What are you reading currently? Fiction or non-fiction or poetry, any genre, any language! Tell us what you're reading, and talk about it a bit. Previous topics Previous topics are listed in the wiki.
This thread is posted daily, and is intended as a place for more-casual discussion of the coronavirus and questions/updates that may not warrant their own dedicated topics. Tell us about what the situation is like where you live!
What have you been watching and reading this week? You don't need to give us a whole essay if you don't want to, but please write something! Feel free to talk about something you saw that was cool, something that was bad, ask for recommendations, or anything else you can think of.
If you want to, feel free to find the thing you're talking about and link to its pages on Anilist, MAL, or any other database you use!
This questions ultimately rests on the supposition of what a game intends to be or what esport should be. This is partially why it probably won't spark too much discussion, but I'm interested in your opinions nonetheless, especially when it comes to the current state of esports. It seems to me that when we are talking about rules in any kind of sport we want to change as little as we can over time. If the rules changes enough, you could argue that people have over time played what essentially is a different game. It becomes harder to compare achievements between players within the a timeline. Meta's and achievements will only really be comparable after games has stopped adding content such as new heroes or mechanics. With a lot of games there seems to be a major content patch, then long period of balancing and this cycle basically repeats itself. Another point is that by adding content and changing the meta you are preventing the current players from reaching their full potential, the older players from retaining their hard earned experience and discouraging new players by promising them a game they can never "beat". That is until the content stops coming in and in today's world that might mean that you are not able to play at all due to a lack of dedicated servers. Further the players that might once have stuck to it might already have left, leaving no opponents left to play against.
This superficial take ultimately comes from someone who hasn't really played esports except a little bit of 1.6 counter strike and counter strike global offensive. It always struck me as odd that with MOBA's and especially with shooters such as overwatch and siege, that there seem to be no pushback on this. When I ask people that prefer this sort of drip-feed-service, what I usually hear is that it's something that is necessary to keep them engaged. Isn't there ultimately a trade-off here, between a sort of accessible fun and lack of constancy which prevents players from reaching their full potential?
I immediately see the talking point of financial aspect of games. It seems to me however that Quake and counter strike largely went without major changes when compared to modern esports games. Are there any good broad rules we can use when designing esport games in order to avoid the issues mentioned here?
In an ideal world, do you agree that we generally don't want kind of content and/or rule change that we see today?
If there is a need to add content (such as heroes) to keep a game feeling "fresh". Is there an acknowledgement here that the core-gameplay isn't engaging enough? I think there is a case to be made here when it comes to MOBA's since knowledge (about enemy heroes abilities) plays a more central part when compared to more archaic shooters. Is this indicative of a an audience that is more interested in an entertaining service, rather than a (e)sport that seldom changes?
When we look at games such as world of warcraft, which isn't an esport, yet there are achievements and historic events so to speak which became cheapened or not attainable until what was basically a restart of the timeline (story of the game). Is this not what we are risking with current service models in modern esports?
What have you been doing lately for your own fitness? Try out any new programs or exercises? Have any questions for others about your training? Want to vent about poor behavior in the gym? Started a new diet or have a new recipe you want to share? Anything else health and wellness related?
This topic is part of a series. It is meant to be a place for users to discuss creative projects they have been working on.
Projects can be personal, professional, physical, digital, or even just ideas.
If you have any creative projects that you have been working on or want to eventually work on, this is a place for discussing those.
A list of all previous topics in this series can be found here.
This thread is posted daily, and is intended as a place for more-casual discussion of the coronavirus and questions/updates that may not warrant their own dedicated topics. Tell us about what the situation is like where you live!
This thread is posted daily, and is intended as a place for more-casual discussion of the coronavirus and questions/updates that may not warrant their own dedicated topics. Tell us about what the situation is like where you live!
This is a recurring post to discuss programming or other technical projects that we've been working on. Tell us about one of your recent projects, either at work or personal projects. What's interesting about it? Are you having trouble with anything?
