The other day I had to get new glasses, and I braced myself for my lenses to be incredibly thick and expensive to boot again - but then I had them made, they look normal, and they barely cost me a Benjamin. Clearly, the optometrist crowd has made some major developments in the past decade or so, which leads me to ask - if you're working in an industry most people don't really think about, what's happened in your space in the past ten years?

The user @trim posted an interesting question in ~Tech and it made me wonder: what are my forgivable sins? What kinds of misdeeds on the part of companies that are suppliers of goods or services do I tacitly concience or to which I will turn a blind eye?

Whenever there is a scandal, the easy answer is, "I don't know, but definitely not that." This, however, is just an ad hoc definition that can be applied to any unsavory revelation on the part of a service or product provider. What would I be left with? I couldn't retreat from society if I wanted to and the cost of commercial puritanism would be prohibitively high.

What I realized in that topic was that (1) I will not sanction providers merely for doing business with others to whom I am opposed and (2) I will not sanction providers merely for issuing words or statements that I disagree with.

That said, I'm curious about others. What are your criteria for bad behavior in a service or product provider that you would judge to be nonetheless admissible?

I know it's not even Thanksgiving yet (for those in the US), but Christmas shopping season has already started.

What gifts would you enjoy receiving this year? Large, small, fun, functional, or anything in between. I also acknowledge that some people try not to request anything as part of a minimalist or reduced waste mindset. In that situation, what do you request- money, donations to specific charities on your behalf, something else?

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.

Something interesting about the latest escalations in the Israel-Palestine war since oct of last year is that Hamas was the one who launched the terrorist attack which lead to the current escalation.

Israel suffered a loss and was the victim on that day and the following days, but since their actions in Gaza and Rafah and other neighboring countries, the coverage of Israel very much shows the govt of Israel as the aggressor. It's felt like a complete role reversal to me.

Makes me wonder if this is the first time this has happened in such a short time? You can say that U.S. did the same thing after 9/11 but imo it's actions in the Middle east did not gain it a negative perception amongst world leaders nearly as fast.

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?

The recent history of social media has made me interested in the factors that make online communities successful/healthy, or toxic etc.. This is one of the appeals of Tildes for me. I'm also emotionally invested in seeing a healthy future for the Irish language, which has seen some interesting developments in the internet age but remains in a precarious position as a community language in the country. You can see how these two interests dovetail together. At the moment this is a thought experiment, but later, who knows...

Tips I've got so far:

I've heard that some barriers to entry can increase group loyalty by making members feels slightly "invested" by earning a place in the community

I've also noted that some of the most persistant subcultures operate online but also have a strong in-person element (eg: furries)

There's also the common observation that good moderation is crucial to user experience and therefore group cohesion

Then I got some pointers from the Tildes docs:

• Trust by default, punish abusers
• Focus on user experience, not growth metrics
• Favour deep engagement over shallow/clickbait
• Empower members to make choices
• The golden rule (apply charitable interpretations, don't tolerate bad actors)

So, people of Tildes: what factors do you see as crucial to building and maintaining a strong cohesive online community?

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.

I have a long standing problem that probably has several good solutions, I just haven't been able to figure them out. So here I am, asking you.

I'm selfhosting some services, a mix of selfbuilt and open source software. But some things I don't want to selfhost. Notably backups and alerts/notifications. For backups I have a solution which works well in every regard except one - I don't always get alerted when things fail, because the way I send myself those alerts is failing more than the actual backups.

Currently I'm using python and gmails smtp interface to send myself email, but gmail disables my smtp access from time to time, and it's really easy not to notice not getting an email. I've tried sending the email regardless of whether the backup failed or not, but I've noticed several times that I still don't notice if the they stop coming.

Now on to my requirements/wishlist.

1. I'm already using s3 glacier at aws for the backups, so preferrably something in the aws space.
2. I would like to get an popup/toast on my phone when a message is being sent. And the ability to review messages later.
3. I would like as few moving parts as possible.
4. I don't want to write my own client.
5. I want it to be cheap, and if there's a cost I prefer to pay it at a place where I'm already paying, meaning aws (or possibly proton).
6. I want a stable service.
7. I prefer to manage as little as possible of the infrastructure.
8. I'd like a simple programmable interface that can't easily fail. E.g. http based.
9. It's no problem if messages are not received instantly, I could easily tolerate delays up to 24 hours.

