Does anyone have any good recipes for bread?

My wife and I have been doing a lot of baking lately and I absolutely love making bread. It's easy (most of the work is sitting around waiting for it to rise/proof) and we've been making fresh sandwich bread to use in our lunches for the past few months.

I've found two recipes that I really like:

• BA's Best Sandwich Bread
• Simple Country Load

I have writing, prose and in verses, that I want to start submitting to magazines. I can't decide if I should use a pseudonym or not. My reasons for using one:

• I have problems with my name: it is ideologically loaded, people can tell my dad was a nationalist, which is an ideology I reject and oppose

• I feel like it would somehow good for me to distance myself a bit from my work, don't know why really

• I guess I am intimidated by potential failure a bit, so maybe "getting my feet wet" with a pseudonym could help me get over it.

But I also want to own my work, and feel like using a pseudonym with complete secrecy is a bit... cowardly, if I am totally honest. I consider using a pseudonym which I will publicly own later, but then, is there a point to it?

What do you think about it?

What is our policy about posting original contents (e.g. me submitting a blog post I wrote, which I just did a few minutes ago)?

IMO, if it is a personal blog, it should be okay, and not really different from submitting a text topic here. Especially if the blog is not tracking you.

cw: discussion of specific types of bigotry

I used to kind of think that Reddit's bigotry was relegated to the hate subs (TD and friends), and that you'd only find it if you went looking. But wow, Tildes has made me realise that it is EVERYWHERE.

Whenever I take a trip back to Reddit, I'm always blindsided by the fact ordinary threads about unrelated topics are so hateful. For example today I was on an r/movies thread about the new Terminator movie and there's queerphobia, transphobia and sexism all highly upvoted, right near the top of the comments. I guess being immersed in that environment for the last seven years of my life made me a bit desensitised to it, but now I'm horrified everytime.

Reddit is a far worse cesspit than I realised, I'm glad Tildes exists and I hope it keeps getting better and better. The internet needs it.

pretty straightforward ask. i have some basic, rusty Spanish (on and off learning) and a bit of Esperanto to my name (currently learning) but not much else

eventually i want to speak French conversationally since my boyfriend can and i think it'd be neat to converse with him in more than English, but that's a long term goal.

Oof Grandma... Get your head out of your ass woman.(This is in Jest, Grandma knows and thought it was funny. ya'll chill)* Where are you getting your news lately because I just sent you an article from our national news organization and you just told me you can't believe it... Why?

We live and love in the beautiful free country of Canada and despite any individual political leader, we can find comfort in the fact that we have many elected officials that listen to their constituents and ultimately intend to better the lives for our nation. Canada is a mighty developed country and she has designated important bodies to help protect us from the wolves that prey on the weak. We have the CBC a nationally funded non profit organization that has authorship and integrity to the journalists they hire and a long history of helping the truth and redacting and outright dismissing disinformation (now more commonly called fake news). In this article I've sent you, it has sources directly involved in the measles outbreak, including doctors who are licensed through a board that verifies their integrity and ethics and authority in medicine. Also sourced is the CDC; another body that was appointed by Canada herself to keep her citizens healthy and safe, these are not groups of scientists with a vested interest to lie to anyone as that would jeopardize the safety to our entire nature... Yet these highly educated and well funded scientists are refuting your hypothesis grandma.

I think in order to understand what is happening here we need to both step back and ground ourselves in a neutral territory towards a scholarly pursuit and work towards the advancement of our society. To do this we need to frame our perspective to that of a scholar to which I think you and I both agree we are proud to call ourselves anyway. Me, a university student and you an independent researcher: truth be told, as a student of an organization like Ryerson, I have access to a wider breadth of knowledge in our online resources and databases of peer reviewed articles that I can search through with ease, but our goal will be the same and can be achieved only if you think critically with everything you read - you seem well versed in this regard so kudos let's proceed.

As a critical thinker and scholar we are nothing without our authority which is provided through our knowledge-base in factual information. I don't need to be an expert in biology, medicine, or even journalism to be able to have confidence in reading the news article I sent you; but as a scholar I have the ability to verify the authority to the people making the claims in the article. Every person involved in a professionally investigated article are sourced and cited and provide proof to their authority. It's why the CBC discloses their journalists and is also why they'll happily fire them if they fuck up - their integrity is on the line - same with every scientist working for the CDC. Canada does not have a vested interest in the perpetuation of fake news and disinformation, this isn't fucking Russia! (or the U.S. for that matter - Fox news is GOP run television FYI).

This is critical thinking and needs to be understood before you assume authority to the Facebook posts you read. Think of the platform you are getting your news from - Facebook: an American company with a vested interest in advertising to its users. They are NOT a news agency and have zero regulation in verifying the authority of authorship. Anyone can write any shit they like, and the more clicks they get, the more money Facebook makes. In-fact they will happily sell any message you like so long as you're willing to pay for it. I can post just about anything under the guise of "free speech" so long as it does not contain "hate speech" (technically a crime in Canada) and then pay Facebook a couple hundreds of dollars to get that post higher up on my friend's walls. It's how their platform works and regardless of whether a post has been promoted by Facebook themselves or not they are in the business of clicks. In this age of terrorism and fear mongering, the posts, articles, links, and videos that induce the most controversy and fear will gain the most clicks - this is human nature! Facebook doesn't care, they got their money as they are now one of the largest messaging services in the world, second only to WeChat which is a government controlled chinese messaging app linked to their social credit system meant to repress their citizens... hmm...

As Canadian philosopher Marshall McLuhan famously said in his thesis Understanding Media, “For any medium has the power of imposing its own assumption on the unwary… But the greatest aid to this end is simply in knowing that the spell can occur immediately upon contact, as in the first bars of a melody.” unfortunately the advent of social media has only perpetuated the scaling of the media, the importance of the messages, and the shallow knowledge-base of its users to apply the unwary en masse.

To quote a larger bit of McLuhan to drive this point home:

“The American stake in literacy as a technology or uniformity applied to every level of education, government, industry, and social life is totally threatened by the electric technology. The threat of Stalin or Hitler was external. The electric technology is within the gates, and we are numb, deaf, blind, and mute about its encounter with the Gutenberg technology, on and through which the American way of life was formed. It is, however, no time to suggest strategies when the threat has not even been acknowledged to exist. I am in the position of Louis Pasteur telling doctors that their greatest enemy was quite invisible, and quite unrecognized by them.” (McLuhan was a man before his time., this was written in 1954) “For the “content” of a medium is like the juicy piece of meat carried by the burglar to distract the watchdog of the mind. The effect of the medium is made strong and intense just because it is given another medium as “content.” The content of a movie is a novel or a play or an opera.
The effect of the movie form is not related to its program content. The “content” of writing or print is speech, but the reader is almost entirely unaware either of print or of speech.”

Do not kid yourself, social media is no different than any other media. The content of the message is NOT the message. Who is posting the dribble and fake news and WHY? understand the author and their authority and you will begin to think critically again. You wouldn't pick up a history book without knowing who authored it would you? Facts are facts, and fake-news is disinformation by another name.

Now to return to our CBC article about measles and your claim that there is a connection to the MMR vaccine which has the potential to cause autism (despite how fucking stupid this shit is, I'll entertain your hypothesis for a moment).