How's everyone doing?
I'm feeling quite a bit of stress and mental burnout, so I wanted to post an "off my chest" style thread. Figured I'd keep it for the comments; maybe others could use the space, too.
(Posted in ~talk as I don't think it's productive to post this to ~health.coronavirus)
This thread is posted daily, and is intended as a place for more-casual discussion of the coronavirus and questions/updates that may not warrant their own dedicated topics. Tell us about what the situation is like where you live!
Have you watched any TV shows recently you want to discuss? Any shows you want to recommend or are hyped about? Feel free to discuss anything here.
Please just try to provide fair warning of spoilers if you can.
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.
As part of a weekly series, these topics are a place for users to casually discuss the things they did — or didn't do — during their weekend. Did you make any plans? Take a trip? Do nothing at all? Tell us about it!
I skim-read multiple news aggregators daily, and for weeks now, every single day, 75% or more of the news is specifically about Covid-19.
By comparison, it is worth reminding younger readers that we didn't even know about the Spanish Flu until ~30 years ago. During WWI, we (humans) suffered the deadliest pandemic of the modern era, and it took 60-70 years before anyone even noticed.
If you didn't grow up before the Spanish Flu became common knowledge, that may be a hard thing to grasp ... but during the late-80s and into the '90s, there was this slow, years-long trickle of news from medical researchers, historians and (FFS) archeologists (?!!?) about how there might actually have been a massive global pandemic during WWI that no one knew about.
Today in Wikipedia, there is just one little tidbit about how various things like (intentional) under-reporting and co-mingling of flu deaths with war casualties, led to it being nicknamed "the forgotten pandemic" ... which doesn't really capture that sense of "Holy Fuck"-ness when you discover that up to 100 million people died of the flu one year, and no one even noticed.
Okay ... at any rate .... you get my point. In 1919, the news intentionally under-reported it worldwide (except in Spain ... hence the name), in part to help prevent panic.
Today, the news media coverage is just incredible. Nothing on Earth happens any more, except Covid-19. A few thousand people die (I'm sorry, but yeah, more people die in car accidents), and the Media loses its mind.
OTOH, honestly, it's mostly been pretty good, accurate, up-to-the-second coverage (as best I can tell), really driving home the message of "we know it sounds lame, but wash your hands, dammit ... a lot", and etc.
So ... thoughts? This constant in-your-face media coverage ... good or bad? How much is media causing the panic vs just reporting on it?
By fiction, I mean:
literature in the form of prose, especially short stories and novels, that describes imaginary events and people. (Google)
I understand we have at least one professional writer in the house (I cannot remember your username, sorry!), and several aspirant writers.
Every once in awhile, I get the urge to suggest some collaborative threads exercises, but it's hard to gauge interest without a better notion of how many fiction writers we have.
With that in mind, I make this call for introductions!
Please try to include:
text or markdown)[1] The purpose of this question is not to assess the quality of your writing, but rather the position writing occupies in your life. Is this something you do in your free time, or does it have a central role among your other activities? I do not pretend to know how and why everyone writes, this is just a starter. Feel free to share as much as you want.
[2] For example: self-expression, philosophical investigation, external appreciation (nothing wrong with that), financial rewards, political or societal change, any combination of those.
* In order of importance
The last thread on this was from February 29, and a lot has changed since then. What are things like currently where you are?
What have you been playing lately? Discussion about video games and board games are both welcome. Please don't just make a list of titles, give some thoughts about the game(s) as well.
What have you been watching and reading this week? You don't need to give us a whole essay if you don't want to, but please write something! Feel free to talk about something you saw that was cool, something that was bad, ask for recommendations, or anything else you can think of.
If you want to, feel free to find the thing you're talking about and link to its pages on Anilist, MAL, or any other database you use!
As part of a weekly series, these topics are a place for users to casually discuss the things they did — or didn't do — during their week. Did you accomplish any goals? Suffer a failure? Do nothing at all? Tell us about it!