As you may have noticed I'm pretty much expecting there to be something in aws that I can use, but aws documentation is so abstract, that I often don't understand what the point of something is or how I'm supposed to use it.

Tildes is a very serious site, where we discuss very serious matters like chrome, users and wicked. Tags culled from the highest voted topics from the last seven days, if anyone was researching.

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 thread is an opportunity to vote between a couple of options I see for our spring schedule based on the votes received in the two voting threads.

Please vote for one of them by upvoting. If anyone wants to propose an alternative reasonable set of books based on the numbers in the voting thread, for the consideration of the group, please feel free.

Our next discussion will be the City We Became and we will be discussing in early December.

My nephew and I like to play games together, and we're always looking for games that we can play together. I was manually looking through my Steam library today and wondering how to go about finding stuff that we may already own that we could play together. Is there a tool for that? Or maybe something that could suggest a game for purchase that we would both enjoy based on our history?

Also feel free to drop any general game library organization tips here. I found this tildes thread from a couple of years ago and I've already seen some cool ideas and tools.

I am in the process of starting up my own food blog. I have no hopes or aspirations of being huge or making money, it will solely be a labor of love and an outlet for my love of food to share with the world.

Unfortunately, I don’t have a specific niche that will be targeting and was looking to crowd source opinions on what people would feel they would like in a food blog. I’m hoping to avoid suggestions like “less convoluted stories about your grandmothers tablecloth for 3 pages before the recipe” since I think we can all agree on that front.

Some of you may be thinking the world needs another blog like you need another asshole, and that may be true. However, part of my impetus was that many of the recipe blogs I find online have the same generic 30-40 recipes with minimal variation. Others of higher quality are moving behind paywalls. My goal is to try to include slightly more obscure recipes from all over the world, tried/tested/optimized for simplicity in cooking and flavor, or more unique variations on more common recipes. I also aspire to do some articles a bit more experimental / scientific in nature in the vein of some of J Kenji Lopez Alts articles a la serious eats but that is a larger aspiration for down the road.

I welcome any suggestions or sharing of your current favorite food blogs. I know the current social media trend is YouTube, TikTok, and the like. However as I find myself here with you all, you may understand my preference for sticking with the written word (and occasional photos). Cheers!

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!

Not sure if this is the best place to post this, but I wondered about this recently. I took three seemingly-solo Youtubers as examples at different scales.

Penguinz0 has 16 mil subscribers, and as far as I know his uploads are just him talking into the camera, giving his opinion about recent things in games and pop culture (I could be very wrong about that, I don't know why he's popular). Looks like he uploads at least a few times a week, so that could be manageable.

Videogamedunkey has 7.5 mil subscribers, and he used to do weekly uploads until very recently, I think. Given that his humor and editing style is a big part of his content, I'd be surprised if he's got anyone else working on his vids.

Northernlion has just over 1 mil subscribers and uploads multiple videos daily, and (in)famously refuses to do any editing. He just basically streams on Twitch all day and uploads clips from that.

I would imagine the day-to-day running of the business, i.e. answering emails and phone calls, would be where having help is most advantageous as you grow, but it also probably depends a lot on what kind of content you make. How big can you get before it's too much for a solo operation?

I was watching this clip of The Daily Show where Desi Lydic highlights the change in how Dr. Oz has been portrayed over the years, and it got me thinking about the perception of public figures over time.

I remember watching CBS Sunday Morning segment in 1998 where Elon Musk was painted in a fairly good light as a sort of rebel taking on Microsoft. This was around the time that Microsoft was seen in a pretty bad light for the Internet Explorer anti-trust case.

Musk as he appears in the media I consume today is almost unrecognizable from the 1998 segment.

I also recall a time when Rudy Giuliani was seen in a good light (disclosure: I'm mostly going off of my memory of how he was perceived by the nation as Mayor of New York. I never lived in or near New York, so I can't really speak to how he was perceived locally).

I'm sure I could come up with other examples if I thought about it some more.