1. Where are your critical sources and statistics to prove any semblance to propose such an outlandish hypothesis? Because I can't seem to find any real ones in my databases here and every time I've asked you for your proof you've failed to provide any.

2. If the vaccine were to cause autism you accept that there is a chance this vaccine may put a child at harms risk. The reality is you are saying you'd rather risk your child potentially getting a deadly disease and potentially becoming maimed and permanently injured through contact with the disease and worse contaminating others and spreading the harmful pathogens to others just out of fear of potentially could get autism... again, supported without any fact or evidence? Janet's post from Antivax-moms facebook group is non an authority of fact and no medical body has rightfully confirmed a case of autism to the MMR vaccine... so where is our proof again? Big-vaccine is out to give autism to our children?

3. By not immunizing your children you are immorally upholding your child's life over that of your nations and against those you interact with on a day to day basis. You are no longer in a small town - we are a massive country with very loose borders so we can invite friends and family to visit. But when we don't protect our basecamp, the wolves will get in. That goes for fake news just as much as it goes for measles. We already have guards on duty to protect our children, our sick, our immune deficient elders and infants from harmful diseases. These treatments work and you and I are the proof in the pudding. Where is this form of tribalism coming from where you would rather "protect" from autism but not measles, mumps, and rubella? These are the wolves we must fight, and we can't let our guard down just because a post of Facebook has a few thousand clicks.

We are in the age of disinformation and globalization, whether we like it or not there are a select few who are controlling the messages we perpetuate online. Unfortunately it's the confusion and lack of authority to the messages that has guided us towards a harmful future that is now killing children all over the world.
https://medium.com/the-method/anti-vaccination-is-killing-children-in-europe-658415c54a04

stop spreading misinformation and think critically. You are better than that... you are a scholar!

I love you, and I hope you take this to heart.

EDIT*
Seeing that the post was more appropriately moved to ~talk I'm hoping I can start a bit more of a dialogue that has unraveled from talking with the rest of my family. I told my internal family about my conversation with Grandma which we've all had by now, we bring fact, she still isn't sure there isn't a bigger picture that she isn't seeing. She's been fed too many stories to really believe the true ones. How are we meant to respond to this? My dad kinda pissed me off, he said it's like pushing on rope and said it wasn't even worth the effort - especially since someone like my Grandmother doesn't intend to have anymore children and all her family members are well ingrained in the Ontario health system... despite his position, we get issues where families are believing information and causing significant harm to our society... what do?

My bad argument style aside, has anyone else felt like they've been pushing on rope lately?

For me, it has to be getting up the moment I wake up. No matter if I wake up before the alarm, I still get up. That helps a lot with fighting oversleeping. Not only am I late, but I also feel bad after spending a lot of time in bed, my head often hurts. So I only figured I better spend less time sleeping than more. And it works, too!

I'm making an effort to cut out meat from my diet and I'd love to hear what everyone's favourite vegetarian meals are.

For a long time I have been making pasta with ground beef and I recently found out that I can just not put the beef in and it tastes even better. The tomato sauce really gets a chance to shine without the beef.

I've enjoyed the challenges of gardening in zone 5 -6 and zone 10 - 11, and am wondering about others' experience.

Climate change, with migrating pests/diseases and more erratic weather, are definitely noticeable trends.

While it's interesting to grow ornamentals and food crops that wouldn't ordinarily be available, it's also disturbing to find falling yields and utter collapses of formerly successful "easy" plants like basil and temperate climate tomato varieties.

There are limits on how much can be accomplished with purely "organic" controls - I've had to experiment with soil ecology (MycoStop for fungal infections, etc.). Allergenic plants are an increasing problem. There are brand new animal pests where I live as well - iguanas, pythons, and other hot-climate reptiles.

I'm curious about others' gardening results, and suggestions for improving adaptability.

I've read a few novels, I think an excellent short novel is Elevation by Stephen King. It's not what you'd expect from a Stephen King novel (no horror elements), but it's a great read. I can't say too much without spoiling it, but here's the blurb:

The latest from legendary master storyteller Stephen King, a riveting, extraordinarily eerie, and moving story about a man whose mysterious affliction brings a small town together—a timely, upbeat tale about finding common ground despite deep-rooted differences.

It starts off a little slow, but give it a little bit of time. It's readable in an afternoon, I think I spent 5 or so hours reading it.

A report published in Nature Human Behaviour (hard paywall): Sleepers track informative speech in a multitalker environment

An article published in the Sydney Morning Herald (soft paywall): Your brain is listening and processing while you sleep

A press release published in Mirage News (no paywall): Active sleep is more than just counting sheep

Over 10 years ago the world of mobile gaming was totally different from today's. Still many (if not most) phones could run installable and built in games. Which were your favorite ones?

Let's say the mobile game is retro if released before 2009.

I've found a fair few glitches that I find really interesting, and I'd be pretty interested in seeing some more pixel vomit too. For the ones I'll be listing, they are in old games but are very interesting.

Everyone's seen the MissingNo. glitch, but a far less famous (although in my opinion, more interesting) glitch is the Super Glitch. If you've got an emulator, I'd recommend doing a save state and messing around with it - it's results vary a lot.

A glitch available in quite a few games is arbitrary code execution. It's pretty interesting in general, as people can do loads of things, from loading up homebrew to replacing maps. Most of the time it is rather difficult or time consuming to do, but it's still fascinating to see.

This one technically isn't a glitch at all, but teleporting in SRS-based Tetris games is pretty cool. An actual glitch in Tetris (NES version) is pentrises don't clear all lines, which can make pretty interesting stuff happen.

EDIT: I nearly forgot about The Big Skip in Mario and Luigi: Superstar Saga. I recommend watching a speedrun from AGDQ, it only goes over it very briefly in the tasvideos page.

I am a Russian and recently I started to really like the song “Take Me Home, Country Roads”. I searched for images of things mentioned in the song, like Blue Ridge mountains and Shenandoah river, and they do look pretty. Definitely somewhere I would like to hike. I've also heard that the local BBQ is good, which is relevant to my interests.

At the same time, almost every time I see West Virginia mentioned on e.g. Reddit, there is always someone pointing out that WV is, for lack of a better term, a shithole. I've seen that occurring several times on several different subreddits. What is up with that? Is that just a thing where the people from one US state always feel the need to throw crap at other states? Are there economical reasons? Is it too conservative/racist/what-have-you?

Just in case, I am not trying to start something, I am genuinely curious, how can one place be called “almost heaven” by one group of people and at the same called a “shithole” by another.

Introduction

I want to give an introduction on several physics topics at a level understandable to laypeople (high school level physics background). Making physics accessible to laypeople is a much discussed topic at universities. It can be very hard to translate the professional terms into a language understandable by people outside the field. So I will take this opportunity to challenge myself to (hopefully) create an understandable introduction to interesting topics in modern physics. To this end, I will take liberties in explaining things, and not always go for full scientific accuracy, while hopefully still getting the core concepts across. If a more in-depth explanation is wanted, please ask in the comments and I will do my best to answer.

Previous topics

Bookmarkable meta post with links to all previous topics

Today's topic

Today's topic is the dual nature of light and matter, the wave-particle duality. It is a central concept in quantum mechanics that - as is tradition - violates common sense. I will first discuss the duality for light and then, in the next post, for matter.

