I just wanted a pretext to share my first successful Expert+ song on 150% speed + Ghost Notes :)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9HQIvNCF9RA (two-part video, first half on Ghost Arrows, second half on Ghost Notes)

I got back into Beat Saber a week ago after a 2 months hiatus. I like the new OST and mechanics and I love the new Fall Out Boy DLC. Highly recommend it!

Has anyone else been playing it lately?

I'm working on opening a VR arcade in Brussels and thinking of promoting Beat Saber quite a bit there :)

I notice this primarily with the YouTube videos. I've started to notice that the videos I see posted in here I have already had recommended to me by YouTube. And I realize it must be because when I watch a video here, the YouTube algorithm decides I'm interested in that kind of thing. So, functionally, by posting and interacting with content in Tildes we are tuning the various algorithmic recommendation feeds that we interact with to view us all similarly.

It's just an interesting side effect I noticed and some food for thought about the effectiveness of a link aggregator or discussion forum at surfacing novel, interesting content we might not find otherwise. In part, this could just be an effect of Tildes being kind of small and having lots of self-selection biases for its user population. Perhaps if it was more diverse we'd be exposed to more things that break the mold and recommendation algorithms won't be able to pin it all down as easily. In fact, we may be able to use this effect as a way to test the breadth and diversity of content and types of people a site is attracting.

This post will include spoilers from all first 3 episodes.

Arcane came out on Netflix a few hours ago. I binged the first 3 episodes. It easily exceeded my expectations. I played the game for many years and I can't believe how they managed to bring those characters to life. Now I'm really hoping that they develop the Runeterra universe more like Disney is doing with Star Wars.

The character that teleports Jayce and his mom is called Ryze (Maybe I'm wrong and it's not him?). He is considered the main protagonist of Runeterra. Some other characters that I've spotted include Vi, Jinx, Ekko, Singed, Jayce, Viktor, Twitch(?), Caitlyn, Heimerdinger, Warwick(?).

One of my favorite thing about League of Legends is it's art department. This show has some great music and the video is like a painting. I really like how bright the images were, especially during that first robbery scene. The view on the cities was breathtaking. They went for a really stylized look and I really like what it does to the effects like lightning or smoke. Sometimes they draw extra lines around the objects or characters' silhouettes to make them stand out.

The story itself was good too. I was pretty engaged with all the characters. Many of them we've never heard about before in the lore. There's a meme in the community about how characters have a "dark and secret past". It's nice to finally get rid of the secret part of the quote. Seeing it animated was pretty emotional they really didn't pull any punches :D. It gives so much context for why those characters behave the way they do.

It's definitely a show I'll have to rewatch multiple times to catch all the easter eggs. For example Vi wears these goggles in the game.

I'd love to hear what people unfamiliar with the game think about this series so far. Also for those that didn't know, this series will end up being around 6 hours long once it's fully out. The second act will launch on November 13, and the third act will release on November 20.

btw for those that want to read more about this universe, there's a map here. The story is happening in Piltover & Zaun. They publish a lot of short stories here.

Edit: Arcane showrunner interview: how League Of Legends broke the video game movie curse

I have never been in the military, nor wanted to. I assume a great degree of hardship is required in military life, but I wonder what everyone thinks of the exaggerated, highly theatrical shouting and demeaning language used on recruits. Does that actually make someone a more apt soldier? Does that really prepare them for difficult/tough/combat situations?

What I meant is a world without any barriers whatsoever for the circulation of people. Each country would have border checks for things like explosives, heavy drugs, and weapons, but apart from that everyone would be allowed in, always. I'm not sure about economy measures, trade barriers, and circulation of goods, though.

But please, feel free to interpret "world without borders" however you wish! ;)

Keyword Research and SEO are entire industries today. There are tools like ahrefs and semrush that promise to give you "trending" topic keywords for a sum of monthly subscription money.

However, you can discard all their claims using a similar logic that you use to discard the claims of Astrologers, Voodooists, Stock Experts who "recommend" stocks, etc:

1. If an Astrologer knows the future of everyone, wouldn't they profit massively from it themselves using the information rather than telling the trick to everyone else (just for a pittance)?
2. If a Stock Expert knew that a stock's price will go up (and how much), won't they invest thousands and make millions themselves instead of giving those "tips" to "subscribers" and again, earn only a pittance?
3. If SEO and Search Marketing companies knew exactly which keywords can rank your blog or site in the Google Search Engine, won't they write articles on those topics/keywords themselves and profit massively with the page views instead of revealing that secret to you for merely a few cents!

I'm not sure if this goes here or in ~talk, so if it needs moved, that's fine.

I've been thinking a lot, lately, about why I use Tildes.

As noted in my bio, I left Tildes for an extended period of time, after getting embroiled in some heavy arguments that, in the scheme of things, didn't matter. Such arguments consistently make me feel worse; I get into them on this account, too, though I do try to use uBlock Origin and the tag filter to keep out of the threads that will most obviously affect me.

But I can't seem to leave Tildes entirely. Even when I log out on all devices, I keep opening the site. Even when I had no account, I kept typing til<Enter> in the address bar and coming back.

So, why?

--

First, Tildes is what I love about the web. It's complete but uncluttered; it's featureful but not bloated; it uses client-side interactivity to improve the experience but does not break or reimpement default browser functionality. Overall, it's a good piece of software, designed to create, catalog, and discuss documents, like God Tim Berners-Lee intended.

Second, and more important, Tildes is a community. It's a community like my college dorm was a community; I know people here, and while I definitely don't like all of them, I recognize the personalities behind the names. Leaving, and diving mostly back into the world of Twitter and Mastodon where conversations are short, ephemeral, and deeply restricted, feels like losing relationships, no matter how damaging and negative some of those relationships are.

I don't know if gaining this understanding means I'll be able to - or even want to - drop the site again. We'll see. But I would love to know why y'all use it. Is it a community for you, too?