All of this has me pondering the nature of my own perception. I don't know any of these people personally, so I rely on what I see online and in the news to guide my image of who these people are. But when I see this stark contrast it makes me wonder what is real.

Did these figures change over time, perhaps corrupted by power and/or fame?

Have they always been this way, and I'm just seeing the media paint them differently over time?

Are they just in a Harvey Dent / Batman "live long enough to become the villain" situation?

Maybe all of the above?

I also think about this in context of aging. My views on the world have definitely changed over time. I think I've mostly grown in a positive way as a person. But I've also seen my own parents change their views and become disturbingly conservative. It worries me that I may also have a regression as I age. They are still mostly the same loving parents I grew up with. The only real obvious cause of their shift in views is the media they consume.

So I'm curious to hear other points of view on this phenomenon.

I think I won't post the link here to one of the posts about this because I think it's an unproven conspiracy theory and it isn't true.
But there is a particular story going around online that one or more security experts is claiming that the latest presidential election was stolen. The "proof" is of this type:

• I'm a security expert
• There is some stuff in the election results that is statistically impossible, especially in swing states
• There is a specific type of ballot where the voter has only voted for one candidate or issue
• Here are the numbers compared to the normal numbers
• Voting machines were compromised, and here's how

For each of those bullet points (and a few others I didn't mention), I have to go and research that data in order to determine if it is accurate.

• I could google the expert and check their reputation
• I could research how common it is to have certain types of ballot completions
• I may be able to get detailed information about specific counties and their historic voting patterns
• I could do a lot of research on voting machine integrity

The research on each of those bullets could be compromised by other misinformation, astroturfing, bad AI summaries, etc.

Or I could just send the link to everyone I know and hope that someone else does this. Or just send it because I don't like the election result and I wish this story was true.

It's easy to see why CNN reported that 70% of Republicans thought the 2020 election was stolen, especially since conspiracy theories were repeated to them on all their main news sources and confirmed their biases.

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!

We had a fun thread last year about what came to mind when other people's usernames come up.

It ended up turning into a cool little online intro of the history of your username, if you have one. There are so many usernames I don't recognise now that I'm back with a steady internet connection after a long time away.

Mine is boring sorry - I switch usernames every 12 months or so for the illusion of control regarding anonymity. My main username used to be Iain M. Banks' Culture series related, so I do miss meeting fellow Culture fans, but this year it's just from a random number generator.

Does your username have an interesting backstory? I recently learned that @chocobean wasn't a chocolate bean, and @cfabbro wasn't a Computational Fabrication Bro, I'm sure there are plenty of others out there.

So perhaps I should have done more research , should have known, etc. But their recent news post took me by surprise:

Your subscription money at work:

Image search enhanced with Yandex

They're just out there bragging about giving money to Yandex. This bothers me.

As I said above, I should perhaps done more to research this before subbing, but that news post.

Shame, as I quite liked the search, but it's back to DDG I guess.

Am I over reacting here? What do others think?

I am not a native English speaker.

Because that word became prominent in recent years, with a meaning that is heavily disputed, dictionaries and encyclopedias are useless in determining how it should be interpreted.

Tildes has a good assortment of intelligent native English speakers. In that light, when applied to people and in the context of social discourse, what do words such as "cancelled" and "cancelation" mean to you? In your view, are there situations in which these are employed either correctly or incorrectly? Or are they multiple and fluid in such a way that they can be applied to a vast array of situations dissimilar from each other?

This discussion is about semantics and subjective interpretation. It's about how words are employed to convey meaning. If you find semantics or subjectivity irrelevant, boring, stupid, unnerving, or otherwise unworthy of discussion, please do not comment.

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 live in the southeast, and I'm finally in a situation where nothing is really keeping me here, so in the next month or so I'm intending to begin selling everything I can't fit in my car, and move out west.

Unfortunately, I don't have a job lined up or anything like that, which obviously makes things more difficult. I figure something like offering to put a year of rent into an escrow account can probably cover that?

On top of that though, how are you supposed to get a feel for everything? Like, there are virtual tours and things like that, but it's not exactly the same.

