I am an experienced programmer (mostly M$ stack -- C#, etc).

I started learning mobile Android development a few months ago, learning both Kotlin and the larger Android development environment at the same time. I got bogged down in tutorials and guides, because half of them teach Jetpack Compose methodology and half teach XML layout ... and, often enough, don't bother to mention which method they're using.

Which should I learn first? I am initially interested in learning Android dev for my own hobby/fun/side projects, but I would--ultimately--like to be able to put "Android developer" on my resume.

Jetpack definitely looks better, more modern, more OO, and I expect it will eventually become the new standard ... but that could still be many years down the road. Also, while it might be "better"--especially for larger projects--it also smells more complicated.

So, ultimately, I guess I should learn both if I actually intend to become an Android dev ... but I should definitely get comfortable with one, first ... so, which one?

There are many interesting videos about the ISS on YouTube, but I have a hard time committing video content to memory, and it is also difficult for me to create a mental picture of how things work in that format.

So, what are some good books (or maybe long-form articles) about the ISS that can help me understand it both functionally and spatially? Essentially, where everything is, what everything is for, and also how all the procedures actually work. I'm looking for both accessible introductions for the general public and more technical literature (although I am not in STEM, so something meant specifically for engineers might be too much for me).

The purpose of the request is research for something I am writing. I intend it to be (kinda hard) science fiction, so I wanna be able to comfortably visualize and refer to all the spaces and moving parts with knowledge. I do wanna learn some jargon and what it's for, but I'm not building a space station in my garage :P

It takes place in current times.

I'm not against learning more about the history of the ISS, but my focus is really on how it is organized, what every part is meant to accomplish, and how the operations and procedures actually take place there. Including all the rules, methods, and inner works involving human beings, both in relation to the ISS and themselves.

I just bought a Ninja nutribullet-equivalent blender and will be on a smoothie kick for quite awhile. I bought it because I really need to incorporate more fruits and vegetables in my diet and think it will be a good way to replace breakfast and sometimes dessert.

So far, I have bought two huge bags of frozen fruit, one with strawberries, mango, pineapple, and peaches, and the other is a mixed berry with blueberries, blackberries, raspberries. I also got a bag of frozen kale and frozen spinach. I know there are many, many sites out there filled with smoothie recipes but was curious on your favorite go-to recipe.

I'm open minded so share even your weird ones if you got them!

Hello, due to some unfortunately circumstances I need to have my left hand in a cast for some time and I'm looking for recommendations for games I could play only using my right hand (so only using the mouse). I have a few in my library that I've already been playing like Super Auto Pets and Let's Revolution, but I'm a bit bored of them. I also tried a tower defense game called Super Sanctuam TD, which was in my library, so I've tried looking for some other TD games but couldn't find anything that caught my eye.

Edit: I only listed what I've played recently, but I don't really want to limit myself to any genre, the only requirement is to be playable only with the mouse.

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.

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?

I've offered to cook Christmas Dinner for my husband's side of the family, but have one problem. While my husband and I aren't the biggest beef eaters nor big fans of steak, my in-laws are. I don't mind cooking for their requests and find it a fun challenge to cook a different type of meat, but here's the concern: due to not regularly cooking it, I'm not as well versed in the methods or approaches.

They would prefer either a prime rib roast or beef tenderloin; both cuts I have never worked with. While there are a number of recipes out there, I would like see if anyone on Tildes has a recommendation on how to cook either cut or another of similar quality. My mother-in-law does not like a lot of pink appearing in her steaks as well, so I'm having to consider how to handle that while also not over cooking the meat. I was already considering dry brining it overnight, but after that I'm unsure what direction i would go.

Any tips and advice would be greatly appreciated!

This is Album of the Week #14 ~ This week's album is Love - Forever Changes

Year of Release: 1967
Genre(s): Psychedelic Pop
Country: United States
Length: 42 minutes
RYM | Listen! (Album.Link)

Excerpt from AV Club:

Forever Changes, for all of its gorgeous balladry, layered acoustic guitars, and silky string arrangements, is filled with passion and angst. 1967 may have been The Summer Of Love, but Forever Changes dismantles any notions of free love and social change. Opening track “Alone Again Or” boasts the overtly hippie line “You know that I could be in love with almost everyone.” Love pulls off a bait-and-switch though, undercutting that line just moments later with, “and I will be alone again tonight, my dear,” a line that closes every verse and positions the album as one of isolation and disconnect.

