Datahoarders are people who will keep an absurdly large amount of data on a number of large capacity hard drives. That data can be anything from 4K movies, family photos and recordings, archives, YouTube channels... anything really. I find this practice to be intriguing. Do you feel like this description may apply to yourself?

If so, do tell us more about your endeavor: do you collect anything you can get your hands on or do you have a more specific aim? Do you share any of it? Do you have a particular setup? That could be hardware, software or some cloud subscription.

In an episode of the TV show Seinfeld, a woman invites George Costanza for a cup of coffee in her apartment after a date. George rejects the offer, saying if he drank coffee that late he would stay up all night. The woman leaves the car visibly underwhelmed. After a second, George realizes "coffee" meant "sex" and he just lost a great opportunity.

Have you ever had a moment like that (not necessarily about romance), in which a silly misunderstanding led to the loss of an opportunity?

Where do you all waste away most of your time on the internet? I hate to sound like a hipster, but I've come to avoid and/or dislike most main stream content aggregators. Reddit, Twitter, Facebook, etc. are all platforms I no longer participate in because of privacy and quality reasons. I like Tildes and all, but the community is small (and I like it this way) and that means the content isn't always fresh. So where else do you all hang out?

I ask people this all the time, especially lately to check in with them, and everybody says they're fine. I get it, because I say the same thing to everyone who asks me that too. It's just "what you do" with that question, especially over text.

So, here's a chance to let someone know how you're doing beyond "I'm fine", even if it just us random internet strangers here on the site. I'd love to hear where you're honestly at: good or bad, up or down, stable or unstable, happy or sad, or anywhere in between or outside any of those.

I like to talk, I used to talk quite a bit more, but I still talk... a lot. I was always told I was a smart kid when I was young, and I always felt I had a lot to contribute. I honestly don't feel like I'm that smart anymore, even though I still feel that I have much to contribute. I'm not autistic or special needs, I don't feel I have any reason to ramble so much. I'm often told I'm not rambling, people insist they like to listen, I don't believe them.

While in real life I've learned to pipe down, the internet is a different beast. The internet allows me to check myself more easily before I speak; I can fact check. There's a larger filter in that the submit button is a physical barrier, vs my cognitive ability to filter myself. There is feedback from internet communities that you don't normally get in social settings, I guess the submit button isn't as much as a barrier for some people. Due to these reasons, I can take my time to form a position and a statement. This leads to the entire thought process landing in the reply box. I don't mean to come off as /r/iamverysmart material, it's just how my brain works.

My worry is that my verbosity turns people off to my conversations and ideas, to me as a person. How many people have gotten to a thread or a forum post and seen a wall of text and just backed out? TL;DR is a thing for a reason I guess. How many times have you seen somebody ramble on about something, unable to notice that the other person in their conversation (who is now more of a prisoner than a participant) has just tuned out?

I don't know, just a rant I guess, I've got some stuff I'm procrastinating from.

EDIT: s/attribute/contribute/

We all want changes to our societies that we think would be beneficial, either for ourselves, our families, or as a whole. Rarely do I see discussion on a personal level of what posters envision for society at whole. So I figured I'd try that here. You can be as expansive as you'd like. Economy, governmental structure, citizen responsibility, guaranteed rights, etc. You can make it a future utopia or what you think could be feasible today.

MAJOR SPOILER WARNING

What I Did

The game took me around twenty hours to beat, and I stretched that out over the course of about two months. Sometimes I would dive in deep and play non-stop for an hour or two, but most of the time it was me playing it almost piecemeal, for ten or fifteen minutes at a time. Enough to get through one or two panels that I had been stuck on and then stop again.

I would have liked to do longer gaming sessions with it, but I found that I sort of had finite mental resources to apply to the game. I would hit a panel, be thoroughly perplexed, stare at it for 10 minutes while trying different solutions in my head, on paper, and in the game. Nothing would work, so I'd stop the game. The next day I would boot it up and, more often than not, have the solution in a minute or two--sometimes even the first try! I think my brain was working on these in the background.

Something that helped me massively was not letting myself get intimidated by the game. As I would work myself farther and farther down a strand of puzzles, I would instinctively start to feel the pressure that they were getting harder and harder each time. Rather than feed into that feeling, I simply reassured myself that each puzzle was its own thing, and each one had a solution right there, staring me in the face. I just had to find it.

What I Loved

I think the game is gorgeous. Stunning. Beautiful. An absolute joy to look at. It made me realize that we don't often get vibrant color in games that aren't pixel art. I also think the world is beautifully designed. The island is a memorable place with lots to explore.

I also loved the game's ability to teach you its rules wordlessly. The line puzzles aren't just puzzles--they're a language. The whole game felt like some geometric force was trying to communicate with me, but first it had to teach me its alphabet, grammar, and syntax.

Furthermore, I can't tell you how many times I would fight for a solution to a difficult puzzle, feeling it was nearly impossible all the way, only to find the seemingly one right answer. The only way it could possibly work. The next panel? The same damn layout but with an added rule that ruined my prior solution! I loved that the game made me rethink my own thoughts and forced me to see, quite literally, that there is often more than one way to solve a problem.

What I Felt

I was probably 12 to 14 hours into the game when I accidentally stumbled onto the knowledge that there were lines that could be activated outside the panels. I can't remember where I was but holy hell can I remember the feeling. I've got goosebumps right now as I type this from revisiting it in my memory. It was the sublime feeling you get from a great plot twist. There was a sense of revelation, the feeling of frission, and a newfound respect and appreciation for the design that went into the game.

What's sad is that it shouldn't have taken me that long. I saw the circles and lines throughout the environment as I made my way around the island and just assumed that it was a sort of visual motif, or maybe a stylistic flair, much like the game's sort of cartoony, polygonal look. Finding out that I could, in fact, trace them just like every other line I'd been making for the past ten hours was absolutely flooring to me. Experiencing that moment is one of the high points in all of my gaming history. It was the moment the game went from "this is definitely a clever game!" to "FUCK...this game is SO. DAMN. SMART." After that moment I think I spent two hours frantically running around the island hunting environmental lines. Now that I knew what to look for, they were EVERYWHERE. Hiding in plain sight! I was stunned. In absolute awe.