I guess I'm just looking for general advice and tips at this stage. I feel like I don't even really know what I should be asking, but I'm definitely intent on ending up on the west coast.

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.

I don't know what I intend for this post to be - I guess I just need to get my thoughts out somewhere. If anyone has any advice, I'd appreciate it - but I'm not expecting anyone to read all the way through this or anything really. If this isn't appropriate for Tildes, feel free to remove it.

I recently graduated college and moved to San Jose, CA for work. And let me tell you, I am not liking it here at all so far. Work itself is great - it's interesting stuff, I like what I'm doing, and I feel like there's really nowhere else I could be doing it. But dear lord, has my social life evaporated. This does not feel like somewhere that someone in their young 20s should be living. I live in downtown, and it's mostly apartments, tech companies, and a spattering of bars and restaurants frequented by tech bros in their 30s. Which is fine, but not at all the social scene I am looking for.

I work with a handful of people my age, and while we do things outside of work every so often, they're really not the same kind of folks I got used to hanging out with in college. They're all super career/status-oriented people, which is not me at all. I've definitely selected for meeting these kinds of folks by working at a tech company, but that's really not the kind of people I usually vibe with. In college, I made a lot of really close friends who were mostly "weirdos", without any better way to put it - lots of queer leftist folks, people into strange art and music, people I could really be myself around. Maybe I have high standards for what I look for in friends, but I really do not see myself becoming close with any of the people my age that I've met around here so far. I have nothing against these folks - we just share different ideals. But I feel like I am constantly censoring myself and am unable to really just be me here.

Of course, to find the kinds of people that I want to hang out with, I probably chose the wrong career path and wrong place to live. I was wary of moving to San Jose since the sentiment I'm sharing here is widely echoed online. And it feels bad proving my fears correct. I looked into moving to San Francisco, Berkeley, or Oakland, but decided against it because I was afraid the commute would burn me out. But now, I am regretting that decision hardcore. I have never felt lonelier in my entire life. I would much rather spend three hours commuting every day than spend my weekends alone.

I started adulthood during the pandemic, and I moved out of state to go to college. For the first two years of school, I had a really hard time meeting people and making friends since my university was really strict on COVID restrictions, and we didn't have in person classes until halfway through my second year. That part of my life was really lonely, too - so this isn't new to me. But somehow, being surrounded by people who are nothing like me feels way lonelier than being around nobody at all. And what hurts even more is seeing all of my friends back in college / high school thriving, and feeling like I'm drowning. I feel like I sold my friends and happiness for a job and money, and it feels terrible. Nobody I knew from college or high school lives here - I had zero connections moving up here.

And this isn't for a lack of effort - I've been trying to figure out where to meet people. I've looked at meetup, and all the events around here seem to be networking, business, and tech related. I've gone on Bumble BFF, and everyone on there just wants to "network" or aren't my vibe. I've been going to bars, coffee shops, etc by myself to try and meet people, but haven't been successful. I've signed up to volunteer at a local animal shelter, which I figure might be a good way to meet people, but they don't have any open shifts yet. I've looked for live music events near me, but there isn't really a lot in the scenes I'm into. I don't know what else to do.

Everything in this place seems to revolve around careers, money, status, networking, and tech. It feels terrible, it's like a physical microcosm of LinkedIn. I know I'm going to be moving to San Francisco as soon as my lease is up in August. I feel like I'll have a way better chance of meeting people who are like me and are my age up there. But in the meantime, I need to make the most of where I am. I'm sure there's people like me somewhere around here, but the issue is meeting them. Where do I find them? How the hell do adults make friends, and close ones at that? I am surrounded by a lot of lonely adults - lots of folks at work who never married, don't do anything fun, and live for work. Do I need to get out of here before this place eats me alive? I don't want to end up like that.

I know this will pass, or at least I hope it does. I know my life isn't over. I just feel like I'm squandering my precious 20s, if there is such a thing. At least I have a roof over my head and a dream job. I guess the grass is always greener, but I feel like I'd rather be struggling to pay rent and be surrounded by close friends than have a full wallet and an empty living room like I do now. The pandemic was a really terrible period of my life, and I won't go into detail about everything going on in my brain, but I feel like I'm standing on the precipice of that kind of depression again.