#couple
Defined as:

noun:
couple; plural noun: couples

1.
two individuals of the same sort considered together.
"a couple of girls were playing marbles"

a pair of partners in a dance or game.

MECHANICS

a pair of equal and parallel forces acting in opposite directions, and tending to cause rotation about an axis perpendicular to the plane containing them.

2.
two people who are married, engaged, or otherwise closely associated romantically or sexually.
"in three weeks the couple fell in love and became engaged"

3. INFORMAL

an indefinite small number.
"he hoped she'd be better in a couple of days"

verb: couple;

3rd person present: couples

past tense: coupled

past participle: coupled

gerund or present participle: coupling

1.
combine.

"a sense of hope is coupled with a palpable sense of loss"

join to form a pair.
"the beetles may couple up to form a pair"

2.
mate or have sexual intercourse.
"as middle-class youth grew more tolerant of sex, they started to couple more often"

#Discourse of the use of the word/phrase in this particular case

You

"how many would you like?"

Them

"just a couple."

When someone requests 'a couple of...' I respond with something similar to: 'How many do you want specifically?', which leads to the discourse of, 'A couple is two, a few is >2, several is <x' and so on.

I agree with the first two clearly stated definitions of 'couple', but in the informal use of a couple (eg. a depiction of a quantity) is not specifically two...nor is 'a few' three. How many specifically is several..?

I understand the semantics within the conversation. But, the expectation of understanding that two, and only two, is implied in the use of the phrase 'a couple' in a request; is ambiguously stating what one party desires. I'm the asshole now, just tell me how many you want.

And now...your thoughts, please.

The distinction between Hard and Soft paywalls used to be clear:

Hard paywall sites only allowed paying subscribers to view their contents;
Soft paywall sites typically used a metered approach that limited non-subscribers to a certain number of free article views per month.

This made tagging paywalled submission here on Tildes, as either paywall.hard or paywall.soft, pretty easy to do, and doing so provided tangible benefits. They let submitters know when to consider providing a summary of the article, or even mirror/alternative links, so non-subscribers weren't left out. It allowed users to easily avoid or filter-out hard paywall submissions entirely, if they so chose. And also indicated when a paywall was soft, and easier to get around (e.g. by clearing browser cache, or viewing in private-browsing mode), so the article could still be read.

However in recent years the distinction between Hard and Soft paywalls has become increasingly blurry. And with all the new, constantly evolving, often opaque, paywall mechanics now in play, it has become more difficult to identify and keep track of what type of paywall a site has. E.g.

Some sites have begun adding article sharing mechanics as a perk for their subscribers (NYT). Some with hard paywalls now allow certain articles of "public interest" to be viewed by everyone (Financial Times). Some still hard paywall their print articles but allow the rest to be viewed for free (Forbes). Some have hard paywalls for recent articles but older ones are free (Boston Globe). Some decide on a case-by-case basis whether or not to paywall each individual article, based on editorial board decisions and other unspecified metrics (Business Insider). And apparently some now even switch from Soft to Hard paywalls depending on where in the world the traffic is coming from (WaPo?).

And as a result of all this, accurately tagging paywalled articles here has become increasingly difficult too, especially since there is no easy way to update all previously applied tags on older articles when a site's paywall type changes.

So, the question is, what should we do about this?
Should we simply stop trying to distinguish between hard/soft paywalls in the tags?
Should we add another "hybrid" category?
Should we just do away with the paywall tag entirely?
Or is there a better solution to this problem?

p.s. I started a "Hard vs Soft Paywalls" wiki entry to try to keep track of all the paywall types, as well as the various new mechanics I have been able to identify, for the sites commonly submitted to Tildes.

The Cowboy Bebop live-action adaptation caught the attention of many users here, so I'll link some of the reviews I could find. The show is not yet available to the audience, but entertainment websites clearly had access to it.

AV Club: Netflix’s Cowboy Bebop is a bloodless substitute for the real thing.

EW: A colorful, campy attempt at live-action anime doesn't justify itself.

The Verge: Netflix's Cowboy Bebop has heart, style, and some rough edges.

Indie Wire: Netflix’s Live-Action Riff on Everyone’s Favorite Anime Is a Cosmic Disaster

Games Radar: A Stellar Remix That Hits All the Right Notes

Polygon: Cowboy Bebop turns a classic anime into a Saturday morning cartoon

IGN: mixed

Slate: Cowboy Bebop Is Netflix’s Latest Live-Action Anime Mistake

Hollywood Reporter: negative

Rolling Stones: The Live-Action ‘Cowboy Bebop’ Takes an Anime Classic Into the Stratosphere

The Atlantic: What’s Lost When a Classic Anime Is Adapted by Netflix

RogerEbert.com: Cowboy Bebop Fails to Find a Rhythm

Time: Netflix's Live-Action Cowboy Bebop Misunderstands What Made the Original a Classic

Vulture: Cowboy Bebop’s New Shine Can’t Replace Its Old Soul

Collider: Netflix's Live-Action Show Is a Colorless, Soulless Copy of a Landmark Anime Series

Vanity Fair: Netflix’s Cowboy Bebop Is the Rare Remake That Works

Rotten Tomatoes: currently 41%

Metacritic: currently 40, Mixed or average reviewsbased on 18 Critic Reviews

I’ve been getting more into perfumery, and wanted to share a bit of my interest. I usually wear Fougère Gothique from Barrister and Mann - I really like the coumarin and ash it has. I picked up samples of Casablanca, Song of Aubrac, and Pandora from St. Claire recently. Casablanca is incredible - floral and animalistic; Song of Aubrac is also great, but a bit too floral for my tastes; and while Pandora is wonderfully put together, something about it reminds me too much of a grandma’s bathroom. Today I’m wearing Song of Aubrac layered with Fougère Gothique, and have been thoroughly enjoying the combination. I have a number of samples coming in of other fragrances with ash notes that I’m excited to try, namely Mandrava, Eshu, and Homa from Prin Lomros as well as Beaver from Zoologist. I also have Bat and Bee from Zoologist, as well as Resonance, AEOOJ (LMB), and Leaves My Body from Chris Rusak on the way to try. I’d love to hear any opinions anyone here has about fragrances, or their own adventures with them!