At probably about the 15 hour mark, I found the movie room and had the input for one movie. It was a scene in which a man lights a candle and attempts to walk across a courtyard, and each time the candle goes out, he returns to the beginning. I took this to be a metaphor for the game--specifically that it is about the journey rather than the destination. As such, this was the point that I realized I wasn't going to get some revelatory story at the end of the game, and that making it to the end of the game, while definitely a goal, was not what gave the game meaning.

The sub-takeaway from the film was the idea that the effort is worth it. The man in the film could have just crossed the courtyard and lit the candle at the end. The fact that he didn't showed self-restraint and a committment to the rule. I took this to be a comment on how the game is played. I could have looked up solutions to the puzzles online and just inputted them easily as a way of breezing through the game. While it would get me to where I was going (the end), what was the point? My playthrough was the lit candle route--harder because I was forcing myself to put in the work rather than taking the easy way out.

Oh, and did I mention that the film also had an environmental line at the end you could activate if you went behind the screen while it was running? Genius. This game is SO. DAMN. SMART.

What I Didn't Love

Because I didn't pay attention to detail and made assumptions when I shouldn't have, I didn't realize that I could enter the mountain without all the beacons activated. My gamer mind simply saw OBVIOUS GATED DESTINATION and OBVIOUS DESTINATION GATE KEYS and went "yup, gotta get all of these to unlock the end!" As such, I overplayed my game a bit by doing all of that first. I was all set for entering the mountain to be the ending, especially because the village beacon felt like a "final exam" to the game, incorporating all of the other puzzle types. I kept coming back to it after learning a new symbol/rule and would chip away here and there until I finally got through all of it.

As such, when I got into the mountain and there were even more puzzles I was miffed. My steam had run out. Add to that I'm pretty susceptible to motion sickness in games, so the flashing, scrolling, and color-cycling puzzles were deeply unpleasant for me. I literally had to look away from the screen for the scrolling ones. I solved them on paper and inputted them with the panels in my peripheral vision.

The double-sided room below those was equal parts brilliant and frustrating, though I was impressed as hell with the room with the four sub-puzzles that fed into the larger one on the floor. Unfortunately, I ended the game on quite a low note, as the pillar puzzles at the very end turned my stomach on account of the rotating camera. I was able to power through those only because I knew I was so close to the end.

What I'm Left With

While I didn't love the ending, I, as previously mentioned, don't think it's about that. The game gave me 20 hours of puzzle-solving bliss in a beautiful, rich environment. It gave me legitimate chills when I figured out its secret. It made me think, it made me work, and it made me feel legitimately fulfilled. Good puzzle games make you feel baffled and then they turn around and make you feel brilliant. This one made me feel all sorts of brilliant.

The game has so many legitimately clever moments. I loved the pagoda area where you have to look through branches at the right angle to see the solution. The last puzzle has two pieces of the answer, but a section is missing. After traipsing around, trying every possible visual angle, I look down and find a branch broken off at my feet. The missing piece. Brilliant.

It was filled with little things like these. Little thoughtful twists or nudges. Each puzzle strand was an iterative sequence, and each time you thought you knew where it was headed, they'd push it further. Then further. More and more. Often in ways you wouldn't expect. It's not just that the idea of the game is good but that its execution is so rich and thoughtful that it makes me reverent.

As for post-game stuff (because I know there's a ton I haven't gotten to), I'm taking a break from the game right now, but I might return to it a little later. I kept screenshots of puzzles I didn't solve or environmental elements that I was pretty sure were really activatable but that I couldn't quite figure out (the brown railroad tracks in the white limestoney area, for example).

I have the inputs for a couple more movies that I haven't watched, so I'll probably go back for those. I know there's a challenge area as well, and I'm presumably equipped for it given that I did all of the beacons, but I don't know if I'm up for that. Not just yet, at least.

What You Can Help Me With

For those of you that have gone through the post-game content, do you recommend it? Are there certain things I should focus on? I'm not terribly concerned about spoilers, but if there's something "big" like the environmental line revelation, maybe just give me a hint or point me in the right direction.

I also have a couple of lingering questions. Feel free to answer them unless you feel that it's better if I try to figure it out by myself.

• What do the individual, standalone panels lying around the island do (the gray ones with the triangles)? I've figured out the rule, I just don't know their purpose.

• Does finding all the environmental lines serve any larger purpose?

• Is there story or lore in the game? Does the island or its frozen inhabitants get explained? I activated a few audiologs, but those were mostly philosophical ponderings rather than narrative.

• How on earth do I get that environmental line with the railroad tracks? Of all the ones that I haven't been able to figure out how to get, that one's bothering me the most.

Finally, to anyone who's played the game (which is hopefully anyone who read this), I'd love to hear your experience and thoughts. What was The Witness like for you?

EDIT: Writing the post inspired me to go back into the game instead of sleeping. I watched two other videos I had found inputs for. One was a woman talking about freeing yourself from want, and the other was a man talking about science and knowledge. Interesting stuff.

Then I started exploring and I found an environmental line made by the negative space in the sky when properly bounded by a cloud and wall from the exact right angle. This game is SO. DAMN. SMART.

EDIT 2: Disregard where I said I was going to take a break from the game. I'm diving back in. I want to explore and find these environmental lines. It's so satisfying when you find one.

There was one on a bridge leading from the village towards the foresty area with the orange trees. I could see it from the ground and knew it definitely was one, but I could never quite position myself right to actually trace it. I tried climbing in the castle area since it seemed like I needed to be elevated, but that didn't work. I tried it from the rooftops in the village, and that didn't work. Then I looked: the tower in the middle of the village! I'd forgotten to try from there because once I got to the top of that I headed straight for the mountain. Sure enough, that was the spot.

Also, can we talk about how the sound is so satisfying when you get one? So good.

EDIT 3: The game might be trying to teach me a lesson in freeing myself from want. Now that I'm fired up to dive back into it, it's hard crashing after I start it up. It loads fine and I can walk a few steps, then it locks up my whole system.

I'm running it on Linux through Proton and tried all the different Proton versions assuming that was the culprit (it has crashed before) but the outcome is the same. I might be technologically barred from going further, which I guess is in the spirit of the game's ending and philosophy, right?