Anyway, this post isn't really coherent or organized. It's more of a rant than anything. I just needed to get my thoughts on to paper (screen?), and posting here seemed better than screaming into the void. If you read this, thank you :)

EDIT: Wow, I didn't expect so many replies, recommendations, and support on this post. I fully expected to get no replies. Thank you everyone, really. I suppose part of my situation is I need to stop being so negative - while I am genuinely unhappy here, this isn't forever and I can't do anything besides keep trying. If nothing else, I can always move in August (or before then, if I can figure out a way to break my lease without emptying my bank account). Until I move or find connections, I'll get good at enjoying my own company. And I'm also eternally grateful to have made amazing friends in college and High School that I can still talk to, even if they're hundreds of miles away.

I've been thinking about this over the past few weeks after chatting with some of my friends about this.

For some framing:
I grew up with my parents not encouraging me to learn to cook and my Mom actively refusing to have myself or my brother in the kitchen because we always "made a mess". Before I moved out to university I'd only ever cooked a couple of meals beyond warming things up or instant ramen + grilling meat. I also learned how to carve a turkey/bird because that would be expected of me at a family gathering later on. At university we had the mandatory freshman meal plan my first year and I lived in my fraternity for three years where we had a cook at our house when school was in session.

It wasn't until I moved in with my girlfriend, now wife, where I started cooking. Learning from either recipes, or watching my wife cook things and asking her how she prepared a dish so I could try to make it. Nowadays I like cooking breakfast foods especially on the weekend when I don't have to get my oldest off to school and have more time since my wife doesn't like to wake up early.

When chatting with my guy friends who are around my age (late 20s/early 30s) I've found a lot of them don't cook much or say they don't know how. Many of them eat out regularly/order delivery or buy instant meals.

Knowing my parents, if I had had a sister growing up she would have been encouraged to learn to cook unlike my brother and I. My wife and her siblings all learned through helping my mother in law prepare food in the kitchen.

This got me curious for a wider perspective on this from other men:

Do you "know" how to cook or are you comfortable cooking for yourself, for others?
Were you encouraged to learn how to cook growing up or did you learn as an adult?
Do you have any favorite or signature dishes you prepare?

Ok, so my partner has gotten the recommendation from one of his spinal cord injury groups that a Meta Quest 2 would potentially be really good for him as way to feel less "closed in" this winter and that many of the games can be played stationary (he has essentially no control of his legs and uses a power wheelchair).

I don't know anything about any VR games, so I'd love thoughts on the system, what to look for if we buy secondhand, if a different system would be better (money is a barrier, so I don't want to spend it all on a new system and not be able to afford games), and what games would meet his needs?

Thanks y'all

Alright, time to ask for help. I designed a website for my cousin using Wordpress, hosted via BlueHost. It's 99% done.

The problem: she'd originally registered her domain through wordpress.com. She also has an email through that, which she accesses via Google Workplace. We've transferred the domain, but the nameservers are still registered to wordpress.com. I've found the guides for transferring nameservers on BlueHost and wordpress.com, but this is a step above what I've dealt with in the past.

My main concern and frustration are the email. She's already using it for work, and I want to make sure there's no downtime, but I... honestly have no idea how it's even set up, right now. Or how this would work when transferring hosts entirely. Attempts to search it haven't been too helpful for me.

So my questions: How will changing nameservers impact the email? Would updating them potentially just... break her email entirely? Need her to set up the email separately? And if she does, can it be kept through Google Workplace/Gmail since that's what she's already using? Is it fine to leave it as-is? I assume not but her wordpress.com account shows that it expires in 2027, so...?

Just, please help.

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!

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.

So I just heard, less than a week before release, that Wicked (2024) is the latest film in the current maddening trend to lie (by omission) to audiences by not including the "part one" in the title.

Sure, that information is available online, but not everyone will see that, and that's clearly what their intention is. Get butts in seats, then hit them with a cliffhanger so they have to buy a second ticket. Or possibly to save budget on the second movie (which is likely to have more climactic action scenes) if the first is a flop.