Insight once came to me after I was prepped for a surgical procedure. As my body's weight began to evaporate, a pain I had never recognized, but which must have always been sounding in the background noise of my being, vanished. The superadhesive worry--which sometimes frightened others as much as myself, that in order to socialize, I had learned to sometimes twist into a temporary shape resembling charm--came unstuck and peeled away. Then followed a great thought, a mandate for how I should spend the remainder of my life. Also, I needed to poop. But more than that, I needed to get out of this semi-public hospital bed and to a private space immediately, so I could allow this cosmic insight a moment to fully bloom. Time was against me. Anesthetized, I knew I was slipping toward, maybe even over, the falls past which I would forget everything of this experience until a groggy post-procedure awakening brought dull daylight and its senseless aches back to me. I had to somehow save the thought. I searched, but the bathroom gave up no markers, no specimen cup labels to write on. I wondered about tearing toilet paper into little letters, hiding them above the cabinet. But would I remember to return to read the message? With an increasingly calm desperation, I dug my nails into the flesh of my hand and repeated again and again the life-saving insight delivered during communion with the world that lay beyond pain. Please remember, please remember this thought.

When I regained consciousness, it was waiting for me like a friend who had lost patience, and now seemed much less attractive. What I had somehow stolen from the gods, secreted in my closed palm through a swim across the river Lethe, was this message: “Do Drugs.”

I had realized that analysis, working on the problem of myself both mentally and verbally, had won me no appreciable gains. Insight, I had. But relief, happiness, an improved outlook? Nothing I had done had really helped me feel better. Anesthesia instantly had. These aren’t the words of an addict coming on-line. I was a reluctant user of any substance. However, in the years following I forced myself to again undertake drug trials with my psychiatrists. Methodically, I worked through every class, waltzed backward through the eras of drugs, danced off-label with each oddball wallflower, ingested every twisted molecule to ever win over the FDA with a promise of psychiatric benefit and maybe some that merely had intrigued one of my more historically-curious doctors. When Eddie Haskell, MD wanted to resurrect a drug of the bad old days just to see what it’d do to a person, I was the patient with his hand out.

I overslept and didn’t sleep. I gained and lost a third of my body weight. My head felt like a styrofoam block, then like the slate of a blackboard being scraped with tableware. I was more or less charged, sweaty, sensitive to light, and shaky. Some drugs make you feel like Benjamin Braddock in his birthday diving suit. Others make you feel like an amnesiac idiot in Benjamin Braddock’s birthday diving suit. A common theme emerges. These substances could help me feel slower, distant from the world, claustrophobic, clammy, sensorily distorted. Sometimes, they dulled my anxiety, or dried my hair-trigger tear ducts, but they accomplished this through impairment, and very clumsily. I have never been drunk, but I think it’s like a drunk traffic cop: success in psych meds comes about by the stopping of certain avenues, slowing up of traffic, blocking lawful turns. And it’s sometimes noted in the overall impact that fewer crashes have occurred. To me this is not success. Impairment so far hasn't been healing for me. I want my turn at quoting the line, "I feel like myself again."

And so, my heart sinks at every day's new headline about psychedelics. If you follow health news at all, you know they are a hot topic, showing a ridiculous amount of promise. Despite fitting the diagnostic profile, my former home was far from anywhere with signups for studies. I reached out to several "clinics" offering psychedelic-assisted therapy. They struck me as resembling many legal weed shops--loads of young bros polishing their presentation and sanitizing an extortionate drug deal in hopes of financing a Tesla. With fees starting at 8x the plane ticket to administer and contextualize a drug that costs less than $20 a dose, I wouldn't credit their soft patter as containing much idealism.

And here I am--for other reasons besides. Yes, a part of me thought living here would put legal psychedelics within my reach, but I'm not seeing any opportunities. Now I'm kicking myself for never having tried to cultivate mushroom spores, never having ventured to ask acquaintances for a hand. I'm marooned here and psilocybin is about blow up in the States.

I just finished watching it (pirated, because I wasn’t going to give Disney money after all the controversy regarding Taiwan).

Uhh, it.. was bad? I mean I’m usually pretty positive especially about all the Disney remakes, and I liked the general darker mood of this Mulan version. But what’s with the 90s era cgi physics?

Also, and I get the Mulan plot line is entirely about how ridiculous gender-gating is in general, but whew there is a serious case of The Stupids around a lot of the tradition, much more so than in the original. This felt very tropey to me, convenient idiocy. I mean yes okay this takes place 1200 years ago but …

I appreciated not seeing mushu, but the Phoenix could have just been a lot lot lot more subtle.

And I’ve never seen snow look so much like party foam. This is the same studio that produced Frozen?!

Man, this movie felt like it was written, produced and directed in 1998. I would say I watched the wrong one by mistake but the original was actually good for its time.

What happened, did I miss something? This could have been an amazing movie full of great music, awesome choreography, and a super dark take on the original. Instead, I watched the equivalent of a machine learning exercise in turning anime to live action.

I've recently experienced something multiple times and wanted to see if others are seeing this. I'm seeing various news articles where the first few paragraphs basically say the exact some information over and over again 3 or 4 times in slightly different ways. My most recent experience was this article about some hackers selling information on billions of Facebook users.

The article starts off with the title "Personal Information of More Than 1.5 Billion Facebook Users Sold on Hacker Forum". Straightforward and to the point. Next we get this paragraph in bold:

The private and personal information of over 1.5 billion Facebook users is being sold on a popular hacking-related forum, potentially enabling cybercriminals and unscrupulous advertisers to target Internet users globally.

