One thing (amongst many) that always bothered me in my 6+ years of using Reddit was their lax rules about posting clickbait articles and straight up misinformation. In my opinion this was something that contributed to the rise of radical communities and echochambers in the website.

In this post I'll talk about Clickbait, Unreliable studies, and Misinformation. I'll give examples for each one and suggest a way to deal with it.

Clickbait-

Let's start with the most benign one. These days most big websites use clickbait and hyperbole to gain more traffic. It's something that they have to do in order to survive in today's media climate and I sort of understand. But I think that as a community in Tildes we should raise our standards and avoid posting any article that uses clickbait, instead directly link to the source that the article cites.

An example would be: An article titled "Life on Mars found: Scientists claim that they have found traces of life on the red planet".

But when you read the original source it only states that "Mars rover Curiosity has identified a variety of organic molecules" and that "These results do not give us any evidence of life,".
(This may be a bad/exaggrated example but I think it gets my point across.)

On Reddit the mods give these kinds of posts a "Misleading" tag. But the damage is already done, most of the users won't read the entire article or even the source, and instead will make comments based on the headline.
I personally think that these kinds of posts should be deleted even if they get a discussion going in the comments.

Unreliable studies-

This is a bit more serious than clickbait. It's something that I see the most in subjects of psychology, social science and futurism.
These are basically articles about studies that conclude a very interesting result, but when you dig a bit you find that the methodologies used to conduct the study were flawed and that the results are inconclusive.

An (real) example would be: "A new study finds that cutting your time on social media to 30 minutes a day reduces your risk of depression and loneliness"
Link: https://www.businessinsider.com/facebook-instagram-snapchat-social-media-well-being-2018-11

At first glance this looks legit, I even agree with the results. But lets see how this study was conducted:

In the study, 143 undergraduate students were tested over the course of two semesters.

After three weeks, the students were asked questions to assess their mental health across seven different areas

Basically, their test group was 143 students, The test was only conducted for 6 months, and the results were self-reported.

Clearly, this is junk. This study doesn't show anything reliable. Yet still, it received a lot of upvotes on Reddit and there was a lot of discussion going. I only spotted 2-3 comments (at the bottom) mentioning that the study is unreliable.

Again, I think that posts with studies like this should be deleted regardless if there is a discussion going in the comments or not.

Misinformation-

This is in my opinion the biggest offender and the most dangerous one. It's something that I see in political subreddits (even the big ones like /r/politics and /r/worldnews). It's when an article straight up spreads misinformation both in the headline and in the content in order to incite outrage or paint a narrative.

Note: I will give an example that bashes a "left-leaning" article that is against Trump. I'm only doing this because I only read left-leaning to neutral articles and don't go near anything that is right-leaning. Because of this I don't have any examples of a right-leaning article spreading misinformation (I'm sure that there are a lot).

An example would be this article: "ADMINISTRATION ADMITS BORDER DEPLOYMENT WAS A $200 MILLION ELECTION STUNT"
Link: https://www.vanityfair.com/news/2018/11/trump-troops-border-caravan-stunt

There are two lies here:

1. Trump administration did not admit to anything. (The article's use of the word 'Admit' is supposedly justified with 'They indirectly admitted to it'. I personally think this is a bad excuse.)
2. Most importantly, the 200 million figure is pure speculation. If you go to the older article that this article cites, the 200m figure comes from a speculation that the operation could cost up to 200m if the number of troops sent to the border is 15,000 and they stay there for more than 2 months.
   In reality the number of troops sent was 8,500 and they stayed for only a few days/weeks.

A few days after this article was published it turned out that the operation costed 70 million. Still a big sum, still ridiculous. But it's almost a third of what the article claimed.

The misinformation in this example is fairly benign. But I've seen countless other articles with even more outrageous claims that force a certain narrative. This is done by both sides of the political spectrum.

Not only do I think that we should delete these kinds of posts in Tildes, in my opinion we should black list websites that are frequent offenders of spreading misinformation.
Examples off the top of my head would be: Vanity Fair, Salon.com, of course far right websites like Fox News, Info Wars and Breitbart.
A good rule in my opinion would be: If three posts from a certain website get deleted for spreading misinformation, that website should be blacklisted from Tildes.

In conclusion:
I think we should set some rules against these problems while our community is still in the early stages. Right now I don't see any of these 3 problems on Tildes. But if we don't enforce rules against them, they will start to pop up the more users we gain.

I'll be happy to know your opinions and suggestions on the matter!

Hey all. My old computer is fine, but the Oculus software has recently pushed an update where it no longer starts up, attempting to repair the software uninstalled it, and the install errors out despite clearing out the install cache and existing files while running it in network capable Safe mode with Defender off as recommended.

Eventually I narrowed it down to this error. https://forums.oculusvr.com/community/discussion/71083/cant-install-software-exiting-with-code-18 and since I'm using an old HP xw8400 build with two Xeon 5355 processors, it does kind of check out that this latest update finally became incompatible with my processor and it may be time to upgrade anyway. To my knowledge, there isn't really a way to get a more modern processor onto the motherboard, and I'm not going to rage at Oculus for not supporting hardware they were never supporting in the first place. (Auto Update and being unable to downgrade is meh, but I'm not going to win that fight.)

So what would you guys recommended for a new processor/ram/motherboard combination? My Graphics Card (RX480) and hard drive is still fine, and I'd like to keep it on the cheap for as much as we can do with VR.

I'm a student of software engineering. I'm not a programmer yet, but I use software that is common among this crowd, like i3wm, Neovim and Emacs. I know how to find and read documentation. I've read the obnoxious How To Ask Questions the Smart Way. Every time I encounter an issue, I do my diligence. I go through the manuals, I google, I read the docs. My main editor, Emacs, has an extensive manual, with plenty of accurate details. I get that's a huge program (more like a platform, really), but let's just say that a black-and-white 650 pages PDF is not the most ADHD friendly thing in the world.

I'm aware that I chose a career that requires plenty of reading, but I happen to like it a lot and it seems like I have some aptitude for it. I had similar issues in my previous activities anyway. But it's discouraging trying to understand programming and complex software, only to be repelled by people who think everyone has their ability for concentration. Sometimes I completely lose track of time. I can sit on my computer and hyperfocus for up to 48 hours with 20 Chrome tabs open non-stop and Netflix on the background. I may seem productive, but I'm not reading anything. Maybe I read one paragraph or two, and 30 seconds later I can't remember what I was doing. But I still have tasks to accomplish, and sometimes I need help to find useful information on a 700 pages manual.

Luckily I have a great support and determination and have accomplished a lot, but my peers have no idea what I went through to get to where I am. What I don't have in natural born skills I compensate with a lot of raw effort. Everyone has their difficulties and I'm not seeking compassion, but I'd like to suggest people think twice before dismissing as "lazy" someone you know nothing about. That person might have a mental disorder, a reading disorder or even an intellectual disability. Do you wanna be the guy who told a dyslexic to just read the fucking manual?

EDIT: of course I get that time and energy are limited commodities... my point is: don't be an asshole about it. Do what you can and you wanna do, but there's no need to use hostile buzzwords when you communicate with less knowledgeable people. You're not even forced to answer... I much prefer not getting an answer than getting a hostile one.

Intro

Hello everyone,

Today we cover entropy and the heat death of the universe.

The previous chapters can be found here and here. While I recommend you read both, you should at least read the first part and skim the second.

A collection of all topics covered can be found here: https://tildes.net/~tildes/8al/.

