Partly posting this because I love those little nuggets of local lore, and partly so I can share this local fact that I just discovered.

My city's cathedral has this amazing double-bowl copper font (different angle here) which I had assumed was ancient - the cathedral is almost 1000 years old - but it turns out that until 1994 these bowls were being used at a local chocolate factory to make caramel to go inside Rolos and was gifted to the church when the factory closed.

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!

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!

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!

Yes, I’m totally serious.

If you find a recipe online that includes beans in the ingredients list, chances are that it calls for canned beans. And I honestly don’t know why. Canned beans are terrible.

To be specific I am not talking about flavored beans. Beans in tomato sauce or a sugary sauce for baked or barbecue beans tend to be OK. It’s the unflavored ones that bother me.

I could only wish that a lack of flavor was the only problem with canned beans, but in addition to that they also tend to have a sharp metallic taste. I don’t even know how that can happen. Canned tomatoes don’t taste that bad. Are they just not cleaning the cans before they put the beans in them?

We are living in an age where it’s surprisingly common for people to have access to pressure cookers which can cook dry beans en masse within an hour’s time. And the result will be properly nutty, buttery, and creamy like they are supposed to taste.

I get that canned beans are always going to be more convenient, but they taste so much worse that I honestly don’t think the resulting dish should be called the same thing.

Am I the only one who feels this way?

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!

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!

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!

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!

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!

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!

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!

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!

It's officially Christmas in New Zealand. Australian parents are telling their kids they want just a few more minutes to sleep in. Santa is over Zambia.

I hope you all enjoy your time with family and friends (and kooky internet weirdos such as myself.)

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!

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!

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!

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!

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!

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!

Have you been properly spooked? Did you acquire a fear of a procession of mummies coming to pluck a hair from you each night to teach you about conservationism?

Do you have any annual traditions you follow? Haunted houses, straw mazes, or cider making? Do you or an acquaintance go all-out with decorating?

Do you have horror movie marathons? For fun, or to put on your Mary Shelley hat to look at horror as capturing a zeitghost like Them! for nuclear war, slasher films for rising crime, or Us for class issues? (Leprechaun's bi allergory is an outlier)

Do you have a favorite costume, or future costume idea? A shambling uncanny valley girl, group human obstacle course, ensemble of 3/7 dwarves, or reverse trick-or-treat grandparent?

like, say I've invented a magic trick that I don't know how it's done. What is my moral obligation to report novel phenomena? If a divine singularity spontaneously opens up in my living room, or in my kidney, and somehow I harness it and taught myself to fly -- do I have to tell people, or do we think it would be too scary? It seems really obscene and disruptive to announce something so premise-shattering. Shouldn't I labor in secrecy? Do I have to expose my abilities to some sort of mandate before I can start?

In light of our 4th anniversary here, I believe it is time for another thread on those beloved furry/scaly/feathered friends we all know and are beholden to.

So fellow Tilderinos, share your pets! Photos! Stories! Antics! Attitudes! How they've changed your life! How you've changed theirs!

I don't know about you, but I love reading about other people's dreams and occasionally sharing my own.

Let this be a place to share your dreams, whether they're super mundane or absolutely wild. Reply any time you feel like sharing to your last comment, so we have a thread where each top level comment is a different individual.

Good morning/evening tildes. What are you procrastinating on today?

What's the thing you keep meaning to do but can't find the time to because, let's be real, you'd rather do something else and it's not important anyway?

What's your favorite memory from a birthday (yours or someone else's)? This could be a favorite experience, gift, interaction, cake, anything! It can be more than one!

I'll go first.

My favorite memory of my own birthday was in high school when my friends surprised me with a grocery bag filled with my favorite treats (various sour candies! XD!). For some reason, it made me feel seen.

A funny memory of my birthday was when my family treated me to IHOP for breakfast and later on that day my friends surprised me and took me to IHOP... the same one!

My favorite birthday memory in general was my significant other's. I got us tickets to a comedy show in Madison Square Garden/a weekend in NY (we were living in the west coast at the time). NYC in December: walking in Central Park, bars, donuts & pizza, good public transportation, making a little snow man, walking.

Oh, and you could also state if you had a horrible birthday experience.