Discussion points:
Have you heard this artist/album before? Is this your first time hearing?
Do you enjoy this genre? Is this an album you would have chosen?
Does this album remind you of something you've heard before?
What were the album's strengths or weaknesses?
Was there a standout track for you?
How did you hear the album? Where were you? What was your setup?

--

Album of the week is currently chosen randomly (via random.org) from the top 5000 albums from a custom all-time RYM chart, with a 4/5 popularity weighting. The chart is recalculated weekly.

Missed last week? It can be found here.

Any feedback on the format is welcome ~~

I'm basically very new to complicated tabletop games but I've been in love with this game for well over a year now but it's really hard to find people that want to play it multiple times with me (physically) because the setup and learning process takes 30-45 minutes for the average new-ish player. I just learned (today) that there's also an online component to it. If anybody else loves this game I'd be down to start an online game with you and your friends if they'd like to.

Edit No.1: I don't currently have a way to access steam but I should soon (assuming the Microsoft Surface Pro 9 can run games). If so I will DM everyone on here :)

Edit No. 2: I had no idea that this post would get this many comments (5 at the time of this edit). I'm very glad that my niche nerdy interest resonates with people. Whenever I get my lil computer/tablet thingy I wanna make a group chat thingy (maybe discord, never used before) with y'all so we can set up some games together. Looking forward to our future games.

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?

Hey all, hope you're doing well today. I'm visiting NYC for the first time with my wife in January (she's been a couple of times already), and I would greatly appreciate any advice or recommendations you could offer! Of course I have to do the obligatory Broadway show and pizza, and I have this nifty little guidebook, and wow as I write this I am such a tourist.

Thanks!

So for the past two years, I've been a residential Cable Technician working for a subcontractor for Cox (Comcast). After many applications, I finally landed a position. I'd been trying to get a foothold into IT for a while now; my A+ is nearly expired at this point. I was pretty stoked to actually get the position. The position is a "Level 1 IT Specialist" at a private school. Utilizing company software to respond to tickets, fix issues for admin staff and teachers/students. The only hitch at first was that I had to shave clean (Silly, I know). Begrudgingly, I relented. That's fine, it's not particularly impressive anyway.

Today, I got a call from the HR rep who did my onboarding saying that I would also unfortunately need to cut my hair to follow their guidelines of hairline above the collar. This is a huge deal for me, as my hairline is currently at the middle of my back. I just wear it up for work. This would truly devastate me. The people interviewing me (3 of them) said it would be fine, then the employee handbook stated otherwise. When asked, the HR rep said she'd contact a supervisor, supe said no, and now she's referring me to another department (Benefits? Dunno how that's relevant) to try to make an exception or something to that effect.

Beyond just wanting to lament the likely loss of 4 years of work, I did want to ask those who are more experienced in the IT field than myself: Is this job (the IT one) one that will absolutely help me progress in my IT career? I know I didn't give the most detailed explanation of it; I hardly know everything myself. It was hard enough to finally have a job get back to me. And I was accepted rather quickly. But the loss of my hair gives me pause, and makes me wonder if I'm better off at my current job and waiting for another opportunity that might never come. Should I just grit my teeth and accept this blow to my identity for the sake of furthering my career? Any advice at all is welcome.

Desk space at my home is very limited.

Right now I have a set of speakers hanging out behind my external monitor, but I'd really rather get rid of them entirely and just have the speakers/soundbar built-in to the monitor itself. It would give me a lot more room to work with because I'd be able to push the monitor back further on the desk.

Also, presumably (and correct me if I'm wrong here), having the speakers powered by the monitor and fed audio through HDMI would free up a lot of cabling clutter as well. My setup is already very messy (2 laptops and a KVM switch), so cleaning it up will give me some relief (my theme of 2023 is "Simplify").

I know nothing about buying computer monitors. When I look them up, I'm not even sure which type I should be looking for (IPS? OLED?).

I do plan to game on it, but most gaming-focused monitors seem like overkill for someone like me who will primarily have it hooked up to a middling 5-year-old laptop that plays mostly indie stuff. I do occasionally play the more intensive/prettier game, but those are usually usually far between and definitely not a priority that's worth spending a bunch to target. I tend to tank the graphics settings on games like that anyway to keep my laptop from becoming a cooking surface, and I'll take a smoother framerate over better eye candy all day, every day.

What are the trusted brands (if any)? What pitfalls should I look out for? If anyone can help point me in the right direction, I'd appreciate it!

