First I thought to myself, "I seem to use too many commas." Now I'm no writer, but I've noticed that professional writers (and editors) clearly use less commas than I do.

For example, here's a sentence in a book that I'm reading: “As the victim was usually unconscious it was obvious they were totally reliant upon third parties and whatever action they took would determine their fate.”

I thought it was interesting, because I would've put a comma after "unconscious" and a comma before "and."

So, I found this helpful resource on grammar rules: https://www.grammarbook.com/punctuation/commas.asp. 4a and 5b in particular were situations where I learned I could get rid of commas.

Still however, in the example sentence above, you'd think to put a comma before the "and" to separate the two clauses. I haven't found an explanation for omitting it, other than some writers are grammatically correct in a stricter sense, and others use commas more stylistically.

Is the use of commas more of an art, if you will, than I thought? How do you use commas personally?

Interested to read others' opinions!

See this image.

Which groups are unsubscribed? All of the ~sports.X groups are unsubscribed, but american_football, basketball, football, and motorsports have been visited.

The link-visited colour set by a.link-group:visited is taking precedence over the default colour otherwise set by .group-list-item-not-subscribed a.link-group, hiding the colour change associated with -not-subscribed. This is particularly troublesome when unsubscribing from a group, since one must go to the group's page – visiting the link – in order to unsubscribe.

Hello! Tildes newbie here. I wasn't sure if this is a bug or if it's working as intended, so I wanted to ask.

I unsubscribed from https://tildes.net/~sports but noticed that I still saw a post from ~sports.hockey in my home feed. It took me a while to figure out that I also had to go to each of the ~sports subgroups and unsubscribe from all of them too. Am I doing this correctly or did I miss a button somewhere that would let me unsubscribe from a parent group + all its subgroups in one go?

Thank you!

--- EDIT ---
Thanks to everyone for the replies! Confirmed that it's working as intended. And there is now a new post by cfabbro on Gitlab suggesting that "unsubscribe from all subgroups" be added as a new function.
https://gitlab.com/tildes/tildes/-/issues/802

Recently, I've been thinking pretty hard about how to archive data. Optical media is out, due to my (possibly irrational?) fear of disc rot. HDDs just break with extended use, SSDs have been known to die with either overuse or just existing for an extended period of time. What's left?

I have heard of tape (of some kind) being used for backup in some bigger operations, but with my experieces with VHS, and to a lesser extent, cassettes, they seem to be very susceptible to mould.

Any suggestions?

I would be interested in tips, thoughts, and experiences folks have had with raising sons. I work in healthcare (in finance) and am acutely aware that most of my colleagues are women, as were most of my teachers, and class mates in college. With this in mind, it seems that the feminine side of raising sons is well represented. I've been reading and soul searching about good practices for the father of a son but would welcome all perspectives. Another interesting aspect is that I've found many parenting books to be focused on mothers rather than fathers. The few I've found that are focused tend to be religious/ Christian. Nothing wrong with that but would like to hear the collected wisdom here. To be clear I am hoping to get specific thoughts and actions rather than a broad topic with concepts and ideals.

Hi there,

I enjoy writing! I find all formats fun to play with from short stories to screenplays. One thing I've never really written for is video games. I love the idea though. All the world building, lore notes, dialogue, weapon descriptions, codecs, bestiaries and on and on. There's all sorts of ways to tell a story through a video game and I want to try my hand at it!

Problem being though, I'm not particularly interested in game design. I'm not NOT interested, but it's not where my passion is. I am willing to learn what I need to, so don't shy away from suggestions that would require me to learn some on the design side.

Really the only ideas I've come up with are using the mod creator in Neverwinter Nights 1/2 or something like RPG Maker? Are these overwhelmingly difficult to get started in? Could I write in all the things I mentioned from dialogue to weapon descriptions?

Or perhaps trying to find someone NOT interested in the storytelling side? Someone who wants to focus on design but would love some storytelling in their project and would welcome the addition?

Or even starting with TTRPG modules maybe. Video Games and TTRPG modules seem to have some similar storytelling elements.