I feel like we’re constantly talking about how the last year and a half was the “lost year” and that no one did anything all year. But is there something you managed to do that makes you happy, proud, etc?

My wife and I spent the last few months building an outdoor tortoise enclosure for our pet Russian tortoise, Tortoro. We moved him outside a few weeks ago and he’s much more active and inquisitive.

Taking the time to build him a larger, outdoor enclosure that was designed to maximize his happiness was a nice respite from the stress of the world.

Since no one has posted this yet and the day approaches the end (UTC), I decided to post this...

I have a friend who's in the Big Brothers Big Sisters program. They're currently all meeting remotely, for Obvious Covid Reasons.

The kid they were paired with asked if they could play a game like Monopoly or Wheel of Fortune.

I'm sure there are some amazing games out there that are a) well-suited to be played over Zoom or a similar videoconferencing link and b) enjoyable for an adult and a kid to play together (most likely 1-on-1, but if there's games that could be played with N adults and N kids, those could also work)

The following are ramblings from my garden. I would love to here the ramblings from other people's gardens.

It's spring where I am, and I absolutely love spring! The last full moon (the one in February) I call the Angry Goose Moon, because it's around that time that my male goose turns into a monster, and I need to pull out my shield (a garbage bin lid) to move around the yard while warding off his attacks. His change in demeanor signifies the onset of spring for me.

Some people divide spring into early spring and late spring, but I live in a cool, wet environment that has a very long spring which is why I prefer thinking about the garden in terms of the moon cycle. The beginning of spring is Angry Goose Moon. During this phase, the hummingbirds start visiting, waiting for our native red flowering currant (Ribes sanguineum) to bloom. Everyday it gets closer and closer (I expect it to be in full bloom any day now). My hated Burkwood Osmanthus (Osmanthus × burkwoodii) begins rapidly trying to turn into a tree, and I'm reminded that I still haven't figured out what to plant in its place as I trim it back down a manageable level. And OMG the freaking cranesbill geranium (Geranium sanguineum) has once again gotten into everything, but I loathe to get rid of it all because the bees love it so much. This year I am being way more ruthless than years pass and have filled several bins of it for the yard waste collectors.

Usually this is also when I start seeds, but I'll be leaving for six weeks, so the seed catalogues will be collecting dust this year. Instead I'm checking out my propagation efforts from last year. I need to move a beautiful hydrangea (Hydrangea macrophylla) that gets way to big for the area it's in, but I've been afraid to move it case it dies, so last year I took 30 cuttings, which all rooted. It looks like 29 of those made it through the winter. I have no need for 29 more hydrangeas, but I now know I can move the mother plant, and if it dies, I'll have something to replace it with. In the mean time I'll plant the new ones in bigger pots to give away next year when they are more established.

Last fall I divided up some of the lemongrass (Cymbopogon citratus) I planted last year, plopped them into 10 pots, and brought them indoors to winter over. It looks like five of them made it. It won't be late enough for me to get them in the ground before I leave, but I will put them into bigger pots and get them under artificial light. Hopefully they will still be alive when I get back.

I'm not much of a rose fan, but outside my back window is a shrub rose (Rosa glauca) that has beautiful red tinged foliage and purple stems. It only flowers for a short time, and the flowers aren't anything to write home about, but they are followed by nice plump rose hips that I harvest for tea. It is absolutely in the wrong spot with its large growth and overly thorny stems. Last year I took a lot of cuttings of it and some natives roses that inhabit the same area, and it looks like most of them made it. Once they are large enough (another year or two) I'll plant them in a spot where their flesh ripping thorns won't be bothersome, remove all the large specimens, and replant the area with berries (I'm thinking about a mix of blueberry and honeyberry (Lonicera caerulea). Another potting up project before I go.