Subject

Intro

Entropy describes how chaotic a system is. In thermodynamics, chaos is created from an irreversible process. We are all sort of familiar with this concept. A broken cup will not unshatter itself. As a consequence of how our universe works, (net) chaos can only increase. And this might have far reaching consequence, if we look at the effects of entropy on a cosmic scale.

Entropy

Entropy describes an amount of irreversible chaos.

But first, let's cover cycles super quickly. In thermodynamics, a very important concept is a "cycle". A cycle is a repeating process, that returns to its initial condition. For instance, when we ride a bike. We're turning our feet around the crank shaft. Repeatedly returning to the same position we started from. As we push on the pedal, some of our work is lost and turned into heat. Primarily due to friction from the wheels and from the different mechanical parts.

A cycle that wastes no energy is called a reversible cycle. That would mean 100% of the work in a cycle (even the work that is turned to heat) has to be returned in some way to its original state. The most famous example of this is the Carnot heat engine.[1] But in reality, the Carnot heat engine is nothing more than a theoretical engine. As we remember from before, we cannot turn 100% of heat back into work. So any heat engine, be it a car's motor, a refrigerator, a star, or the human body, will in some way contribute to this irreversible chaos.

Now what about entropy? If we look at entropy at the molecular level, it all becomes a bit abstract. But we can think of this concept with bigger building blocks than molecules, and still be close enough. Say you have a brick house with orderly layed bricks. This house would love to come crashing down. And lets imagine it does. When the house lays in ruins, it is not likely to suddenly "fall" into the shape of the house again. So if the house has collapsed, our system is in a higher state of chaos. Our entropy has increased. And unless we supply work to the system (and waste energy trough heat), we will not get the brick house back.

So now we understand, that on the grand scale of the universe, entropy will only increase.

The heat death of the universe

But what are the consequences of this? Imagine entropy going on for billions and billions of years. Everything in the universe slowly reaching a higher state of chaos. Everything that is orderly, turns into chaos. All high quality energy has turned into low quality energy. Everything has been wasted and turned into heat. Everything ripped apart until you are left with nothing to rip apart. At this point, there is no interactions between molecules any more. Everything has reached absolute zero temperature.

At this point, entropy is at its absolute maximum. And we have reached entropic equilibrium.

This is the heat death of the universe.

Afterword

Of course, the heat death of the universe is just one of the many theories about the end of the universe. It assumes that thermodynamics properly describes the universe, and that there are no hidden surprises.

Frankly told, it's the best bet we have with our current knowledge. But we still know so little. So I would not panic just yet. Alternatively, this is where we could continue with "an engineer's perspective on existensial nihilism". But I think that this is something better reserved for later, and better presented by someone else.

We have covered what I consider the absolute minimum of thermodynamics, that still gives us a basic understanding of thermodynamics. There are of course a lot of other topics we could cover, but thats it for now. I will potentially write an appendix later with some questions or things that have been asked.

But for now, that's it. Questions, feedback or otherwise?

Notes

[1] The Carnot heat cycle is a bit beyond the level of what we have discussed so far. It describes a system where heat is supplied and removed to have a piston expand and contract without any energy becoming waste heat.

Some people have mentioned they'd like to have some sort of weekly track-sharing thread, so let's have a little fun and find some good music in the process.

Everybody's got that playlist somewhere with all of your favorite earworms - the songs you put on repeat to the point where you annoy the hell out of everyone else in the room because you love them so much. Let's collect some of those earworms here and see what we can come up with.

In particular, let's go for the uplifting kind - feel good music. When the thread settles down I'll pull these all together in a nice playlist and share that here as a separate link submission.

Any time period, any genre, any style, popular, obscure, or even your own music, it's all good - just as long as it's positive energy and you can't stop spinning it. If you're on mobile, don't worry about making it into links, others can linkify it for you (and eventually, Tildes can do that automatically to make this all easier in the future). Share as many as you've got. If you've already got a playlist like this for yourself, you can share that too. ;)

Oh, and don't worry about nebulous 'standards' or if people will like it. If you like it, that's all that matters. Don't overthink it!

Edit: Almost forgot, feel free to make suggestions for the topics of upcoming share threads in the next few weeks!

I've started doing this amateurishly a few months ago, translating a novel slowly, and nowadays I'm thinking of going to a few publishers and asking for actual contracts. Currently, I'm using an Org mode file in Emacs to do the translation, but I'm not sure that this is the most optimal way to do it. I was doing it using paper for a while, but editing and commenting is more flexible in Org mode. Yet it is also rather cumbersome the way I do it:

<<pageNo.paragraphNo.sentenceNo>> Text, text text
#
some text with a comment
# comment about the part between this comment and the above empty one
more text, more text. <<...>> Another sentence

I'm thinking of adding some code to make this a bit prettier, though.

But are there anything that's better out there already. My preference hierarchy: Emacs mode, yayyy! > Open source app, that's fine > Proprietary app, shit! but better than nothing.

I'm not sure if this should go under ~comp, ~tech or here (~books).

for those of you unaware, the "Earth Strike" movement (see also: their Reddit, Tumblr, and Twitter pages) is an international planned protest movement that will ultimately culminate in a general, international strike on september 27th, 2019. as of today it's only been in planning for like a week and change (almost exclusively online, as a point of note) so a lot of kinks are still being worked out and i'm not even sure there's a centralized organization to it as of now, but among other things, it internationally seeks the following demands:

An immediate start on global co-operation to reverse the damage done to the earths’ climate, through unambiguous and binding agreements, by both world leaders and corporate entities, following IPCC projections of halving carbon net emissions by 2030 and zero net emissions by 2050;
International, unambiguous and binding commitments to halt the destruction of rain forests and other wildlife habitats, and
International, unambiguous and binding agreements designed to hold corporations accountable for the greenhouse gases they produce.

i think most of us can agree that ultimately, their current demands are not 100% feasible or are actively impossible (at least not without radical, extremely sudden societal change) and that the ship has most likely sailed on keeping climate change from having some serious impacts. but do you think that this movement has any potential of any kind to enact change going forward? is it destined to be another Occupy, where some of its goals are taken up into politics but ultimately the movement itself collapses due to infighting and external factors? can it even be truly successful at all, given its lofty aim of an international general strike? or is it likely to just outright evaporate into functional or actual irrelevancy given enough time?

I'm not going through anything bad right now, I just feel like listening to some ugly-cry type of breakup albums.

My picks:

• Sharon Van Etten: Are We There

• Bon Iver: For Emma, Forever Ago

• Beck: Sea Change

• The Cinematic Orchestra: Ma fleur

• Lykke Li: I Never Learn

My friend and I are considering finishing a prototype of a Reddit app. We've already agreed to the following features on first release (if we keep going).

• Similar urls to current Reddit website (so you can change the URL to reddit.com and see the same page)
• voting, commenting, posting selftexts and links
• Directly uploading image posts may come later if it looks complicated
• Masstagger integrated.
• Dark theme (other options in later releases)
• Primary use case: desktop and mobile web.
• Performance first. Reddit's 1 minute load time on default mobile, missing/broken features on i.reddit.com/.compact, and a few tiny complaints on the desktop site are the primary reasons we are considering writing this app. Native is not in our collective skillsets or radar, so we're going to go the extra mile to make sure the app respects both your time and your battery where possible. We did do some research and found that Reddit has actually been negligent in this regard on mobile web, meanwhile we have years of experience in the subject.
• Mailbox (send/receive messages, orange icon on new message/comment reply/thread reply).
• No infinite scroll
• View source JSON of comments/posts.

What are some features/ideas that members of this community would really like in a Reddit app?