EDIT 4: My OS had some graphics library updates for me today, and after installing them I'm back in business--no more crashing! (Sub edit: I spoke too soon. It crashed after about half an hour, but that's way better than what I was getting before). I spent a while traipsing around the island, looking for environmental lines. It's amazing how, in hindsight, so many areas or destinations that I thought were just kind of dead space are actually strategic locations for environmental lines.

A good example is the very beginning of the game. You can get onto the roof of the overhang you first walk out from. At the beginning of the game I got up there, saw some pillows, and just thought it was set dressing in an ultimately useless space. Nope! Not only is there an environmental line you can get from there, but there's an audiolog as well if you're paying attention to detail (which, of course, I wasn't in my first go-around).

(Semi-throwaway account because of personal details)

This is prompted by /u/Adys comment to /u/Kuromantis.
I'm currently 14, and online I've refrained posting my age on my main account (on this site and others) to avoid it becoming a point in discussions (most prominently with politics, but any topic).

• How do/did you feel about posting your age on the internet (in regards to being younger)?
• Do/did you feel like your decision made an impact on discussions?

In these lean COVID-19 times I feel like a lot of people are trying to make a bit of extra cash. I've been thinking about trying out some freelancing platform to market a few of my skills (apparently people pay for at least few things I do for fun?), and I was wondering what people who've used any of the main platforms think of them. I keep seeing conflicting stuff around the web.

Whether it's a personality trait you have, an experience you've been through, or a way that you "come across" to others, or something else entirely, what's something that people commonly misunderstand about you? Why do you think that happens? How do you feel or respond when you're made aware of it?

I was recently in the market for a cheap used phone. I was looking for an Android device, preferably less than 3 years old, preferably with an unlockable bootloader and rootable, for $200 or less. I was looking at used Pixel 2's when I came across this weird Chinese manufacturer I'd never heard of.

The Umidigi F2 is a bizarre device. I was blown away by the specs, and the seller was only asking $200CAD for it, so I took a chance. I've got to say, so far I'm pretty impressed.

Quick Specs:

• 6.5" IPS LCD, 2340x1080px, bezelless, w/ hole-punch camera, no notch
• 6GB Dual-channel LPDDR4 RAM, 128GB Storage
• Mediatek P70 - ARM Cortex A73/A53 Octo-core 2.0/2.1GHz CPU
• 5 cameras, 32MP front-facing, 48MP rear, 13MP wide-angle, 5MP depth, 5MP macro
• Dual SIM, MicroSD
• 5150mAh battery
• ~40 frequency bands
• 3.5mm headphone jack
• Stock Android 10

At this price I was initially skeptical. There must be something wrong with it, some glaring flaw I wasn't seeing, and/or those specs must be fake. I'm happy to say though, they're real, and the device seems much more solid than I expected.

I've had the thing a little over a week so far, and have only charged it once. On the first charge it lasted 4 days before I charged it, and still had 30% battery remaining after I'd spent a couple hours surfing the web and two hours watching youtube (total screen-on time was ~4.5hrs). After charging it I haven't been using it as much, but it's currently been running 3 days and it has 70% battery remaining. I've used it to listen to the radio for 3 hours this morning. Oh yeah, did I mention? Bizarrely, it has a FM radio tuner for some reason.

So far everything has been smooth, the device performs really well, which is not something I expected from a Mediatek CPU. Rooting it went smoothly, and I've been able to tweak a bunch of settings via the EdXposed framework, as much as you can in Android 10 anyway. I did remove some background bloat, but otherwise the default ROM is very close to vanilla AOSP.

The build quality of the thing is honestly not bad. I've used mid-range Samsung devices that have felt cheaper and more plastic-y than this. I have read some reports of bad touchscreens, but so far I haven't had any problems. There's also a DIY solution to solve that. Unfortunately, if it dies, this is pretty much my only option, since the warranty and support is pretty much nonexistent. At a quarter the price of a brand-name phone with similar specs though, I'm willing to roll those dice.

So, other than warranty, what are the downsides? Well, so far the biggest gripe I have is there is no notification LED on it. So if I go to the washroom and come back I can't just tell at a glance if I've missed a call or text, I actually need to unlock it. Luckily the fingerprint reader and face unlock are both pretty reliable. There is no wireless charging, which I'm more or less okay with. The main reason I'd want that is if the USB port died, but again, this is the sort of phone that if anything is wrong with it you're pretty much meant to throw it out. The speaker is a bit tinny, and unfortunately it's mono. The cameras are bad. The 48MP camera does take 8000x6000 pictures, but they're grainy to the point where even if you resize them down they still look worse than something taken with a good 6MP camera. This seems to be a software problem though. The camera module is apparently made by Samsung, and people have said it's gotten better with every OTA update. As for that, there's been an update this month, but a lot of people are expecting it might be the last update they put out. Umidigi apparently has a bad track record of only providing updates for a few months.

In conclusion, this is objectively a decent phone, and for it's price, it's exceptional. You sacrifice warranty, updates, any kind of support really, but you get some very decent hardware for $200.

Official site: https://www.umidigi.com/page-umidigi_f2_specification.html
Purchasable on amazon for fast shipping, purchase on aliexpress to save $50.

Following an off-topic conversation starting here:

https://tildes.net/~health.coronavirus/mq7/advice_from_a_doctor_who_studied_coronaviruses_for_50_years#comment-4qi7

I thought it would be handy to establish that life still continues even in pandemic lockdown. One participant mentions a successful video date, and another wishes for sex.

The questions below may be personal and sensitive - please use your best judgement in answering or refraining to do so. Usual Tildes rules of courtesy apply.

1. If you're in a relationship, what are you doing to keep it alive and healthy?

2. If you're not partnered, what are you doing, if anything, to date or otherwise meet your needs while everything is closed down (if this is the case where you are)?

3. Does your idea of love or sex require physical contact?

4. If physical contact is required, what, if anything, are you doing to stay safe right now?

I recently finished reading Edward Abbey's Desert Solitaire, and prior to that I read his novel The Monkey Wrench Gang. I was left feeling quite differently than what I was expecting to feel. I'm an outdoorsman, a conservationist and an activist. I spent a good portion of my time last year on The Colorado Plateau, much of it in the places Edward Abbey has been and discusses frequently in his work. There is a distinct emotional connection I feel to this land, so my mental conflictions are especially notable. I recently wrote a friend a letter, much of it including my thoughts on Abbey thus far, and I felt posting the relevant excerpt here would be a good conversation starter. Let me know what you think!