Next is a bullet list of the highlights of the incident:

Highlights:

• Data scrapers are selling sensitive personal data on 1.5 billion Facebook users.
• Data contains users’: name, email, phone number, location, gender, and user ID.
• Data appears to be authentic.
• Personal data obtained through web scraping.
• Data can be utilized for phishing and account takeover attacks.
• Sold data claimed to be new from 2021.

This rehashes the number (1.5 billion) and place (Facebook), but does contain new information like what was leaked, and some unsubstantiated claims about whether it's authentic and how it was obtained.

The next paragraph repeats the 1.5 billion number a fourth time, and repeats that the data is available on a hacker forum. Two paragraphs later, we get another list of bullet points which are identical to the 2nd bullet point above; namely that the info contains:

According to the forum poster, the data provided contains the following personal information of Facebook users:

• Name
• Email
• Location
• Gender
• Phone number
• User ID

At this point I stop reading because I mistakenly think that I'm re-reading the same paragraph over and over again. It's an incredibly unpleasant experience.

Is anyone else seeing this? I've been seeing this not just on smaller sites like the one linked here, but on major news sites like CNBC and CNN, too. I know that news sites are having their budgets slashed, etc., but I literally can't read articles like this. I mean my brain just won't let me complete them because it thinks it's caught in a loop or something. It's hard to describe.

My two roommates and I just finally got over some kind of weird cold-like illness, took us 11-12 days to recover. Not Covid (based on 1 negative PCR test for one of us; I'm assuming we all had the same thing). Presumably, just your random cold/flu-type bug. A remote co-worker (400 km away, both of us in EU) has been experiencing a similar illness for over a week now, still not over it.

It took the three of us almost 2 weeks to get over it. The symptoms kept changing every 1-2 days (sore throat, then harsh cough, then chest/lung pain, then gas and intestinal issues, then headache, then back to coughing); had a false "I'm all better now" moment halfway thru, then Phase 2 kicked in. On top of which, I don't get sick much, and when I do, it's usually very mild and I'm over it very quickly.

So, I have a hypothesis. Thanks to all of the social distancing, OCD hand-washing, masking, etc for the past 18 months, "regular" colds/flus/germs have probably been going through some pretty extreme evolutionary stresses, just like Covid ... and are probably mutating/evolving a lot, just like Covid. Except all the researchers and specialists are pretty much completely preoccupied with Covid research/work, so no one has been paying much attention to all the other day-to-day respiratory illnesses.

I've seen a fair bit of news about how colds/flus have been much less common of late, due to the Covid-precautionary measures, but I have not seen any research or discussion about how those measures might be impacting other non-Covid illnesses.

Thoughts?

Is there an example in sharing a comedy(amusing, causing laughter) NOT at the consequence of something else's tragedy(distress, suffering, downfall)...?

Is there a funny story that doesn't diminish an other?

I've noticed some people making a point of editing titles on articles to either impose or undo title case on articles. I dug around a bit and haven't been able to find any style guide suggestions on the matter.

Barring some kind of official stylistic standards being laid down, that I'd like to respectfully request that curator roles refrain from overruling a submitter's formatting choices without good reason.

This has been a thread I’ve wanted to make for a while but I’ve hesitated to for fear of it going badly. Recent events, however, have made me think it’s a topic that’s we can’t really afford to ignore.

When people read the phrase “toxic masculinity”, some see a clear collection of bad behaviors or mindsets that exist independent of men as a whole, while some see an indictment of an entire gender or identity. I’ve talked to men who have admitted to not knowing how to be masculine without being “toxic”because they can’t see a clear line where one ends and the other begins.

Thus, I’m interested in exploring what specifically gets defined as “toxic masculinity” and how we distinguish it from neutral or positive masculinity.

Part of what has kept me from asking this is that I see in people here two different experiences that I fear might collide in bad ways. I know we have people here (myself included) who have been directly harmed by behaviors and mindsets that would fall under the umbrella of “toxic masculinity”. Likewise, I know we have people here who have been harmed by an over-application of the phrase — being seen or treated as “toxic” simply for being men and thus being denied the dignity of their own identity. Giving credence to one experience can feel like it overrides the other.

Even just the phrase itself is the kind of thing that often divides people into camps and causes conflict, and I’m hoping we can avoid that here. (Though, to be honest, Tildes always impresses me with how we handle difficult topics, so I’m not sure where my worry is coming from). My goal for this topic is for everyone to have the opportunity to speak openly to convey understood truths and lived experiences in ways that maintain dignity for everyone involved.

The guiding question is about distinguishing masculinity from toxic masculinity, but answers don’t have to be limited to that. I’m interested in hearing about people’s relationship with masculinity in general, both in people who identify with it and those who don’t.

Following the London E-Prix I thought I'd share some ideas I've had on how Formula E might be able to improve generally. Of course they'll never see this, but that's not the point right?

Live Broadcast

• The timing tower needs some improvement, mostly with adding team colours or logos to help differentiate them at a glance. This is definitely needed to better understand what's happening, especially with a 24-car grid.
• In group qualifying, the live lap timing appears seemingly in whichever order the director selects the drivers in. It would be better to order them showing whoever started their lap first, first.
• The broadcast, both this weekend and previously, has lacked a little polish. I know they're operating on a smaller budget than other world championship motorsports but fixing the audio and team radio issues, and not cutting away from an overtake that's about to happen, are a minimum in my opinion.
• They might do well to showcase the car development a little more. It's not a spec series but you'd be forgiven for thinking it is given how little they mention it - given road relevancy is a key focus of the sport I don't see why they don't focus on development of the powertrains every so often and how that is being carried over to road cars.