The dual nature of light

In what terms can we think of light so that its behaviour becomes understandable to us? As waves? Or as particles? There are arguments to be made for both. Let's look at what phenomena we can explain if we treat light as a wave.

The wave nature of light

Let's start with an analogy. Drop two stones in a pond, imagine what happens to the ripples in the pond when they meet each other. They will interact, when two troughs meet they amplify each other, forming a deeper trough. When two crests meet they do the same. When a crest and a trough meet they cancel out.

Now if we shine light through two small openings and observe the resulting pattern, we see it's just like ripples in a pond, forming an interference pattern. When looking at the pattern formed on a screen placed at some distance from the openings, we see a striped pattern Light can be described as an electromagnetic wave, with crests and troughs. It sure seems like light is wavey! The wave nature of light allows us to describe phenomena like refraction and diffraction.

The particle nature of light

When we shine light on some metals, they will start tossing out electrons. This is called the photoelectric effect. How can we understand this process? Well we know light is a wave, so we imagine that the wave crashes into the electron that is chilling out near the surface of the metal. Once the electron has absorbed enough of the light's energy it will be able to overcome the attractive forces between itself and the positively charged atom core (remember, an electron has negative charge and so is attracted to the atom cores). So a higher intensity of light should make the electron absorb the required amount of energy more quickly. Easy, done!

However, there's something very peculiar going on with the photoelectric effect. If we shine low frequency light on said metal, no matter how intense the light, not a single electron will emerge. Meanwhile if we shine very little high frequency light on the metal, no matter how low the intensity, the electron will emerge. But how can this be? A higher intensity of light should mean the electron is receiving more energy. Why does frequency enter into this?

It seems that the electron needs a single solid punch in order to escape the metal. In other words, it seems it needs to be hit by something like a microscopic billiard ball that will punch it out of the metal in one go. The way physicists understand this is by saying light is made up out of particles called photons, and that the energy a photon carries is linked to its frequency. So, now we can understand the photoelectric effect! When the frequency is high enough, the photons in the light beam all individually carry enough energy to convince an electron to leave the metal. When the frequency is too low, none of the photons individually can knock an electron out of the metal. So even if we fire a single photon, with high enough frequency, at the metal we will see one electron emerging. If we shine low frequency light with a super high intensity at the metal, not a single photon will emerge.

So there you have it! Light is made out of particles. Wait, what? You just told us it's made out of electromagnetic waves!

The wave-particle duality of light

So, maybe light is just particles and the wave are some sort of emerging behaviour? This was a popular idea, one that Einstein held for some time. Remember the experiment where we shone light through two small openings and saw interference (commonly known as the double slit experiment)? Let's just take a single photon and shoot it at the openings! Because light is particles we'll see the photon just goes through either opening - like a particle would. Then all the non-believers will have to admit light is made out of particles! However, when we do the experiment we see the photon interfere with itself, like it was a wave. Remember this picture which we said was due to wave interference of light? When a single photon goes through the openings, it will land somewhere on the screen, but it can only ever land in an area where the light waves wouldn't cancel out. If we shoot a bunch of photons through the openings one at a time, we will see that the photons create the same pattern as the one we said is due to wave interference!

Implications

So it would seem light acts like a particle in some cases, but it acts like a wave in some others. Let's take a step back and question these results. Why are we trying to fit light into either description? Just because it's convenient for us to think about things like waves and particles - we understand them intuitively. But really, there is no reason nature needs to behave in ways we find easy to understand. Why can't a photon be a bit wavey and a bit particley at the same time? Is it really that weird, or is it just our intuition being confused by this world we have no intuitive experience with? I would love to hear your opinions in the comments!

Observing photons

To add one final helping of crazy to this story; if we measure the photon's location right after it emerges from the slit we find that it doesn't interfere with itself and that it just went through a single slit. This links back to my previous post where I described superpositions in quantum mechanics. By observing the photon at the slits, we collapsed its superposition and it will behave as if it's really located at one spot, instead of being somehow spread out like a wave and interacting with itself. The self interaction is a result of its wavefunction interacting with itself, a concept that I will explain in the next post.

Conclusion

We learned that light cannot be described fully by treating it simply as a wave or simply as a bunch of particles. It seems to be a bit of both - but neither - at the same time. This forces us to abandon our intuition and accept that the quantum world is just fundamentally different from our every day life.

Next time

Next time we will talk about the dual nature of matter and try to unify the wave and particle descriptions through a concept known as the wavefunction.

Feedback

As usual, please let me know where I missed the mark. Also let me know if things are not clear to you, I will try to explain further in the comments!

Addendum

The photoelectric effect is actually what gave Einstein his Nobel prize! Although he is famous for his work on relativity theory he was very influential in the development of quantum mechanics too.

So I'm doing my GED at the moment and I'm in the same couple of classes this gal. It's only 3 months into the semester and we won't be in the same classes next semester anyway. Nevertheless, despite it only being 3 months we quickly became acquainted and within the last month or so we've become friends. Last week however, her boyfriend broke up with her and today he kicked her out of his apartment - so she's homeless. And in order to not live on the damn street she's going back to Norway (she's only been here in Denmark for a bit over a year) to live with her family until she can find somewhere to live here - she still has another semester to go until she's done with school here, so it need only be temporary.

She's leaving tonight and so I asked if she wanted to meet after school today. We did and talked for a couple of hours at a cafe - and it was pretty nice despite her situation being total shit. I'm a really empathetic person in general and I feel all sorts of compassion for her. Simultaneously, despite barely even knowing her (today was the first time we actually hung out, come to think of it), I am gonna miss her like crazy... This is mostly about her because of how much it sucks for her and how bad I feel for her, but I can't help but feel like shit too even though I barely even know her! I can't tell if I have a crush on her or if I just like her as a friend, but who cares anyways - she's gone now and I might not see her again...

Just had to get this off my chest I guess. I just wish so bad that she didn't have to leave - that I could've gotten to know her more and spent more time with her.

I'm also trying to follow some advice from a psychologist, because I have borderline personality disorder and basically it means I feel feelings a lot more intensely than the average person. I also haven't been a very social person historically speaking so I find it difficult to navigate relationships and situations like this. So the advice I'm trying to follow is particularly this bit: Instead of ‘I love you with the passion of a thousand fiery suns’ it might be nice to do a small gesture. But it's difficult to not write her on messenger and just say something like "I'm gonna miss you :(" - I know it's stupid to do that and she doesn't feel the same way I do because it's only been like 1 month of actual friendship, but it's genuinely how I feel.

Wasn't sure if this belongs in ~life or here, so I figured I'd just go with this one. Just had to get this off my chest so that maybe I'll not be dumb and write her something that the overly attached girlfriend meme could have written. I used to be super clingy and it's driven people away in the past so yeah. Anyway, thanks for caring if you read this whole post :)

For those that don't know, NaNoWriMo (National Novel Writing Month) is an annual challenge to write a 50,000 word novel over the course of the month of November. That translates to roughly 1,600 words a day. More info on NaNoWriMo here.

I first tried it two years ago though I fizzled out at around 10,000 words and moved on to another WIP. Last year I didn't formally participate though I made an effort to write something every day. Not sure about my word count.