"I just finished Abbey's Desert Solitaire, while I enjoyed many aspects of the work, it also left me feeling conflicted. I wholeheartedly concur with many (but not all) of his views on conservation. He challenged my views in some positive aspects as well, his disdain for the automobile in national parks, for example. Other views of his I cannot ignore or absolve him of. His views on traditional family values (read: misogyny) are quite apparent in The Monkey Wrench Gang and seep into this work as well. Furthermore, his views on indigenous peoples are outdated, even for his time. His incessant diatribe on the blights that impact Native Americans and other indigenous populations, blaming their own attitudes (victim blaming, if you will), while simultaneously railing against the federal government and The Bureau of Indian Affairs is at best hypocritical (while also patently racist).

Edward Abbey's actions also do not reflect his writing. The man continually rants about the ongoing destruction of this Earth, he blames everybody (The National Park Service, Bureau of Land Management, Forest Service, Bureau of Indian Affairs, the modern consumer, tourists, oil and gas corporations, mining companies, logging businesses and wannabe outdoorsmen) but himself. He went so far as to work for the NPS, while admitting their culpability in their own decimation. During his time there he constantly capitulated to the tourists, the modern consumers in their iron contraptions. Some federal employees I've met have set out to change their respective agencies from within, but what did Abbey do? He left. He saw a problem, railed against it, and left.

So I ask: Why didn't he do more? It has been suggested that Ed had engaged in some less-than-peaceful activities, "eco-terrorism" they call it. I personally don't believe it, I believe that any actions taken were never near the magnitude of the happenings of The Monkey Wrench Gang. Ed's books were his personal fantasies, which while not a guide, a reference point. He prefaces Desert Solitaire, describing it as an elegy. Almost as if he is passing an extinguished torch on to our time. It is frustrating and demoralizing to say the least. While grateful to read his words and as much as I concur with his notions, I disagree with hits actions (or lack thereof). I finish this book left feeling angry."

I just finished Andrew Marantz's Anti-Social: Online Extremists, Techno-Utopians, and the Hijacking of the American Conversation, and I think it's a book that would interest a lot of the people on this site. Marantz is a journalist for the New Yorker who embedded himself with alt-right influencers and social media companies. This book is a compilation of all of those stories; part memoir, part retelling, part observation, part commentary.

Despite its title, the book is not a one-dimensional hit piece. I actually strongly dislike the title as I feel it's a bit too barbed for a book that's rooted in extensive, thoughtful contemplation. The author is honest, open-minded, and critical. I hate the word "balanced" for all of the baggage it brings to the table, but it really feels like the best word to use, especially as an antonym for "unbalanced". He deftly handles a lot of different subjects here. He doesn't shy away from giving criticism where its due, but he's also not quick to judge, trying to understand the broader picture first before casting any judgments about it.

I mention it here because I think it has a lot of relevance to Tildes as a site, as well as the type of people that have congregated here. It covers a lot of ground of direct interest to Tildes: the role of social media platforms to police speech and ideology; how the structure of social media creates influence; how bad faith actors can manipulate systems; how noxious ideologies continue to appeal and propagate. I also know that Tildes trends toward the left, and as someone far on that side myself, I appreciated this book for giving me what I feel was a fair and thoughtful window into the lives of certain high-profile people on the right. It's easy to think of them as a monolith, but I was surprised by the differences between all of his various character portraits. Marantz never loses the individual humanity of his subjects, even when some of them are abjectly abhorrent people.

I should mention that the book is very US-centric, as that was where he focused his journalistic efforts. As such, readers outside the US might not appreciate it as much, but I still think a lot of what he shares is relevant no matter where you are located since we all share space together online.

I'm Brazilian, and personally (in the most radical, electability-indifferent and honestly meme-y campaign) would go for Bernie with the campaign finance and tax reform but with a platform for civical reform like putting STV as the nomination method for our chamber of deputies and supporting automating or funding new technologies to replace menial labor, like funding lab grown meat to replace all farming companies and labor now or robotics to automate large parts of the industrial and service sectors and use that money saved from not paying wages to people doing bad jobs to fund free universities and better schools/wages/welfare/infrastructure to the people once doing that work, along with adding civics and economics as subjects in school and always including notes as to where do you use the content you're learning, along with requiring subsidiaries to go independent or drop their branding. Clearly this isn't very realistic so feel free to expouse absurd policy.

I know this has been posted before, but I was going through old posts about blogging and at least half the blogs linked in the comments were offline now, so I thought I'd bring this topic back to light.

Do you run your own personal blog, and if so, could you share some details?

• Is it self-hosted, or do you rent server space?

• Do you use Wordpress or another blog platform like that, publish through other means like a flat-file CMS, or did you build it from scratch?

• What topics do you write about?

• How consistently do you post; or alternatively, why don't you post as often as you would like to?

• Do you keep analytics, or do you write regardless of how many clicks you get?

• Is your site monetized with ads or otherwise?

• How popular is your blog on average?

• How do you keep up with other writers' posts?

I'm bringing this up because it seems like most places around the web centered on blogging are more in it for the money rather than for the content. Places like /r/blogging and the like are all talk about how to maximize views, earn revenue, and find your niche. I'd love to see some discussion more geared towards the content and construction of individual blogs, as opposed to people trying the next "get rich quick" scheme on their lists of passive income opportunities.

Personally, I have multiple blogs for the sole purpose of giving me a platform to voice my opinions or share things that interest me without being constrained to a centralized platform like Twitter or Medium. I'd love to hear what you have all made and/or shared online, as well as the process behind making it happen.

I don’t like my name, and I never really have. It has nothing to do with ‘tomf’.

My main questions are:

1. How did you go about choosing the new name?
2. How did you manage/roll out the new name?
3. What unforeseen challenges came up?

My main concern is that I’ll settle on a ‘cool’ sounding name and that people will think it’s weird. While I want something normal, I do have some parameters:

1. The name should be free for the .com and major social media
2. I don’t want a main ‘S’ sound, since I don’t like how I say it.
3. I am hoping to have something simple to use over the phone. I use ‘Tom’ for Starbucks and reservations because it’s clear, short, and not me.

Anyway, has anybody done this? Any feedback is great, but I am more focused on changing my first name.