Racing

• More consistent penalties would help the sport's reputation a little. At the moment this is an easy way for people who don't watch the sport to criticise it - rightfully, as similar incidents are given very different penalties that seem to have no relevance to the incident itself.
• I think most locations should host double headers. Firstly, why spend all the effort building the track and paddock for a single 45 minute race? Secondly, it's more compelling to say a driver is looking to reverse a poor result "tomorrow" rather than "in three weeks".
• The championship should start and end in the same year. Having to say "2020-21 season" is more wordy than simply "2021 season" and the reason we need to use terms like "season 7" instead.
• I hope they keep group qualifying! The drivers love to complain but it keeps the championship close without artificial reverse-grids, and the title still goes to the team and driver who best maximised the situations they found themselves in.
• FanBoost is difficult - I don't take part in it, but don't hate it either. I like how there's still some skill involved - it's not a guaranteed overtake button, and sometimes the driver fails to get past. I do think it would benefit from preventing drivers repeatedly getting FanBoost, giving others a chance. Perhaps if a driver wins it twice in a row, take them out of voting for one or two races?

Others

• Better communication, especially with ticket sales. Right now it's not a given that an event will be able to host spectators, but they could have announced either way a bit earlier to give fans a chance to make or cancel plans to attend.
• A way to watch historical races would be a benefit! There doesn't seem to be a universal way right now like there is with F1TV & was with Formula E races on their YouTube channel. For some reason, probably broadcasting rights, they took them down - I think it would be beneficial to put them back as it's an easy way for a fan to share a good race with someone else.

What do you think?

Hello everyone,

I recently got put on some SSRI for my worsening suicidal ideation and honestly I can't believe the difference it's made. It's like a version of myself that I find hard to believe existed, but can draw parallels with the version of me before I got depressed, etc.

I'm just curious how I should be viewing these changes in me: Are they really me without depression/anxiety or is it a more lurid exaggerated version of that?

Any other thoughts on SSRIs in general welcome! I'm interested in seeing Tildians' thoughts on them :)

This tournament has been absolutely bonkers so far with last night as the culmination so far. What an absolutely mad night that was. 14 goals and a penalty shoot out. The world champions are out after a heroic effort from the Swiss and Croatia putting up one helluva fight against Spain. I can't remember a EURO or WC so exiting before.

Edit: Just to clarify - this wasn't meant as a provocation or a dig at this sites lack of interest in sports. I'm just excited.

As a new member I am really hesitant to post this but I recently posted an article to ~news that was related to lgbt issues and it was moved to ~lgbt. I fully support a sub section devoted to lgbt but news should be news regardless.

Just because it has an lgbt angle does not mean it should be moved. I'm not even lgbt myself but I find it sort of hurtful that a news article was pushed off ~news. So I ask this, and once again not trying to make waves. But why?

Edit: I would love to be a member of this community as I am personally seeking a less asshole filled reddit alternative. But pushing a news article to another ~ just because it relates a bit more to them shouldn't be a thing. If you are tolerant it relates to us all. And yes I know I posted it in ~news because I was trying to participate and I'm a news junky.

Sorry.

Edit 2: This was a sad sorry way to come in to this community. I apologize.

I never considered myself an introvert or shy. I’ve always been comfortable talking with strangers, whether that was in my college class or just sparking up a conversation with someone next to me in line.

I haven’t talked to a stranger irl since the pandemic started and I’m running scenarios in my brain about how I would talk to someone when I just met them. And every situation I’m going through I’m being awkward and uncomfortable.

I can talk to my family and my cousins, who are essentially my only friends, just fine but that’s different since there’s already an established way of communication there.

I just feel like I’m gonna be so rusty at talking to people, which is a shame because I’ve spent years learning how to talk to strangers in a certain way to make them comfortable and to very easily have a conversation. And I feel like I lost all of that now.

Looks like Tildes hasn't discussed this show for a year or two. I just finished binge-watching the first 5 seasons (I'm hoping there is a Season 6 in the offing), and of course, I now feel like discussing it. This thread is wide open to whatever anyone wants to bring up about the series. But my first question for people is this--

Did anyone notice any significant change in quality after Amazon took it over? If so, better or worse? How?

For me, somewhere around Season 3 or 4, it felt like the story quality declined. Not that it's "bad" in any way ... just that it got less original, more like traditional series plot devices. And that could just be me, or that--in general--even the best shows tend to lose some of their edge after the first few seasons ... or maybe they're just following the books (never read 'em) and this is how the books went.

But, yeah ... it's turning into a nicer, more nuanced Stargate ... the Good Guys trying to save humanity from The Terrorist Mastermind ... the Evil Post-Soviet Empire conspiring to help said Terrorist, etc. They even had Snidely Whiplash tying the poor girl to the railroad tracks.

I'm obviously over-simplifying here; it is still an excellent show ... just, like I said; it started to feel less original. I'm wondering if that's just my impression, and if not, do we know that it's an "Amazon" thing, or what?

The main reason I ask this is that, given these types of songs exist mainly to rile up a people in support or opposition to something, which leaves very little serious discussion to be had, other than the top comment offering some context. So what do you think? Given these songs are mostly more about nations, peoples, faiths, I'd probably post them in ~humanities inst of just ~music, but I want other opinions. I also generally make exceptions to sad music of this type, mainly because it's more meaningful.

I've never been one to follow much social media - certainly not the kind that is just a (almost certainly fake) presentation of a perfect life. Someone's highlight reel. But I did catch myself on the other side of this. I spent hours on some days baking or cooking specifically to flex on people with well-crafted photos of the finished food. I still enjoyed it, but once I realized what I was doing I started cooking much more reasonably difficult dishes - so I'm sure it was motivated by a wish to instill envy in others.

So I think I understand that side of the equation. But I had a more or less captive audience (a Slack #food channel). Can anyone speak from the side of the willing consumer? The avid subscriber?

The contest is still more than a month away, but all songs have been released, so let's have a listen and a discussion!

Eurovisionworld has links to all the songs (ordered by how likely the bookmakers consider it for them to win the contest). There's also a YouTube and a Spotify playlist of all the songs.

So which songs are your favourites? Guilty pleasures? Overrated, underrated? Most fun? Most excited to see performed live? Predictions? Etc.

Episode 4 of Falcon and Winter Soldier had me contemplating the architypes these characters represent. If you haven't seen the latest episode, I recommend watching it first because it actually does a lot to develop their characters (also spoilers are bound to come up).