I'm sure it comes as no surprise to anyone familiar with what I generally submit to tildes that videos, history and history.military are my favorite topic tags... but some of the other slightly more obscure ones I also enjoy (all music related) are live, soul.blue_eyed, singer_songwriter, and cover_songs.
What about you all? What are your favorite topic tags on tildes?
p.s. If you provide the associated https://tildes.net/?tag=topic_tag links to the ones you mention so that we can all peruse them, that would be greatly appreciated. :)
This is a recurring post to discuss programming or other technical projects that we've been working on. Tell us about one of your recent projects, either at work or personal projects. What's interesting about it? Are you having trouble with anything?
What have you been doing lately for your own fitness? Try out any new programs or exercises? Have any questions for others about your training? Want to vent about poor behavior in the gym? Started a new diet or have a new recipe you want to share? Anything else health and wellness related?
It always bothers me that I know American politics presumably pretty well but my own nation's politics on a nearly surface level so I guess I'll ask this, but this can be for practically any country that isn't the US or maybe Britain.
Since this is specifically for your countries the sources can be limited to your country's language.
One source of Brazilian (my nation's) news I've heard of that isn't a from a large cable channel like CNN is Nexo, although the paywall makes serious consumption inviable simply because my parents wouldn't pay for me to read news of all things, but if you can, do it, the charts are great and the rest seems pretty good.
What have you been watching and reading this week? You don't need to give us a whole essay if you don't want to, but please write something! Feel free to talk about something you saw that was cool, something that was bad, ask for recommendations, or anything else you can think of.
If you want to, feel free to find the thing you're talking about and link to its pages on Anilist, MAL, or any other database you use!
What have you been watching and reading this week? You don't need to give us a whole essay if you don't want to, but please write something! Feel free to talk about something you saw that was cool, something that was bad, ask for recommendations, or anything else you can think of.
If you want to, feel free to find the thing you're talking about and link to its pages on Anilist, MAL, or any other database you use!
Have you watched any TV shows recently you want to discuss? Any shows you want to recommend or are hyped about? Feel free to discuss anything here.
Please just try to provide fair warning of spoilers if you can.
How are we feeling about all this? There is going to be anxiety over the next few days (weeks..months....years?) so let's talk about it.
10yr Treasury Bonds are at their lowest ever, futures market are down ~10%, and cryptocurrencies have lost billions.
How are you feeling?
As part of a weekly series, these topics are a place for users to casually discuss the things they did — or didn't do — during their weekend. Did you make any plans? Take a trip? Do nothing at all? Tell us about it!
What are you reading currently? Fiction or non-fiction or poetry, any genre, any language! Tell us what you're reading, and talk about it a bit. Previous topics Previous topics are listed in the wiki.
This topic is part of a series. It is meant to be a place for users to discuss creative projects they have been working on.
Projects can be personal, professional, physical, digital, or even just ideas.
If you have any creative projects that you have been working on or want to eventually work on, this is a place for discussing those.
A list of all previous topics in this series can be found here.
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.
As part of a weekly series, these topics are a place for users to casually discuss the things they did — or didn't do — during their week. Did you accomplish any goals? Suffer a failure? Do nothing at all? Tell us about it!
Inspired by the @culturedleftfoot post.
Try providing links, and, if you feel that your country is too big for this exercise to make sense, feel free to limit your choices to your region, state, city or even neighborhood!
Definition of Homeland (adapted from Wikipedia):
A homeland is the concept of the place where a cultural, national, or racial identity had formed. It can also mean the country of nationality, the place in which somebody grew up or lived for a long enough period that shaped his or her cultural identity, the place in which one's ancestors live for generations, or the place that one regard it as home.
I'm curious how other people think about this.
What have you been playing lately? Discussion about video games and board games are both welcome. Please don't just make a list of titles, give some thoughts about the game(s) as well.