Pardon the crappy tags.

This is something I've been struggling with for a couple of months now.

I want to make a website. I have the design I want to implement. I have a few things I want to post there. I have what seems to be a reliable hosting platform ready for use.

What I don't have is the URL.

It's a conceptually-difficult problem, because I want this URL to be permanent. I don't want it to be my name, because I don't want this thing I make to be about me. It's about what I do. This what I do is what needs the name, and I have nothing.

A few people around the Internet know me as ThatFanficGuy, but using that creates false expectations, because my writing is mostly original. A few people around the Internet know me as FirebrandCoding or simply Firebrand – it's my GitHub handle, among other things – but it's an old name that I'd like to transcend.

Essentially – and I hate myself for saying this – I need a brand name. I need a banner to unite the wide collection of all the things I do under a recognizable symbol. I write, worldbuild, code, design, blog, make games, photograph, potentially make music and even record podcasts... All of this needs encapsulation, and I've been racking my brain for a good name to no avail since November.

A great example of such a name would be Magic & Wires. The website is currently empty. It used to be a game dev company, led by Firestream, who made Destiny RPG (now defunct) and Titan Conquest. If you scroll down on the main page of both games, it says "Made of magic and wires", which is such a cool way to use your name. I'm not one for murder, but I'd kill to have a name so cool.

Has anyone experienced something similar? How have you dealt with it? Is there some sort of theory behind picking a good name for your project?

It's been a while since we had one of these. probably for good reason since clogging the site with 'do we exist' threads like this is counterproductive

'Developmental disorders' comprises autism, ADHD, Tourette's and more. (Here's a wiki article for them.)

I'll start with my asperger syndrome which was very strong autism when I was a child.

I've realized over the past few hours that I've spent an absurd amount of money relative to my income over the last few days, and I think that starting to budget would probably be a very good thing for me. Does anyone know of any good tools for keeping and managing a personal budget?

This question really came to mind to me about last week when I was hanging out with some friends. I always noticed it as a part of my personality but I never really thought about it as in depth as I have recently. That night I immediately got concerned to the point of it ruining my evening about the following things:

• We're running out of helium in the world
• Where is my birth certificate
• The old VHS tapes of my childhood and important moments in my family are slowly degrading but I can't digitise them until I go home to my parents and that's not for at least half a year, will they hold up that long?
• There's too much space junk
• I used so much plastic just cooking dinner this one evening for my friends, imagine how much gets bought and consumed worldwide
• Some languages are going to die out and there's nothing I can do about it
• Are the rhinos doing ok?
• What's my blood type and am I allergic to anything?

Does anyone else suffer from this idiosyncracy? If so, what are some things that concern you or what are some other things that I can be concerned about?

EDIT: This turned dark, I thought I was just sharing some lighthearted fun and now I have schizophrenia, OCD and should talk to a therapist... jeez louise

(Presuming it's done purely for statistical purposes of course.)

I, like most of us am personally fine with age, sex, city level location and relationship status. I really dislike using real names though since I feel like it ties you to who you are in person, which I really dislike and I support people deciding not to fill them in because in some places even what I've outlined can get you in trouble.

I'll preface this by saying this post is birthed out of a small argument I'm having on Reddit, but the topic seems like a worthwhile one. (And I'm not getting much other than downvotes for a counterargument over there!)

The initial question is whether or not the death of someone who is very old (95 years or more) should be considered tragic. Some things to consider:

1. The overall health and condition of the person.

• Are they in constant state of suffering?

2. The wishes of the person.

• Do they actively wish to be dead? This might not even be out of suffering. Some people, as they get to be quite old, are just bored of their lives or want this stage to be over. Anecdotally, my great-grandmother was this way from the ages of 90 and onward. (She quite famously would greet cashiers with "I want to die.")

3. Are they still active?

• Do they still find meaning in what they are doing? For example, David Attenborough is 93 years old and is still a big presence on the world stage. Despite his great age, if he were to die, his work would still be ‘cut short.’

4. The circumstances by which they die.

• Was it sudden, or did it take a long time? Was it painful? Was it violent?

This list is not exhaustive. I welcome suggestions for what should be added to it.

There is also how we define tragedy. In general terms, it typically just alludes to an event that causes great suffering and distress. I think this is the definition that we are more concerned with. Alternatively, there is the theatrical definition of tragedy, which is more tied to the leading character suffering some major downfall at the end of the narrative. While we could construe the death of someone in real life this way, it seems to be a bit of a stretch as most of us do not live out our lives in three-act structures with a clear climax and finale. (I’m going to rule out this definition now, if not just for the sake of argument.)

Balancing all of these thoughts, I think the crux of where disagreement lies is in how we feel about death for the deceased versus our own selfish desires. Bringing this back to my anecdote, about twenty years ago, my great-grandmother passed at the age of 94. She spent at least the last 5 years of her life pleading to God to finally take her. Her health was fine. She lived in her house, alone, fully capable of maintaining it (and herself). In fact, in the year prior to her death, she was so physically active that she painted all 200 feet of her white picket fence! By all means, she was not physically suffering. She just simply wanted to go.

Then she did. I think the group consensus was something akin to, “Well, I guess she finally got what she wanted. I’m going to miss her.” It was a feeling of simultaneously being happy for her and grief for ourselves.

To which, does this make for a tragedy?

Some might call it splitting hairs, but what I am arguing is that the death itself was not tragic. What is tragic is our loss of the ability to interact with that person and the feelings of grief that follow. I cannot help but feel these are ultimately separate things that we have such a difficult time reconciling. Part of life is death, and as long as we revere life, we must also revere the last part of it. If we did this better, we might have an easier time accepting things like medical-assistance-in-dying. It is for this reason that I say, death, by default, does not necessitate tragedy.

However while death is not necessarily tragic, I do think there are a multitude of conditions that would make death sufficiently tragic. Looking back at my list above, the death of a young healthy person would be considered tragic. Suppose someone was violently beheaded; this could be considered tragic. Even suppose that the 93-year-old David Attenborough passed away, I would think his death to be tragic as he wanted to offer more to the world.

Anyway, I think I’ve rambled enough. What are your thoughts?