I enjoy plant medicine and started quite a few medicinal plants from seed last year. I started a bit late so nothing got in the ground, but it looks like most of them were able to winter over in the potting shed, but not all of them. I sowed 30 seeds of skullcap (Scutellaria baicalensis) of which only 6 germinated. I was going to move those six into the house to winter over, but I ended up with a spider mite problem in the house from having earlier brought in my toothache plants (Acmella oleraceae) and didn't want them to get infected. Unfortunately none of the skullcap survived. The toothache plants in the house didn't survive either, and I wish I had extracted their medicinal properties before their death, they were certainly large enough. But this paragraph started like it was going to be about wins. The biggest win, the one I'm most excited about, is that all of my mountain meadow arnica (Arnica chamissonis) made it! Their first leaves of spring are pushing through the soil, and their roots are pushing out of the holes of their pots. I don't believe there is a better plant for muscular aches and pains than arnica, and I am looking forward to harvesting it to make salves. I did seed way too many than my garden can hold, so as soon as I determine whether or not they they also are infested with spider mites, I will offer them up for other people to add to their gardens. I'm also excited that all the elecampane (Inula helenium) made it through the winter, though once again I seeded way too many. The added bonus is this plant can tend to be weedy in my locale, so I will only plant a couple down in the weedy medicinal area to let them compete with each other.

Side talk about garden pests. Besides slugs, which if I allow the ducks to move through the garden, don't damage too much of my garden, my gardens are fairly pest resistant. I spent a lot of time last year moving through it with a magnifier taking pictures and videos of the smaller insects that live among the plants. It's a whole other world living just out of reach of my normal vision! Of particular interest to me were a few of my phlox plants (Phlox paniculata) that had deformed leaves. On closer inspection I saw what I assume is spider mites. A few weeks later, taking video again, I saw what I assume are predatory spider mites, and a few weeks after that the phlox started growing correctly. There are so many predators out there doing "gods" work, and if any of you gardeners are ever bored, I suggest rabbit holing into garden predators.

I'm rambling, where was I?
Oh yeah.
I also use this time to severely prune stuff back that missed my list the year prior. In my culinary herb garden there is a bay tree (whether it's Laurus nobilis or Umbellularia californica I do not know). It's a monster that should not be planted where it is. I know I could hack it it back almost to the ground and it would come back, except that its branches cover my bathroom window in a way that gives me privacy from the cabin on the other side of the creek, while letting light in. It's this constant battle between keeping it small enough that wildlife can't use to get to the roof, yet large enough to afford me bathroom privacy. I just hacked a bunch of it off and I suspect I'll be doing the same again in the fall.

This place has a lot of problems, and I have to remain vigilant in celebrating the successes and not getting lost in lists of things to do. But there's a lot of beauty in our property, and I do enjoy experiencing it. Angry Goose Moon is the time of year when I am filled with the most hope for the future.

(Well, let's play a game of trust, shall we?)

I personally don't because most of the things that come to mind in my case are mostly doing really out of character things that would require way too much effort in my part and hoping people will find them funny, which will probably not happen and generally trust-based games like April fools aren't really my thing and I'm pretty sure I've struggled enough with irony and naiveness enough as is.

(This is a self-repost, hence the "duplicate question" tag.)

A guy named Adolf Hitler won an election in 1932. He won an election, and 50 million people died as a result of that election in World War II, including six million Jews. So what I learned as a little kid is that politics is, in fact, very important.

-Bernie Sanders

Good satire raises questions about reality.
(IDK the source, but I first heard it here)

The old world is dying, and the new world struggles to be born: now is the time of monsters.
-Antonio Gramsci, 1930

When I was a kid my parents warned me about the mind-numbing effect TV would have on me if I watched too much of it. They were referring to fluff entertainment, which I've consumed plenty of over the years. Meanwhile, my parents used the TV to watch important and meaningful shows like the news. Eventually Fox News. In the end, they were right— but not in the way they expected.

-@balooga, here

If God has made us in his image, we have returned him the favor.

-Voltaire

All tyrannies rule through fraud and force. When fraud is exposed, they must rule exclusively by force.

-George Orwell

If you do not use the person you are, you will lose the person you are and instead become the mask that you wear.
-Greg Guevara/Jreg

What do you need from your parents?

encouragement
-u/DeSteph-DeCurry

Collect and code, until it is done.

And now it is.