Anyways, both characters show a clear commitment towards a guiding set of morals. Zemo with his unwavering commitment against super powered individuals. Cap with his fight against terrorism in the name of justice. Cap obviously believes himself to be good, but his actions don't always reflect that. Meanwhile Zemo seems to be aware that his zealous actions are morally problematic, but doesn't really care.

I realize it's kind of a silly question, but the ambiguity of the actions these characters take has me wondering where they would traditionally fit on the good ole' alignment chart.

Up until recently my girlfriend’s grandmother had a relatively good life. She’s taken care of, had some interesting allucinations, slept most of the day and had funny interactions with her grandaughter, some of which ended up on Instagram.

In recent weeks, she started refusing food and spent days at the hospital. The sudden lost in autonomy made her hostile. It’s a struggle to change her diapers. The situation was made worse by the feeding tube up her nose, which she attempts to remove non-stop, and can only be replaced at the hospital. We had to restrain her arm. That is no way to live.

She's made it very clear she does not want to be in this world any longer. Today I heard a hundred year old lady scream, multiple times: "just let me die!".

I don't know what to make of it.

Edit: I'd like to thank everyone's answers. I wasn't really looking for a solution since the legal situation in my country does not allow for any wiggle room. But it is always nice to read the smart people of Tildes passionately explore their ideas, sharing knowledge with compassion. Sometimes it is enough to feel less alone. Thank you and good night.

It might sound silly to most, but I have had one for years now.

I started to really listen to music on my own volition in the early 2010s when I was in my early 10s, and I was really big into EDM at the time (big room house, brostep, electro house, progressive house, etc).

At some point in 2014 I wanted to expand my tastes so I ended up on rateyourmusic.com which is the kinda place you always end up on at some point if you go down this path the way I see it, and at first I just checked the overall charts and shrugged since it wasn't my kind of music at all (The Beatles, The Beach Boys, Miles Davis, Pink Floyd, The Rolling Stones, Radiohead, etc), but at some point it started bothering me; "why is all that crappy old music so highly regarded?" and I started giving the stuff a try. Didn't like it at all, but I somehow starting feeling compelled to try and understand/appreciate it.

Eventually, I fell down a sort of rabbit hole when I started reading discussions on how some music is "objectively better" than others and I completely believed it. Pushed around by the extremely harsh disdain towards the EDM I loved and godly praise of the type of thing I just mentioned, I just kinda felt like I was supposed to move on and basically listened to a lot of stuff like that.

Another while later I eventually realized that the whole "objectively good/bad" thing is one ugly sack of false shit, but I've been really burned out since then, and now I don't even really feel the music I used to like. Problem is, at this point the act of crawling through the charts looking for new music, constantly listening to new stuff, thinking about genres, etc, is so deeply ingrained in my behavior that I can't seem to stop. I have music on at nearly all times, and I force myself to listen to everything in full despite not feeling it at all.

Something that's also gotten me is the whole repeated listening thing, I've always really loved the idea of being able to enjoy something you initially didn't care for or were lukewarm towards by simply repeatedly listening to it. That also caused me to disregard my own impressions and force myself to repeatedly listen to almost everything. I'm mostly out of that phase now, but I sometimes still find myself digging through random stuff I've given low ratings and listening to it again purely to see if I suddenly like it, but it has literally never even worked once. I also think this has been a contributor to me being burned out on music.

At this point I kinda feel like I'll never truly enjoy music again like I used to and it's really sad. Sometimes it does return a little, but if have to explain it with a rating, I can't say I've ever really felt anything above a 7/10 again, most of the time it's between a 3/10 and 6/10. I totally realize I just need to take a break, but I simply can't seem to stop (through a lot of effort I have actually managed to take a full break last month, but I immediately relapsed when I resumed this month, and even without that it doesn't seem like it helped all that much). What a lot of people have with things like gaming and food, I basically have with music.

Does anyone else have anything like this?

What product features would you hope the vendors would add in preparation for that eventuality?

For example... For the last year, we all have had “one connection, one face on screen.” That’s given everyone a kind of equality, where we each have an equal seat at the table. (With or without cat filters.) Now we have to contemplate returning to an environment where SOME people are in the office, and thus huddled around a conference table, and the rest of the team is working from home. It was like that in the Before Times, but now everybody is more cognizant of the disadvantages… not the least of which is the poor video organization in conference rooms. Few companies are smart enough to install a camera that’s pointed at the people around the conference table, for instance, however simple/cheap an option that is.

I've been thinking a good bit about gender-neutral language lately, and I've been making an effort to eliminate unnecessarily gendered language from my day-to-day speech. However, there are a few sticking points for me that I am having a hard time with finding my way around. One of the most difficult for me, having been brought up in the deep south and still living there, are honorifics like "sir" and "ma'am". I use these when addressing pretty much anyone, and it's a habit I'm having a hard time breaking. It's got me thinking about whether there are any good alternatives that would feel respectful of the person I'm addressing while not sticking out too much. If that's not an option (and I suspect it would be asking too much) then what are your ideal alternatives, either neologisms, borrowed from other languages, or just repurposed words that are in current use?

Examples of usage that I would love to replace:
"Yes, sir/No, ma'am"
"Excuse me, sir/ma'am"
"Mr./Mrs./Ms." (I use this less often but still catch myself at times. I also think this one has the best alternative currently in use, with Mx. catching on in some places)

Also, if this question is missing the mark or disrespectful in any way, please let me know. I'm still learning!

Let's discuss themes for our March 1 Writing Club submissions. (If prompts or themes aren't your thing, you may write what you like and post when the submission topic opens.) Feel free to suggest a prompt (a scenario, dilemma, or background), a theme, or an ambiguous title to jump-start writing efforts. What do you want to suggest?