This year I'm doing a series of short stories in a shared setting since I've been doing more short form writing as of late and I've been mulling over the idea for a few weeks now. It's a nice way to experiment with different settings and themes within a "singular" work. I've made some notes on plot hooks, settings, characters, and ideas I wanted to explore, so it's only a matter of writing the stories now. Maybe I'll even share excerpts as I go along.

So has anyone else made plans to do it this year?

There was a brief (an oh-so-brief) period in youtube history where all types of non-corporate content thrived. I'm referring, if memory serves, to the timespan from around 2011 - late 2014.

This was after youtube initially got big, but before Google decided that it wanted to step in and maintain the cultural status quo rather than redefine it. Ad revenue paid creators fairly-ish in most cases, and the talk of the town was machinima assfucking it's segment of poor souls that signed into it, rather than youtube pulling the same moves universally as it did a few years later.

(Suffice to say I have no love for the platform).

It's important to note that at this time, Youtube was a bit like a small-scale television enterprise, before it dreamed of deliberately becoming one. Youtube had everything from animations to product reviews, news to reality programming to VFX extravaganzas.

One of the most incredibly important innovations of the time, and one that's been all-but-lost, was the birth (and subsequent heat-death) of youtube news channels.

These channels mirrored cable news, but without the influence of corporate sponsors getting in the way, and without the ravenous need to appease political parties and harebrained cable tv viewers. They were biased - good god were some of them biased - and they weren't perfect, but they were set up in such a way that, had youtube not fucked it up (sigh...) they might've someday dethroned CNN, MSNBC and Fox.

With the next election coming up and shaping up to be a small-scale repeat of 2018s (you're kidding yourself if we're every going to go any other direction than further down at this point - after all, it works!) it's important to remember that there was, for a beautiful gleaming moment, a chance for not a corporation, but a community, to rise up and redefine the way people received news in a way that hadn't been seen since the conception of the newspaper.

Instead, youtube squandered it. Real events and engaging content don't generate views. People can't sit and watch hours of current events like they do for whatever-the-hell youtube trends nowadays (list videos and toy openings, I guess?), and why would they? If you get on youtube to watch today's news, you're not going to stick around for yesterday's. So youtube's 'algorythm', a word I've come to absolutely detest, doesn't favor them just like it doesn't favor basically anything else that once made youtube great.

The icing on the cake: rather than embrace even a tertiary aspect of the community, they went for the safe option and the ad revenue. No Phillip Defranco for you, we'll show you Jimmy Kimmel. No TYT, we'll fill trending with clips of CNN, MSNBC and Fox News. The only real survivor of the era was infowars.

Here's to you, youtube news. Dead and gone, but not forgotten.

DISCLAIMER: The reason I’m writing it is that there are some things I’m afraid to ask IRL to not be labeled as “not woke enough” but I honestly want to learn the whys and hows of some things. Incidentally that’s something I think could be improved in “leftist” circles, because if people feel they can’t say things but don’t get chances to actually change their minds it’s just a bandage and not a solution IMHO (plus this whole idea that people have to be perfect and not make a single mistake is really counterproductive I think). On the other hand, I understand it’s not the job of a minority/oppressed population to educate the “other”, but at this point, my questions are mainly in the edges and all the info I see online is actually not consistent. Hopefully, I won’t say anything horribly wrong lol.

1. My first “friction” is with the whole concept of cultural appropriation. I don't know if you've read the Cosmopolitan article on "don't dress your kid as Moana this Halloween". But that article pointed to another article by a Fiji woman that said it's OK to dress as Moana as long as you don't try to copy traditional garbs, etc.. I usually understand the points of view but in this case (as well as in the recent case of the qipao) it seems that even the affected people don't agree on the gravity of the thing. I've also seen discussions on whether it's appropriate for a white kid to dress up as The Black Panther (obv no blackface) and I've seen more white people saying it's "cultural appropriation" than black people saying that. There are some blatant cases like blackface, or wearing religious/spiritual stuff to a party, or using the “n” word, and it's obvious to me why shouldn’t they be done, but other cases seem to be more about “well if you’re doing this and you’re only doing because it’s cool then it’s bad”. Which I can relate to but yeah, it doesn’t feel very productive.

My usual approach with cultural appropriation and correct behavior is “I’ll do it if I think it’s not offensive and if someone complains or tells me it is offensive I’ll learn and not do it again or ask for permission” (for example I give dap to some black friends who initiated it, but I won’t give dap to a random person I just met). How do you navigate this? How do you navigate the pieces of your identity that you feel are misrepresented (and sometimes ridiculed) and how do you navigate your interpretations of other identities? Since I’m asking controversial stuff, could someone explain to me why drag isn’t offensive? Isn’t it men dressing up as women and taking feminine stereotypes to the extreme? Like, I enjoy RuPaul but I’m always wondering why people find it cool.

2. Speaking of identity, what forms an identity? I mean, if I start going deep then I am the only person with my identity, and I have problems and people hurt me and I hurt people, but we usually get around it by talking, empathizing, and not assuming the worst of each other all the time. But if I look at certain pieces of my identity: I’m poor, I grew up in a violent city, I had to be ultramasculine to survive, I am a woman, I am not white, I have a disability, I have BPD, I know how to code… In each of these facets I have reasons to feel “oppressed” or “guilty”, to feel like I’m a “victim” or to feel like I’m an “oppressor”. But none of these thoughts really give me much to do about it other than masturbating to my self-pity or self-righteousness. Furthermore, whatever all the things I am I’m also a member of a society that I think has the potential to get better if we all row together. So how do we combine the fact that we are all individuals but at the same time we have all these identities that make us feel angry/sad/guilty and at the same time we’re all in the same boat? How do you deal with this?

OK I have many more questions but maybe this is enough for now… Again, I appreciate your understanding and your help!

What are you all typing on?

Right now I'm using a Planck with gateron reds. It was a gift from a friend and I'm loving it. It didn't take too long to get used to the ortholinear layout and I'm starting to like it more than staggered. At first the lack of keys seems like a con, but once you really start digging into the power the firmware offers it's easy to counteract, and it can become easier and faster to use than a full size keyboard

FUCCCCCCCCCCCC IT WE DRUNK AGAIN

WE OUT HERE GEN Z PAINN VIBIN

*#BIGMOOD*

dont @ me if u aint catch tha links

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ShI6axFfqj4

https://i.imgur.com/LKIwWHa.png

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DjhJ_Sv0MlI

ich schlaf'
auf einem Bett
das ich aus Stein
gemacht hab'

ich schließe
fest die augen
aber finde keine
Schaffe

einfach nur
das Mädel das
hat mich früher
verlassen

dann klebt mein arm
in der erde ein
um mich zu
begraben

-.

ich hab an
sie gelacht und
sie sieht mich
an mit Hass

ich hämmert auf'm
Nachttisch
bis ich wurde
aufgewacht

dann fragte ich
an Gott warum
ich denke immer
krass

Hände in die
Taschen, lauf'
alleine auf'm
Strass

ich möchte kein mehr
Weihnachten,
ob sie nicht an
mir sagt:

-.