Ladies (the few that we have, I mean holy ^FUCK ), gents and everyone inbetween, welcome to the results of the 2020 Tildes census, which is only 34% less horrifying than 2020 itself. And you better believe I'm going to keep this up for the whole post, because fuck the responses this year, while greater in numbers, were occasionally still [REDACTED].^{thanks, thought police}

In the year of the lord, 2020^{CAN YOU PLEASE END ALREADY}, we got 350 responses in, which is a whopping 100 more than last year. I don't know how many accounts we have in total, no one does, and I'm too lazy to calculate the percentages right now because I'm calculating as we go so from the point of me writing this to clicking Post Topic an hour or two will probably pass.^{Update: I went to bed, so like 10 hours passed} Absolute numbers is all you're going to get here, so fuck me, fuck you and fuck off.^{I need some alcohol}

Anyway, let's go through the census. I let JotForms compile this nice graphical report that is pretty much useless because it completely breaks once either sexuality, gender or the myriad of various operating systems the people on here have get involved. But it's still funny seeing it struggle. Have a link to the PDF. So back to good Excel, my old nemesis.

Aggregated Data

Thankfully, this time around you'll have access to generate all this shit yourself, HERE YOU GO. The thing is in JSON, so easily deserializable, etc etc. I'm sure you people are skilled enough at typing the words into the IDEs to magic the data into your memory.

Important info: Empty answers are usually marked NO ANSWER, in case of numerical values it's usually -1 for age, -2 for the Kinsey scale (-1 is taken) and -69 for the 3 political values from the Sapply test, as these range from -10 to 10. Yes I made the default value -69. It's everyone's favourite number after all. Also, for some absolute FUCKED reason one of the values has 3 more entries than the other ones, I'm sure it has a totally VALID reason that has nothing to do with people entering bullshit. NOTHING.^{FuckingKILLME}

Also I can't be bothered to edit the "wrong" data out, i.e. typos in languages etc, so those are all in, maybe someone with more compassion than me can do that.

Kowalski, Analysis

First of all, I'm going to less graphs this year because it's fucking hard to aggregate things like ethnicity when you get responses ranging from black to a literal link of someone's You23AndMe results. Yes. I mean props to you for that but like, uh, FUCK, what am I going to do now? YOU ARE ALL MAKING THIS WAY TO FUCKING HARD. ლ(ಠ_ಠ ლ)

This propagates to basically all responses and next year I'm probably going to captain a way straighter course with less options, because I can't fucking MAKE FANCY GRAPHS WHEN YOU GIVE ME TOO MANY INDIVIDUAL RESPONSES^{FUCKINGKILLME}

Personal Shit

Geography

Not much has changed, the US still dominates, Canada second, though the British are catching up. I'm sure you'll have your tea party eventually. Though with good ol' Boris in charge I don't know if annexing the yanks is such a good idea. Also, as there are no invidual option here for everyone to FUCK IT UP it's the most sane graph of them all. No fucked colours this year, I promise, it's all scale.

Fancy Graph #1: Geography

Age

Fancy Graph #2: Age by decile For those wanting to repeat this, watch out, as the age by decile and specific age questions were exclusionary. You'll have to combine the results to get the same numbers. I hope. Unless I fucked up. Equal possibility.

Also whoever entered 28.9, because of you I had to make the age field in my code a double instead of an integer. Fuck you.

Gender etc.

I honestly thought this was going to be the wildest answer, but y'all are such a minority that it's fairly sane. The real clusterfuck starts after this question. Also whoever wrote prefer not to say, DID YOU NOT READ THE PART ABOUT THE OPTIONAL ANSWERS, [REDACTED] PLEASE [REDACTED] AAAHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH-

Anyway as I said, fairly standard results.

Fancy Graph #3: Gender

Trans? Value
NO ANSWER 13
no 312
yes 23

Yeah I'm not gonna make a graph for a yes/no question, if that's bigoted you may scream at me in the comments.

Sexuality

I MADE THE SCREENSHOT BUT I FORGOT TO ADD IT FUCK FUCK FUCK FUCK

Kinsey

Also forgot about you. Average is 1,37, idk what else to do.

Ethnicity

This was a mistake. 124 wrote white. 23 wrote caucasian. One person wrote causcasion. One person wrote that it's illegal to ask this question in their country. Someone wrote I bleed red white and blue.

THIS WAS A MISTAKE.