When I was discussing Wicked with some friends recently, someone said they heard it was pulling this two-parter stunt so we looked it up, and sure enough it was! We were all genuinely shocked. For Dune and It, yeah those are big novels, but surely a 3 hour play adapted to a nearly 3 hour movie wouldn't need to be 2 parts? The musical buff in the group was especially surprised. For that musical buff, the deception and the padding out to two movies made them a lot less motivated to see it. The Google AI summary also goofed and said it wasn't 2 parts, citing a source that said it was two parts, which caused a lot of laughs, but that's another issue.

I'm not against movies being multiple parts, it's a much better solution than cutting a lot of content or making a bloated movie. My issue is the deception, it always rubs me the wrong way. The newest Mission Impossible went ahead and included "part one" in the name so it was clear. It helps to temper your expectations when you don't expect all the plot lines to be resolved by the time the credits roll. Compare this to the newest Spider-Verse movie, where several of my friends went in with no indication that this one would have a cliffhanger and very little would be resolved. It's a very bad feeling and can sour a theater going experience for some people.

Movie fans of Tildes, what do you think? Are you also annoyed with this trend? Or does it not bother you?

A pretty quick work trip has been planned. I will fly into Heathrow Saturday morning. I'll have until Sunday evening to get to Warwick. I'll be in Warwick for 5 days before flying back out the next Saturday.

I'm looking for any general advice but also if there is anything specific to the following:

• I'm going to book my own hotel in London the Saturday night I fly in. Saturday and Sunday are essentially my "tourist" days. Where is good to stay? Not too concerned with price.
• I'm taking a train to Warwick and mostly have that figured out but is there an app or pass that I should add to my Apple wallet for transit around London?
• I like museums of all types. Are there any in particular I should check out?
• Any classic pubs or restaurants I should try to get to?
• Once the week starts I don't think I'll have much time to do touristy stuff and I won't have a car. Any recommendations on things around Warwick/Birmingham that I can get to some evenings via train or bus?

Every time I find myself in an ADHD related thread on the internets, I feel like I'm seeing my personal struggles being described by others (Anxiety, Depression, executive function issues... the list goes on).

My intermittent attempts to seek out a diagnosis (or rule it out) end quickly with all the utter shite noise in the search results (literally everyone is selling something).

I'm hoping some of you who've been down this road can shed some light. Should I just schedule and appointment with my GP and start a conversation or???

Thanks (hope I got this in the right sub-tilde)

UPDATE: Thank you all so much! I ended up setting an appointment with a nearby adhd clinic that does 2 brain scans, a bunch of bloodwork, several questionnaires, and a couple meetings with a psychiatrist/psychologist (can never remember which is which). 1st scan is on Monday morning, 1st meeting with psych* is in early December. Feeling optimistic.

Reading through all your comments, I feel connected and optimistic in a way I've never felt before when pondering what I can see to be atypical behavior/emotions/response to stimuli but felt powerless to address.

Thanks so much for helping a stranger on the internet, hoping to pay it forward someday.

I work in IT, and was the caregiver for both my parents as they aged. You'd think I would be the one that people turn to to ask this question, and yet I have been utterly frustrated by my attempts to find such.

I have a few folks who are extended family and friends that are now in the early/mid stages of different forms of dementia, and a real pain point is that they no longer have the capacity to recognize ads, and will unfailingly click and install scam apps via the Apple store. Think things like 'cleaner' apps that have a $50/week subscription fee, and other abusive tactics. The #1 subject I get called about is some ad popping up after they've finished a puzzle, and now they think they're out of space, and in a panic.

This is not a small problem. The coloring and puzzles they can still do bring them happiness and stability through their day; removal of the ipads entirely causes them a lot of stress. (TV is nothing but ragebait, and a non-starter. They do have books on tape, but get tired of listening rather quickly.)

I have been completely unable to locate ad-free, paid versions of these types of apps. I'm not looking for free. I don't care about the cost. I just need apps that only do what they say they do, and don't have unexpected pop-ups, ads, or anything else, and I thought perhaps the folks here might know of some.

Any ideas?

[edit] Only five hours in, and I've already gotten more insightful, helpful responses than anywhere else I've asked. You all are the best.

