The server will shut down on July 17th in the evening (US Pacific time)

We will then start up on the 25th for a special 3 day hardcore survival server. After that the server will be offline for a few months for everyone's Minecraft-o-meter to recharge.

Server host: tildes.nore.gg (Running Java 1.21.4)
Bluemap: https://tildes.nore.gg
Playtime Tracker: https://tildes.nore.gg/playtimes.html
Tildes website extension (shows online status & location): Firefox (Desktop and Android) - Chrome
Verification site: https://verify.tildes.nore.gg
Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/TildesMC

The server operates on a soft whitelist. Anyone can log in and walk around, but you need a Tildes account to gain build access.

Long ago, Cree leader Captain Swan visited the Athabasca area. In 1715, he described a scene to Hudson’s Bay Company fur trader James Knight: “... there is a Certain Gum or pitch that runs down the river in such abundance that [Indians] cannot land but at certain places.” This was the first written reference to bitumen in Canada. Bitumen forms when organic matter is buried and subjected to heat and pressure over geological timescales. That organic matter was primarily algae and plants, which had sequestered carbon dioxide (CO₂) from the atmosphere by photosynthesis, thereby locking CO₂ in place, significantly reducing atmospheric CO₂ levels, and helping sustain all aerobic life.

In 1859, John Tyndall explained how atmospheric gases absorb heat from the sun as infrared radiation. His paper details an early understanding of the greenhouse effect. Scientists have long since linked CO₂ emissions—burning refined bitumen and coal—to changing Earth’s climate. A 1912 Popular Mechanics article states, “The furnaces of the world are now burning about 2 billion tons of coal a year. When this is burned, uniting with oxygen, it adds about 7 billion tons of carbon dioxide to the atmosphere yearly. This tends to make the air a more effective blanket for the earth and raise its temperature.” A century on, we’re burning 500% more fossil fuels.

Wishful thoughts will not prevent Earth’s global average temperature from increasing as we combust fossil fuels back into atmospheric CO₂. And while our generation reaps the rewards of inexpensive energy, our grandchildren will face the consequences of repaying this debt. A debt undermining the ancient Haudenosaunee philosophy that today’s decisions should result in a sustainable world seven generations from now.

Building a better world for our children requires energy—yet doing so by burning fossil fuels to the point of climate destabilization twists irony into generational betrayal far removed from sustainability.

In a 2013 experiment, University of Berkeley researchers found that breathing in a CO₂ concentration of 1,000 parts per million (ppm) indoors causes a measurable decline in intellectual capacity; at 2,500 ppm, initiative and strategic thinking declined to a dysfunctional level, which has since been corroborated by other researchers, including a 2023 meta-analysis on the short-term exposure to indoor CO₂ levels versus cognitive task performance. These cognitive effects become particularly concerning when viewed against atmospheric trends. On June 2, 2025, atmospheric CO₂ surpassed 429 ppm, a significant increase from the 318 ppm measured at Mauna Loa on June 15, 1959.

https://i.ibb.co/yFcXJqCy/graph.png

The graph illustrates a troubling acceleration in CO₂ emissions. At the current growth rate of 3.8 ppm per year, atmospheric CO₂ could reach 1,000 ppm in six generations (150 years). A 2021 study published in Nature emphasized the urgent need for action, stating that global oil and gas production must decline by 3% annually until 2050. Moreover, to limit warming to 1.5 °C above pre-industrial levels (1850–1900), an additional 25% of oil reserves must remain untouched.

Against this backdrop, political leaders advocate for increased fossil fuel extraction. Danielle Smith wants to unlock Alberta’s “$14 trillion in oil wealth” to “benefit millions of Canadians for generations.”

Short-term economic benefits derived from resource exploitation have repeatedly led to gradual, often unheeded, environmental degradation. This pattern repeatedly culminated in ecological and economic crashes, devastating the very communities who initially profited. Notable cases include Mesopotamian salinization, the Classic Maya collapse, the Ancestral Puebloan collapse, Norse Greenland settlements, Easter Island’s deforestation, the Dust Bowl, the Aral Sea’s desiccation, and the Grand Banks cod collapse. While some nations have sustainably managed resource wealth, the immediate economic pressures and political incentives that drive extraction often overshadow long-term planning.

The question is not: “How many Canadian generations will benefit?”

The question is: “How many generations will suffer, globally?”

Will we learn from history? Will we set an example for the next seven generations?

Or will we build more oil and gas pipelines, condemning our descendants to an unsustainable future?

Hereby released into the public domain. Feel free to adapt, correct, and send to representatives.

Yes, I realize the answer is “everything.”

I intend the question to be less about simply naming answers and more about surfacing their associated complexity.

Walk us through something you know well so that we can appreciate how not simple it actually is!

What have you been listening to this week? You don't need to do a 6000 word review if you don't want to, but please write something! If you've just picked up some music, please update on that as well, we'd love to see your hauls :)

Feel free to give recs or discuss anything about each others' listening habits.

You can make a chart if you use last.fm:

http://www.tapmusic.net/lastfm/

Remember that linking directly to your image will update with your future listening, make sure to reupload to somewhere like imgur if you'd like it to remain what you have at the time of posting.

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!

Tildes is a very serious site, where we discuss very serious matters like forums, stardew valley and whatever. Tags culled from the highest voted topics from the last seven days, if anyone was boggled of the mind.

But one of my favourite tags happens to be offbeat! Taking its original inspiration from Sir Nils Olav III, this thread is looking for any far-fetched offbeat stories lurking in the newspapers. It may not deserve its own post, but it deserves a wider audience!

Any clever ways to connect to the Internet safely to update drivers, security, etc? I'd only want to connect to Intel, AMD, Microsoft, etc, and then would physically disconnect the lan card. I know, dangerous, but I'm trying a piecemeal approach with a flash drive and getting mixed results. I tried to update to Service Pack 2, and it bricked the computer on restart, back to flashing Vista.

I'm starting to use AI increasingly, and am getting some value out of it. I'm curious if paying for paid tiers of the big players (in particular, ChatGPT and Claude) provides significantly better responses.

I'm aware that the paid tiers offer more features and benefits than just higher response quality. For me, those are just nice-to-haves, and not my primary concern.

My main uses of AI are software development and foreign language learning. So far, I've used the free versions of ChatGPT and Claude, as well as "proxies," including Github Copilot and Duck.ai. For both my use cases, I've found the responses usually good and helpful. I just maintain a healthy skepticism about the correctness of the answers, and challenge, test, and double check where needed (especially testing suggested code when developing software).

Have you found response quality to be noticeably and significantly better with paid tiers? I was just randomly thinking, and it occurred to me that the cost of an AI subscription is in the same ballpark as a subscription to a language learning service like Duolingo. So, if I can get value from AI that approaches what I'd get from a dedicated language learning service (even if it doesn't quite match or exceed it), then also getting the value of general AI in the same subscription should make things quite valuable and worth it. Not to mention possibly getting better software development assistance in the same package.

I don't have a lot to say myself, yet. I signed up for the beta mostly because people talk so positively of what Digg was like in the past. I never experienced that, as Digg was already on it's way out when I discovered it.

I'd love to hear from those who remember the golden age of Digg, as well as those just curious about the reboot themselves... What are you thoughts, expectations, hopes and concerns?

What are you reading currently? Fiction or non-fiction or poetry, any genre, any language! Tell us what you're reading, and talk about it a bit.

What have you been doing lately for your own fitness? Try out any new programs or exercises? Have any questions for others about your training? Want to vent about poor behavior in the gym? Started a new diet or have a new recipe you want to share? Anything else health and wellness related?