I just finished Elena Ferrante's "Neapolitan Novels" and am grappling with this idea of time and the aging process.

Some themes that I find peculiar are:

• Those pesky things our parents told us in adolescents, which we often absentmindedly or hotheadedly disregarded, make much more sense as an adult. And, sometimes, we don't get the chance to share our revelations with them.
• The things we wanted to dissociate from/ we found disgusting as youths are things we may cling to for comfort as an adult. (Be that as it may, sometimes the things they say are atrocious, which makes one think, what atrocious things am I saying now?).
• Sometimes the things we fear are inevitable.
• Things we said and our attitude towards our parents were harsh. As we grow older and become the receiver of such harshness, we grow to have compassion for them (possibly after they have passed) and wish we were kinder to them.
• Quarrels between friends and family members seem so important at the time of the incident, however, as space and time grow, those quarrels fall to the backdrop. Human connection is craved and desired more as we age. This makes me feel that grudges are so wasteful (although I am guilty of holding them and am holding them currently - That's an internal battle I am fighting).

There's more I can say about this, but I should hold back from rambling. So, what do you think of when you think of time and/or the aging process?

Admittedly that's 90 years of history but I've always wondered about what was the politics of the US back then, because I've never really known about them.

The parts I'm most interested in are:

Why did it take until 1832 for the state legislatures to reach a consensus on how to elect people to the electoral college? I know states' rights are a big theme in US politics, but it seems really strange that it would take them 55 years to figure out how to pick the president, even if early on, that role was a lot less powerful.

Why were there so many parties before the US settled on the Democratic and Republican parties (although they have changed plentifully thanks to the US's 2-party political system where everyone needs to bundle up into 2 large coalitions or risk turning the US into a 1-party state.)

Why did they switch so often? From my count there are:

4 main parties being:

The Democratic-Republicans vs the federalists

The Whigs and National Republicans vs the (Jacksonian) Democrats

3 3rd parties being:

The anti-masonic party

The know nothing party/cult according to wiki apparently

The free soil/anti-slavery party

(Also in 1820 there was effectively no election, in 1824, 4 people of the same party all ran for president at once, in 1836 the same thing happened and 4 Whigs ran at once, but with Democratic opposition and 3 actually won votes while one just coasted off south Carolina. Why?)

Why were there so many large parties and what were all these parties about?

This is, of course, subjective, so go with whatever your feelings are. Also, you can choose to judge quality as based on the time of the game's release, or by current standards. However you choose to evaluate the question, I'm interested in hearing about which series haven't faltered in releasing good titles across a large number of entries or span of time.

I also think it would be fun to examine some that barely miss the mark: series that are almost entirely great -- if only weren't for those one or two titles that really brought them down.

One thing I'm uncertain about Tildes is how informative its posts are meant to be. I've been keeping myself from posting hype threads about upcoming movies (Dune, Ride Your Wave, etc.).
What type of balance is tildes trying to strike? I'm in favor of shitposting, but against images, since I think text encourages the type of discussion I'm looking for a community. So I'd like to see copypasta, but I'm not sure what the general consensus is.

Edit: I'm looking less for general examples than some sort of hard and clear rule. I'm seeing comments which disagree somewhat and leave ambiguities, but I believe the criteria should be better laid out.

The month of May brings my birthday and wedding anniversary, so we usually end up making a cake or two. We don't usually do anything fancy. Usually a store-made cake. But this year with the pandemic, we ended up just getting some boxed cakes - Betty Crocker, Duncan Hines. Those sorts of things.

The problem is that they call for eggs and I'm allergic to egg yolks. (Not egg whites, oddly enough - just egg yolks.) So I've found some egg substitute. It works pretty well considering there's no egg in it. But I've found that when I use it in cakes, sometimes they turn out just fine, and other times they end up falling apart.

I know that eggs can be used for flavor, as a rising agent, as a binder, etc. but it's not clear to me how to tell which thing it's being used for in a given recipe. So my question is, in the case of a cake, are there other things I could substitute for egg yolks? The stuff I'm using has potato starch, baking powder, and psyllium husks. I guess the baking powder handles the rising aspect and the psyllium husks are probably like a binder? Are there other things I could be using?

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.

I tend to watch AlternateHistoryHub, WhatIfAlthist and occasionally Monsieur Z (but less so since the guy somehow got a far-right audience) so I've always been interested in the idea of alternate history.