I'm not a teacher, professor or anything, but I had a speaking engagement at a school recently and saw myself in front of a class of students who where tired, bored out of their minds, and just wanted to go home. It was a demoralizing experience because I was invited to talk about things that are very dear to me on a personal level. It wasn't easy because in a sense I was putting my heart out to a sea of rolling eyes.

I lectured two classes. The first was wonderful, the students were very interested and made great interventions. The second was a complete disaster and I almost ended it before the time. They were interested in anything but my talk. At some point I wondered, why should I keep talking? Do teachers face that routinely? If so, there's a place for you in haven!

I was glad to go back home knowing I would not have do it again...

I have a quandary.

Suppose there is a coin that, when flipped, it lands head’s side up on a table.

Without picking the coin up to confirm the side that is down is tails. Could you ever know that it is tails ?

Assume in this world that the coin has a heads side and tails side when held in your hand.

Assume you cannot view the coin’s two sides in any other way than picking it up.

Is this just a variation of Schrödinger’s Cat ? Or is it more “does a tree make a sound if no one is around to hear it” ?

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.

Apologies if this comes off as rambly or even entitled. Also for the title, didn't quite know what to put there.

So firstly some context. I live in an Asian country where it's normal AND expected to live with your family past 20. Housing is expensive, and you're really only expected to move out once you're married. Also, I'm 21M.

I really enjoy expressing myself with things more traditionally associated with femininity, like makeup, nail polish and fem clothing sometimes (side note, definitely don't think I'm trans).

But as they say, god gives the gayest children to the most homophobic parents. My parents have told me multiple times that if I was gay I'd be kicked out of the house. My dad for some reason follows American politics (and by that I mean right wing grifters) despite having no link whatsoever to America. In fact, I think he'd be hatecrime'd if he went there. So yea I'm inclined to believe their homophobia.

One incident in particular which made me genuinely angry was when I bought something pink and I was sat down and talked to like I commited some crime.

Anyway, that's all just to say how do I keep up this balancing act? I do my nail polish then sneak out the door. Before I come back, I remove it somewhere quiet. I feel like a fugitive, and it's so damn exhausting. I want to express myself. But it's not the end of the world if I don't (I feel somewhat entitled that I'm even asking this when LGBTQ+ people in some places of the world are in actual danger).

If I tell my parents, I don't think they would accept me. And worse, I might get kicked out - they'd probably think I'm gay.

Being kicked out would be terrible. Renting is still prohibitively expensive for me, I'd have to get a full time job and effectively stop my studies. I don't think I'd be able to survive in this country like that, where it's expected for you to have a degree.

Eventually I'd like to move to another country where I'd be more accepted, but that's years down the line and I don't even know where to start with that. Do I just keep my head down and just be satisfied with the status quo?

Thanks for reading, any input would be appreciated.

So I've been playing a lot of Helldivers 2 recently, and was wondering if there would be much interest in the community for a Tildes LFG / Discord situation to find pick up games.

Anyone else have an interest in the game still?

EDIT: Apologies for the slow response / organization to this thread. Life is busy.

I have generated a permanent invite link to a 'HELLDIVERS' channel on 'The Oak', my personal use Discord server: https://discord.gg/sqepxdu7dK

Join that and say something in the helldivers chat channel, and I'll tag you as an HD2 player for general pings.

Or if you'd like to add me on steam: https://steamcommunity.com/id/Acorn_CK

My rarely used twitch is the same name, twitch.tv/Acorn_CK

EDIT 2: My timezone is PST, although I play late (generally 9pm-~1am)

It only now just occurred to me after reading the username thread that people actually recognize each other on Tildes by username. I certainly recognize a few of the "big" usernames but otherwise I kind of have username blindness. I was absolutely shocked to see someone tag me and more shocked to see that someone remembered even a single thing I had ever posted.

I'll start:

@cfabbro is pretty on top of things around here. Super knowledgeable about various topics and a stickler for the rules in a really positive way that demonstrates their love for the community and their desire to keep it special. One of the most important Tilderinos (or Tildos, which is my personal favorite that someone suggested a while back). Thanks for all that you do, and if you're the one who has to go though and fix my god-awful tags then a double thanks and a sincere apology.

