Vancouver @ NYRB
LA Galaxy @ Orlando
Atlanta @ RSL
Montreal @ LAFC
NYCFC @ Chicago
FC Dallas @ Vancouver
DC United @ New England
Portland @ Philadelphia
NYRB @ FC Cincinnati
Houston @ MNUFC
Columbus @ Colorado
Seattle @ Sporting KC
San Jose @ Toronto

(Let me make this clear before you continue reading, I don't know any good solutions)

Recently, all over the internet, I feel like I am seeing more and more companies filtering out content that are considered hate speech. I personally do not like this for two reasons.

1. I think it is a band-aid solution. People who have their voice taken away from themselves are not suddenly going to change their mind.
2. In a way, it is a form of removing freedom of speech. Now, I understand that a lot of the companies that are censoring hate speech are doing it primarily for the sake of sponsors, but I mean this in a more broad scope.
3. It is effectively hiding societal problems.

I think one argument for the increased censorship is: even if it doesn't combat hate speech, it stops the spreading of hate speech. By spreading, I mean more people believing that hate speech. Though at first this could be a good idea, I think it is the wrong way to go about it. I really don't know what exactly is the right way to deal with this issue. Maybe more inclusion of different communities? Maybe education? Learn how to think critically?

Here are a couple other things I have been thinking about, but I am not too sure about. I do not know if they are true or not, but if any of you could provide more insight, I would like to know more:

1. Hate speech is actually lower than ever. The reason why some people feel like it is higher is because the hate speech is entering to people's bubbles through the internet. Before the internet, there was still that kind of talk, it was just in a different medium.
2. Though not hate speech, but in a way related, with Anti-vax, the people who are most susceptible to converting to an anti-vaxxer, are parents. A lot of times these are the people who didn't grow up with the internet, the way they view the internet is not exactly how younger people view the internet. There is more doubt in what we see online between younger people than older.

And I have had people say I must be a white upper class person to have these kinds of opinions. No. I am not white. Not upper class. I have dealt with racism in one way or another for all of my childhood, less so as an adult.

So, in a nutshell, the writing quality and character development declined a lot in the last season ... except I mostly didn't notice (or mind), until I started reading online about how much - and why - everyone else hated the last season.

I got as far as S08 Ep03 (the White Walker battle) without reading any online commentary, critiques, etc. On my own, I did feel some characters' activities/behaviors were a bit 'off', but I still loved the episode overall (except literally too dark, hard to see some scenes).

Then a friend commented on some disappointing thing in the episode, and how 'everyone' was bitching about it. I started reading online ... and that's when I started seeing the flaws in the last season.

Granted, even if I had stayed offline, just watched it myself, there probably still would have been things that pissed me off ... Euron's magical dragon ambush, the whole Missandei capture/murder thing, and Dany embracing the Dark Side. I can't imagine I would have overlooked those.

But, by reading everyone else's gripes online, watching bitter youtube reviews, etc., the last 3 episodes sucked a lot more for me, because I saw all the flaws, many of which I would have missed.

So, to sum up, I blame all y'all for ruining GoT for me.

Thoughts?

Heya!

The question is rather straightforward. Even though I said smaller, size doesn't really matter for this - the focus is more on the community aspect rather than it being small. Here's my non-exhaustive list (in no particular order):

1. Tildes - This is unsurprising. It's definitely large for a "small" community, but it's managed to preserve it's culture very well, which is rather impressive. It's cozy and has high quality discussion.
2. Various Discord servers and IRC channels. This one is harder to pinpoint, to be honest. As far as IRC channels/Discord servers goes, some of the more niche gaming ones are probably some of the nicest environments. IRC-wise, I really haven't managed to find any particularly active ones, outside of the ones for the next list member...
3. tilde.town and probably the larger tildeverse. Not affiliated with Tildes, but generally just... a nice place to be. It's rather quiet a lot of the time, but their main IRC channel is, frankly, quite great. When it's active.
4. A lot of Mastodon instances, although of course not all. The fediverse is generally a nice place to be, although politics on there is kind of mushy and one sided. Genuine interactions on there, however, are extremely common and sorting by the global timeline is quite nice (most of the time.)
5. rateyourmusic is a nice community of those who are passionate about music. It's quite nice overall, though.

There's definitely a lot I've missed out, mainly because I probably don't know about them.

So, what are some of the smaller (or not) communities that you enjoy?

@Whom asked me to cover this post for today.

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.

Here's a list of a things that came out in this past week, up through Friday. Of course, there's no way to be completely comprehensive with this and I avoided including things where information was too lacking, so feel free to mention anything that isn't on here that you think is worth mentioning. Beyond that, if you have any thoughts of any of these albums, it would be great to hear them :)

Notes:
The Waterboys - Where The Action Is || Deluxe album linked
Sting - My Songs || Deluxe album linked
Octave One - Locus Of Control || song.link says single, but it's EP
Mavis Staples - We Get By || song.link spotify link is to single... linked spotify to album too
Fleshgod Apocalypse - Veleno || Deluxe album linked
The 1975 - Notes on a Conditional Form || No song.link... official site instead
YG - 4REAL 4REAL || No "parental advisory" version linked... so NSFW
The Lonely Island - The Unauthorized Bash Brothers Experience || no song.link, spotify and netflix instead

Thanks @Cleb and @cfabbro for the help this week!

I have been listening to "Darknet Diaries" and it's a great podcast, but I am looking for more. Maybe more technical.

Does anyone have any good recommendations? Thanks!

Edit: if you are like me, and learning about this stuff, here is an interesting and hilarious episode of mini-stories from Darknet Diaries: https://darknetdiaries.com/episode/22/