I tend to watch AlternateHistoryHub, WhatIfAlthist and occasionally Monsieur Z (but less so since the guy somehow got a far-right audience) so I've always been interested in the idea of alternate history.

However, there's more than that. There are books and writers (I.E Harry turtledove), 3 subreddits (r/historywhatif, r/historicalwhatif and r/alternatehistory), many games (HOI I, II, III and IV, civ 1-6, Vicky 1-3, etc), a forum and according to Wikipedia, people have been speculating about history since before the year 0.

So what do you think of 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.

Meant primarily for long threads (35+ comments)

Mainly because sometimes we just want to get to the reply box after reading through a long comment section and checking several times over now that highlighting new comments is a default feature and the fastest way to do that is closing a bunch of threads or tapping the screen a few times/scrolling.

Admittedly it's kinda silly but being able to collapse all the threads and get straight to the reply box seems like a pretty good QoL feature.

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?

Does anyone else struggle contributing to communities? Maybe I'm being overly critical of myself, but it seems like I have nothing to offer up other than comments.

I'm completely happy commenting on posts, and I feel like I do so in good faith. It just feels like if I'm not contributing actual content I'm benefiting from the community without contributing to it. Am I being overly critical? Am I looking at this all wrong?

*EDIT Spelling correction.

According to this guy, societal collapse is imminent because a. entropy and b. the high EROI (energy return on investment) afforded to society by the use of energy dense hydrocarbons such as coal and petroleum will decline dramatically in the near future due to the decreasing economic viability of acquiring them and the lack of a similarly high return alternative (barring nuclear fission, which is VeRy DaNgErOuS (and also practically infeasible politically in most countries that can achieve it), and nuclear fusion, which is, of course, perpetually 20 years away) and because this EROI is (according to him) what makes the complexity of modern civilization possible, it is inevitable that we will soon see a corresponding decline in said complexity (collapse). Now there is a section in the wikipedia article that touches on some of these points (Economic influence) so it's not totally junk science (if you trust Wikipedia, that is). However, I'm still struggling to grasp the significance of this figure. As long as our means of acquiring energy is scalable, why does it matter what the EROI is as long as it is greater than 1? if we need to spend one fifth of the energy we get from solar panels on making more, fixing existing ones, and installation, can't we just make a bunch of them to match our energy needs, even if they're growing? What am I missing here?

General Programming Q&A thread! Ask any questions about programming, answer the questions of other users, or post suggestions for future threads.

Don't forget to format your code using the triple backticks or tildes:

Here is my schema:

```sql
CREATE TABLE article_to_warehouse (
  article_id   INTEGER
, warehouse_id INTEGER
)
;
```

How do I add a `UNIQUE` constraint?

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?

So, let's say I wrote something on my blog[1] and want people to check it out. Since I don't have any proper "audience" (and I don't expect one given I rarely post something), I don't really see any way other than sharing my own posts on places like Tildes, relevant subreddits, etc.

But doing this feels bad. I feel like I'm using these places just as a dumping ground for my own posts, trying to boost my own site or whatever, even though I don't earn anything from it.

If I check my Tildes history, 3 of the 4 topics I submitted are self-promotion in some way. On my comments the ratio of promotion vs "natural" comments look lower, but even just saying that makes me feel like I'm trying to lie about something.

One thing about my small number of topics are that I don't really think about sharing links I come across, since I feel like none of them would fit the site, and most of them are already shared here.

I don't know if the self-promotion is frowned upon, if I should continue, how I'd "diversify" my posting habits, and all that. What do you all think?

[1]: Doesn't have to be a blog post, it could be anything.

Hello,

So I've been officially diagnosed with depression a few years ago. I am on medication for it and I've done therapy in the past. I am a more functional person than I was, let's say, one year ago as I've adjusted my medication.

However there is something that is SEVERELY affecting my quality of life and that is the generalized lack of interest or extreme difficulty in doing almost anything. Yes I've talked with my doctor about this. It's "normal" and we are working on it.