@boxer_dogs_dance, like cfabbro has a very wide range of interests and is quick to share interesting tidbits of information that a lot of people may not know. I think I have disagreed cordially with boxerdogs a few times maybe? But I have a good impression of them overall.

@deimos is a bit like God, which I think works on multiple levels. The highest power, behind-the-scenes, hard to prove his existence. I have a conspiracy theory that he uses alt accounts to participate anonymously, which I think would be a really smart thing to do. Joking aside, I think Tildes' resiliency and ability to maintain its small town vibe while being quite large is due mostly to his political/philosophical genius. The guiding principles for this site and moderation style have made this a pretty awesome place to be. Case in point: The few times I saw people complain about Tildes' moderation on other websites, I was able to immediately see why that person wasn't a good fit here. They were people who didn't even understand that they were being antisocial or were playing coy when they knew exactly what they were doing. Keeping Tildes more or less free of that stuff is one of the greatest internet achievements I've ever seen.

Hi, here is me asking for some advice.

I currently have the Sennheiser CX True Wireless but I feel like they are too heavy, big, and uncomfortable for my ears to the point that I feel my earholes are being stretched.

I am looking at AirPods right now despite not being committed to the whole Apple eco-system. They seem to be light enough and good quality enough, but I fear getting them is too expensive for what I'm getting given that I would want to use them with my Ubuntu desktop and my Android phone.

What alternatives could you suggest? Or is AirPods the best bang-for-your-buck even if you are not really into the Apple eco-system?

Most of my family members (notably everyone in the older generation) are variously xenophobic (very), transphobic (plenty) and racist (enough). They're openly right wing populist party voters. In family gatherings, or even in online messaging, I normally ignore them or try to divert the conversation away from their stupid political takes - even the ones who know I am pansexual are likely to say some nasty shit, showing (I believe) that they don't have a drop of respect for me or my gay brother. There is nothing I can ever convince them of, political or not, because (I believe) they will always treat my arguments with disdain, regardless of any reason or evidence. I don't think much better of their politics myself, since I find most of their constant complaining about entire classes of people they've never even interacted with incredibly tiresome, not to mention wholly inconsistent with their supposed christian values (I know, this situation sounds very american, even though I am not.)

I personally believe there is some value in some, but not all, arguments that are for restricting or reorganizing immigration at this time, mainly due to problems stemming from years of lazy policymaking, and in some right wing fiscal policy (we have some extremely expensive and inefficient government programmes right now - NOT health or education - and misguided protectionism of certain huge and mismanaged private companies), so we can usually meet on that common ground.

Today at a gathering an aunt decided out of the blue to loudly proclaim how happy she was that Donald Trump was elected in the US. Other relatives quickly agreed, after which they started a conversation about how a Trump presidency will be good for the economy. At this point I will just politely say I didn't understand what they were talking about (my thoughts weren't as kind at the time); we are not americans, and I have the notion that Trump is an isolationist who admires dictators and despises the EU and doesn't value us as allies; I am led to believe he wants to do things with regard to defense, tariffs, etc. that are unambiguously bad for us and will directly translate into a harder life and more danger for Europeans over the next few years.

A younger relative then said he was happy that we finally had "an insane dictator" on "our side". According to him, none of the crazy authoritarians in the world respected a man like Biden, but they were wary of Trump, since Trump is unpredictable. I remember hearing this argument eight years ago, but I'm not so sure of this. Historically, as I said, Trump seems to me to fawn over strongmen and demagogues leading other nations, while he hasn't exactly conveyed that he is "on our side". As far as I know, he's been suspiciously an enabler of Vladimir Putin, for instance.

So at this point I explained to my family that we weren't there to discuss politics and the politics conversation was to end immediately or I was going to start insulting people.

I'd like you all to tell me if I'm in the wrong here. Am I out of touch? Can you explain my family's perspective to me in a way that makes them sound less insane? This isn't some kind of bait. Just because I don't like Donald Trump (and neither do the majority of people in this community, AFAIK), I pride myself in being a fairly rational person. I can be convinced of things, as long as there's rationally constructed argument underpinning them. Maybe there's some value to their position?