I'll start (for reference, I am a 14 year old Brazilian in a presumably poor house , also in retrospect this reminds me of what they tell you to do at the beginning of most English courses, which makes me feel like a cringy kid):

• Wake up (6:15, praised be alarm clocks)

• Put on the school uniform (takes 5-10 minutes)

• Have breakfast (takes 10 minutes)

• Brush my teeth (takes less than 5 minutes)

• Walk to school (6:45)

• Reach school (less than 100 meters from my home thankfully) and enter a classroom (7:00 plus a few minutes for teachers to set stuff up)

• stay in school until 12:17 (every time the subject changes, we pack our stuff and go to the classroom the teacher of the subject is in. There is also a break between 9:30 and 10:20.)

• Leave school and go home

• Get home by 12:45

• Have lunch, usually rice and beans with either meat or chicken meat in some flattened form I can't describe, usually at 1-1:30 PM.

Do... whatever on the phone (as of recently be here or in discord, along with reddit and YouTube for longer unless it runs out of battery) Edit: see here for details.

• Have dinner (usually at 8:30-9:00, same food as lunch)

• Pack the books for the subjects they teach tomorrow

• Go to sleep at 10.

During vacation/weekends I can wake up from 5-10 AM depending on how well I slept the previous night. The rest is the same, except for Saturdays my parents go and buy some esfihas to break the monotony of lunch and dinner.

I'm always curious to see what languages people speak, especially given that most communication on sites like Tildes happens in English and as such it doesn't always come up.

At one point, I was pretty fluent in Spanish, but it's been about 4ish years since I've used it with any frequency and as such I am very rusty when speaking. I can still read and write it pretty well however. The big thing is that I have trouble these days recalling vocab I knew like the back of my hand... I should read more to stay sharp.

I also took some French in college and can read it at a beginner-intermediate level, basically enough to understand threads on not super complex topics. I can write too, but require a dictionary for anything remotely complex. Speaking I'm shit however - despite having great teachers I always had a tough time with pronunciation.

I (probably) have aphantasia, so I only dream when I'm actually trying to make my brain dream something, so I usually only dream to indulge in NSFW fantasies to jack off and despite this barely anything makes it into my mind. (I swear someone has said something like this before, I think they said they 'did it to embrace their kinks to improve mental health', which is quite unique and pretty cool.)

Asked in the spirit of the new decade.

I am 14, so mostly growing up and realizing that the world is probably going to enter a recession when I reach adulthood which will suck for reaching financial independence.

Going through puberty, even if it's just the beginning of it and seeing one of my cats die from kidney failure and hearing that my grandma died from cancer, which is very sad :(

I'll start by saying yes and no, but the reasons for my answer are personal and familial ,so if you don't like that skip my answer.

With the year and decade coming to an end, I wanted to do a self interview/reflection. I'm basically looking for questions that address the past, present and future. Questions that help reflect or set goals are nice, but anything goes really. This was inspired by Vanity Fair's yearly interview with Billie Eilish, but I also love reflecting on the past and need for structure by setting goals for the future. Plus what better time to do this with the new year and decade coming up?

What I'd like to do is ask myself these questions on a yearly basis, but this one might be longer as I'd put questions that will address things 5 & 10 years from now.

I often run long distance as part of my workouts and lately I've been composing various axioms for how I should live. These are three axioms I find integral to my character which I try and place at the bedrock of my decision making.

0th - The thought which you cannot think is that which guides you.

1st - The world can be boiled down to two types of people: those who act and those who are acted upon. Be one who acts.

2nd - Defy social conformities via normative methods.

So I bought this laptop mainly for web browsing, document editing, note taking and programming with perhaps light gaming although that's not something I've tried yet. So, really just for school work.

Specifications

Laptop Model : Acer Aspire 3 A315-42
Laptop screen : 1080p IPS (with matte finish?)
CPU : R5 3500U
RAM : 8GB DDR4 (6GB available because of iGPU)
Storage : 256GB SSD NVMe
Wireless : Qualcomm Atheros QCA9377
Wired : Realtek Semiconductor Co., Ltd. RTL8111/8168/8411 (According to lspci)
2x USB 2.0, 1x USB 3.0, 1x HDMI port, Audio jack, 1x RJ45 Ethernet port
Battery : 36.7Wh

Linux compatibility

Everything worked out of the box, gotta modify TLP to not kill the touchpad and webcam. The touchpad seems to have a mind of its own when it comes to being detected, It seems to be a kernel bug, unsure what I'll do about it concretely but rebooting a couple of times makes it work. Nothing to install thanks to AMD's open source mesa drivers. Might need a kernel higher than 5.3 because of general Ryzen 3000 issues but I've not tried, it was already higher than that.

Operating system tested

Basically never touched Windows, directly installed Fedora 31 Silverblue.

My Silverblue configuration is :

● ostree://fedora:fedora/31/x86_64/silverblue
                   Version: 31.20191213.0 (2019-12-13T00:42:11Z)
                BaseCommit: a5829371191d0a3e26d3cced9f075525d2ea73679bd255865fcf320bd2dca22a
              GPGSignature: Valid signature by 7D22D5867F2A4236474BF7B850CB390B3C3359C4
       RemovedBasePackages: gnome-terminal-nautilus gnome-terminal 3.34.2-1.fc31
           LayeredPackages: camorama cheese eog fedora-workstation-repositories gedit gnome-calendar gnome-font-viewer gnome-tweaks hw-probe libratbag-ratbagd lm_sensors nano neofetch
                            powertop radeontop sysprof systemd-swap tilix tlp

Kernel : 5.3.15
Gnome : 3.34.1

Body and Looks

The screen back has metal, I believe it feels quite sturdy. The rest is reasonable feeling plastic. The material used just loves to imprint grease / fingers which kinda sucks - the keys being the exception thankfully. There was also stickers on the inside which well, are somewhat standard but I thought they were pretty obnoxious so I removed them.

Typing experience

It's nothing amazing but it's good enough. I'm not really knowledgeable on keyboards so that's as much as I can say on it, really.

Performance

Everything feels quite snappy but I don't game at all on this machine so I'm not pushing it too much other than while I'm compiling or doing other things. The temperature does go up to 75°C and the fans get a little loud but it's not that bad. It's mostly the bottom getting hot so it's not something you notice too much while typing. It also cold boots quite fast, in about 10-20seconds I want to say but I've not benchmarked that. It's my first computer with an SSD so there's that.