Does anyone in the profession have thoughts? Does anyone not in the profession have thoughts?

anyways, bye love you

https://themarkup.org/hello-world/2023/07/08/ai-environmental-equity-its-not-easy-being-green

A few months ago, I spoke with Shaolei Ren, as associate professor of computer science at University of California, Riverside, and his team about their research into the secret water footprint of AI. Recently, Ren and his team studied how AI’s environmental costs are often disproportionately higher in some regions than others, so I spoke with him again to dig into those findings.

His team, which includes UC Riverside Ph.D. candidates Pengfei Li and Jianyi Yang, and Adam Wierman, a professor in the Department of Computing and Mathematical Sciences (CMS) at the California Institute of Technology, looked into a path toward more equitable AI through what they call “geographical load balancing.” Specifically, this approach attempts to “explicitly address AI’s environmental impacts on the most disadvantaged regions.”

Ren and I talked about why it’s not easy being green and what tangible steps cloud service providers and app developers could take to reduce their environmental footprint.

I think we all know how redditors can be negative nancies looking for the next user to argue with, so I'm curious to know from the peeps that were here before the redditors: has the quality of conversation and sense of community changed (either positively or negatively) since us redditors showed up?

This week marks my 8th year of working in IT, and I have been feeling more and more that I am ready to move onto something different. Both my undergraduate and masters degrees were in the arts (Japanese, and Linguistics respectively), and I just sort of fell into IT as a job because I was always good with computers and it seemed like it had a pretty great pay-to-effort ratio. Now that I am approaching the decade mark, I feel like it's not what I want to do any more. Even my current job (which I once described as my dream role) has lost its sheen, and the prospect of spending the rest of my working life having to study and learn new technologies, and keep up with the latest developments just fills me with dread. I don't want to be in my fifties and reading endless documentation to try and understand why MacJibbleGPT is now the preferred way to skilter a virtualised quallock. In short, I would like to relegate my computing to the level of "hobby."

The problem is, I really don't know what I would like to do instead. The last time I had an idea of a career that I wanted to follow was as a teenager when I wanted to be a doctor, but I didn't get the grades. Since then I've just sort of fallen from thing to thing, and been a bit directionless, just assuming that IT would be enough to carry me through my working life, and focus on my hobbies for fulfilment. Well my hobbies are now very fulfilling, but they just make the slog of the work day even harder.

So how do I go about figuring out what it is that I want to do? I have done a few quizzes online (via reputable organisations), I've contemplated the jobs of my friends and family, and I still just feel like nothing is inspiring me. There are a few problems that I need to try and work around with finding something new as well:

• At least for the next 6 years or so, I am geographically fairly restricted to being within a reasonable driving distance to my daughter's home
• Shit is expensive, so I need to minimise the hit to my salary
• I do not have the money to get a degree or similar vocational qualification
• I would like stable hours, and not to work weekends or evenings (this is more job-specific than it is career-specific)
• Hybrid working is preferable to full-time in the office or full-time WFH (ditto)

So I ask my fellow Tilderen, have you ever pivoted into a completely different career after several years of investing your time into another? How did it go? How did you go about figuring out what you wanted to do instead? What advice would you have for me, a nearly-31-year-old who still has most of her working life ahead of her?

We have the weekly fitness check-in but I thought it would be valuable to have a thread to discuss more specific lifting topics and resources.

• What type of programs do you gravitate towards?
• Do you compete in Powerlifting/Weightlifting/Strongman or some other discipline? Any upcoming meets worth watching?
• Have you found any resources that others might be interested in?

What short animated films do you really love and why? Here's two of mine:

Anna & Bella - says so much without saying much of anything! I love the lack of dialogue and the expressiveness. Makes me feel warm and fuzzy thinking about my relationship with my brother.

Affairs of the Art - NSFW, love the animation style and character designs, and the overall message on obsessions, passion and art being for everyone!

This thread is posted weekly - please try to post all relevant US political content in here, such as news, updates, opinion articles, etc. Extremely significant events may warrant a separate topic, but almost all should be posted in here.

This is an inherently political thread; please try to avoid antagonistic arguments and bickering matches. Comment threads that devolve into unproductive arguments may be removed so that the overall topic is able to continue.