This thread is inspired by an off-topic discussion in another thread that was so interesting that I wanted to make a whole post about it. I've often seen people on the net express surprise that others have different modes of thought, typically with statements like "It was surprising to learn that others do/don't have an internal monologue!", where the do/don't choice depends on the person. I've thought for a while that a lot of this confusion might arise from people interpreting "Internal monologue" differently, and that people might actually think more similarly that it appears at first glance. My attempt to explain this in that thread was:

For example, I certainly do not vocalize all of my thoughts and it seems like my speed of thought goes much faster than the amount of time it would take to vocalize every single thing going through my head. That being said, once I concentrate on what I am thinking about, there is definitely a vocal component. If I think about going downstairs to get a snack, my thoughts are non-vocal, but once I think about the fact I am thinking about going to get a snack, I impose a narrative that has some type of vocal quality to it - I will think, I believe in words, that my thought was "I am going to go get a snack". I suspect in discussions like this a lot of people perhaps conflate the thought with the thought about the thought, since the latter is necessary to convey what one is thinking about and (at least in my case) has some type of narrative element.

So I am curious, Tildes - can you explain how you think, preferably both in moments where you are not actively thinking about thinking and those where you are?

(I don't personally have any interest in trying much of anything if anyone interprets this post as such. And yes, 'drugs' is a general/vague and loaded term and I might be asking too much in a single topic)

My opinion on drug legalization was generally summed up as pro-legalization, but really because just banning everything doesn't work and generally just understood drugs as bad.

However, I often hear people talking about drugs as giving them new experiences, enhancing sensations and generally being fun.

However, being Brazilian/Latin American, drugs here are often associated with illegal traffic, gangs, poverty, crime, among other bad things and, unlike in the US and Europe, this is generally something that is exterior to us, nor a position held overwhelmingly by social conservatives who rant about "the devil's lettuce", because it affects poor people (although, yes, that's also true in the US).

So back to the title question:

What separates people that have positive and negative experiences with drugs?

The 3 obvious differences are:

The drugs used. Drug gangs traffic stuff like cocaine and areas like [the] Cracolândia are populated by people dependent on crack, while people advocate for legalization of weed or psychedelics which are very different and "weed is no worse than alcohol" is confirmed to be truth and has been for a while. A question I have concerning this is what separates 'good' drugs from 'bad' drugs?

Preparation, since obviously you don't want to be high at work (or asking for help on a Tildes thread, that happened.) A question I have in that area is what preparations do people take before taking weed or DMT and other drugs.

Their motivations for taking drugs, since a lot of the bad examples come from people taking drugs to fill holes in their lives, while good examples are the vast majority of the time recreational (aka, for fun.)

Are there any other differences anyone wants to delineate?

p.s the difference between this post and this post is that I want to ask questions and get people's opinions and answers in this one more.

Here's a few examples, last one being an argument between a few people where most people, including Deimos agreed with this idea.

Personally, I find this idea almost terrifying because it implies social media in it's current form cannot be fixed by changing or expanding human or automoderation, nor fact checking, because moderation can't reasonably occur at scale at all.

However, I have 2 questions:

1: If large social media platforms can't really be moderated what should we do to them? The implied solution is balkanizing social media until the 'platforms' are extended social circles which can be moderated and have good discussion (or more practically, integrate them to a federated service like mastodon which is made to be split like this or something like discord.) An alternative I've heard is to redo the early 2000s and have fanforums for everything to avoid context collapse and have something gluing the site's users together (something I am far more supportive of) or a reason for invite systems and stricter control of who enters your site but doesn't explain the idea that once your site hits a certain usercount, it will inevitably worsen and that is something that stems from human nature (Dunbar's number aka the max amount of friends you could theoretically have) and so is inevitable, almost natural.

2: Why is moderation impossible to do well at large scales? While I think moderation, which I think is analogous to law enforcement or legal systems (though the many reddit mods here can definitely give their opinions on that) definitely likely isn't the kind of thing that can be done at a profit, I'm not entirely sure why would it be wholly impossible. A reason I've heard is that moderators need to understand the communities they're moderating, but I'm not sure why wouldn't that be a requirement, or why would adding more mods make that worse (mods disagreeing with eachother while moderating seems quite likely but unrelated to this.)

I'm aware of the more relaxed approach to sexuality and bare breasts among some European countries as compared to elsewhere in the world, but how is this viewed when it comes to teens? I've watched a few series in the past few months (e.g. Dark, Les Revenants, La Casa de Papel) that featured topless characters in the 15-17 age range participating in sex scenes, and while I knew the actors were definitely older than 18, I couldn't help feeling a little squicky since they were ostensibly portraying minors. Is this considered at all controversial? I imagine cultural factors like lower ages of consent or Romeo and Juliet laws might have some relevance here? I can't really draw on any examples besides those three series... I know that Mignonnes had its fair share of controversy in the US (despite not showing any actual nudity AFAIK) as it seemed to be a story on the sexualization of pubescent girls, but I never followed how it was received in France.

As a matter of fact, I'm interested in hearing from other parts of the world too.

So what I'm talking about is stuff like this 10-video playlist or this 3 video playlist (Emp never actually made it a playlist unfortunately).

So how should we deal with multiple videos from the same person on the same subject?

Should the ability to make 10 link posts and wrap them under a single topic so people can comment on each video individually be a new feature (and if so should we be able to upvote the whole thing or each link individually?)

Should we upload a playlist of all the videos like this?

Should we make a text post with all the video links, like this but with videos instead of chapters?

Or should we do something else?

Glenn Greenwald resigned from from The Intercept_ an online publication he helped start after the Edward Snowden Leaks. In that letter Glenn Greenwald goes into detail for the reason for his resignation.

The final, precipitating cause is that The Intercept’s editors, in violation of my contractual right of editorial freedom, censored an article I wrote this week, refusing to publish it unless I remove all sections critical of Democratic presidential candidate Joe Biden, the candidate vehemently supported by all New-York-based Intercept editors involved in this effort at suppression.

