Hey all,

I'm Catalan (expat) and many of my friends in the USA or other countries in Europe tend to ask me a lot about the Catalan situation: independence, Puigdemont's extradition, political prisoners, police brutality, etc. I figured maybe some users here will be interested too?

I consider myself equidistant to both the independentist nationalist, and the centralist nationalist movements (I'm more anti-borders than pro-borders, and I don't recognize the authority of any state), so I figure many of my responses will annoy everybody in Spain equally :-) . That said I would appreciate it if we all keep the discussion civil and as soon as I see flame wars I will stop answering questions.

To my fellow Spaniards/Catalans. Feel free to chime in, contradict me with facts and opinions (I will probably not argue with you, I'm actually eager to learn more about other points of view in this matter), answer questions that I haven't answered for lack of knowledge, etc. Hell even if you are not from Spain but you know about it feel free to give me your two cents.

Hope we get interesting discussions and we all learn from this!

Fellow LGBTQ+ ~ers, I'm hoping you can give me some direction and pointers in dating advice.

I'm a male in my early 40s who has become single after a dozen years and finally realizing/admitting that I'm gay. This isn't a huge deal (I've always identified as queer/not straight) but it does leave me in a place of total ignorance on how to proceed in meeting gay men and dating them.

I'm not intetested in sex-without-friendship, so Grindr is out. I'm not a fan of social media, so FB is useless to me. Even if there are any gay bars left, I'm not the bar type. My preferred personals site was craigslist... which shows you how out of the loop I am.

Any advice on dating sites and/or alternative ways of meeting people? I'm thinking about getting a bunch of shirts printed with a wittier version of "Introduce me to your gay friends!" and a rainbow necklace or bracelet...

If location matters, I'm a fair distance outside the Seattle area but get there often enough.

Thanks, all!

On my way to work this morning, I saw a bumper sticker on a truck in front of me. It said "Ecology is not a religion", my first thought was this guy is an idiot, etc. etc. Then I began dismantling the entire bumper sticker in my head while I drove. "Of course ecology isn't a religion, it is a science! -ology denotes a field of study!" I don't know why, I guess to reassure myself the world wasn't falling to pieces. This brought up a question that often crosses my mind but I've never had an answer for: How do you discuss open minded topics with close minded people?

This doesn't necessarily have to focus on ecology and environmental issues, any "controversial" issue that one side might become completely close minded to could qualify. Homosexuality, gender identity, gun rights, and privacy all come to mind. If you spend any amount of time on Internet forums and boards, you've come across someone like this. No matter how much scientific fact, evidence and truth you show them, they simply deny it. They cherry pick what you presented to make their point, they pull the fake news card, etc. How does one deal with this?

In my mind, I don't think there is any way one can deal with it. How do you reason with someone who is explicitly rejecting reason? I'm not asking "how do you change their mind?", doing such a thing is quite difficult and shouldn't be the primary goal of a debate (though it could be a byproduct of a healthy debate). I don't like to attribute one's opinions on some topic to their entire personality. Just because I disagree with them doesn't make them bad, nor I to them. Sometimes, this is a hard pill to swallow. How do you a) converse or debate with these people with an end product being improved mindsets on both sides, and b) swallow the proverbial pill?

In the end, we all need to talk to each other, or else we end up in 2018 where the sitting president rejects scientific fact, politicians are being elected on planks of homophobia, racism, and denial of science, and intolerance is the new norm it seems.

cw: discussion of specific types of bigotry

I used to kind of think that Reddit's bigotry was relegated to the hate subs (TD and friends), and that you'd only find it if you went looking. But wow, Tildes has made me realise that it is EVERYWHERE.

Whenever I take a trip back to Reddit, I'm always blindsided by the fact ordinary threads about unrelated topics are so hateful. For example today I was on an r/movies thread about the new Terminator movie and there's queerphobia, transphobia and sexism all highly upvoted, right near the top of the comments. I guess being immersed in that environment for the last seven years of my life made me a bit desensitised to it, but now I'm horrified everytime.

Reddit is a far worse cesspit than I realised, I'm glad Tildes exists and I hope it keeps getting better and better. The internet needs it.

I can see ~news becoming global or US specific and I think geolocational tildes would be useful. I do want to know if there is an appetite for this though - I recognise that there would be work involved in moderating such a news tilde, so there has to be the interest.

Cheers,

Manley

I may be one of the least qualified people here to discuss this topic, but I find two reddit bots pretty useful:

https://www.reddit.com/user/autotldr

https://www.reddit.com/user/alternate-source-bot (this is my recent favorite)

What do you all think features like the two above being integrated into Tildes in some fashion, via bot or otherwise? Are there any other bot behaviors that you like which would have a good impact here, or are bots that produce comments the scourge of Reddit?

^{Sorry if this has been discussed before, if so let me know and I will delete this topic.}

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!

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

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

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

Here's the tweet the release date info came from: https://twitter.com/wykrhm/status/1024704897218883584

And an article from March that had some of the first actual gameplay info: https://www.pcgamer.com/artifact-guide/

The first few seasons of Adventure Time are very dear to my heart, I watched them as a teenager when they first aired and I still revisit them from time to time when I'm bored or am having a bad day and need a pick-me-up. I recently came across a bunch of outlines and concepts for unproduced episodes from season 1, and some of them are really good!

Full Storyboards:

THE GLORRIORS

BROTHERS IN INSOMNIA (This one's good)

Outlines:

BOXCARS & BINDLES (I really like this one)

HAND (It's a board artist's worst nightmare!)

ONE HOT WORM

THE MUMBLING MAN

TOWER OF BONE

THE HELMET OF THOROGON

SWATHS OF GLORY

TREE PROBLEM (This is an outline for "Brothers in Insomnia")

Story Notes:

DIAMOND JIM

JAKESUIT

Other:

Adventure Time series presentation

alright so much to my dismay, no, not currently day drunk (though a mimosa does not sound half bad right now!)

so in place of my standard late-night drunk poetry, have some mid-morning-havent-slept-in-36-hours-poetry.

cheers

bishop

remember wanting what i got now
didn't think it'd be a let down
guess back then i wasnt thinking sound
deadly quiet with you not around

got me so down im
making lots of pillows
taking heavy shots and smoking
off a lot of rillos
now my mind is gone, am i okay
i cannot think so
falling down from heaven hitting
every branch like plinko

like you're yoko ono and
i'm every single beatle.
warring with myself and every
general's in fetal
got my world all fucked but
i lay here with no libido
sorry if i fucked it up, i
swear i did not mean to

but at least i saw a palm tree
caught a little of the ocean breeze
heavy sand where you buried me
for the forest couldn't hear the screams.

got me so down im
making lots of pillows
taking heavy shots and smoking
off a lot of rillos
think my mind is gone, am i okay
i cannot think so
falling down from heaven hitting
every branch like plinko

no quiero recordar nada
que ella ha dicho
Como el tiempo cuando
ella me ha prometido
que nosotros siempre
quedaríamos amigos
He querido solo estar
perfecto contigo.

loved our movie, but you said
you didn't want a sequel
got my head up in the clouds
now i cannot see through
if you were perfection,
how can i trust other people
to take my hand and guide me
past all of the shit we been through

(beat.)

got me so down im
making lots of pillows
taking heavy shots and smoking
off a lot of rillos
think my mind is gone, am i okay
i cannot think so
falling down from heaven hitting
every branch like plinko