Install from here: Wide Tildes on UserStyles.world

Features

• Multiple columns on list pages
• Wider site on all pages

Source

@-moz-document domain("tildes.net") {
header#site-header {
    width: 97vw;
}

.topic-listing li {
    break-inside: avoid-column;    
}

.topic-listing {
    column-width: 25em;
}

.topic-text-excerpt {
    display: none;
}
}

Through the years I have struggled with perfectionism, low self worth, and an overwhelming need to make everyone else happy at my own expense. Recently I've begun wondering if this is related more to my own personal upbringing (my mom and sister share a lot of these traits) or if it's a wider experience of being a woman in modern society.

Growing up in a world where women had successfully entered the job market, there was still an unspoken urging that I had to be better than my male peers to earn my place in the world. There still felt like there were expectations that women would follow all the rules, keep the peace, and maintain the home/workspace. Is this an off base interpretation of societal pressures, or do any of you find yourselves still struggling with some of these messages?

ETA: Also, what are some positive ways being raised as a woman has impacted you?

So, if I have stocks that were purchased during the class window of a class action lawsuit, is it okay for me to sell them?

It's not a large amount of money at stake here, but it'd also be nice to be able to recoup some of the losses I had due to the misleading information that caused me to buy the stock and ive filled out the forms but they didnt say anything about future actions just asked when i bought or sold any at the time of the suit. I am not sure if it's okay to sell them or if I should hold them.

Any one have recommendations? This is US stock exchange, and if I did sell they'd be at a loss and I have sold other stocks at profit so I would be looking at capturing the losses on my taxes.

https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2023/07/reddit-mods-fear-spam-overload-as-botdefense-leaves-antagonistic-reddit/

the Reddit community is still reckoning with the consequences of the platform's API price hike. The changes have led to the shuttering of numerous third-party Reddit apps and have pushed several important communities, like the Ask Me Anything (AMAs) organizers, to reduce or end their presence on the site.

The latest group to announce its departure is BotDefense. BotDefense, which helps removes rogue submission and comment bots from Reddit and which is maintained by volunteer moderators, is said to help moderate 3,650 subreddits. BotDefense's creator told Ars Technica that the team is now quitting over Reddit's "antagonistic actions" toward moderators and developers, with concerning implications for spam moderation on some large subreddits like r/space.

BotDefense started in 2019 as a volunteer project and has been run by volunteer mods, known as "dequeued" and "abrownn" on Reddit. Since then, it claims to have populated its ban list with 144,926 accounts, and it helps moderate subreddits with huge followings, like r/gaming (37.4 million members), /r/aww (34.2 million), r/music (32.4 million), r/Jokes (26.2 million), r/space (23.5 million), and /r/LifeProTips (22.2 million). Dequeued told Ars that other large subreddits BotDefense helps moderates include /r/food, /r/EarthPorn, /r/DIY, and /r/mildlyinteresting.

On Wednesday, dequeued announced that BotDefense is ceasing operations. BotDefense has already stopped accepting bot account submissions and will disable future action on bots. BotDefense "will continue to review appeals and process unbans for a minimum of 90 days or until Reddit breaks the code running BotDefense," the announcement said. The announcement also advised "keeping BotDefense as a moderator through October 3rd so any future unbans can be processed."

https://undark.org/2023/07/05/neglect-of-a-museums-collection-could-cause-scientific-setbacks/

IN A DUSTY ROOM in central Florida, countless millipedes, centipedes, and other creepy-crawlies sit in specimen jars, rotting. The invertebrates are part of the Florida State Collection of Arthropods in Gainesville, which totals more than 12 million insects and other arthropod specimens, and are used by expert curators to identify pest species that threaten Florida’s native and agricultural plants.

However, not all specimens at the facility are treated equally, according to two people who have seen the collection firsthand. They say non-insect samples, like shrimp and millipedes, that are stored in ethanol have been neglected to the point of being irreversibly damaged or lost completely.

When it comes to how the FSCA stacks up with other collections she’s worked in, Ann Dunn, a former curatorial assistant, is blunt: “This is the worst I’ve ever seen.”

Experts say the loss of such specimens — even uncharismatic ones such as centipedes — is a setback for science. Particularly invaluable are holotypes, which are the example specimens that determine the description for an entire species. In fact, the variety of holotypes a collection has is often more important than its size, since those specimens are actively used for research, said Ainsley Seago, an associate curator of invertebrate zoology at the Carnegie Museum of Natural History in Pittsburgh.