Battery life

I get about 5hours with tlp installed doing web browsing, some programming occasionally, listening to music on the speakers and chatting. Personally I was kind of expecting more from this considering it's an APU but it seems to be what other people are getting on similar setups so It'll do.

Conclusion

Overall, I'm pretty happy with this laptop considering how I bought it for 575$ on sale. I made this review mostly because I wasn't finding much information about this laptop on Linux and well, I don't know, I guess I felt like it. If you have any questions, ask up!

I'm currently re-watching all episodes of Detectorists and it's one of my favourite tv things ever, so I thought maybe Tildes would be interested. Detectorists is a single camera sitcom about two men and their friendship around their metal detecting hobby.

Here's the link to the BBC Four webpage for it: https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b06l51nr

Some review sites -

Rotten Tomatoes 100% (few reviews), 99% audience score: https://www.rottentomatoes.com/tv/detectorists

IMDB 8.6 : https://www.imdb.com/title/tt4082744/

Guardian review (because she writes about it far better than I can): https://www.theguardian.com/tv-and-radio/2017/dec/09/detectorists-rich-portrait-unremarkable-lives-gone-slightly-awry-mackenzie-crook

Detectorists is about nothing and everything. Made with palpable love, it’s about people and their passions; camaraderie and community. As a portrait of male friendship, it is closer to documentary than drama, delving beneath the topsoil of mid-life ennui via the sparsest of exchanges. You won’t find a laughter track, or smart-arse punchlines or an oh-so-subtle veil of irony here; instead of begging for your attention, Detectorists is notable for its avoidance of snark. It’s the drama least likely to culminate in alpha plonkers blowing up cars, taking down baddies or ravishing beautiful women.

Instead, it lingers lovingly over dewdrops on grass, magpies on gateposts, scudding clouds and gently fluttering leaves. Even an alfresco wee takes on a painterly aspect, viewed solely through the steam cloud billowing from behind a sunlit tree. Meanwhile, the camera makes high art out of Lance’s face in closeup, crestfallen as he unearths a scaffolding bracket instead of an Anglo-Saxon nugget, and from Andy’s silent incredulity when a colleague jokes about Richard Attenborough when he means David.

Radio Times review https://www.radiotimes.com/news/tv/2017-12-13/detectorists-series-3-review/

If all British programmes took this much care over their tone, look and overall distinctiveness, the golden age of television would never go away.

Modern comedies are often predicated on cruelty: laughs are hard, clanging or sharp as barbed wire. In its quiet, undemonstrative way, Detectorists has ploughed its own furrow. Buried in its field of fun are evergreen truths about life, and the things we don’t say but should. So if kindness and companionship are unfashionable, I know which side of the hedge I’d rather stand.

You know: something that sticks out to you in a bad, unignorable way -- like a "sore thumb" -- every time you see/hear it.

Maybe its apostrophe misuse, maybe it's using cliches like they're going out of style, maybe it's b  a d k e  r n i  n g, or a lack of parallelism perhaps bothers you.

Whatever it is (and it doesn't have to be writing related), let us know. Also, most importantly, why do you think it has such a profound effect on you?

"What do you want to do/be when you grow up?" is a question we've all been confronted with, willingly or not, throughout our lives. It's intercultural, except for the increasingly rare instances where it's culturally or familialy expected that you'll continue a family trade.

And then there are those of us who just can't pick the one true direction, or thought we had it right for a while, then abruptly got bored/burnt out and had to find a new career or calling. I've personally had no fewer than eight different or only tangentially related "careers", sometimes overlapping with hobbies, and I'm floundering a bit to find the next one.

I was just introduced to the "multipotentialite" concept today - see the TED Talk, Why Some of Us Don't Have One True Calling for details, and https://puttylike.com/ for the speaker's site and book information. As the video mentions, polymathy was once highly respected in the Renaissance, but it's been devalued in favor of increasingly narrow specializations in the industrial and information economies.

This thread is for the bewildered, the career peregrinators wandering with or without aim, who've been branded as flakes or losers, or are suffering anxiety/depression because the heavens haven't opened up and rained down purpose and meaningful work.

Tell your story to the extent you're comfortable, ask questions and seek support.

• What is it like to discover a passion?
• What is it like to find yourself losing that passion?
• How did you accommodate the change?
• What carried over successfully from prior careers?
• Did you experience pressure to stay with just one thing?
• Have you had disrupted relationships with family, partners, or friends as a result of these changes?
• Do you feel that you've made unique contributions due to broad experience and/or interdisciplinary knowledge?
• Do you feel discriminated against in the job market for lacking a clear career path?
• Did you suffer damaging mental distress before or as a result of making a career change?
• Is it exciting or frightening to make a change, and has it become more or less so with repeated changes?

This is also open to the people who were seemingly born knowing precisely what they wanted to do - were you successful in pursuing it, or did you have to make accommodations, perhaps discovering something else?

This is sort of a "backlog post" but for real-life: take care of something small that, for whatever reason, you've left unaddressed for too long.

Maybe it's something that keeps ending up on your to-do list but never gets resolved. Maybe your desk is cluttered. Maybe you haven't vacuumed your carpet in a while. Maybe your fridge could use a cleanout. It doesn't have to be cleaning themed, but that's what's coming to mind for me right now, so you can probably guess what mine will be.

Whatever it is, take a few minutes to resolve the issue, then tell us about it here.

• What was the issue?
• Why do you think it kept getting put off?
• How do you feel now that it's done?

Halloween has always been one of my favourite events of the year. I loved dressing up (though we always had to wear a winter coat over our costumes), I loved going trick-or-treating with my friends, and I loved sorting through our pillowcase of loot at the end of the night. I remember entire streets decorated as graveyards and how lively it was with kids everywhere. A few houses down from us, a neighbour set up a haunted house in their garage every year, and it ended with a warm hot chocolate with little marshmallows. We always planned to hit that house when we started getting cold.

When my partner and I starting handing out candy, we were in a relatively newly developed neighbourhood, and had very few kids. We handed out full sized chocolate bars and chips, the best prizes when we were trick-or-treating! We took turns answering the door and just loved to see the costumes. We counted Darth Vaders and witches and whatever was popular that year. It was always a lot of fun.