My use case: general browsing and (mostly casual) gaming

My computer: System76 Oryx Pro 5 (2019), NVIDIA GeForce RTX 2070 Mobile, Pop!_OS 22.04

My budget: ultimately whatever is necessary to get a quality product, but hopefully no more than $300 USD or so?

Preferred Size: 24" -- absolute maximum I could do is probably 27"

Key Feature: built-in speakers or soundbar

Let me know if there's any other key information I can provide that would help.

Questions I Have:

• Will buying a higher resolution monitor (e.g. 4K) tax my graphics card more because it's rendering at a higher resolution, or can I just scale down the display resolution to something less intensive?

• Same question as above, but for refresh rate.

• Would audio be transmitted over HDMI, or would I have to have a cable from the headphone jack (or some different method I'm not aware of)?

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!

Is anyone here involved with archery in any way?
I've been thinking about looking for a local archery club because I've always had an interest in it, especially in a competitive context. As a 15-17 year old I spent many hours in the backyard coming up with wild trickshots and not stopping until I perfected them. I want that specific type of joy back.
I had a (maximum) 110lb youth model Diamond compound bow but it's the only bow I've ever owned. Also looking for reccomendations for my first adult sized bow. I don't care if it's an English-style longbow, compound, or a weird horsebow, I'd love the input either way.

Has anyone else noticed that sometimes the Tildes homepage will say "1 new message", but when clicking on this the message inbox is empty?

I guess this is because messages are being deleted after being sent? It's slightly annoying because I can't find a way to dismiss the "new message" notification.

I was thinking it would be possible that they actually stumbled across something factual. But it's really hard to ask about this on todays web, because everything is so polarized, with Antivax versus "debunkers" whose sole goal is to win the debate. I sort of wished that there were some highly intelligent people who didn't care about this at all who could look into it from a fresh perspective. Some martians or something.

The reason I'm asking this is because my mother is heavily into antivax. And I really can't deal with any of her sources, but if they're right about about something, I'd like to know.

Open to anything from Hallmark-style movies with particularly ridiculous storylines, horror movies with a Christmas twist, or childhood classics that are a lot crazier than we might remember them as children.

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.

Find yourself watching tons of great videos on [insert chosen video sharing platform], but also find yourself reluctant to flood the Tildes front page with them? Then this thread is for you.

It could be one quirky video that you feel deserves some eyeballs on it, or perhaps you've got a curated list of videos that you'd love to talk us through...

Share some of the best video content you've watched this past week/fortnight with us!

Does anyone else completely disagree with that sentiment?

I see it a lot in these communities, and I definitely am not trying to yuck on someone else's yum, but I just don't relate to it. Maybe someone else can explain it better than me?

Like, I feel almost totally defined by borderline. I struggle so much with life because of this disorder. It takes so much time and energy away from being able to focus on normal people things, to the point that I feel unable to live a normal life without a ton of help and therapy.

So I just feel that I really am my BPD.

PS: not trying to stir a pot or anything, it's just a thought I had and wanted to talk about

I very much would not be. My son had a rough birth, but it probably wouldn't have killed him or my wife.

Both my brothers had children in the last six months. Neither of the kids would have survived, and one of the mothers would definitely have died.

The better question might be: how many of you can say for sure you'd be alive without modern medicine?

Hey all!

My wife and I are waiting to board our flight to Norway to spend Christmas with her family in Sarpsborg. However, we'll be spending about 10 days there and spending out nights in a hotel in Oslo, so we'll def have time to ourselves without family obligations. If anyone (local or not) has recommendations for favorite restaurants or cafés, please share them here! Especially stuff on the cozy and cheap(er) end.

So usually every couple weeks I make a pot roast on the weekend, however my crock pot broke I discovered, just prior to making it. My girlfriend and I need to eat it prior to leaving town this Thursday after work. As I have work all week, I don't have time to make an 8 hour pot roast, so I need an idea of what I can do with this thing.

I doubt I'll find any new ideas, but maybe someone here has one. I'm running out of places to turn, with no solution.

I have been in a fight with Fitbit support for a few weeks now over their push to migrate everyone to a Google-linked Fitbit account. I'm pretty sure what I've found is a rare edge case of a bug, or rather, an unaccounted for set of conditions when trying to migrate.

A long time ago, 2017 I think, I created a Google-linked Fitbit Account (via oauth, "Login with Google"). I used it briefly and then stopped, and completely forgot about its existence.

