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!

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 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?

1. Definition

By fiction, I mean:

literature in the form of prose, especially short stories and novels, that describes imaginary events and people. (Google)

2. Introduce Yourself!

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:

• Have you ever made money writing fiction?^[1]
• First writing language(s): Examples: English, Portuguese, German, etc
• Other writing languages(s): same as above. English is implied.
• Formats^* : Examples: Short story, Romance, Play, Screenplay, etc
• Genres^*: Examples: horror, science-fiction, fantasy, etc.
• Main themes^*: Examples: relationships, violence, artificial intelligence, etc.
• Link to Writing Sample(s) on Tildes or Ghostbin (either as text or markdown)
• What do you expect to achieve with your writing (anything, either subjective or objective)?^[2]
• Apart from ~creative, where do you go for feedback?
• Are you looking for collaborations of any kind? Yes or No.

Footnotes

^[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

I'm wondering if there could be a silver lining to this coronavirus pandemic, at least for the current generations.

Maybe everyone will be more careful in the future about spreading infectious diseases by practicing better hygiene e.g. coughing in the elbow, washing hands more often, considering staying home etc. And maybe the number of people accepting vaccines will increase? I'm willing to make a bet on that one: a modest increase. I'm also hoping we can shame all the hoarders after this is over and have a better understanding of how society functions via cooperation which might lead to more self awareness. This is not going to be the last pandemic let alone epidemic, so I also hope that more governments will be better prepared for future biological natural disasters, like how Taiwan and S Korea seem to be dealing with this rather well because of their previous history with SARS.

What does everyone else think? I don't expect this to last too long, maybe a decade or two, but that would still be a good thing.

Technically two people are a team, right? :P

If it was only me I would use Org Mode, but that's not the case.

Our projects are all artistic in nature, mostly screenplay collaborations, film criticism, YouTube, podcasts, etc ^[1]. It's easy to get overly excited about this kind of stuff, but we need to follow up too. And we don't have an external demand that would incentivize us to put in the effort.

Even though we're only two people, we both have trouble sustaining long term goals, organizing schedules and information. My partner is a brilliant writer, but for him concentrating is even more of an issue than it is for me. He needs something visual. This tool must also work very well on mobile since he currently does not own a computer. It also must be graphical and easy to learn for someone that only knows Windows and MacOS.

To be more specific, I'm looking for something that allows me to track what we have done, what we're doing now and what we're going to do next. A calendar and some kind of notification system would be nice, but, as I say in the title, it must be free (I'm Brazil and our currency is worth nothing, so even the cheap is expensive for us...).

Google gives me dozens of results, reviews, etc, but it's hard to assess how good each tool is without experimenting it. And I would like to avoid learning an entire platform just to conclude it is subpar (I know this is largely unavoidable, but we can do better with a little help from our friends!).

Any suggestions? :D

^[1] Even though our projects are artistic, their execution involves many things that are not artistic at all, such as understanding, budgets, legislation, registering our works with the copywriting authority, participating in public contests, networking, etc. There are lots of menial tasks that are easy to forget.

I suspect many of you are, like me, working from home today and in the near future. I thought that it might be nice to have a single thread where we can chat about WFH and our day to day lives while self-isolating in order to feel a bit less isolated. If people think this kind of thing is a good idea, perhaps this can be a daily (or weekly o_o) thread.

Feel free to talk about:

• Day to day life at home
• What's on your agenda for work
• Your thoughts on self-isolating and quarantine.
• Casual talk that you might normally have with coworkers .
• Anything else! (Though of course, the rest of the site still exists)

I personally tend to get more work done while working from home as there are less interruptions in the form of meetings and informal breaks. So in a weird way I'm looking forward to this time in order to get quite a bit done. Still, it's hard not to get cabin fever.

How are you all doing?

Admittedly this depends on the measures being taken, which vary wildly from country/state to country, so you should probably specify where are these measures being taken to a national or state level depending in the location.

There are some very specific kinds of interactions that are much harder to find anywhere else. At the same time, large subreddits tend to have stringent rules, which mods frequently apply in an inconsistent and subjective manner.

I get that it's hard to manage a sub with thousands of people, but at the same time, it is frustrating to make an effort to write a long post just to realize there is no place for it.

To make matters worse, the principle of charity is basically unheard of, and people will evaluate your sentences in such a way to make them the least true, sometimes adding personal hostilities.

Posting on Reddit feels like something that should require a legal department, and I would very much like to stop doing that altogether. At the same time, places like /r/emacs are essential to help me quickly solve issues, and /r/destructiveReaders/ gave me some of the best criticism of my material I have ever had (and I'm including people from outside the Internet).

So I guess it comes up to self-control to not waste my time with subs that are prone to be toxic. But it's hard, sometimes.

Do you still post on Reddit? If so, what are your strategies to avoid unnecessary frustration?

Facebook et al. must be excited right now with this jackpot of acute behavioral data they're acquiring, in the context of a global catastrophe. I wonder if anyone has any insight here into what kind of research they are doing? I know it's all usually a tight secret.

One idea that came to mind is that this would be excellent data to weaponize. Now we (as in social media corps.) can generate a pretty good model of what a global conflict looks like on the level of individual behavior and how that can be used for an advantage. The other edge of the sword would be this will help future public health initiatives but somehow I don't see this info being made publically available...