However, there's more than that. There are books and writers (I.E Harry turtledove), 3 subreddits (r/historywhatif, r/historicalwhatif and r/alternatehistory), many games (HOI I, II, III and IV, civ 1-6, Vicky 1-3, etc), a forum and according to Wikipedia, people have been speculating about history since before the year 0.

So what do you think of it?

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.

Meant primarily for long threads (35+ comments)

Mainly because sometimes we just want to get to the reply box after reading through a long comment section and checking several times over now that highlighting new comments is a default feature and the fastest way to do that is closing a bunch of threads or tapping the screen a few times/scrolling.

Admittedly it's kinda silly but being able to collapse all the threads and get straight to the reply box seems like a pretty good QoL feature.

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?

Does anyone else struggle contributing to communities? Maybe I'm being overly critical of myself, but it seems like I have nothing to offer up other than comments.

I'm completely happy commenting on posts, and I feel like I do so in good faith. It just feels like if I'm not contributing actual content I'm benefiting from the community without contributing to it. Am I being overly critical? Am I looking at this all wrong?

*EDIT Spelling correction.

According to this guy, societal collapse is imminent because a. entropy and b. the high EROI (energy return on investment) afforded to society by the use of energy dense hydrocarbons such as coal and petroleum will decline dramatically in the near future due to the decreasing economic viability of acquiring them and the lack of a similarly high return alternative (barring nuclear fission, which is VeRy DaNgErOuS (and also practically infeasible politically in most countries that can achieve it), and nuclear fusion, which is, of course, perpetually 20 years away) and because this EROI is (according to him) what makes the complexity of modern civilization possible, it is inevitable that we will soon see a corresponding decline in said complexity (collapse). Now there is a section in the wikipedia article that touches on some of these points (Economic influence) so it's not totally junk science (if you trust Wikipedia, that is). However, I'm still struggling to grasp the significance of this figure. As long as our means of acquiring energy is scalable, why does it matter what the EROI is as long as it is greater than 1? if we need to spend one fifth of the energy we get from solar panels on making more, fixing existing ones, and installation, can't we just make a bunch of them to match our energy needs, even if they're growing? What am I missing here?

General Programming Q&A thread! Ask any questions about programming, answer the questions of other users, or post suggestions for future threads.

Don't forget to format your code using the triple backticks or tildes:

Here is my schema:

```sql
CREATE TABLE article_to_warehouse (
  article_id   INTEGER
, warehouse_id INTEGER
)
;
```

How do I add a `UNIQUE` constraint?

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?

So, let's say I wrote something on my blog[1] and want people to check it out. Since I don't have any proper "audience" (and I don't expect one given I rarely post something), I don't really see any way other than sharing my own posts on places like Tildes, relevant subreddits, etc.

But doing this feels bad. I feel like I'm using these places just as a dumping ground for my own posts, trying to boost my own site or whatever, even though I don't earn anything from it.

If I check my Tildes history, 3 of the 4 topics I submitted are self-promotion in some way. On my comments the ratio of promotion vs "natural" comments look lower, but even just saying that makes me feel like I'm trying to lie about something.

One thing about my small number of topics are that I don't really think about sharing links I come across, since I feel like none of them would fit the site, and most of them are already shared here.

I don't know if the self-promotion is frowned upon, if I should continue, how I'd "diversify" my posting habits, and all that. What do you all think?

[1]: Doesn't have to be a blog post, it could be anything.

Hello,

So I've been officially diagnosed with depression a few years ago. I am on medication for it and I've done therapy in the past. I am a more functional person than I was, let's say, one year ago as I've adjusted my medication.

However there is something that is SEVERELY affecting my quality of life and that is the generalized lack of interest or extreme difficulty in doing almost anything. Yes I've talked with my doctor about this. It's "normal" and we are working on it.

I don't know many people and COVID-19 took a hit on my already limited social life. So I guess I want to share my experience and hear from others who experience(ed) the same difficulties. When you are trapped in not wanting to do anything, what the hell do you do?

Recently I've started reading a physical book again. I think it is a good thing for me to have something to do that does not involve a screen. Plus it makes me sleepy if I am a bit tired which, for me personally, is great. Aside from this next experiment, the activities I do the most are playing one or two video games, study for my degree and work part-time.

Another thing I've started doing is doing the bare minimum in terms of physical exercise. I am working on doing pull-ups (I went from doing 0 to 1,5 =) ) and doing some squats. School and work rob me of a lot of energy so I tend not to exercise. But now I'm trying to at least do something.

I will try to keep up with this post but I have a tendency to procrastinate on them if I get a lot of replies. Thanks for bearing with me =).