Schätzi, guten
Morgen und
mich küsste auf'm
Hals

Ja ich
möchte Kaffee
ja ich lieb' dich
ebenfalls

"Liebe macht das
Heim" hat sie auf
unserem Wand
gemalt

lustig, dass sie
nicht mehr ruft
mich an oder
mich halt

-.
?
i dreamed
of you
with angered eyes,
a gaze that
filled with hate

i felt my arm
beat on my dresser
'til i did awake

a soft and shaky
soul succumbed to rub
against the grate

life has been for nothing since february eighth.\

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KvlGMCVGkQA

have i ever done post-drunken poetry before?

i've got to be breaking some sort of rule with the amount i've been spamming this site over the last four hours.

I'm gonna go make breakfast and take a few days away to compensate.

sorry. thanks for listening.

much love

i woke up after
three hours of sleep
took a look around my room
and everything was tinted green
had a sobering reminder about
why i shouldn't drink
i get caught up in the moment
and try too hard not to think.

i'd do anything to go numb,
i'm afraid of that side of me.
it's hard, i hate myself
when in the middle of sobriety.
the room is tinted yellow as
the sunlight slips in quietly
i'm at a fork in the road,
man, i gotta choose carefully.

to the left a road of headaches,
heartache, a masochistic fantasy
take everything the hard way.
drunken, spinning memories
thinking of the good days,
accepting they're behind you
and your options won't change.
you're numb but somehow bitter
life is shorter, and it starts to fade.

off right a path of effort and torment,
pushing through the years of shit
that you drink just to forget.
the subtle kisses on your forehead
are bullets of a war chest
you're naked and afraid and
your perspective's all distorted
tryna shake your obsession with the morbid
it's been about a year since you last felt worth it.

and say you choose the better
of the two, here's the evil thing.
the second road is always there,
quiet, calm, and glistening.
internal scars and all the
hurt will start to dissipate
just share another secret,
close your eyes, and disintegrate

you're still quite young,
there's time to do the right thing.
maybe depression in aesthetic
isn't really worth you dying
and you won't find steady love
by telling everyone you're crying
that just attracts the broken, you
need something solid and inspiring
to all of you who noticed,
heard my wishes and my wailing

i'll switch to water, hope
that better starts prevailing

• In a first, India to deport 7 Rohingya men to Myanmar

• 7 Rohingya Muslims deported to Myanmar from Manipur's Moreh; illegal immigrant says 'happy to leave India'

• India under fire as it deports Rohingya Muslims to Myanmar

• India deports Rohingya Muslims, drawing U.N. ire

don't know exactly what to title this so that'll do. this is maybe a topic that could fit in ~talk but since it's something i came up with i'll put it here for now. move if necessary. i also don't know if it will "work" in the sense that it'll generate a discussion, but we'll see. never know until you try.

anyways, i am a writer at heart and to put a long story short one of the more interesting concepts i have going on is the social/political ideology of "homaitism", an ideology which at is core opposes property entirely and seeks to establish shared ownership of everything in a society. in a more Wikipedian serse, i think this best describes the ideas at play here:

[Homaitism is] the general term applied to a collection of far-left political philosophies and ideologies which, broadly speaking, reject the ideas of property ownership and sometimes small government. Many Homaitist schools of thought advocate the establishment of a large social net, the socialization of the most important services in a society (such as those of fire, police, healthcare, and so on), and the formation of a government which serves most if not all of the needs of its people. Others resolve that this is incompatible with a Homaitist society and suggest a more communal organization to society, in which groups are formed voluntarily on the basis of need rather than through the establishment of a state authority.

i think it goes without saying that there are some significant flaws in this idea, which is primarily what i want to explore. my main questions here that i'd be interested to hear people's responses to about this, if there's anything to be said (which maybe there's not? dunno):

1. what impression you get from that as an idea. far too utopian? far too many holes to be viable? impractical but not impossible? possible on a certain level? things like that.

2. are there reservations or flaws you see beyond the obvious questions of whether this is utopian or in any way viable?

other comments about the general idea here are also welcome (especially if you think some of these ideas are dumb and contradictory and/or would not work together at all). if people don't think this is enough to go off of i'll try to post some of the more detailed writings/sketches i have which elaborate on it more.

It's hard to get a straight answer on this because there are allegations of shilling everywhere when it comes to VPNs (particularly when you discuss specific providers). There's also this post which gets linked pretty frequently and which seems to throw a wrench in the whole idea.

For context, I ask because I have two main concerns:

1. I have been the subject of a mild internet stalking/doxing, and I have no wish to relive that experience.
2. I live in the United States and, if I am understanding things correctly, my ISP now has the right to sell my browsing data without my consent.

I have no love for my ISP and am all about the idea of blocking them from gathering data about me, but it seems the only other option is to hand all of my data over to another company who simply promises not to do anything with it. While I'm sure some of them are legitimate, how can you tell the difference between a genuine privacy tool and a honeypot?

The world needs more positivity. Do you have any positive stories from when you came out? Or maybe any positive experiences from being openly queer in general?

^{If you're still in the closet for whatever reason, that's perfectly alright!}

Looks like a fire in out back of one of the vacant houses on that block. There's a bunch of firetrucks outside and they've been working for an hour or so. I'm glad the smoke hasn't blown up north, but we're all very awake so I dunno what we're gonna do now.

Got it up and running, currently will do fine with about 25 players.

It's not set up locally so the hosting fee is $6/month, I'll leave it up for at least one month.

Currently running vanilla 1.13.1, will modify if requested.

167.114.73.187:25565

Have fun and please don't grief spawn!

So this is the dumb post of the day. Bear with me.

All I can say about art (like paintings and sculpture) is "is cool", "I like it", "it makes me sad" and look like a complete idiot totally out of place. (On the other hand, I can deliver a nuanced analysis of graffiti and hip hop so yeah it's all about the background.) I want to take my partner to a museum and start saying fancy shit like "oh you see the lines here these remind me of Donatello's style of light and shadow". Like I know it's possibly the dumbest thing to want but I really would like to learn more about it and be able to give informed opinions on art pieces.

Anyway, any recommendations? Maybe some youtube videos or some books? Or should I just say that everything past 1400 is derivative?

Our current plan is to stay in Oxford for three days, and "go with the flow" for the next four. In Oxford, we have a few plans, but still a lot of free time. For the remainder, we have no fixed plans other than to do the WB studio tour in London. Mobility wise we are pretty much entirely free, though ideally public transportation as opposed to renting a car would be good.

Do you have any suggestions for what we should do in those free days?

be it coffee
be it kratom
be it moscato
be it meth
be it canna
be it coca

we've had a lot of more serious or intentful posts about drug use, usually with a focus on depression or addiction, but we've never had a ~talk.casual type conversation about it.

what drugs do you do? why do you like em? do you like em?

what do you want to try?

i can see how this post could push on a border of "acceptable" content, so my bad if i'm breaking any rules.

#tildes:matrix.org

So there are many, many Matrix clients but the most popular one seems to be Riot which is available on iOS, Android (F-Droid, Play Store), and as a web app which you can join by clicking the link above.

It's similar to Discord in the features it offers, but being open source I thought it might be more in the spirit of Tildes than some of the proprietary alternatives.

That being said I'll be the first to admit Riot is a bit rough around the edges and Matrix seems to be under both heavy load and development. If there's demand for it I should be able to get a dedicated server up since it's an optionally federated service.

