitness? Try out any new programs or exercises? Have any questions for others about your training? Want to vent about poor behavior in the gym? Started a new diet or have a new recipe you want to share? Anything else health and wellness related?

It always bothers me that I know American politics presumably pretty well but my own nation's politics on a nearly surface level so I guess I'll ask this, but this can be for practically any country that isn't the US or maybe Britain.

Since this is specifically for your countries the sources can be limited to your country's language.

One source of Brazilian (my nation's) news I've heard of that isn't a from a large cable channel like CNN is Nexo, although the paywall makes serious consumption inviable simply because my parents wouldn't pay for me to read news of all things, but if you can, do it, the charts are great and the rest seems pretty good.

What have you been watching and reading this week? You don't need to give us a whole essay if you don't want to, but please write something! Feel free to talk about something you saw that was cool, something that was bad, ask for recommendations, or anything else you can think of.

If you want to, feel free to find the thing you're talking about and link to its pages on Anilist, MAL, or any other database you use!

What have you been watching and reading this week? You don't need to give us a whole essay if you don't want to, but please write something! Feel free to talk about something you saw that was cool, something that was bad, ask for recommendations, or anything else you can think of.

If you want to, feel free to find the thing you're talking about and link to its pages on Anilist, MAL, or any other database you use!

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.

How are we feeling about all this? There is going to be anxiety over the next few days (weeks..months....years?) so let's talk about it.

10yr Treasury Bonds are at their lowest ever, futures market are down ~10%, and cryptocurrencies have lost billions.

How are you feeling?

As part of a weekly series, these topics are a place for users to casually discuss the things they did — or didn't do — during their weekend. Did you make any plans? Take a trip? Do nothing at all? Tell us about it!

This topic is part of a series. It is meant to be a place for users to discuss creative projects they have been working on.

Projects can be personal, professional, physical, digital, or even just ideas.

If you have any creative projects that you have been working on or want to eventually work on, this is a place for discussing those.

A list of all previous topics in this series can be found here.

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! If you've just picked up some music, please update on that as well, we'd love to see your hauls :)

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.

As part of a weekly series, these topics are a place for users to casually discuss the things they did — or didn't do — during their week. Did you accomplish any goals? Suffer a failure? Do nothing at all? Tell us about it!

Inspired by the @culturedleftfoot post.

Try providing links, and, if you feel that your country is too big for this exercise to make sense, feel free to limit your choices to your region, state, city or even neighborhood!

Definition of Homeland (adapted from Wikipedia):

A homeland is the concept of the place where a cultural, national, or racial identity had formed. It can also mean the country of nationality, the place in which somebody grew up or lived for a long enough period that shaped his or her cultural identity, the place in which one's ancestors live for generations, or the place that one regard it as home.

What have you been doing lately for your own fitness? Try out any new programs or exercises? Have any questions for others about your training? Want to vent about poor behavior in the gym? Started a new diet or have a new recipe you want to share? Anything else health and wellness related?

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?

(You could replace FPTP with STV to keep the districts that elect representatives in the house intact.)

I'll start.

The Democratic party breaks up into the neoliberal and progressive parties.

The neoliberal party is where centrist candidates like Joe Biden and Michael Bloomberg go.

The progressive party is where progressive candidates like Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren go.

The Republican party might lose a large part of their electorate to the libertarians, since many Republicans are more concerned about letting business prevail and don't really want cultural conservatism.

Andrew yang maybe also leaves the Democrats and founds his own party, the party for online reform.

The greens also become significantly more popular but they may have too much in common with the progressives.

The Senate could be changed to include as many seats as the house for proper representation.

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.

As part of a weekly series, these topics are a place for users to casually discuss the things they did — or didn't do — during their weekend. Did you make any plans? Take a trip? Do nothing at all? Tell us about it!

After using Shreddit to delete my Reddit history periodically for some time now, I finally decided to make a cron job to automate it on a weekly basis. I use it to delete every post and comment that isn't whitelisted, which right now is just a tiny subreddit for a musician I like that I solely moderate and a pinned post explaining why I have a bunch of karma but barely any posts.

After setting this up, it got me curious as to what tasks other people automate in their lives in order to streamline their workflows and eliminate minor (or major) routine tasks.

So, what do you automate, and how did you go about doing it?

I'll start with @TheFanficGuy's reply to a comment of mine where he said you can bring down an authoritarian regime without a coup'd etat/successful civil war, although I admittedly can't really imagine any dictator just giving up power like that unless it hurts their economic allies. (And the Arab spring shows this above all else.)

I also wouldn't be surprised if many of these regimes only make a minimal amount of effort to keep their population shut.

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! If you've just picked up some music, please update on that as well, we'd love to see your hauls :)

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.

This is not meant to be a "which is best"-style console war question but instead one of personal affinity: which console, if any, do/did you love the most, and why? Whether you're a diehard Dreamcast fan ^{Hello friend!}, you have fond memories of your first Gameboy, or you think the PS4 is the best piece of technology of all time, tell me your story and why it means so much to you.

Also, I know we have a lot of primarily/strictly PC gamers here, so if you're wanting to view that as a console, feel free -- whether that's looking at the platform as a whole, an individual piece of hardware (e.g. my laptop from college), a specific time period (e.g. the early 2000s), or some other division. The question is about attachment to a device with a lifecycle and identity, which computers undoubtedly have too, just in different ways from consoles.

I really want to talk about the SCP Foundation with other people, so let's get a thread going!