In 2022, I got a Pixel Watch and created a new/second Fitbit Account with a different email address, as I did not remember I had a Fitbit account already and I wanted to use a masked email address through my personal domain.

With the push to migrate all Fitbit accounts to Google accounts, I decided to try to do so last month. When I attempted to migrate my second account to a Google account, I got an error that I already had an account registered under my Google account. So I logged in to that old 2017 Google account and initiated its deletion. It told it me would take 30 days to delete it, so I waited 31 days.

31 days later, I tried to migrate my second account to a Google account. When I try to do so, I get an error:

Can't use Fitbit with this Google Account
This could be because you're using a Google Workspace account, or because your account is supervised.

My account is neither a child account, nor a Workspace account, it's a standard (adult) account I've had for something like 16 years.

So I tried to see if my old Google account was perhaps not deleted after all. I tried to log in to my old account via oauth (Sign In > Continue with Google), and I get a different error:

Sign in again to continue
Since you deleted Fitbit from your Google Account, you’ll need to sign in again as a new user.

I suspect that what happens when I deleted my old/original Google account is that it wasn't actually deleted, but made inactive with some "deleted" flag, but the account hasn't been purged. As a result, I'm unable to migrate my new account to the same email address I used for my old Google account.

Reaching out to Fitbit, they continually put the blame on Google for reporting my account as a workspace/supervised account, and the only solution they'll offer me is "You should create a new Google account". Google has also been unable to help, but that doesn't surprise me, as I don't think it's an issue on their end. Requests to Fitbit to escalate my case to a higher tier of support and/or someone from some type of database team have been stonewalled, and I think that Fitbit support has now just stopped responding to me entirely.

Does anyone have any idea where I could turn?

Hello, as the title says: someone registered their phone subscription using my email. It doesn't make sense as I (obviously) never permitted this stranger to use my email for their subscription.

I say stranger but I now know their first name, their last name, their billing address, and their phone number by now. It's crazy.

I would just like the emails to stop coming! I know I could just make a filter to forward everything from this domain to spam but is there a way to actually make the phone company to stop sending me things?

The emails are coming from a language that I don't know how to speak (so calling customer service is not an option here).

I tried using the "forget password" option but for some reason that's not arriving to me. Probably it's pinging their phone first to verify that it was them who initiated it.

The best customer service I can find is by WhatsApp but it's a robot that always asks the stranger to verify that it's them.

So as the title states, I am realizing that most folks don't have CD readers. I do, and I can burn my phone's videos to one, but... I also use Linux these days. I have a CD burner somewhere around here, but honestly I just want to do a "zip file" type option, where I can just group the videos and get them on a usb stick to send out.

Everything I find on the 'net is about burning CDs and whatnot... which isn't my goal. Honestly, I think windows did this just easy-peasy with select and "burn to image" or whatnot. But I dunno how with Linux (Arch/i3).

Edit: I'm asking because I don't see any options in pacman. It may be in yay, but it's my bedtime...
Edit 2: Lots of folks asking why I want an ISO and not just copy the files; my dad states their TV will play videos 'in a DVD format from a USB stick' (and I don't know how accurate it is, but it's what was requested).

The next movie from the 1990s is Edward Scissorhands from 1990 directed by Tim Burton

IMDb
Letterboxd
Wikipedia

Are you familiar with other works by Tim Burton and how does this compare? Does it have a certain "90s feel" to it? Feel free to add any thoughts, opinions, reflections, analysis or whatever comments related to this film.

The rest of the schedule is:

• 18th of December: The Talented Mr. Ripley
• 25th of December: Home Alone

Have any of you tried out fossil as an alternative to git? I have been using it for about a week, and I think I am in love. I have used git for years, since having some sort of source control is absolutely essential in programming. But I never liked git or felt comfortable using it. Within a week of messing with fossil, I feel like I understand it and can use it without a guide or external tools. It also has an issue tracker, forums, and a wiki built in.

Fossil Versus Git

I recommend reading all of that, especially section 2.5. Their description of cathedral style development lines up much more closely to everything I have worked on than git's bazaar style. Another thing I love is the ability to have the same repo open in multiple different folders at the same time. Basically everything about fossil lines up much more closely with what I think a source control program should be, at least for my use.

Have you watched any movies recently you want to discuss? Any films 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.