I don't know many people and COVID-19 took a hit on my already limited social life. So I guess I want to share my experience and hear from others who experience(ed) the same difficulties. When you are trapped in not wanting to do anything, what the hell do you do?

Recently I've started reading a physical book again. I think it is a good thing for me to have something to do that does not involve a screen. Plus it makes me sleepy if I am a bit tired which, for me personally, is great. Aside from this next experiment, the activities I do the most are playing one or two video games, study for my degree and work part-time.

Another thing I've started doing is doing the bare minimum in terms of physical exercise. I am working on doing pull-ups (I went from doing 0 to 1,5 =) ) and doing some squats. School and work rob me of a lot of energy so I tend not to exercise. But now I'm trying to at least do something.

I will try to keep up with this post but I have a tendency to procrastinate on them if I get a lot of replies. Thanks for bearing with me =).

Following up on @freddy's query about self-hosting ...

I am trying to set up a self-hosted VPS running Synapse (the server-side component of Matrix), Riot-web, and bundled in Jitsi. I've twice gotten it up and running successfully for internal accounts/users, but federation keeps throwing weird authentication errors when trying to connect with user accounts from other server instances (a week later, my regular Matrix account still has 3 outstanding broken Invites from the new server-account which I can neither accept nor reject ... ).

I'm basically following along with this youtube setup tutorial (except I am using Apache rather than nginx).

Before I start to drill into the nitty-gritty of my issue(s), does anyone here have experience setting this up? Anyone care to dedicate a bit of time and energy to helping me figure out what I'm doing wrong?

Additionally, I saw commentary from @smores that Jitsi isn't performing well for him on his self-hosted server ... any further details you can share?

Edited to add:

Sorry all, I didn't think through the timing. I am still motivated to get a self-hosted Matrix instance up and running; however, right at the moment, I have a couple of other, higher priorities I need to attend to first. If I'd thought about it, I would have held off on starting this thread for a couple of days.

I will get back to this thread ... let's say, Wed or Thurs ... take another crack at the Matrix set-up then, and provide details here, as I do.

Thanks,
EtC

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!

Currently, I've been playing board games which always have the same kind of (standard) mechanics (worker placement, card drafting, etc), which after a while, starts to feel kind of the same but what changes is the theme.

I'm looking for recommendations on board games which have unique mechanics. It could a completely new mechanic or simply a mechanic which already exists but then the game uses it with a twist.

For example:

• Trickerion use of worker placement but the workers have actually different values.

• Tzolk'in and the use of gears.

I have a UX pain point: From the notifications / new comments (replies) page, if I mark all notifications as read, all the nice, handy links to the threads go poof on the page refresh. So now, I have to manually hunt down all/any of them to return to the OPs and revisit the broader discussions.

Can we make the "mark all read" link do its job without clearing the page? I realize this will probably make things more complicated (a notif that is already seen/read is being displayed on the "unread notifs" page, so how will that work, UI- and UX-wise), but... this is just a pain point that I hit again and again. I thought I could tolerate it (which is why I haven't said anything till now), but it's an issue for me nearly every single time.

My feelings are a bit mixed as there are painful consequences on both sides of the equation. However, I ultimately feel that schools in their current set up cannot work in the current environment and shouldn't be re-opened. The likelihood of the virus spreading and killing grandparents, parents, and teachers is guaranteed. But I feel like the US has to address the negative consequences of kids staying at home. What that would look like, I'm not 100% sure. I don't even think you can apply a set of guidelines that would fit every situation out there.

Some things that I think would work in some areas:

• Open air schools
• Cafeteria food delivery to students on free, or reduced lunch.
• School-provided internet hot spots (I think this is being provided for already in some places)
• Traveling teachers- teachers providing some sort of in-person check ups on students, especially those that are at-risk.
• Schools move towards being open in the Spring, Summer, and partial Fall, with Winter break replacing Summer break.
• Schools partially re-open, with 1/5th the students coming in on one day a week.

Would really be interested in hearing the thoughts and ideas of others on this topic. Especially the people who work in the education field.