For those of you who don't know, The SCP Foundation is an online creative writing project where people write fake files and stories about The Foundation, a secret organization committed to containing various anomalous creatures. It's a really cool website, one that I recommend to anyone who likes thrillers, horror, sci-fi, or are just looking for something interesting.

Be warned though, there are over 4,000 entries on the wiki (they just had a 5,000th entry writing contest), so if you are feeling overwhelmed by the number of articles, feel free to start out with SCP-2030, one of my personal favorites. And if you're someone who prefers audiobooks to regular reading, a YouTuber going by the name Brendaniel has a great video narrating SCP-2030.

Usually bugs, glitches, and exploits degrade the experience of a game, but occasionally they can actually work to a game's benefit. In some cases, they can become significant enough to become part of a game's identity. In others, they make a broken game worth playing in the first place. Even without such legendary status, a given wrinkle in a game might simply make it more enjoyable or entertaining, or perhaps open up unexpected modes or paths of play.

What are some examples of these, and how did they improve their associated games?

I know this has been posted before, but I was going through old posts about blogging and at least half the blogs linked in the comments were offline now, so I thought I'd bring this topic back to light.

Do you run your own personal blog, and if so, could you share some details?

• Is it self-hosted, or do you rent server space?

• Do you use Wordpress or another blog platform like that, publish through other means like a flat-file CMS, or did you build it from scratch?

• What topics do you write about?

• How consistently do you post; or alternatively, why don't you post as often as you would like to?

• Do you keep analytics, or do you write regardless of how many clicks you get?

• Is your site monetized with ads or otherwise?

• How popular is your blog on average?

• How do you keep up with other writers' posts?

I'm bringing this up because it seems like most places around the web centered on blogging are more in it for the money rather than for the content. Places like /r/blogging and the like are all talk about how to maximize views, earn revenue, and find your niche. I'd love to see some discussion more geared towards the content and construction of individual blogs, as opposed to people trying the next "get rich quick" scheme on their lists of passive income opportunities.

Personally, I have multiple blogs for the sole purpose of giving me a platform to voice my opinions or share things that interest me without being constrained to a centralized platform like Twitter or Medium. I'd love to hear what you have all made and/or shared online, as well as the process behind making it happen.

If you're not familiar with them, a "Tom Swifty" is a punny sentence that involves a quote by a person named Tom which is the setup for landing a pun in the description of the quote's delivery (often but not necessarily a single adverb).

For example:

"This water is freezing," Tom said icily.

"I'm going to hit this piñata as hard as I can!" said Tom, bashfully.

"Nevermore," Tom said ravenously.

"I like tart fruits," said Tom with aplomb.

Really good Tom Swifties are often not immediately obvious, have a fantastic setup, or are simply really clever (mine are alright, though it's certainly possible to do far better).

You can get a more full picture and better examples from Wikipedia, but I encourage you to tread lightly there and in searches because it's way more fun to think of them and share them in threads like these than it is to pull up lists of them online. Just reading previously written ones kind of spoils the fun, IMO.

Anyway, let's see what great Tom Swities we can write!

As part of a weekly series, these topics are a place for users to casually discuss the things they did — or didn't do — during their week. Did you accomplish any goals? Suffer a failure? Do nothing at all? Tell us about it!

What have you been doing lately for your own fitness? Try out any new programs or exercises? Have any questions for others about your training? Want to vent about poor behavior in the gym? Started a new diet or have a new recipe you want to share? Anything else health and wellness related?

Was just wondering if anyone in the Tildes community follows cryptocurrency at all. I'd say it's one of my biggest hobbies. Bitcoin is of course the king, but I like what Ethereum and some smaller protocols are working on as well. I see a lot of potential on the horizon.

For example, I think Pool Together is a great idea (no-loss lottery).

I also learned about this game from a friend called Axie Infinity which looks pretty fun.

I don't mean this to be a thread to shill your bags or talk about going to the moon, but more of a crypto-focused discussion on what you're following, interested in, sharing cool dapps, etc. Just seeing if there's any interest in a regular crypto discussion thread here. (Weekly, bi-weekly, monthly, etc.)

Hi All,

I have recently completed a software archaeology project, reverse engineering Space Invaders si78c, and would like to cast around for opinions as to which game(s) to do next.

I am currently thinking of doing either Pacman, Donkey Kong or Galaga but am willing to entertain suggestions about other games of a similar vintage. Please go into detail as to why you think it's an important title.

Eventually I would like to tackle bigger games from the home micro / console market, but they are most likely out of scope for now.

Please note, this is very labour intensive work, taking several months / years at a time depending on title complexity, and I will most likely only do a handful of these (barring any great advances) in my lifetime.

Cheers,
Jason

I'm finally giving up Reddit and trying to do the traditional catholic "fast" which is 2 small snacks and 1 meal a day during lent. I recently learned about the Black Fast which is a sort of Pescatarian vegan-ish, one meal a day fast which looks interesting. I might try it on Fridays but being coeliacs would make it more challenging.

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?

As part of a weekly series, these topics are a place for users to casually discuss the things they did — or didn't do — during their weekend. Did you make any plans? Take a trip? Do nothing at all? Tell us about it!

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.

What have you been watching and reading this week? You don't need to give us a whole essay if you don't want to, but please write something! Feel free to talk about something you saw that was cool, something that was bad, ask for recommendations, or anything else you can think of.

If you want to, feel free to find the thing you're talking about and link to its pages on Anilist, MAL, or any other database you use!

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! If you've just picked up some music, please update on that as well, we'd love to see your hauls :)

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.