Kill me. Safe to say, that Tildes is, as someone put it perfectly: white af. Yes this was also a reply. KILL ME.

Language

Fancy Graph #3,5: Language^{This was added later, and I'm really not updating the others.}

Religion

I'm just gonna let the graph speak for itself, I don't have it in me to keep the anger up.

Fancy Graph #4: Religion

Politics, Education, Work

This is where the fun begins. No, honestly not really.

Politics

If I average out our Sapply values, we get this compass result. Yeah we're all communists. So whoever said in their dislike the alt right people on this platform, I really don't know what you mean. If anything we need more to achieve PEAK CENTRISM. In all honesty, the people saying that this sub is a leftist echo chamber (there were a few), you may have a point.

When we get to the magical field of how everyone identifies themselves politically, well, let's just say^{ah, there's the rage again} I'M NOT GONNA REPEAT THIS NEXT YEAR, GREAT FUCKING IDEA. Whoever entered confused, I FUCKING AGREE. SINCE WHEN IS PINK A FUCKING POLITICAL AFFLIATION? We do have a pirate though.^Nice

You may wade through the rest OF [REDACTED] YOURSELF in the published data.

Education

Tildes is an educated lot, contrary to popular my belief after making this census. A good chunk of people have a Bachelors, Masters, PhD. Still only one MD though, so if you have a medical emergency take it up with... checks notes ^{Ah fuck I can't reveal anything.} ...Take up with them. ^{JK please call your local emergency line when you need help}

Fancy Graph #5: Education

Work

Actually fairly sensible results, except a few, like that one person that entered not STEM, thanks for not giving me any useful information. You have the ability TO NOT ENTER SOMETHING. THIS GOES FOR THE PERSON WHO ENTERED meh AS FUCKING WELL, [REDACTED].

Fancy Graph #6: Work

Technology

Fancy Graph #7: Computer Operating Systems

Fancy Graph #8: Mobile Operating Systems

Basically just like religions. You all have to many options, since we're all communists now according to average, and options are bad, you MAY ONLY USE WINDOWS VISTA FROM THIS POINT ON, OR THE GESTAPO WILL PAY YOU A VISIT ^{fuck, wrong mass murderers}

About Tildes

Have Acc? Value
NO ANSWER 7
yes 312
no 29

For consistency, and it didn't fit into the picture in a nice way.

Fancy Graph #9: Various Tildes Statistics

Most people migrated off reddit, followed by Hackernews. The rest is various random shit, include like 5 different ways of "I don't know", but the one person replying Gab surprised me. Didn't think people would hop on Tildes off Gab, since Gab is basically extreme rightwing Twitter and Tildes is like, the antithesis to that. Leftist userbase, longform discussion.

The long replies

Once again, can't graph the shit outta this, so here's the collection of them. One reply per line. Had to format some replies to fit this format, I know someone did bullet points, apologies.

What do you like about Tildes?

What do you dislike about Tildes?

What would you change about Tildes?

Final notes

To keep my sanity in check, although when I read this post, that probably didn't work out too well, I kept some notes.

1. Someone suggested to ban all Europeans off the platform. You now have the stats, so I'm going to let you guess from where they are. Fucking hilarious.

2. Someone very cordial managed to write an entire blog post into one of the final freeform boxes. I appreciate the feedback and I'm sure Deimos does as well, but why did you have to make so many empty lines? TBH it's more on Jotform for not removing linebreaks when giving you the CSV, it breaks the entire format.

3. We should have a prize for that person who fit a textbook into the box for ethnicity, also amazing, you mad fucking lad (or lass, but statistics are on my side, lol)

In closing, most answers were good and interesting, except for the part where I let you run wild with the politics question, holy fuck, but that's on me. To the people that reduced my IQ by a few points, well I took the piss outta you already, so I hope you have a great day. Everyone else, I hope you [REDACTED] on a few [REDACTED]. Wait, I think I mixed something up here.^{As you may have guessed, don't take this too seriously}

As always, see you all next year, same time?^{Unless I get banned, which seems like a good possibility when I proofread all this, so much angerI need to get laid, or drunkActually how high does this go?}