Hi everyone! I'm looking for a nice chef knife (or small set of cooking knives) for Christmas.

I'm looking around medium end so I'm wanting to spend 100-200 bucks, I'd prefer a small set of 2-4 knives, no large 12-16 sets as I don't believe those are good value.

I've heard good things about Wusthof and Henckels from my friends but I wanted to get a wider net of recommendations just in case before I made a decision

I'm a pretty conscientious person and I like to research stuff before I buy it - I'm not obsessive about getting The Best Whatever In Class, but like anyone I'm interested in a good deal for a product that suits my needs.

Between the prevalence of review-stuffing bots, Google's results getting worse, and reviewers themselves sometimes having questionable financial backing, I'm finding it harder and harder to find reliable information. So the gold standard is personal recommendations from real people!

I checked and it's been a while since we've had a general recommendations thread on Tildes so I thought it might be nice to start up another one with the influx of new folks!

Possible points of discussion:

1. Are you looking to buy something and hoping to hear from people about what's good and what's bad? Post the type of thing you're looking for in a top-level comment and others can chime in!

2. Is there a product you enjoy or that has improved your life, fills a niche or special requirement really well, or stands out to you as being a big improvement over its competitors? Is there a particular company you had a great experience with? Share with others who might also benefit!

3. Is there a product you tried, HATED, and want to warn people about? Something that's all hype, no substance? I think that also fits here.

4. Are there any reviewers or sites you trust in particular?

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!

I have a NAS with a ton of photos and documents that have remained untouched for around 6 years. I uploaded all that stuff to OneDrive. Tidied it up and kept using OneDrive mostly. But I also sent stuff to the NAS. They have diverged.

I'm thinking about ways of restructuring/sorting my NAS to match my OneDrive so that I can then sync the two. I thought about making a python script that would just match on file names and move them to the correct location.

Figured before I did I'd ask if anyone else had any other suggestions

I have an external drive (3.5" hdd, SATA) in an enclosure (usb 3) (purchased separately), connected to a thunderbolt dock (OWC) connected alternately to an iMac and a macbook pro. The HDD goes to sleep, and causes problems. Freezes, weird internet access problems, kernel panics.

I have done some research, and can't seem to figure out:

how to know whether it is the drive, enclosure, or computer causing the sleep, although, fiddling with various settings on the mac seemed to have no effect, although it may have increased my battery usage :(

how to adjust settings on the drive, or in the enclosure.

How to determine what the sleep behavior of prospective drives will be.

As a workaround, I tried to write a zsh script to touch the drive ever few seconds. This kinda worked, but was a struggle to figure out appropriate permissions issues and how to make it run automatically.

I welcome all guidance, pointers to resources, clarifications, incantations, well-wishes.

Personally. meringue kisses using a low slow bake recipe are my favorite for parties and gatherings. They are gluten free, they can be made with and without chocolate chips, they look sophisticated as long as they don't crack in transit and I really like them.

Banana bread and zuchini bread are typical snacks around our house. Nothing unique about the recipes, I just like them.

We are a household of 5 people with 2 little ones. That means we get to experience the joy and pleasures of viruses the little ones tend to bring home. After a few of those I've noticed a pattern, each viral infection within the household tends to last 2+ weeks.

1. Patient zero brings the virus home and has symptoms
2. One of the adults starts developing symptoms shortly after. Everyone else is fine.
3. Each other person goes down like domino's but with few days in between. By the time the 3rd or last person is ill the 1st and 2nd person are recovered and healthy. In some instances there my be 1 person that never develops any symptoms, or has no symptoms but is very tired/weak.

This got me thinking, and for context I know nothing about viruses or medicine in general. What is happening here?

• Do all people get infected but not everyone develops symptoms?
• Do some peoples immune systems successfully fight off the viral infection completely or partially?

I'm ruling out anyone being able to avoid contact to escape viral infection due to the size and social dynamics of the household.

Hello,

If this topic came up and such a recommendation has been made, please just point me to that post.

I would like to read an introduction to the Israeli-Arab conflict.

I would like the book:

1. to be written by an author with relevant credentials
2. to not be written for academics
3. to not be written by an Arab, Israeli, or European author
4. something that was published before the October 7th invasion of Israel

Thanks much

I'm hoping I might have some recommendations for a computer chassis. So far I've gotten away with using a couple of Fractal Designs, even got my hands on an old Cooler Master XB Evo recently that I never got to put into use.