Introduction

I want to give an introduction on several physics topics at a level understandable to laypeople (high school level physics background). Making physics accessible to laypeople is a much discussed topic at universities. It can be very hard to translate the professional terms into a language understandable by people outside the field. So I will take this opportunity to challenge myself to (hopefully) create an understandable introduction to interesting topics in modern physics. To this end, I will take liberties in explaining things, and not always go for full scientific accuracy, while hopefully still getting the core concepts across. If a more in-depth explanation is wanted, please ask in the comments and I will do my best to answer.

Previous topics

Bookmarkable meta post with links to all previous topics

Today's topic

Today's topic is the dual nature of light and matter, the wave-particle duality. It is a central concept in quantum mechanics that - as is tradition - violates common sense. I will first discuss the duality for light and then, in the next post, for matter.

The dual nature of light

In what terms can we think of light so that its behaviour becomes understandable to us? As waves? Or as particles? There are arguments to be made for both. Let's look at what phenomena we can explain if we treat light as a wave.

The wave nature of light

Let's start with an analogy. Drop two stones in a pond, imagine what happens to the ripples in the pond when they meet each other. They will interact, when two troughs meet they amplify each other, forming a deeper trough. When two crests meet they do the same. When a crest and a trough meet they cancel out.

Now if we shine light through two small openings and observe the resulting pattern, we see it's just like ripples in a pond, forming an interference pattern. When looking at the pattern formed on a screen placed at some distance from the openings, we see a striped pattern Light can be described as an electromagnetic wave, with crests and troughs. It sure seems like light is wavey! The wave nature of light allows us to describe phenomena like refraction and diffraction.

The particle nature of light

When we shine light on some metals, they will start tossing out electrons. This is called the photoelectric effect. How can we understand this process? Well we know light is a wave, so we imagine that the wave crashes into the electron that is chilling out near the surface of the metal. Once the electron has absorbed enough of the light's energy it will be able to overcome the attractive forces between itself and the positively charged atom core (remember, an electron has negative charge and so is attracted to the atom cores). So a higher intensity of light should make the electron absorb the required amount of energy more quickly. Easy, done!

However, there's something very peculiar going on with the photoelectric effect. If we shine low frequency light on said metal, no matter how intense the light, not a single electron will emerge. Meanwhile if we shine very little high frequency light on the metal, no matter how low the intensity, the electron will emerge. But how can this be? A higher intensity of light should mean the electron is receiving more energy. Why does frequency enter into this?

It seems that the electron needs a single solid punch in order to escape the metal. In other words, it seems it needs to be hit by something like a microscopic billiard ball that will punch it out of the metal in one go. The way physicists understand this is by saying light is made up out of particles called photons, and that the energy a photon carries is linked to its frequency. So, now we can understand the photoelectric effect! When the frequency is high enough, the photons in the light beam all individually carry enough energy to convince an electron to leave the metal. When the frequency is too low, none of the photons individually can knock an electron out of the metal. So even if we fire a single photon, with high enough frequency, at the metal we will see one electron emerging. If we shine low frequency light with a super high intensity at the metal, not a single photon will emerge.

So there you have it! Light is made out of particles. Wait, what? You just told us it's made out of electromagnetic waves!

The wave-particle duality of light

So, maybe light is just particles and the wave are some sort of emerging behaviour? This was a popular idea, one that Einstein held for some time. Remember the experiment where we shone light through two small openings and saw interference (commonly known as the double slit experiment)? Let's just take a single photon and shoot it at the openings! Because light is particles we'll see the photon just goes through either opening - like a particle would. Then all the non-believers will have to admit light is made out of particles! However, when we do the experiment we see the photon interfere with itself, like it was a wave. Remember this picture which we said was due to wave interference of light? When a single photon goes through the openings, it will land somewhere on the screen, but it can only ever land in an area where the light waves wouldn't cancel out. If we shoot a bunch of photons through the openings one at a time, we will see that the photons create the same pattern as the one we said is due to wave interference!

Implications

So it would seem light acts like a particle in some cases, but it acts like a wave in some others. Let's take a step back and question these results. Why are we trying to fit light into either description? Just because it's convenient for us to think about things like waves and particles - we understand them intuitively. But really, there is no reason nature needs to behave in ways we find easy to understand. Why can't a photon be a bit wavey and a bit particley at the same time? Is it really that weird, or is it just our intuition being confused by this world we have no intuitive experience with? I would love to hear your opinions in the comments!

Observing photons

To add one final helping of crazy to this story; if we measure the photon's location right after it emerges from the slit we find that it doesn't interfere with itself and that it just went through a single slit. This links back to my previous post where I described superpositions in quantum mechanics. By observing the photon at the slits, we collapsed its superposition and it will behave as if it's really located at one spot, instead of being somehow spread out like a wave and interacting with itself. The self interaction is a result of its wavefunction interacting with itself, a concept that I will explain in the next post.

Conclusion

We learned that light cannot be described fully by treating it simply as a wave or simply as a bunch of particles. It seems to be a bit of both - but neither - at the same time. This forces us to abandon our intuition and accept that the quantum world is just fundamentally different from our every day life.

Next time

Next time we will talk about the dual nature of matter and try to unify the wave and particle descriptions through a concept known as the wavefunction.

Feedback

As usual, please let me know where I missed the mark. Also let me know if things are not clear to you, I will try to explain further in the comments!

Addendum

The photoelectric effect is actually what gave Einstein his Nobel prize! Although he is famous for his work on relativity theory he was very influential in the development of quantum mechanics too.

So I'm doing my GED at the moment and I'm in the same couple of classes this gal. It's only 3 months into the semester and we won't be in the same classes next semester anyway. Nevertheless, despite it only being 3 months we quickly became acquainted and within the last month or so we've become friends. Last week however, her boyfriend broke up with her and today he kicked her out of his apartment - so she's homeless. And in order to not live on the damn street she's going back to Norway (she's only been here in Denmark for a bit over a year) to live with her family until she can find somewhere to live here - she still has another semester to go until she's done with school here, so it need only be temporary.

She's leaving tonight and so I asked if she wanted to meet after school today. We did and talked for a couple of hours at a cafe - and it was pretty nice despite her situation being total shit. I'm a really empathetic person in general and I feel all sorts of compassion for her. Simultaneously, despite barely even knowing her (today was the first time we actually hung out, come to think of it), I am gonna miss her like crazy... This is mostly about her because of how much it sucks for her and how bad I feel for her, but I can't help but feel like shit too even though I barely even know her! I can't tell if I have a crush on her or if I just like her as a friend, but who cares anyways - she's gone now and I might not see her again...

Just had to get this off my chest I guess. I just wish so bad that she didn't have to leave - that I could've gotten to know her more and spent more time with her.

I'm also trying to follow some advice from a psychologist, because I have borderline personality disorder and basically it means I feel feelings a lot more intensely than the average person. I also haven't been a very social person historically speaking so I find it difficult to navigate relationships and situations like this. So the advice I'm trying to follow is particularly this bit: Instead of ‘I love you with the passion of a thousand fiery suns’ it might be nice to do a small gesture. But it's difficult to not write her on messenger and just say something like "I'm gonna miss you :(" - I know it's stupid to do that and she doesn't feel the same way I do because it's only been like 1 month of actual friendship, but it's genuinely how I feel.