Cheers, I'm gonna go C͉̠̰͚͚͓ͪ̿̋̏̚O͓̯͕̙͕͎͈̫̦͐̊́Ṅ͕̮̣̺̖̣̖̈ͥͦ͊̽͒͠S̶̵̹̜͔͖͗͂̋̔̈̒͊̚Ú̷͔͍͇̪̥͍ͭͭ̔ͨ̄̇̅̕M̵͈̮͉̹͈͕̻̎̓E̛̯̝̭͉̼̍̎̐̋̑̎ ̷̵̮͔̬̙̠̣̬͉ͭ͒S̨͙̼̟̻̜̈̄͋̄̇ͨ͛́͟͞Ò̡̧͙̩̓̄͂̓͗́M̹̰̲̆̌E̴̡̲̟ͯ ̹͇̲̩͍ͨͨ͒̑͊̌͒͆̕͡F̵͊̊̾ͭ҉̘̲̝͎̥͔̠̺̙O̧̡̱̠̙ͤ͒ͪO̬̯̪͉͙̩̅͂̀̏ͫ̄̓͂D͎͓͍͔͙̰͕̒̒͒̓̃̍͂ͭ̀͢
Grzmot

What do you dislike about tildes?

Overview

I read through the 'what do you dislike about tildes?' responses and attempted to classify them. A link to the excel document containing one row for each comment, a classification, and totals is provided. I figured a deep dive into this question (I am considering doing a deep dive on the other end of the spectrum - what do you like about tildes) may provide some insight on how we, as a community, can strive to be better.

Here's what I found:

Total number of free-text comments: 181
No comment, N/A, "nothing", etc.: 14

Tildes is too small

44% of the user-base indicated that they felt that Tildes was currently too small. There's really not a lot to be said here, other than a large number of those who filled out the survey wanted to express that they felt Tildes should still continue to grow.

I think a major point of discussion here should be around how best to grow. What do you like about tildes is not covered in this post, but some common themes are around enjoying the discussion and the community. Many individuals also seem to like the small community, showing an interesting division between a like and dislike of the size. From my own perspective, I enjoy how I recognize and see many of the same users on this website, but I also don't enjoy how the size leads to a lack of diversity and content.

Diversity, Tech-centric

Both of these topics are hitting on the same fundamental problem, which could be seen as an extension of the size of Tildes, but really refers more to who is using Tildes, rather than how many users. There is a lot of overlap between these two classifications, but sometimes people mention the tech centrism as a problem of content (too many tech/computing discussions) and not a problem of culture. In these cases there's not complete overlap.

Many individuals commented both on the size of the community and the diversity. Overall, roughly 23% of individuals who responded commented in some fashion on the lack of diversity on the website. The general sentiment from people who commented on the need for diversity was that Tildes was white, male, and working in tech. Given that the survey found 86% of us are male, the majority work in STEM and are primarily based in the US, this is not a very surprising finding.

An important point of reflection comes out in some of the longer form comments here and I think is also captured in many people who felt that tildes was "too serious" - discourse is firmly rooted in STEM interests. Several comments discussed a desire to see more artistic/creative discussions. There was also a strong sentiment for more non-US centric discussion. Interestingly (and perhaps described by our rather large LGBTQ+ contingent), diversity mostly focused on the dominance of male opinions (sometimes I wonder how people know what gender is behind a username unless they specifically state so) and the only comment on LGBTQ+ diversity was that there was a "lack of posts about anything other than tech or lgbt+ politics".

Intolerance

Intolerance is the unwillingness to accept views, beliefs, or behavior that differs from one's own. Many comments talked about users 'talking past' each other, getting into long bickering arguments that went nowhere, or targeted harassment of some sort. Several people mentioned specific users or powerusers not operating under good faith, and users which annoy or are hostile towards them.

If a user is being hostile to you, please report their comments.

While only 8.4% of us reported intolerance as being something they actively disliked, it is troublesome to see. I don't have a good frame of reference of what an 'acceptable' level is, because you're bound to have some people who are more emotionally sensitive than others and confrontations that don't always end the way you want them to. I hope we can discuss this in a broader context, however, because I have personally seen what I believe is an increasing number of intolerant posts often masquerading as 'honest discourse'. Whether this is me jumping to conclusions about potential alt-right trolls (which I do not discount) or an actual increase in not-so-good-faith arguments, I don't know, and would like to hear how you all feel.