A paper published in March 2023 highlighted the importance of museum specimens more generally, for addressing urgent issues like climate change and wildlife conservation, with 73 of the world’s largest natural history museums estimating their total collections to exceed 1.1 billion specimens. “This global collection,” the authors write, “is the physical basis for our understanding of the natural world and our place in it.”

https://asiatimes.com/2023/07/indonesias-mineral-export-bans-face-hot-global-fire/

JAKARTA – Indonesia is under rising fire at the World Trade Organization and by the International Monetary Fund (IMF) for the government’s seemingly haphazard policy of banning mineral ore exports, a market intervention Jakarta insists is just and necessary to maximize its economic and industrial growth.

In a sharply worded statement accompanying its 2022 country report, the IMF called for Indonesia to phase out the restrictions and not extend them to other commodities. “The increasing use of trade measures and industrial policies may destabilize the multilateral trade system,” the IMF said.

I recently got this plate at a yard sale and was curious if anyone has any info on it
I did some reverse google image search and couldn’t find much on it.
I’m not sure if this is number 28 made out of so many or number 28 in a set.
If this is a set I’d like to track down the rest and collect them because look how cool it is!!
I also apologize if this isn’t the right place to post as I’m fairly new to tildes.

https://imgur.com/a/6eUt9We

The other day I created a post here to evoke discussion around what kind of topics, and community norms we might consider. I offered up initial thoughts to spark conversation and there were a lot of people offerings deep insights. I spent the past few days learning from everyone and reading through comments. I tried to capture the high level take aways in a summary and added it as an edit to my original post. Here is a link to the full thread.

It was suggested I post that summary as a new topic for better visibility and so that's the intention of this new post. This is only the foundation of what we could consider as we evolve the discussions, and it helps surface the initial thoughts and perspectives we have collectively shared.

It's encouraging to see such in-depth and thoughtful conversations on ~life.men. I wanted to take a moment to recap the significant themes I read up to this point. This is high level, so please correct me if I got it wrong, and I may have missed something valuable that needs called out.

Our discussions around Stoicism have been quite enlightening, and we've recognized its potential to encourage self-control and inner resilience. Nevertheless, we've also acknowledged its potential misuse, which might inadvertently promote unhealthy aspects of masculinity. This is a subject that requires more nuanced exploration.

We've unanimously expressed the need for a supportive environment for men of all identities. This includes cis, gay, trans, and men of all other identifications. Despite potential challenges such as toxicity and inactivity, many believe this forum can serve as a respectful and positive space to engage in discussions about contemporary masculinity.

Conversations have emphasized challenging traditional gender norms and fostering inclusivity. There's been a strong consensus against defining masculinity by outdated stereotypes. We've expressed a shared commitment to creating an environment welcoming everyone, regardless of gender identity. We also acknowledge the role of diverse geographical and cultural backgrounds in shaping our understanding of gender, which we deeply value.

The topic of men's role in promoting gender equality has been prominent. We agree on the importance of men as allies in this movement. Tackling the rigid roles defined by patriarchal norms is crucial, as is having open and transparent conversations on these issues. Progress in gender equality benefits everyone - it's not a zero-sum game.

We've also delved into gender norms, roles, and the usage of gendered language. It's been helpful to see such scrutiny of societal expectations and a strong emphasis on promoting universally beneficial values and inclusivity. There's a shared understanding of the complexity of gendered language and how it can both define personal identity and represent broader affiliations.

We've explored varied experiences in male-specific spaces. From the importance of representing all demographics to discussing the challenges of modern fatherhood, we've covered extensive territory. There's a shared commitment to guard against potential toxicity and ensure balance in all our discussions.

We have expressed the importance of focused discussions on men's experiences. Challenging assumptions about masculinity and addressing men's issues from multiple perspectives can impact our society.

I'm new to Tildes and not sure where to go from here. Given all the valuable insights and themes we've gathered, how can we adopt draft guidelines for our community? I suspect we can see how this develops organically, but I appreciate approaching things intentionally. Thanks for all the comments and discussions. It has me thinking much more broadly and about things I hadn't considered.

EDIT
I received early feedback that "guidelines" may be the wrong ask here. The thought was to be intentional and surface a "purpose" for having a men group. Being new to Tildes, I'll defer to community as to what's the right way to move forward. Regardless, I appreciate the conversations and discourse that Tildes brings.