Wasn't sure if this belongs in ~life or here, so I figured I'd just go with this one. Just had to get this off my chest so that maybe I'll not be dumb and write her something that the overly attached girlfriend meme could have written. I used to be super clingy and it's driven people away in the past so yeah. Anyway, thanks for caring if you read this whole post :)

Intro

Hello everyone,

Today we cover equilibriums and phase changes. Through that we will get a basic understanding of how things like pressure, temperature, density, volume, etc. are related.

The previous chapter can be found here: https://tildes.net/~science/8ao/. I highly recommend that you read it before continuing.

A collection of all topics covered can be found here: https://tildes.net/~tildes/8al/.

Subject

Summarized

"Equilibrium" is fancy word for "balance". A system is in equilibrium when it is in balance with the surrounding systems. Any system will naturally attempt to be in equilibrim, and will adapt its physical properties to do so.

A phase change is the transition of matter from a state (solid, liquid, gas, or plasma) to a different state. This happens due to a change in internal energy, changing how a material is bonded.

Now that we have it summarised, lets dig a bit deeper.

Equilibrium

A system always tries to be in balance with its surrounding systems. We maybe don't think about this a lot, but we are all very familiar with this principle since we observe it every day.

If you have a cup of hot cocoa, it will cool down until it has reached ambient temperature. At this point, the cocoa is considered to be in "thermal equilibrium". If we fill a balloon with air, it will expand. It will do so until the air inside the balloon has the same pressure as the air outside the balloon. At this point, the balloon is considered to be in "barometric (pressure) equilibrium".

Just like when we talk about energy, there is a relationship when we talk about equilibriums. We have something we call (you may remember this from basic chemistry) an "ideal gas". An ideal gas is a good way of looking at this principle. Since the temperature, volume and pressure have a direct relationship.

Pressure-volume-temperature diagram for ideal gases.

In the diagram above we can see that if we change one of the three variables, then one (or both) of the other two variables has to change too. For instance, if we heat some air in a canister, the air will try to expand. But being unable to change in volume, it will instead increase pressure. [1]

Phase changes

Any material has a set of phases. The ones we'll discuss are the solid, liquid and gaseous phases. Unless we control the material's environment very carefully, materials will always follow this order when energy is added. Solid becomes liquid, liquid becomes gas, and vice versa. For instance water; ice (solid) becomes water (liquid), water becomes steam (gas). So each of these transformations is a phase change.

So when water is solid (ice), the molecules are in a grid. The molecules do not move around much, maybe a little bit where they stand. But they all still stand in a grid.

When the water gets heated up, the molecules will start to move. Molecules have a natural attraction to each other due to subatomic forces like the van der Waals force. So the molecules will no longer stay in a grid, but they will still keep each other close due to this attraction. So a material that sticks together but freely moves around is called a liquid.

Once the material overcomes this natural attraction, the molecules can go anywhere they want. And that's when we get a gas. Or steam, in the case of water. All of this applies even for materials we don't usually imagine would melt or evaporate, for instance steel.

Here is a visual representation of the three states.

Now comes the fun part. Ice is water that is at 0 degrees Celcius or below. Liquid water is water that is 0 degrees and above. But wait! Does that mean that water can be both solid and liquid at the same temperature? Yes, indeed. A material requires a certain amount of internal energy to become liquid. That is why internal energy and temperature is often used interchangeably, but is not exactly the same.

The water molecules in ice will use the supplied energy to get excited and start moving around. This continues until the solid-liquid water reaches a point where all molecules move around. At that point it has completely become a liquid. While water is in solid-liquid state, the amount of internal energy dictates how much is liquid and how much is solid. The exact same thing happens with water at 100 degrees. It can be steam or liquid, but not fully either until it reaches a certain amount of internal energy.

Here is a diagram of this process.

Another fun tidbit that makes water special: Water has a lower density as a solid than it has as a liquid, when both are at 0 degrees Celcius. This means that per unit of volume ice weighs less than (liquid) water. Therefore ice floats on top of water. This is the only material that behaves in this way. And thats extremely important to our existince, since it helps regulate heat in the ocean.

Steam engines (and implication)

We have learned a few new things today. But there is one really important wrinkle to all of this. A system always will try to be in balance. And this we can exploit. Pressure is a type of "pushing". So thats a type of work! And an increase in thermal energy can lead to an increase in temperature. We remember that from the ideal gas. So if we cleverly organize our system, we can create work from heat! This is the basis behind most heat engines (simplified a ton). We supply thermal energy to some gas or fluid, and extract work from this gas or fluid.

A classical example is the steam engine. We have water inside a closed system. When we heat up the water, it will turn into steam. And this steam will want to be much less dense than water. As a consequence, the pressure inside the water tank increases drastically. We release a small amount of this steam into a closed piston.

Here is an animation of this in action.

The piston suddenly gets a high pressure level. As we remember, it will want to be in equilibrium with its surroundings. Currently the pressure inside the piston is much higher than outside the piston. As we remember from the ideal gas law, a higher volume will mean a lower pressure. So the piston will be moved, as the steam expands to reach a pressure balance. The movement from the piston will drive something, like a wheel. The steam is removed from the expanded piston, and the piston will return to its closed position.[2] Then the process is repeated again and again, to have the piston continously move something.

All that from a bit of water in a tank and some supplied heat.

Whats next?

Next time we will talk about another important property. Entropy! In the previous topic I had a lot of questions regarding the quality of energy types, and what specifies heat from work on an intrinsic level. Entropy is the big answer to this. From that we will also cover the heat death of the universe, which would be a good introduction to "a laypersons introduction to nihilism" if we have any philosophers here.

Note

[1] For solid and fluid materials (as well as non-ideal gassess) this becomes a lot more complicated. If we ever do a "layperson's intro to fluid mechanics" we will cover it then.
[2] This described design is very inefficient and very simplified. Usually the piston is made so steam is supplied in turns supplied to either side of the piston. Then the work will both removed the steam that already performed work as well as move the piston. That way you can have continous movement in both directions.

See for instance this image.

"How could a low-budget, black and white movie from the 60s possibly scare be that scary." I thought to myself as I was purchasing my ticket for the movie. I was going to see the movie, because I had always heard that it was a good movie. I thought that this movie couldn't possibly be scary, so it had to have other merit to have it be considered a good movie.

I left the cinema that day quite spooked. I was amazed at with all of it. The true horror weren't the wondering ghouls, but the interaction between the people inside the house. It was a social experiment more than anything else. What would happen if six people were placed inside a house, with a wounded child, and impending doom closing in on them? This is the question answered by the movie. A power struggle between Ben and Harry, about the safest place in the house to hide, led to the death of Harry. Everybody sided with Ben, and in the end he only survived the longest because he hid in the cellar as Harry had suggested from the beginning.

TL;DR
I found the fighting between the survivors in the house to be very spooky.

Deimos and I were discussing the use of "ask" topic tags this week, and we agreed it might be a good idea to get a consensus on these.

At the moment, Tilders are using four "ask" tags on topics:

• ask

• ask.survey

• ask.recommendations

• ask.help

(There may be more "ask" tags created in the future, but these four are what we're all using at the moment.)

Anything that's a question gets tagged with "ask". Some specific types of question will then get tagged with "ask.survey" or "ask.recommendations" or "ask.help", depending in the type of question being asked.

• "ask.survey" is for questions about preferences and favourites. "What's your favourite horror movie?" "What's the best place you ever visited?" "What's your favourite type of holiday?" The asker is collecting data about people's likes and dislikes (even if they're not going to publish the results in a report later!).

• "ask.recommendations" is for questions asking for recommendations. "What's a good browser to use?" "What book should I read next?" "Which brand of phone should I buy?" The asker is looking for people to recommend things to them.