Editor-in-Chief of The Intercept's response with a heavy critique of Glenn Greenwald work as a Journalist.

it is important to make clear that our goal in editing his work was to ensure that it would be accurate and fair. While he accuses us of political bias, it was he who was attempting to recycle the dubious claims of a political campaign — the Trump campaign — and launder them as journalism.

Glenn Greenwald post the unedited article w/ typos and and all that The Intercept refused to publish.

Glenn has also posted the email exchange between himself and other editors at The Intercept.

It is pretty clear there are certain subject areas where the discussion simply never goes well here. This isn't a Tildes thing really. Frankly these topics rarely go well anywhere online but, as we have aspirations 'round these parts of being more sophisticated than the Reddit rabble, I think it's worth digging into.

Overall Tildes is a fairly low-activity site, but if I ever see a topic that even tangentially touches on "identarian" issues get past double-digit comments, there will almost surely be an acrimonious exchange inside. I don't want to pretend I'm above this, I've been sucked into these back-and-forths myself as, I think, has almost every regular poster at one time or another. I've largely disengaged from participating in these at this point and mostly just watch from the sidelines now.

Unlike most of the common complaints with Tildes, I don't think this one will get better as the site grows and diversifies. If anything, I think it's going to end up creating norms and a culture that will bleed over into other controversial topics from tabs/spaces to iOS/Android. To keep that from happening, the community will need to form a consensus on what "high quality discussion" means and what we hope to get out of having conversations on these issues here.
To start, when I say "doesn't go well" I'm thinking of indicators where some combination of the following happen:

1. None of the participants learn anything new about the subject, themselves, or another viewpoint
2. Preponderance of "Malice" and "Noise" tags
3. Heated back-and-forth exchanges (related to the above)
4. Frequent accusations (and evidence) of speaking in bad-faith or mischaracterization of peoples' statements

These threads end in people being angry or frustrated with each other, and it's become pretty clear that members of the community have begun to form cliques and rivalries based on these battle lines. It also seems like the stridency and tone are making people leave out of frustration, either deleting their accounts or just logging off for extended stretches of time, which is also an outcome we don't want. So let's go into what we can do to both change ourselves and how others engage with us so people feel like they're being heard without everything breaking down into arguments.

The "Whys" of this are varied and I'm sure I don't see the whole picture. Obviously people come into any community bringing different background experiences and with different things they're hoping to get out of it. But in my view the root cause comes down to approaching discussions as a win/lose battle rather than a shared opportunity to learn about a subject or perspective. From observing many of these discussions without engaging, there are evident patterns in how they develop. The main thrust seems to be that criticism and pushback pretty quickly evolve from specific and constructive (e.g. "This [statement or behavior] is problematic because [reason]") to general and defamatory (e.g. "[Person] is [bad thing], as evidenced by them doing/making [action/statement]").

This approach very quickly turns a conversation between two people into a symbolic battle about making Tildes/the world safe for [community], defending the wrongfully accused, striking a blow against censorship, or some other broad principle that the actual discussion participants may or may not actually be invested in. Once this happens the participants are no longer trying to listen or learn from each other, they're trying to mine their posts for things they can pick through to make them look bad or invalidate their participation. This has the effect of obliterating nuance and polarizing the participants. Discussions quickly devolve from people speaking candidly to people accusing each other of mischaracterizing what they've said. This makes people defensive, frustrated, and creates a feedback loop of negativity.

The win/lose battle approach permeates political discussion on Tildes (and elsewhere), which is a separate issue, but it gets especially problematic in these threads since the subject matter is intensely personal for many people. As a result, it's important to take care that pushback on specific positions should always endeavor to make people feel heard and accepted despite disagreement. On the flip side, there needs to be a principle of charity in place where one accepts that "no offense/harm intended" actually means no offense intended without dissecting the particulars of word-choice to uncover secret agendas. If a charitable interpretation is available, it isn't constructive to insist or default to the uncharitable one. It may not feel fair if you know that the more negative interpretation is correct, but it is literally impossible to have productive discussion any other way. If you can't imagine that a well informed, intelligent, and decent person might hold a certain view then the only conclusion you can draw is that they're either ignorant, stupid, or evil and every response you make to them is going to sound like you think this of them. That's not a position where minds are going to be changed from. English isn't necessarily a first language for everyone here and, even if it is, not everyone keeps up to date on the fast moving world of shifting norms and connotations in social media. What's more, not all cultures and places approach these issues with the same assumptions and biases you're familiar with.

Now I don't actually believe in appealing to peoples' sense of virtue to keep things going constructively in situations like this. Without very active moderation to reinforce it, it just never works and can't scale. So I think operationalizing these norms is going to take some kind of work. Right now we freeze out comments when they have a lot of back-and-forth, which I think is good. But maybe we should make it a bit more humanistic. What if we rate limited with a note to say "Hey this discussion seems to be pretty heated. Maybe reflect on your state of mind for a second and take a breather if you're upset."

Or, in long threads with lots of my bad indicators, the submit button can send to the post preview rather than immediately posting. It could then flash a banner to be a quick reminder of the ground rules (e.g. Try to assume good faith, Remember the Human, Listen to understand rather than respond, Careful with the snark, It's not about winning/losing, etc.) This would introduce just a touch of friction to the posting process, hopefully just enough to make people think "Maybe I could phrase that better" or "You know, this isn't worth my time" and disengage (Obligatory relevant XKCD)

Alternatively, maybe it is the case that this is honestly just intractable without some sort of third-party mediation mechanic and we freeze out comments under such topics entirely. Like I said before, I worry the frequency with which these discussions turn dispiriting has a chance of acculturating new users or signaling to prospective users that this is an expected way for this community to engage.

This is a long post, and I hope it does not itself turn into another case study in the issues I'm trying to raise. I want to open the floor to anyone who has other ideas about causes and solutions. I also ask that we try to keep any critiques to specific actions and behaviors without trying to put blame on any groups of people. We all contribute to the vibe one way or another so we can all stand to try a little harder on this front.