Oh, and as a bonus the Matrix chat links with the Tildes IRC channels (#tildes and ##tildes) on freenode, so there's that. (Thanks @tyil)

Don't forget to visit @Kat's wonderful ~tech wiki for links to other options such as Discord and Telegram if them's more your fancy.

Happy wordsing!

Voting has closed for this week's topic.

The prompt is...

The Road Trip

Some questions to help you get started:

Who is the traveler?
Why are they traveling?
Where are they going? Are they going anywhere?

The questions are only meant to help you get started. Make it happy or sad, adventure or horror, romance or tragedy. Go where your imagination takes you. Don't feel constrained by what may seem to be the obvious response to the prompt.

Please keep your submissions between 1000-2000 words (for reference, this topic section is about 200 words), make sure to properly format to Tildes when submitting to the submission thread.

Submission thread will be created on Wednesday, Aug 29, EST.

Please feel free to use this thread to brainstorm or share ideas or post any other comments you have about the writing prompt group.

Have fun everyone! I can't want to see what you create!

Things I may change:

I may do away with topic voting if/until the group gets big enough, and I'll just post a weekly prompt.

Depending on the number of submissions, I may increase the max length.

A Short Summary and Introduction Before the Actual Content of This Post:

A site—especially a small one, like Tildes—is going to have growing pains. That's natural. It's also natural, and to some extent, necessary, for users to raise issue with remedies for these growing pains. However, there's a spectrum of correct ways to do this, and a way to not do this. If you aren't interested in—or think you already have a firm grasp on the subject of—this post, you might want to skip it.

Tildes has reached its first major streak of growing pains, as I'm sure everyone active or lurking's noticed. We've also reached our first few incorrect methods of handling these. There are a few obvious things you shouldn't do, and everyone knows that—tantrums, slurs, personal attacks, etcetera—I'm going to be discussing a less realised one, and ways you could handle it instead.

Now, onto the good stuff.

Repeatedly, when handling issues, Tildes has seen a recurring circumstance. User makes post, upset. User namedrops and or subposts a user (the most apt description I could think of for a term lifted off of Twitter—subtweet—for example, "I'm not saying it's Garfield I'm talking about, but there was a suspiciously large orange cat with a mild food addiction with a fondness for lasagne who really pushed my buttons!" and etcetera). User hits "send." The targets of it feel offended, and the poster gets yelled at by the community for hurting people. No one wins.

The trick to fixing this: stop going out of your way to call out users, directly or indirectly. If you have issue with something someone said, either take it to an administrator, or directly message the user in question (politely, of course.) There's no reason to air dirty laundry in public, and there's no reason to bring personal grievances into the public eye for minor things.

If you notice an issue, do the above, and nothing changes, wait a short while before making a post on it. There's a fair chance it will resolve itself. If you end up feeling the need to make a post, do not mention individual conversations. Do not give examples from actual conversations; make an analogous example and put it into quote blocks. Never name a name or names, don't allow hate to be directed at anyone.

We're all (presumably) adults (or close enough,) here. If you have any desire for Tildes to flourish, act like an adult. Passive aggression isn't the behaviour of one. Aim to have better behaviour than the docs recommend; you might slip up sometimes, but you'll never fall too far if you keep that in mind.

Anyway, if you ended up reading this; thank you for taking the time. I appreciate it. I've spent a lot of time handling large forums, and in comparison to most of you, fairly small, incredibly high-volatility subreddits with immeasurably close communities. If you can't get a community to do the above, or something close to it, it's more or less going to be a death warrant for it. We'd all prefer not to have that happen to Tildes, so I—and presumably, most of us—would really appreciate if people made an effort to stop that from occurring.

Hate to copy reddit's slogan, but really:

Remember the Human.

Thanks again,

Eva.

This post is taken from one made several years ago on /r/fragrance by /u/acleverpseudonym. It's very well written, but I've edited and added to it a bit.

The concept of a perfume house probably isn't that familiar to most of you - it's a fairly niche topic even for those who wear the stuff. Generally speaking, there are a few "great" perfume houses: Chanel, Lanvin, and Creed for example, but the greatest among them, the one considered "legendary", is Guerlain.

When approaching a history as long and a catalogue as extensive as Guerlain's, it can be intimidating. It's hard to know where to start and olfactory fatigue limits the number of fragrances you can really appreciate in a single outing. It can be hard to tell which fragrances are the important and good ones and which are the fillers and by the time you smell some of the really complex and beautiful classics, your nose might be blown out already and unable to appreciate them.

This is a guide to those important scents, and why they matter.

About Guerlain

Guerlain is one of the oldest and most respected perfume houses in the world. They first opened in a small shop in Paris in 1828 making custom fragrances for the moneyed classes (and royalty - Pierre-François Guerlain was His Majesty's Official Perfumer to Emperor Napoleon III of France). Guerlain sold the first fragrance marketed as a parfum (Jicky, 1889). This was also among the first fragrances to use synthetic ingredients. Guerlain also sold the first Oriental fragrance (Shalimar, 1925) (my personal favourite, and one I wear very often).

Guerlain fragrances are famous for sharing a common olfactory accord called "Guerlinade" that was originally created back 1800s, This accord can be found in most all of their famous fragrances. It was developed by Aimé Guerlain, the creator of Jicky, and is said to contain bergamot, rose, jasmine, tonka bean, iris, and vanilla. Once you become familiar with it, it's very easy to pick up on it in many Guerlain scents.

There have been 5 master perfumers for Guerlain over their almost 200 year life; 4 of them have been from the Guerlain family. The most recent, Theirry Wasser, is not.

The Perfumers

• Pierre-François Pascal Guerlain, active 1828-1864 - founder. So far as I can tell, only a single fragrance of his is still made, Eau de Cologne Imperiale, 1860, made for the Emperor Napoleon III's wife.

• Aimé Guerlain, active 1864-~1900. 3 of his fragrances are still around. Jicky, 1889 is by far the most famous and most important.

• Jacques Guerlain, active ~1900-1955. He made most of Guerlain's most famous women's fragrances. He hold's 40% of the slots in Luca Turin and Tania Sanchez's top 10 women's fragrances ever made, including the fragrance that is LT's favorite Mitsouko, 1919. He made the first Oriental fragrance as well. If one were trying to decide on the best perfumer to ever live, he would certainly be on the short list. His fragrances are complex, subtle and deep.

• Jean-Paul Guerlain, active 1955-current, though he hasn't been the official master perfumer for years. He made most of Guerlain's most famous men's fragrances...and some pretty famous women's fragrances as well. I think of him as one of the last old-school perfumers. He might think that "aquatic" is a bad word. His fragrances are more bold than Jacques Guerlain, but not in a bad way.

• Thierry Wasser, active 2008-current. I was skeptical, but I've been won over. He's certainly taking Guerlain in a slightly different direction, but he's also made several amazing fragrances. His are by far the most modern of Guerlains, but they still manage to keep the signature Guerlain flair. He also has done something awesome: try to fix the reformulations of the old stuff. He’s spent significant amounts of time and money on better synthetic oakmoss and on reformulating Guerlain’s classics so that they smell more like the originals. Mitsouko, in particular, has benefited from this.

Where can I smell them

If you live in the US and you only shop at Sephora and mid range department stores, you’ve probably only seen a very limited selection of Guerlains, many of which are poor examples.