We stopped handing out candy about two years ago, mostly because I didn't want to get Nestle candy, which was the nut-free stuff that we usually got, and because it felt wasteful. There are a lot of drives right after Halloween where people basically dumped pounds of chocolate (either trading them to their dentist, or using them to make Halloween art). At work, every parent would bring in bags of candy to share. It was honestly just too much, especially considering the individually wrapped plastic. I've also started noticing that everyone is starting to sell plastic "Halloween candy reusable" bags, and I just really dislike that.

We're always looking for an alternative because I still really want to take part in Halloween again. This year, we again decided against handing out candy, and I'm already missing seeing the little trick-or-treators and their costumes, and their joy in getting a little treat.

Time for a story.

Some of you might remember that I was planning on going abroad. I intended to visit New York City with one of my best friends, setting foot in the United States for the first time in my life. I have had reservations about the actions and the state of politics of the US for a while, but I'm by no means an activist; I largely settle for small discussions regarding this topic, online or among friends. This means that I had not considered the current administration as a deterrent to my week-long trip.

For the sake of what I'm about to talk in the rest of this post, some additional personal details are needed for context. I am a EU citizen and a second-generation immigrant, child of a parent born in North Africa. I was fortunate enough not to have to go through having to acquire a "real" visa as my country is part of the ESTA program. This program is a fast track of sorts that allows a non-citizen to get clearance to get into the US by providing information through an online form. As I went through that automated process, I arrived at one step that worried me: they asked about being a citizen of another country. Now, I have both an EU ID and passport but I have double-nationality from my parent and so I also have ID and (an expired) passport from that country.

That country is not unstable or known to host terrorists or extremist organizations but I was wondering if I would be lumped in with immigrants from more troubled countries and so I hesitated to put that information at all. But then I figured that it would be a bad idea to lie and then have to explain why I lied if they figured out. And I didn't visit that country for a decade. So in the end I did input that info. This decision stayed with me and caused me anxiety until the end of the 72 hour waiting period. I thought about being denied while having already spent roughly a thousand bucks on the airplane ticket and the hotel. Fortunately in the end everything went through. That put my fears at ease.

Let us fast forward to the day of the trip. My friend and I had the good idea to stay up really late the night before even though our flight was outrageously early. I think I slept for 3 hours if that. And during the 8 hour flight I absolutely could not sleep despite my best efforts. This is just me setting the stage for some heavy sleep deprivation.

Arriving at JFK, we eventually stumble upon the horribly long queue for customs. When we got to an officer, my friend went first, giving his passport and scanning his fingerprints. I went just after him, doing the same. However, the officer seems to have an issue. They close their booth and ask me to follow them. My friend's watching and is like "wtf is going on", the only thing I manage to say is "welp later I guess", maybe not realizing what is going on.

My passport withheld, I'm led to a waiting room... and told to wait there, no reason given. The officer tells me that "it" should be quick. As I scan the room, I mostly see Arab or Asian people with an additional one or two white-passing people. I sit and get my phone out to message my friend where I am and what I was told, when an agent immediately tells me that no phone is allowed. I can only imagine how panicked my friend was getting at that point.

An hour passes.

With still no reason given for what I'm going to call an arrest, I then had had time enough time to see people go through, leave and for others to take their place all the while I listened to the officers talk to each other and interact with the visitors.

The ratio of people stayed mostly the same, meaning the majority was comprised of Arab and Asian people, roughly half didn't speak English at all. There were two types of processing. The first one was people waiting 20 minutes and getting called to a counter in the same room, getting their passport back and being allowed to leave. The second one was people waiting at least half an hour and getting summoned to go with an officer to an ominous corridor, staying at least half an hour and then being allowed to leave.

The officers at the counter chatted within themselves in a friendly manner, typing on their computer at the same time, a nice front immediately shattered by how they talked down to everyone. One elderly person went to get something in their luggage placed at the opposite end of the room when two officers yell at them to sit back down. An asian person was using their phone unaware of the restriction when an officer warns them: "Don't use your phone. Don't use your phone! Hey! Don't use your phone! Oh for the love of- DON'T. USE. YOUR. PHOOONE." Apparently talking slowly to a visitor in a foreign language means they can obviously understand what the office is saying and that they're just acting like they don't understand. And more variations of cliché American cop tropes.

A half hour passes - still no reason given.

My friend tries to approach the room to get information and I hear an officer asking firmly for him to go away. (Un)fortunately an officer finally summons me. They lead me into a room and I'm invited to sit down. The officer apologizes for the wait, and then begins an hour long interview. They are very friendly and ask what places I intend to visit, they ask me about my childhood, my parents, my relation to my other country, my education, my hobbies, my jobs. Then I'm asked to unlock my phone. They go through every app and ask me to explain what they all do. They capture my Facebook name, contact names, what is open in my browser, and more stuff that I can't see.

I cannot describe how distressing it is to see an officer of the law go through your phone. I could not predict if they would stumble problematic material or if they would interpret things the wrong way. This is why I hate people that say "oh I don't care about privacy, I've got nothing to hide". You think I have anything at all to hide?! I am a law-abiding citizen of my country, I have never harbored any intention of committing a crime in my entire life, I can't harm a fly for heaven's sake!

And finally after all of this I am allowed to go. I get to my friend and hug them and try to get out of this place as fast as possible.

Maybe you're wondering if I tried to oppose any of this? Hell no. Not using my phone, waiting without reason, giving an ungodly amount of personal information and give access to my phone to a stranger, I did not fight through any of this. Why? I was afraid. I was an alien going through customs in the Patriot Act era. It was very clear to me that if I tried to block any of this process I would not go out of that airport to the US. I have my principles in privacy, but I did not want to waste a literal thousand bucks and more of my time.

So I went along.

Here's the IMDB page for The Souvenir (distributed by A24). https://www.imdb.com/title/tt6920356/

IMDB users give the score as 6.6, and the user reviews are stuffed full of people who hate it. The critic reviews are almost entirely positive though.

Here's the Cherry Picks page for The Souvenir. https://www.thecherrypicks.com/films/souvenir

They use reviews from "female-identifying and non-binary film critics", and as a result the film gets good reviews.

I find the reviews surfaced by Cherry Picks to be more thoughtful, more considered, and more useful to me than those surfaced by IMDB or MetaCritic (even though they all pull critic reviews from many of the same sources).

I've found some great films via Cherry Picks.