However, Deimos and I wondered about "ask.help". One interpretation we came up with was that "ask.help" is for questions looking for a specific answer, where it should generally be possible for people to think "yes, this is the right answer to the question". This would include questions seeking help learning about an academic topic, such as happens in /r/AskScience and /r/AskHistorians over on Reddit. Another interpretation we came up with was that "ask.help" is for questions looking for guidance on doing something, like a "how to" type question. This would be more like the types of questions in /r/Help and like the Help menus in software and the F1 key - helping people get things done.

What do you think about the "ask" tags? In particular, what should the "ask.help" tag be used for? In general, are the existing "ask" tags okay? Do we need more "ask" tags? Do we need different "ask" tags?

Introduction

I want to give an introduction on several physics topics at a level understandable to laypeople (high school level physics background). Making physics accessible to laypeople is a much discussed topic at universities. It can be very hard to translate the professional terms into a language understandable by people outside the field. So I will take this opportunity to challenge myself to (hopefully) create an understandable introduction to interesting topics in modern physics. To this end, I will take liberties in explaining things, and not always go for full scientific accuracy, while hopefully still getting the core concepts across. If a more in-depth explanation is wanted, please ask in the comments and I will do my best to answer.

Previous topics

Bookmarkable meta post with links to all previous topics

Today's topic

Today's topic will be light emitting diodes, better known as LEDs. As the name suggests, we'll have to discuss light and diodes. We will find out why LEDs can only emit a single colour and why they don't get hot like other sources of light. Let's start by discussing diodes, in case you are already familiar with diodes note that I will limit the discussion to semiconductor (p-n with a direct bandgap) diodes as that's the type that's used in LEDs.

What's a diode?

A diode is an electronic component that, ideally, only lets electric current through in one direction. In other words it's a good resistor when the current flows in one direction and a really good conductor when the current flows in the other direction. Let's look a bit closer at how diodes function.

Semiconductors

Diodes are made out of two different semiconducting materials. In everyday life we tend to classify materials as either conducting (metals being the prime example) or non-conducting (wood, plastics, rubber). Conductance is the flow of electrons through a material, a conducting material has a lot of electrons that can move freely through a material while an insulator has none. Semiconducting materials fall in between these two categories. They do conduct but not a lot, so in other words they have a few electrons that can move freely.

N-type semiconductors

We are able to change a semiconductor's conductivity by adding tiny amounts of other materials, this is called doping. As an example, we can take silicon (the stuff that the device you're reading this on is made out of) which is the most well-known semiconductor. Pure silicon will form a crystal structure where each silicon atom has 4 neighbours, and each atom will share 1 electron with each neighbour. Now we add a little bit of a material that can share 5 electrons with its neighbours (how generous!). What will happen? Four of its shareable electrons are busy being shared with neighbours and won't leave the vicinity of the atom, but the fifth can't be shared and is now free to move around the material! So this means we added more freely flowing electron and that the conductivity of the semiconductor increases. An illustration of this process is provided here, Si is chemistry-talk for silicon and P is chemistry-talk for phosphorus, a material with 5 shareable electrons. This kind of doping is called n-type doping because we added more electrons, which have a negative charge, that can freely move.

P-type semiconductors

We can do the same thing by adding a material that's a bit stingy and is only willing to share 3 electrons, for example boron. Think for a moment what will happen in this case. One of the silicon atoms neighbouring a boron atom will want to share an electron, but the boron atom is already sharing all of its atoms. This attracts other electrons that are nearby, one of them will move in to allow the boron atom to share a fourth electron. However, this will create the same problem elsewhere in our material. Which will also get compensated, but this just creates the same problem once more in yet another location. So what we now have is a hole, a place where an electron should be but isn't, that is moving around the crystal. So in effect we created a freely moving positive charged hole. We call this type of doping p-type. Here's an illustration with B the boron atoms.

Creating a diode

So what would happen if we took a n-type semiconductor and a p-type semiconductor and pushed them against one another? Suddenly the extra free-flowing electrons of the n-type semiconductor have a purpose; to fill the holes in the p-type. So these electrons rush over and fill the holes nearest to the junction between the two semiconductors. However, as they do this a charge imbalance is created. Suddenly the region of p-type semiconductor that is near the junction has an abundance of electrons relative to the positive charges of the atom cores. A net negative charge is created in the p-type semiconductor. Similarly, the swift exit of the electrons from the n-type semiconductor means the charge of the cores there isn't compensated, so the region of the n-type semiconductor near the junction is now positively charged. This creates a barrier, the remaining free electrons of the n-type cannot reach the far-away holes of the p-type because they have to get through the big net negative charge of the p-type near the junction. Illustration here. We have now created a diode!

How diodes work

Think for a moment what will happen if we send current* (which is just a bunch of electrons moving) from the p-type towards the n-type. The incoming electrons will face the negative charge barrier of the p-type and be unable to continue. This means there is no current. In other words the diode has a high resistance. Now let's flip things around and send electrons through the other way. Now they will come across the positive charge barrier of the n-type semiconductor and be attracted to the barrier instead. The electrons' negative charge compensates the net positive charge of the barrier on the n-type and it will vanish. This destroys the equilibrium situation of the barrier. The p-type holes are no longer repelled by the positive barrier of the n-type (as it no longer exists) and move closer to the junction, this means the entire barrier will fade and current can move through. We now have a conductor.

OK, but I don't see what this has to do with light

Now let's find out how we can create light using this method. When current is applied to a diode what happens is that one side of the diode is at a higher energy than the other side. This is what motivates the electrons to move, they want to go from high energy to low energy. If the p-type semiconductor is at a higher energy than the n-type the electron will, upon crossing the junction between the two types, go from a high energy level to a lower one. This difference in energy must be compensated because (as @ducks mentioned in his thermodynamics post) energy cannot be destroyed. So where does the energy go? It gets turned into light!

The energy difference between the p-type and n-type is fixed, meaning a fixed amount of energy is released each time an electron crosses the junction. This means the light is of a single colour (colour is how we perceive the wavelength of light, which is determined by the energy of the light wave). Furthermore, none of the energy is lost so there is no energy being turned into heat, in other words the LED does not get warm.

Conclusion

So now we know why the LED is so power-efficient; it does not turn any energy into heat, it all goes into light. We now also know why they only emit a single colour, because the energy released when an electron crosses the junction is fixed.

Next time

I think next time I will try to tackle the concept of wave functions in quantum mechanics.

Feedback

As usual, please let me know where I missed the mark. Also let me know if things are not clear to you, I will try to explain further in the comments!

Addendum

*) Yes, current flow is defined to be opposite to the flow of the electrons, but I don't want to confuse readers with annoying definitions.

Intro

Hello everyone,

@wanda-seldon has been giving us an introduction to quantum physics. For now, she will be given a short break to prepare new stuff. In the meantime I will be covering some classical mechanics, more specifically thermodynamics. In part 1, we need to work our way through some of the more dry concepts, so we can understand and appreciate the horrifying implications of the fun parts. So I promise, this will be the most verbose one.

Some of you may have briefly seen a version of this posted, that was due to me misunderstanding the schedule with @wanda-seldon. If you saw that one, I will mention I rewrote nearly all of it to be more readable.

Now, on today's agenda: The basics of heat, work and energy and how it's all related.

Previous posts can be found here: https://tildes.net/~science/8al/meta_post_for_a_laypersons_introduction_to_series

Important note

If @wanda-seldon in her posts mention "energy", it's most likely in the context of energy operators, which is a concept in quantum physics. I'm not going to pretend I understand them, so I will not be explaining the difference. We will cover what energy is in classical mechanics. So keep that in mind if you read something from either of us.