The common ones are:

• La Petite Robe Noir, 2009 - a very new line, done under the direction of Theirry Wasser by Delphine Jelk. People like it, but it’s not really the classic Guerlain I’m trying to introduce to all of you. It's not something I'd personally wear.

• Shalimar, 1925 - One of the classics, but not department store sniff friendly. Shalimar is made to smell amazing on the skin 2 hours after being put on, not smell amazing on a paper strip 30 seconds after being put on. Also, It wasn’t made to be sold in EdT concentration like you find it in many stores (EdC concentration in drug stores). It was made to be smelled in parfum extrait concentration. I’ll talk more about Shalimar in a bit.

• Guerlain Homme, 2008 - This is a HUGE departure for Guerlain. Not characteristic of them at all.

• Samsara, 1989 - A feminine masterpiece from Jean-Paul Guerlain and an good example of Guerlain, but it also probably smells to many like their mothers (or grandmothers) and their mother's friends

To get a good selection of Guerlain fragrances, you need to go somewhere like Neiman Marcus. The best place in the US is the Guerlain boutique in the Venetian in Las Vegas. Canadians have a distinct advantage here: we have one of the few actual Guerlain Institutes in North America, located in Toronto on Bloor Street. It's one of my "must visit" destinations whenever I'm in the area. The best place in the world is at their flagship store in Paris.

How expensive are they?

Retail is generally $100/100ml for EdTs, $125/100ml for EdPs and $330/oz for perfum extraits. (US prices)
Some special edition items are more than the standard EdT/EdP price, running from $200/bottle-$300/bottle. Many of the common ones are available on Fragrancenet and other online fragrance discounters. There isn’t a huge counterfeit market for Guerlain like there is for Creed and Chanel. I've bought a number of items in my collection on fragrancenet, and can attest to their authenticity.

What should I smell

That depends on whether you want an education, or you’re looking for something for the club. Guerlain has many, many, beautifully constructed, classic fragrances that are wearable on a daily basis, but they reflect a different aesthetic than mainstream fragrances today do. You’ll notice an almost complete lack of aquatics, for example. Guerlain fragrances are made for the dry down, not the opening like many of today’s fragrances. They show better on the skin than on test strips.

I’m going to create 2 lists for this: one for education and one for some additional modern scents.

A note on reformulations

Guerlain has been forced to reformulate most of their most famous fragrances throughout the ages due to changes in IFRA regulations limiting the amounts of certain ingredients that can be uses. Many of these are only a shadow of their former glory. Vintage bottles are often still available on ebay, and this is where most of my personal collection comes from.

Smelling the History of Guerlain

This list covers the most famous and influential of their fragrances. I’ll note if a particular fragrance is REALLY hard to find (Mouchoir de Monsieur, I’m looking at you, bud)

Also, as a note, a couple of the classic women’s fragrances have a “matching” men's fragrance that smells similar, but is named differently. It’s a quirk of Guerlain that they did it this way, possibly because it was before the “pour homme” and “pour elle” stuff caught on.

• Eau de Cologne Imperiale
• Jicky
• Apres l’Ondee
• L’Heure Bleu
• Mitsouko
• Shalimar
• Vol de Nuit
• Vetiver
• Habit Rouge
• Samsara

The list, in depth

• Eau de Cologne Imperiale, 1860 - Pierre-François Pascal Guerlain - This was the fragrance made for Napoleon III’s wife. Unisex, though it’s officially for women. Citrus, neroli and lemon verbena with rosemary and a bit of Tonka bean. If you try wearing this as a fragrance now, you will be sorely disappointed in the longevity. It was meant to only last for a few minutes as a refreshing scent or to scent handkerchiefs. It’s certainly pleasant and wearable, but it’s like the fragrance version of the Model T, not hugely complex and not very long lasting. As a side note, though, it’s become traditional for every master perfumer to make a traditional Eau De Cologne. Theirry Wasser’s is brilliant and relatively long lasting (Eau de Cologne du Parfumeur, 2010).

• Jicky, 1889 - Aimé Guerlain - Considered the first modern perfume. Before this, fragrances were used differently and constructed differently. It was considered to be a fougere back then, though it doesn’t really meet the modern definition. It’s officially for women, but it very unisex. The legend is that it was originally meant for men, but the fashion of the time didn’t call for men to wear fragrances so they sold it to women instead. It was famously worn by Sean Connery though. It smells of lavender, citrus, herbs, tonka bean, vanilla…and civet. It has a very animalic smell that is certainly out of fashion now, but was very much considered sexy back then. It was supposed to be like a summer garden party with an edge of sexuality to it. Jaques Guerlain made a something that was very clearly supposed to be a men’s version of it (even though Jicky is very unisex) in 1904 called Mouchoir de Monsieur. Good luck finding somewhere to smell in the US outside of the Guerlain boutique in Vegas.

I love this description of Jicky from /r/fragrance:

Oh my. Regardless of what you think about a man who aspired to expose (and sell!) his mistress's bottom to the general public, Aime Guerlain certainly nailed it. Yes, a revolutionary fragrance, bold, modern, enduring, etc... Jicky smells like taint.

I've been lucky enough to try this scent in Extrait concentration (thank you, GI Toronto!), and on me it was... not that. There IS a distinct note of civet, but it was very soft and wearable.

• Apres l’Ondee, 1906 - Jacques Guerlain - For women. This is supposed to be one of Jacques Guerlain’s best fragrances, a mix of violet, orange blossom, and heliotrope. A light, easy to wear scent, perfect for a summer's afternoon.

• L’Heure Bleue, 1912 - Jacques Guerlain - For women. It’s considered a masterpiece because, well, it is. Where Apres l'Ondee is all about the violet, L'Heure Bleue is all about the iris. This is rich, decadent, while retaining a lightness that makes it approachable.

• Mitsouko, 1919 - Jacques Guerlain - This fragrance is amazing, one of the first Chypres. It’s a woman’s scent, but can be worn by a confident man - it's peach and woods and oakmoss and vetiver. I also catch a fair amount of labdanum from it. It’s gloriously complex and exotic, moody and introspective, and lingers close to the skin. This is Luca Turin’s favorite fragrance, and also one of mine. It’s also the fragrance that benefited the most from Theirry Wasser’s attempt to improve the reformulations. The most recent version is MUCH better than the one from 7 years ago. Guerlain has the best synthetic oak moss out there, and it shines in Mitsouko.

• Shalimar, 1925 - Jacques Guerlain - For women. Vanilla, incense, leather, citrus and florals. This was the first Oriental fragrance, and remains the classic example of it for a reason. Often imitated by inferior perfumeries (if you've ever smelled BPAL's Snake Oil, this is what it's trying to be), it’s shocked many a woman idly spritzing the latest from Gucci and Jessica Simpson and Marc Jacobs onto test strips. It is not meant to be smelled on test strips, it’s meant to be worn. The opening can smell a bit medicinal, but it dries down to a glorious, sexy vanilla. A sample of vintage Shalimar extrait is what started me on my Guerlain perfume obsession, and I have since amassed quite the collection. The men’s companion to this scent is Habit Rouge, 1965

• Vol de Nuit, 1933 - Jacques Guerlain - For women, but wearable by men. A lovely cool, oakmossy, green, aldehydic scent. Cool, yet warm. It name means “Night flight” and it smells like a flight on a cool, autumn night across moonlit vistas.