As an aside, I wonder if I'm included in any of these lists of annoying powerusers, or if I was the one who 'picked a fight' with someone and got their 'comments deleted and that REALLY annoyed me'. If I am, please send me a message. I greatly enjoy most of you but I also know that I'm human and make mistakes and whether I agree with you or not, it's not cool to forget the human on the other side of the computer.

Elitism

Generally speaking any comments around power-users or some users believing their opinion, culture, or viewpoint is more important or more correct landed the comment in the category of elitism. Certain users being 'combative', 'bickering', and 'pedantic' came up several times. With regards to powerusers, they were generally mentioned alongside some form of narcissism or a 'holier-than-thou' attitude. Reddit hivemind or a lack of diversity was also sometimes cited alongside complaints of elitism.

I used to be much worse when it comes to this, and the constant back and forth with people who will not have their viewpoint changed. I believe I've learned to tailor this and cut off conversations sooner, but I know that some individuals can at times get under my skin, particularly when they are being actively harmful to minorities or other groups with limited power, speech, or representation. With that being said, I wonder how best we can provide a culture to teach others to limit their responses when they go nowhere. There was at least one mention of how limiting the response rate between individuals had cut off two users who were always bickering over politics, so perhaps a more aggressive form of this?

But I also wonder what we can't do as a community together to actively recognize and point out when two people are not able to reach an agreement and to jump in and mediate or otherwise help them to stop a pointless argument.

Website Functionality

Several people commented on a lack of a mobile app, a want for embedded images and videos, and the voting system. Other suggestions - comment threading, user blocking, differentiation between reasons why a post was bumped in the activity feed (?), mobile design (easier to click links), a desire for a more robust topic log, and that the website is too minimalist/sterile.

Tildes is too serious

Only a single person complained that tildes was not serious enough (or perhaps not, you decide... they said, "increasing creep of low effort posts"). The majority of posts complaining about tildes being too serious were often also complaints about people bickering. When it wasn't about how users interacted, it was about the form of dicussion available - people often brought up the "meaningful conversation" portion of the tildes documentation and culture, but often had a desire to have memes, shitposts, humor, or some outlet for conversation that isn't as effort based. Perhaps they like the culture and just want to do more with the people here? Perhaps they simply want to get to know their fellow users in a way they can't currently.

From my own perspective, I'd love to see more memes and humor. I tend to shitpost a lot on the unofficial discord. I've seen quite a few of you all on there as well, and would highly recommend it to anyone who feels like they want to get to know other users better.

Politics

More people complained about Tildes being too left than too right, which makes sense given the aggregated political compass from the survey. I think more people complained about there being too much politics than commented on politics whatsoever. I'm leaving this section relatively small because I'm not sure this is something that needs significant discussion at this point. But if you feel strongly, please help to direct a discussion in this thread.

Post-script

I hope you all found this analysis useful and a good starting point for discussions. I really do love this platform and have found it to be quite literally life changing. If you found it useful and want to return the favor, check out my soundcloud

I’m pretty sure every dog owner thinks their dog is the best most unique dog in the world, and the same is true about cat owners, snake owners, etc!

So make your best case: why is your animal companion the coolest in the whole world?

Hey everyone, I hope your life is good, and if isn't, it'll get better, so don't you surrender. :)

The census this year had a much improved response! As of writing this I've had 302 handed in forms! I'd also like to thank everyone who graciously donated to offset the cost for JotForms premium. I've almost broken even (Like 2€ off so it's not a big deal really). This post just serves as a simple update and a gentle reminder if you haven't filled out the survey but want to, or haven't gotten around to it or simply forgot. If you don't want to participate that's fine too.

https://form.jotform.com/202281385322348

As responses are still dwindling in, I'll probably keep the thing open for another week or so. Have a fun weekend!

_{Note: If you think I'm going to make this title longer with each consecutive topic... You're god damn right.}

Hello everyone. After the last topic I posted I garnered some feedback and adjusted the planned 2020 form accordingly. Updates include things like the gender text-box so really everyone is included no matter how diverse, unless your gender longer than maximum limit of JotForms text box fields.