Subject

Summarized

What is heat? Using a lot of fancy words we can describe it as follows. Heat is an energy that is transferred between systems by thermal interaction. And what is work? Work is an energy that is applied in a way that performs... work. The combined energy in a system is called internal energy. This type of energy can be transformed or applied to other systems.

These are a lot of new words, so lets break that down a bit.

Systems

A system is just a catch-all term for something that can be defined with a boundary of sorts. Be it mass, volume, shape, container, position, etc. A canister, your tea mug, the steam inside a boiler, your body, a cloud, a room, earth, etc. They are all systems because you can in some way define what is within the boundary, and what is beyond the boundary.

In theory, you could define every single nucleid in the universe as an unique system. But that would be counter-intuitive. In thermodynamics we tend to lump things into a system, and treat it as one thing. As opposed to Quantum stuff that looks at the smallest quantity. Calculating every single water molecule in my coffee would be pure insanity. So we just treat my mug as the boundary, and the tea inside the mug as the system. And just so it's mentioned, systems can contain systems, for instance a tea mug inside a room.

Energy

Energy is some quantifiable property that comes in either the form of heat, work. It can be transferred to other systems, or change between the different energy types. An example of transfer is my coffee cooling down because it's in a cold room. That means heat has been transferred from one system (my mug) to another system (the room). Alternatively you could say my hot coffee mug is warming up the room, or that the room is cooling down my coffee. Thermodynamics is a LOT about perspective. An example of transforming energy types is when we rub our hands together. That way we convert work (rubbing) into heat. It's really not more complicated than that. An interaction in this case is just a system having an effect on a different system. So a thermal interaction means it's an interaction due to heat (like in the mug example).

This brings us to an extremely important point. So important, it's considered "law". The first law of thermodynamics even. Energy cannot be destroyed, it can only change forms.

Your battery charge is never really lost. Neither is the heat of your mug of coffee. It just changed form or went somewhere else. The combined energy of all types that is residing inside a system is called internal energy.

Heat and work

Let's say we have a system, like a room. And all windows and doors are closed, so no energy can leave. In this system, you have a running table fan connected to a power line, getting energy from outside the system. The table fan is making you feel cool. Is the fan cooling down the room, heating up the room, or doing nothing? Think about it for a moment.

http://imgbox.com/CKtQLLOQ

The first thought of many would be to think that this fan would cool the room down, it sure makes you feel cooler! But it's actually heating up the room. As we remember, internal energy is the energy inside a system (room, in this case). The fan is getting energy from outside, and uses this energy to perform work. The fan accelerates the air inside the room, and this accelerated air will evaporate some of your sweat, so you feel cool. But as we remember, energy cannot be destroyed. So we are importing energy into the system, increasing the internal energy. Some of the work from the fan is also directly converted to heat, since the motor of the fan will get hot.

So if we are not getting rid of any of this excess energy, we are increasing the internal energy. And therefore actively increasing the temperature of the room.

http://imgbox.com/SAtqk7YG

To use a more tangible example: Simplified, this phenomena is why green house gases are bad. Lets define earth as a system. Earth gets a lot of energy from the sun. And a lot of this energy will be reflected and sent back to space. Green house gases will reflect back some of this energy trying to leave earth. So instead of having a roughly equal amount of energy enter the system (from the sun, from us doing stuff, etc) that leaves out in space, we have an increasing amount of energy on earth. This, as a consequence, increases temperature.

Implications

Now, what are the maybe not so obvious implications of this?

Waste heat, from supplied energy or inefficient work is a constant headache in engineering. If we cannot remove enough heat, we will actively heat up objects until they are destroyed. Thats why good cooling systems are important in cars, computers, etc.

Whats next?

Now this was not so bad. In the future we will cover phase changes, equilibriums, entropy, the heat death of the universe and briefly touch upon engines. So thats most likely two more parts after this. After that @wanda-seldon will take over again.

I plan on doing one main part per week, but if something is asked that warrants a small topic I might do smaller ones inbetween.

Feedback

Something unclear? Got questions? Got feedback? Or requests of topics to cover? Leave a comment.

apathetic.
hardly wanna move, too
depressed to drink
pathetic.
see a demon's hand
on your closet door
forget it.
possession and a hell-
bound sentence better
than remembrance.
my uncle got so fucked
up that he passed, guess
it's genetic.

exhausted
tryna make depression
beautiful, poetic.
tired of this dance
between lethargic,
apoplectic.
brain on sober
tweakin every minute
schizophrenic. all
the thoughts i'm
barely eatin tryna live
up to aesthetics.

tired of my fucking
skin, a serpent's wish
to shed it.
i saw all the flags
drenched in red
how prophetic.
baphomet in
female form, they said
you'd be angelic.
my single dying wish
you'd be a little
sympathetic

-.

don't come
don't come
to my funeral.

don't cry
don't cry
at my funeral.

just know i
thought you
were beautiful.

even with your
knife at my throat
beautiful

.

where to go
no one's home,
honey can i call?

every day
feed the night
it's insatiable

i never thought
i'd come to say it
maybe its your fault.

i cant believe ive
come so low to say
that its your fault.

-.

i hope you kiss me,
hope you hold me,
when i see you in hell.
cuddle closely
and console me
when i see you in hell.
girl dont push me
will he? wont he?
boy how many pills?
all his poems,
magnum opus, testa-
ment and will.

if i cant know you
lay beside you
then somebody will.
dont wanna own you
or control you, you
do what you will.
i'll just sit here in
the cold, alone, and
write my will.
bottoms up a
litre wine a couple
hands of pills

okay

okay

what in the actual fuck

so i'm a southern boy myself. ever since i was a little kid my mom tried so hard to make me into a little cowboy. i was bought cowboy boots, cowboy hats, and boot-cut blue jeans. even at my young toddler age, i detested all of it lmao.

i was always a city boy.

i loved the idea of big cities like new york, los angeles, chicago, etc. hell, i even fantasized about spending my days in dallas of all places when i was in school daydreaming.

my music tastes trended as far alternative as my style in clothes and girls - in middle school i listened to everything from Shinedown to Disturbed to A Day to Remember to Dimmu Borgir (spooky!)

when i was in higschool - everything from showtunes (Phantom of the Opera) to Eminem to more metal (We Butter The Bread With Butter) to indie rock (Mumford and Sons)

but never in my life was country even a blip on my radar.

sure there were one or two songs you pick up that you get to know like

"Back When" x Tim McGraw

"Pretty Good at Drinking Beer" x Billy Currington

(my stepdad is a country musician. it's hard not to pick up something here and there.)

but

i just discovered a new genre of music (new to me).

i just discovered a new sound.

i just discovered my new favorite song.

and it's country.

Hank Williams III - "Ghost to a Ghost"

like oh my God

i just earlier this week discovered something called "Outlaw Country". i'd somehow managed to go my whole life without ever coming into contact with this.

will you listen to this fucking song??

it's the same classic country instruments that we've heard for decades.

paired with dark, angsty, grungy, emo lyrics.

with an incredibly metal breakdown serving as the chorus.

with a terrifically orchestral and bluesy viola/violin backing the entire song.