Basically, I'm looking for a chassis with something like 6-10 hotswap 3.5 drive bays. Preferably horizontal, but vertical is begrudgingly acceptable. Are any of you aware of such a chassis, or am I forced to start looking at racks instead?

Alternatively, do any of you have experience with hacking together a case and installing drive bays?

Bit unrelated side-note: The front micro-jack in one of my cases has broken off (headset wire looped around the office chair) and Fractal Design wouldn't sell me a replacement. Any idea where I might find a female audio connector? I'll happily do a bit of soldering if necessary, I just don't know what the part called or where to look for it.

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?

Becoming a father is a moment of great elation and stress, bringing challenges that are hard to anticipate. Given the different demands and circumstances that surround us, many of these challenges are not necessarily shared by our partners. At the very least, many challenges and fortuitous circumstances contain features that are more common for men. What was not like you expected (good or bad)? What did you find particularly surprising or revealing?

Long story short--I don't want to connect my mac to my iCloud account, but every time I login to my laptop, I get three popups in a row that say "This Mac Can't connect to iCloud because of a problem with [my email] ...".

I can't find a setting that allows me to disable this, and online searches have been fruitless.

I'm about to embark on another work trip, and will have most of a day + four evenings to explore. Meals are reasonably well planned, but I need some help convincing my traveling companion that the Mall of America around the holidays (!!!!😣) isn't the peak of excitement in the area.

Left to my own devices, I'd probably spend the day at the Minneapolis Institute of Art. I'd welcome suggestions for anything reasonably accessible with a rental car, not too far from the University of Minnesota area.

If I do any holiday shopping, I'd like to find local handcrafted goods, art, and curiosities. Maybe Midtown Global Market, since that's one of the meal destinations? Not-too-loud venues for live music? My thanks in advance!

Note: I have done some homework, but many area destination recommendations appear to be oriented around summer tourism and outdoor attractions. It's likely I'll be back in January as well, so indoor places are preferable.

Second note: Just discovered the Dayton's Project holiday market, which might fit part of the requirements.

I have been pretty consistently pro-Palestine and critical of injustices perpetrated by Israel, but the anti-Zionist stance has always seemed to me to be counterproductive.

On the issue of just the legitimacy of the state of Israel, here's my basic stance: All land controlled by all governments was taken at some point through conquest (this is not a whataboutist stance, it's a tautology), but in the post-colonial era we all decided that might isn't right and that a mixture of international law, norms, and democratic principles should dictate the legitimacy of territorial claims. So, the Ottoman empire fell. The British seized control of the land of Palestine and retained a moderately weak mandate over the land (moderately weak in the sense that they were the essentially undisputed administrators of the land and had a military presence, but the territory would likely try to break away if the British tried to exercise significant control over it). With this moderately weak mandate, they pushed for the creation of the state of Israel that, by extension, I would consider a moderately-weakly legitimate state under the pre-WWII paradigm. Israel fights a defensive war against the Arab states and succeeds, converting the state of Israel as defined by the original 1948 partition plan from a weakly legitimate state into a properly legitimate state. At this point, the post-WWII frameworks kick in, and all the developments in the conflict past this point should be a function of that lens (ie. Palestine wrongfully denied sovereignty, illegality of settlements, etc.).

Zionism, in the most basic sense, is the belief in the creation of a Jewish state of Israel. There are more extreme and moderate versions of it, but that's all that it is at its core. Anti-Zionism is opposition to the creation of a Jewish state of Israel (I would not consider opposition to settlements or, strictly speaking, even to the accession of new territory into Israel proper past the 1948 borders after the two wars to be anti-Zionist itself). The anti-Zionist stance before the establishment of Israel was reasonable, but past that point is primarily a claim of one nation over the land of another nation. It's perfectly understandable at the end of the day for the Arabs and, particularly the Palestinians, to be upset about the whole situation and even to feel that a great injustice was done unto them. But that should all be relegated to the world of international affairs between established states. Ultimately, in my eyes anti-Zionism is not anti-semitic, but it's definitely anti-peace.

Tildes is a very serious site, where we discuss very serious matters like enshittification, computing.cloud and checkouts.self. Tags culled from the highest voted topics from the last seven days, if anyone was perplexed.

But one of my favourite tags happens to be offbeat! Taking its original inspiration from Sir Nils Olav III, this thread is looking for any far-fetched offbeat stories lurking in the newspapers. It may not deserve its own post, but it deserves a wider audience!

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?