• Vetiver, 1961 - Jean-Paul Guerlain - For men. I fell in love the first time I sniffed this. It was so different from what I had been smelling that I was shocked. It’s not sweet at all. It’s citrus is a very dry citrus and with heavy overtones of pepper and nutmeg. It dries down to grass and pipe tobacco and vetiver with an incense smell to it. I’ve heard it described as “what a board room must have smelled like in 1950.” Very grown up. I had sprayed some on my skin and kept going back to it. If you’ve smelled Tom Ford’s Grey Vetiver, it’s an homage to Guerlain Vetiver, a modernized version of it.

• Habit Rouge, 1965 - Jean-Paul Guerlain - For men. The masculine version of Shalimar. Definitely a fall/Winter scent. It opens smelling of very dry citrus and an almost paraffin scent. It dries down to a sweet vanilla leather scent. Apparently it’s best experiences as a vintage EdC. I haven’t gotten a bottle of the vintage, but it’s readily available

• Samsara, 1989 - Jean-Paul Guerlain - For women. A gorgeous, luxurious, sandalwood jasmine and ylang-ylang fragrance. I personally love it, but it does have that 1980’s “I’m here!” boldness to it. I suspect that many folks here will associate it with older women in their lives.

BONUS

• Derby, 1985 - Jean Paul Guerlain - For men. I've never personally smelled this. I think the only source of it may be vintage stock on ebay; the reformulation isn't worth persuing. The old one made Luca Turin’s top 10 list of all time for men. An oakmossy, nutmeg and leather chypre.

Some great modern Guerlains to smell

Here’s where I’m putting the things that are a bit more modern (post 1990) that I really like.

• Eau de Cologne du Parfumeur
• Encense Mythique d'Orient
• Tonka Imperiale

The second list, in depth

• Eau de Cologne de Parfumeur, 2010 - Theirry Wasser - Unisex. This is a beautiful, traditional eau de cologne with fresh juicy citrus, neroli, lavender and just enough green notes to keep it interesting (galbanum, fresh cut grass and mint primarily). Unlike most colognes in this style though, it lasts for several hours (though it turns more into a fresh citrusy musk after 2-3 hours).

• Encens Mythique d’Orient, 2012 - Theirry Wasser - Unisex. Incense, rose, aldehydes and ambergris (either real ambergris or the best synthetic anyone has ever smelled). Wow. This is a stunner. Available to smell at maybe a dozen places in the US. It was originally intended only for the middle eastern market, but has since become more widely available, comparatively speaking.

• Tonka Imperiale, 2010 - Theirry Wasser - Unisex. Tonka, rosemary, spices, white honey, vanilla, almond, woody notes, amber and tobacco. This is my go-to winter scent, it's like being wrapped in a warm amber and vanilla cloud. Hard to find, but worth it.

For example, 500 people working long hours in dangerous conditions for terrible pay, but they make it possible for 5000 others to live in a utopian society. What about 50 workers and 50,000 benefactors? I think everyone can agree that it's wrong for there to be less benefactors than workers, but what about 50/50? What if it's 500 blue skinned people and a million red skinned?

I usually find myself internally preferring the species level ethical decisions, but I've never been brave enough to admit to it out loud because I know it makes me sound like a socio/psychopath.

One aspect of the Writing Prompts subreddit that frustrated me the most was that the submission that got the most responses was often the one that was submitted first. I found that in order to ensure that I got feedback and criticism, I often found myself rushing or submitting sloppy work so that I could submit first. Often times I would ignore prompts I liked because other posts had already taken off.

I’d like to try something here that addresses some of those issues. I imagine it working like this:

1. The first post would be a number of prompts that participants would choose from to be that week’s prompt.

2. After a prompt is chosen, I wouldn’t accept submissions for one/two weeks to give people time to develop their ideas and submissions.

3. A new post would be created for submissions for the past week’s prompt and providing a new list of potential prompts for the following week.

4. Go to 2...

So long as it is practical, I will read and provide feedback and constructive criticisms for every submission.

I hope this encourages people to develop fledgling ideas as they have the time to let their ideas breathe and they have the promise of feedback at the end of it.

Of course this isn’t meant to replace other casual writing prompts.

Edit:

For those interested a few questions:

1. Is one week enough time to write?

2. Would it be better for the writing time to include the weekend?

3. Would you be okay with certain restrictions like 1,500 words? Is that too many words? Too few?

Edit2:

Okay, I'll try to set this up!

Over the weekend I'll think up some prompts. Here's how I see it rolling out right now. Feel free to suggest other things as it's all fluid right now. I'm open to any and all suggestions.

1. Monday, Aug 20, I'll post three or four prompts. I'll leave voting up to participants? Or maybe allow the whole Tildes community to vote on the kind of story or theme they would like to read (hopefully to bring writers more feedback)?

2. Tuesday, Aug 21, I'll announce the weekly prompt. Remaining prompts with good support will be carried over to the following week? Remaining prompts with little support will be removed from the pool?

3. The following Wednesday, Aug 29, I'll open a thread for the past week's submissions and post a pool of three or four prompts to choose from.

Not sure how voting for prompts will work, I'm thinking of posting the possible prompts in the comments and using Tilde's voting system.

Just got invited here and looking at the content of the front page, Tildes is basically a "poor-man's version" of reddit right now. That's OK: it's a new community and I imagine a big part of users are coming here from reddit so they're doing what they're used to doing on social networks, that's only fair.

However, more than that, looking at the groups, they are set up pretty much similarly to reddit's default subs - if not on a 1:1 basis, at least in the general tone: pretty casual, daily life topics, big focus on entertainment media, etc. Maybe again this is, by design catering to the people who are bound to be incoming from reddit, so they can immediately relate to a similar user experience. Good.

So I think it's fair to say that it's proven that Tildes can be "like reddit". It kinda looks like reddit, it kinda feels like reddit. That part of the deal is covered. Now, what can makes us different? I doubt anyone here has no ambition besides being a soft-fork of reddit.

What topics make you tick? What sort of online discussion makes you go "that's the good stuff"? What subjects are you truly passionate about? I'd like to know what the community here is all about, whether the current ~groups represent their interests and passions or not and, hopefully we could come up with some less generic ideas for new ~groups out of the discussion.

EDIT I realize Tildes has a specific policy of "lesser active groups are better than a billion inactive groups" but at this point in time a good selection of groups would really help define the identity and content, not to mention promote quality discussion that actually aligns with people's interests. Hopefully seeing common trends in the replies would allow us to identify a few potential new groups, perhaps.

The only benefit that I can think of is that it gives users a rough idea of how good a post or comment is, which in my opinion, is not a very good thing. It prompts us to judge a post based on how many votes it has, when we should judge the post based on its actual content instead. It doesn't do a very good job as a quality meter either. A post with 12 votes is not that much "better" than a post with 10 votes but seeing those number, it sure does feel like it. On the other hand, is a post at 100k ten times better than a post at 10k? Voting as a way to sort content is fine as the sorting is like a suggestion, the number next to it however makes it feel like a popularity contest.

I know this is a very petty thing to complain about, just want to know if anyone else feels the same way. Personally, I've caught myself getting jealous when my submission "only" have 2 upvotes while also thinking of comments with higher vote count as more trustworthy before actually read them.