WHAT IN TARNATION!?

why did no one ever tell me there was an entire subgenre of emo cowboys running around talking about sleeping on the blacktop, relationship struggles, and popping hella pills

i now listen to country music and i'm never admitting it to my parents lmao.

if you didn't catch the link earlier, this song is a fucking work of art and literally brought me from awe to tears to fuck yeah! all in the span of six minutes in public in this cafe.

https://youtu.be/RoJwrSTIZM0

i think i've looped it back 7-8 times in a row now.

i'm floored.

what did you lot think?

do you listen to outlaw country?

please pass on any recommendations you have

C:

int main(void)
{
	puts("test");
	return 0;
}

Go:

package main

import "os"

func main() {
	_, err := os.Stdout.WriteString("test")
	if err != nil {
		_, _ = os.Stderr.WriteString("fail")
	}
}

Ruby:

10.times { |n| puts "test_#{ n }" }

XML:

<html>
  <body>
    <h1>test</h1>
  </body>
</html>

Saw a pic on Lil Peep's subreddit that listed out a song of his for every mood you could have.

I thought the list was a pretty good showcase of his work, and served as an awesome introduction to Peeper.

Copy my template or make your own and comment below with links of your favorite artist! Show off the range of their work and showcase some of your favorite tracks in the comments downstairs!

A Peep song for when:

(Don't wanna kill the whole list? * = must hear.)

you're overthinking - Overdose ft. Lil Tracy

you're heartbroken - nothing to u

you're really lonely - Praying To The Sky

*you feel hype as fuck - Witchblades

*you have a crush - Star Shopping

you miss your ex - Gym Class

*you're going through shit - Lil Jeep

you're in love - Worlds Away

you hate yourself - OMFG

you're high af - White Wine ft. Lil Tracy

*you're in a toxic relationship - (also leave pls) "Wake Me Up"

your ex moved on - Love Letter

you're gettin freaky - sex (last nite)

no one wants you - Not The One

you don't give a shit (in a good way) - Save That Shit

everything's falling apart - Nose Ring

you got hurt - driveway

they mean the world to you - High School

you're mad at the world - Life

you thought they loved you - Beat It

you want to scream and pull your hair out - Move On, Be Strong

*you're fresh out of a relationship - Awful Things

welcome to Peeper! what'd you think? what'd you love, what'd you hate? let me know!

#GothBoiClique

#WICCAPHASETASKFORCE

TLDR at the bottom

I played Far Cry 5 some time ago, and remember it as a good, albeit conventional, open-world FPS which freshened up the Far Cry formula and simplified it, for the better of the game. I also remember that while I enjoyed myself through it's entirety, the endings (as I immediatelly replayed the final mission to see the other ending) left such a sour taste in my mouth that it ruined the rest of the game's experience for me. I immediately uninstalled it and promised myself to never touch the game again. Both endings had completely ruined it for me. I wasn't there for the story, I was there to enjoy myself while hunting and exploring in rural Montana and occasionally killing people who deserved it (the cult is evil, the game makes this very clear).

Then you get to the end, after dispatching of Joseph's lieuteants; Faith, John and Joseph in missions, that were started through terrible scripted sequences of you being hunted down. And as it turns out, no matter what you choose (engage Joseph in combat or walk away), you can't save your friends (in fact if you walk away it is implied that you kill them yourself because of sheer bad luck) or kill Joseph, for that matter. Your silent protagonist listens to his boring and frankly infuriating monologues after locking you into cutscene, even though you came to the mission wielding an array of very deadly weapons, ranging from assault rifles to rocket launchers to a shovel. But Far Cry 5 doesn't care, you get locked into a cutscene and you are disbarred from shooting the prime antagonist, the man that admitted to you personally that he smothered his infant daughter, the man who leads the cult which kills, kidnapps, tortures and most likely rapes the inhabitants of Hope County. And you don't even get to shoot him in his fucking arrogant face, you just get to listen to his monologue. You totally could! You still have your guns, actually, you pull them out immediately after the cutscene if you choose to engange in a boss fight! But it's a game and nothing makes sense.

So Joseph shows you that he somehow captured your allies again, even though, to even engage him, you have to liberate the entire county from the grip of Eden's Gate, so realistically, there shouldn't be anyone left to capture your friends. The cultists are all dead, killed by bullets or your shovel.

Ultimately, you get to pick between taking three of your friends, leaving the rest behind and driving away, only for the driver to turn on the radio, where it just so happens to play the song which was, during the story, implanted in your brain to send you on a murderous, uncontrollable rage. Or you fight Joseph, who, after the fight ends (WHERE YOU STILL DON'T KILL HIM) reveals, that he was right all along, just as atom bombs start falling from the sky. And even then, Joseph, on his own, manages to overpower all your friends and kill them, because for some reason he's the only one not affected in any way by the atom bomb that just detonated in the distance (it is implied that it was another country that dropped the bomb, not Eden's Gate, but then, who would bomb some random county in Montana in the US without any strategical value?), locks you and himself into a bunker (which had a very capable, armed to the teeth, inhabitant living in it, which Joseph somehow kills off screen even though he marched in there unarmed) probably to brainwash you. Of course, the only right choice would be to take the secret ending, but that means not playing the game at all, and still puts the atom bombs into question and if they would still explode, and all the inhabitants of Hope County at the mercy of an evil doomsday cult.

As it turns out, in the world of Far Cry 5, the world is on the edge of starting world war 3, however, no one tells you this, there are only tidbits you hear on the radio if you drive to areas you've liberated. So everyone who turned off the radio didn't hear those. You could say that the world itself is a bit of foreshadowing, considering that everyone and their grandmother were building bunkers, but I thought that was another jab at the classic US rednecks the game parodied a lot, I missed that entirely. Apparently when you take drugs in the game, the hallucinations also hint at a looming world war, but I didn't take the drugs at all, so, barring the bunkers, the hints were too small to be noticed and gave the player something to think about.

The ending sparked a lot of discussion and speculation(one even going as far as claiming that the protagonist is Jesus) on the internet, mutiple discussion on Reddit and other sites, most people seemed to very much dislike the ending because precisely it felt that everything you did in the game was for nothing, which is an ending you can pull off (See Spec Ops: The Line) but the game has to earn with a very good plot and fitting gameplay. My major problem with Far Cry 5 is that it didn't feel earned at all. There was too much of a disconnect between gameplay and narrative (narrative which on it's own wasn't good enough for such a conclusion) to warrant such a bleak ending and pull it off in a way that didn't send the player into a salty rage. There are also theories floating around the net saying that the entire atom bombs ending was one big hallucination, considering your (and your allies) exposure to Bliss at the start of the boss fight. Honestly, I think Ubisoft could've saved some grace if the post-launch content and the DLC were maybe more focused on apocalyptic content (perhaps one big DLC which turned Hope County into a Fallout-esque desert), I actually thought that such content was part of the game, considering that the main menu changes massively after the atom bomb ending. It would've really saved the game: A classic WTF into oh no you just did not! into Oh they actually didn't. You could've even had most of the characters survive, because there were bunkers everywhere in Hope County. Instead we got lackluster post-launch DLC and content, as all three of the DLCs had a very mediocre reception.

The pcgamer article I linked makes a lot of points about how to make the game better, and ultimately I agree with them. It would've made a lot more sense if the entire plot had more gravitas from the beginning, if it were pictured more clearly that the world is in fact going bonkers, but also if the characters were a bit more realistic, both the villians and allies. You can't make a parody of rural America, structure the entire thing as a fun, wild, action-packed ride and then suddenly start dropping atom bombs and declare world war 3 at the end. People will feal cheated.

I'm interested in what the community here on Tildes thinks of Far Cry 5 and if we could get a discussion going.