What have you been doing lately for your own fitness? Try out any new programs or exercises? Have any questions for others about your training? Want to vent about poor behavior in the gym? Started a new diet or have a new recipe you want to share? Anything else health and wellness related?
This is a recurring post to discuss programming or other technical projects that we've been working on. Tell us about one of your recent projects, either at work or personal projects. What's interesting about it? Are you having trouble with anything?
(You could replace FPTP with STV to keep the districts that elect representatives in the house intact.)
I'll start.
The Democratic party breaks up into the neoliberal and progressive parties.
The neoliberal party is where centrist candidates like Joe Biden and Michael Bloomberg go.
The progressive party is where progressive candidates like Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren go.
The Republican party might lose a large part of their electorate to the libertarians, since many Republicans are more concerned about letting business prevail and don't really want cultural conservatism.
Andrew yang maybe also leaves the Democrats and founds his own party, the party for online reform.
The greens also become significantly more popular but they may have too much in common with the progressives.
The Senate could be changed to include as many seats as the house for proper representation.
Have you watched any TV shows recently you want to discuss? Any shows you want to recommend or are hyped about? Feel free to discuss anything here.
Please just try to provide fair warning of spoilers if you can.
As part of a weekly series, these topics are a place for users to casually discuss the things they did — or didn't do — during their weekend. Did you make any plans? Take a trip? Do nothing at all? Tell us about it!
What are you reading currently? Fiction or non-fiction or poetry, any genre, any language! Tell us what you're reading, and talk about it a bit. Previous topics Previous topics are listed in the wiki.
What the title says, basically. What's the virus like in your community? Are people stocking up on supplies?
After using Shreddit to delete my Reddit history periodically for some time now, I finally decided to make a cron job to automate it on a weekly basis. I use it to delete every post and comment that isn't whitelisted, which right now is just a tiny subreddit for a musician I like that I solely moderate and a pinned post explaining why I have a bunch of karma but barely any posts.
After setting this up, it got me curious as to what tasks other people automate in their lives in order to streamline their workflows and eliminate minor (or major) routine tasks.
So, what do you automate, and how did you go about doing it?
I'll start with @TheFanficGuy's reply to a comment of mine where he said you can bring down an authoritarian regime without a coup'd etat/successful civil war, although I admittedly can't really imagine any dictator just giving up power like that unless it hurts their economic allies. (And the Arab spring shows this above all else.)
I also wouldn't be surprised if many of these regimes only make a minimal amount of effort to keep their population shut.
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.
This is not meant to be a "which is best"-style console war question but instead one of personal affinity: which console, if any, do/did you love the most, and why? Whether you're a diehard Dreamcast fan Hello friend!, you have fond memories of your first Gameboy, or you think the PS4 is the best piece of technology of all time, tell me your story and why it means so much to you.
Also, I know we have a lot of primarily/strictly PC gamers here, so if you're wanting to view that as a console, feel free -- whether that's looking at the platform as a whole, an individual piece of hardware (e.g. my laptop from college), a specific time period (e.g. the early 2000s), or some other division. The question is about attachment to a device with a lifecycle and identity, which computers undoubtedly have too, just in different ways from consoles.
I really want to talk about the SCP Foundation with other people, so let's get a thread going!
For those of you who don't know, The SCP Foundation is an online creative writing project where people write fake files and stories about The Foundation, a secret organization committed to containing various anomalous creatures. It's a really cool website, one that I recommend to anyone who likes thrillers, horror, sci-fi, or are just looking for something interesting.
Be warned though, there are over 4,000 entries on the wiki (they just had a 5,000th entry writing contest), so if you are feeling overwhelmed by the number of articles, feel free to start out with SCP-2030, one of my personal favorites. And if you're someone who prefers audiobooks to regular reading, a YouTuber going by the name Brendaniel has a great video narrating SCP-2030.
What have you been playing lately? Discussion about video games and board games are both welcome. Please don't just make a list of titles, give some thoughts about the game(s) as well.