You also have the option to enter your age by decile instead of a precise number. One user had a problem with this last year, so I added the option to make your age more general. As always, none of the fields are going to be mandatory!

I've also changed the political question to the political compass instead of the 8values quiz. I don't know if it's going to be any more precise, but at least it will allow us to create a better visual representation so the results are not going to be all text. Also, all hail r/politicalcompassmemes. There's also a text box to enter how you identify yourself if whatever movement you subscribe to has a name. It would be very interesting to correlate responses to the data from the compass and country, as political convictions are of course very relative, e.g. American leftwing = European rightwing.

Here's a picture of the form in it's current form^{I'm a literary genius}

Another important update would be the following: There's been yearning in the last topic about releasing the data of the census so that fellow Tilderinosnosnos can create their own fancy graphics. I generally do not have a problem with that, and if it were released, it would be the aggregated responses to single questions. For an explanation, see this comment by @hungariantoast, you lovely person.

Releasing data in this form is not any different than creating graphs from it and releasing it this way, just in a more general, more easily machine-readable format. I think this is acceptable, and it would allow more opportunity for data visualization by the community, and as stated, I wouldn't be releasing more identifiable information this way.

If there are any concrete additions you'd like to see, like for example suggestions on how to make the title of the next topic even longer (that's the most important part), now's the time to bring 'em out.

Hello everyone!

Some of you may remember last years census. I did say I wanted to repeat it, and have decided to push the date forward, as last year a few people said that doing it in December at the end of the year probably wasn't the smartest choice, due to well, christmas and new year's eve and I totally agree. Wish I would've seen that earlier, but I guess I'm dumb lol. Summer may give us better stats because more people are on vacation any maybe check in more regularily. Or maybe there's also less people around because everyone's on vacation. Who fucking knows, I don't know. I don't know anything.

Anyway, just like last time, I'd like to organize a preliminary discussion about the census and what questions we should ask this community. As a reminder, this was the 2019 census.

Areas that I'd like to improve: Politics, mainly. The 8values test I think is good, but maybe there's something better out there. We could do it with the political compass and go full quadrant and r/politicalcompassmemes, but of course that's also not going to be very accurate. I honestly don't even know if there's a good solution to this problem.

Other than that, are there other questions you'd like to ask the community? Let's discuss!^{I hope someone replies or this is gonna be emberassing.}

This is a year old repost, BTW.

I'll start, in a Q&A format.

"What pets do you have?"

I have 3 cats, almost in a large, medium small configuration. (M,F,M respectively.) I've named them Rodolfo, Penelope and Alfredo (PT-BR) (respectively), but rarely if ever, they're actually called by those names, usually we (me and my parents) call them bichaninho, bichanoca e bichanão. (also PT-BR, also the "bi" (pronounced like bee) can often be silent.)

All of them are castrated.

"For how long have you had them?"

Around 8,7 and 2 years respectively.

"what pets did you have?"

I had another "small" cat, we never gave her an actual name, we called her minifufa. She died after 4/5 years of us finding her because her liver practically stopped working. We've buried her at our formerly grandparents' house (because the father went back to his home state 1700 kiliometers away and the mother also died, from cancer.)

We also took care of a cat who accidentally fell into our house because a part of the roof is made of some less resistant stuff I can't really name. She was female and we took care of her for about 2 weeks.

"What are they like?"

Rodolfo is pretty calm and dependent, he often wants to be petted, sometimes late at night. Sometimes I do that, sometimes I hug/squish him.

Penelope if like that, but more because she unfortunately has some terrible breathing. We don't know what's in her lungs and why it got there, so it's not going away. It makes her the most frail :l

Alfredo is the most aloof and often gets into fights with the other 2 cats. He seems to be the most hungry, despite being the smallest cat.

In a recent topic on ~books, I mentioned my own efforts at organizing my bookshelves, and took some pics to showcase that effort... and it got me curious what other Tildes users bookshelves looked like, and what organization methods they use.

So, what do your bookshelves look like, and how do you organize them?

p.s. Feel free to also talk about anything related to this, e.g. what books you like the cover art of, what you do with annoyingly oversized books, ask others about particular books on their shelves, etc... :)