TL;DR: Summing up, I don't think Far Cry 5 did enough to pull off the ending it gave us. For me and a lot of other people, it even went so far as to ruin the entire game, as everything I did was completely invalidated, all the time I spent on the game and with the characters I've grown to like (they were caricatures, but lovable ones) felt wasted, because there wasn't a single thing I could've to save anyone (except get the secret ending and don't play the game at all and even then, everything is still open). What are your thoughts?

So I've just finished watching the new season. I had low expectations going in, given how the writers had to cut out their main character at the eleventh hour, but I still can't help but feel disappointed.

Soo many plot threads left open. No repercussions for any of the shit that went down over the last 5 years. The good journalist ends up dead, Claire Underwood commits murder literally in the oval office while secret service is right outside the door and then... nothing. That's it. That's what we get for series a finale. I mean, what?

I've also been quite pissed off how they tried to turn Claire into a feminist icon. Claire is a monster. She is at least as bad as Frank. She wanted to literally start a nuclear war to deflect attention away from herself.

Don't get me wrong, having a feminist message is ok. It's good. It's even timely. But not with Claire fucking Underwood for fucks sake! In the first episode where that female soldier asks her if she even has a plan so that more soldiers won't end up dead, Claire snarks at her with "you wouldn't ask me that if I was a man". Really? This fresh recruit, this soldier who you will be sending to her death is asking you - someone who never held any public office before - whether you have a plan and your response is fuck patriarchy?

How about that scene where she fires her entire cabinet and fills it with an all-female cast? Forget about real life, it's not even realistic in the show's world. Remember how hard Frank had to fight, how many people he had to cross, bribe and even murder just to replace a single seat in earlier seasons? Where was the senate? Did everyone else just roll over; how come nobody fought her on this? It felt like the writers really, really wanted to play out their deepest, guilty-pleasure Hillary 2016 fantasies out on the show and the script suffered for it.

If they just left things at the last season's finale where Claire looked into the camera with "my turn!" it would have been a much more powerful moment, certainly better than this disorganized, directionless mess we got.

So yeah, that's where I'm at. How about you?

EDIT: With the help of @ducks the post now has illustrations to clear up the experimental set-up.

Introduction

I want to give an introduction on several physics topics at a level understandable to laypeople (high school level physics background). Making physics accessible to laypeople is a much discussed topic at universities. It can be very hard to translate the professional terms into a language understandable by people outside the field. So I will take this opportunity to challenge myself to (hopefully) create an understandable introduction to interesting topics in modern physics. To this end, I will take liberties in explaining things, and not always go for full scientific accuracy, while hopefully still getting the core concepts across. If a more in-depth explanation is wanted, please ask in the comments and I will do my best to answer.

Previous topics

Spintronics
Quantum Oscillations
Quantisation and spin, part 1

Today's topic

Today's topic will be a continuation of the topics discussed in my last post. So if you haven't, please read part 1 first (see link above). We will be sending particles through two Stern-Gerlach apparatuses and then we'll put the particles through three of them. We will discuss our observations and draw some very interesting conclusions from it on the quantum nature of our universe. Not bad for a single experiment that can be performed easily!

Rotating the Stern-Gerlach apparatus

We will start simple and rotate the set-up of the last post 90 degrees so that the magnets face left and right instead of up and down. Now let's think for a moment what we expect would happen if we sent silver atoms through this setup. Logically, there should not be in any difference in outcome if we rotate our experiment 90 degrees (neglecting gravity, whose strength is very low compared to the strength of the magnets). This is a core concept of physics, there are no "privileged" frames of reference in which the results would be more correct. So it is reasonable to assume that the atoms would split left and right in the same way they split up and down last time. This is indeed what happens when we perform the experiment. Great!

Two Stern-Gerlach apparatuses

Let's continue our discussion by chaining two Stern-Gerlach apparatuses together. The first apparatus will be oriented up-down, the second one left-right. We will be sending silver atoms with unknown spin through the first apparatus. As we learned in the previous post, this will cause them to separate into spin-up and spin-down states. Now we take only the spin-up silver atoms and send them into the second apparatus, which is rotated 90 degrees compared to the first one. Let's think for a moment what we expect would happen. It would be reasonable to assume that spin-left and spin-right would both appear 50% of the time, even if the silver atoms all have spin-up too. We don't really have a reason to assume a particle cannot both have spin up and spin right, or spin up and spin left. And indeed, once again we find a 50% split between spin-left and spin-right at the end of our second apparatus. Illustration here.

Three Stern-Gerlach apparatuses and a massive violation of common sense

So it would seem silver atoms have spin up or down as a property, and spin left or spin right as another property. Makes sense to me. To be sure, we take all the silver atoms that went up at the end of the first apparatus and right at the end of the second apparatus and send them through a third apparatus which is oriented up-down (so the same way as the first). Surely, all these atoms are spin-up so they will all come out up top again. We test this and find... a 50-50 split between up and down. Wait, what?

Remember that in the previous post I briefly mentioned that if you take two apparatuses who are both up-down oriented and send only the spin-up atoms through the second one they all come out up top again. So why now suddenly do they decide to split 50-50 again? We have to conclude that being forced to choose spin-left or spin-right causes the atoms to forget if they were spin-up or spin-down.

This result forces us to fundamentally reconsider how we describe the universe. We have to introduce the concepts of superposition and wave function collapse to be able to explain these results.

Superpositions, collapse and the meaning of observing in quantum physics

The way physicists make sense of the kind of behaviour described above is by saying the particles start out in a superposition; before the first experiment they are 50% in the up-state and 50% in the down-state at the same time. We can write this as 50%[spin up]+50%[spin down], and we call this a wave function. Once we send the particles through the first Stern-Gerlach apparatus each one will be forced to choose to exhibit spin-up or spin-down behaviour. At this point they are said to undergo (wave function) collapse; they are now in either the 100%[spin up] or 100%[spin down] state. This is the meaning of observing in quantum mechanics, once we interact with a property of an atom (or any particle, or even a cat) that is in a superposition this superposition is forced to collapse into a single definite state, in this case the property spin is in a superposition and upon observing is forced to collapse to spin up or spin down.

However, once we send our particles through the second apparatus, they are forced to collapse into 100%[spin left] or 100%[spin right]. As we saw above, this somehow also makes them go back into the 50%[spin up]+50%[spin down] state. The particles cannot collapse into both a definite [spin up] or [spin down] state and a definite [spin left] or [spin right] state. Knowing one precludes knowing the other. An illustration can be seen here.

This has far reaching consequences for how knowable our universe it. Even if we can perfectly describe the universe and everything in it, we still cannot know such simple things as whether a silver atom will go left or right in a magnetic field - if we know it would go up or down. It's not just that we aren't good enough at measuring, it's fundamentally unknowable. Our universe is inherently random.

Conclusion

In these two posts we have broken the laws of classical physics and were forced to create a whole new theory to describe how our universe works. We found out our universe is unknowable and inherently random. Even if we could know all the information of the state our universe is in right now, we still would not be able to track perfectly how our universe would evolve, due to the inherent chance that is baked into it.

Next time

Well that was quite mind-blowing. Next time I might discuss fermions vs bosons, two types of particles that classify all (normal) matter in the universe and that have wildly different properties. But first @ducks will take over this series for a few posts and talk about classical physics and engineering.

Feedback

As always, please feel free to ask for clarification and give me feedback on which parts of the post could me made clearer. Feel free to discuss the implications for humanity to exist in a universe that is inherently random and unknowable.

Addendum

Observant readers might argue that in this particular case we could just as well have described spin as a simple property that will align itself to the magnets. However, we find the same type of behaviour happens with angles other than 90 degrees. Say the second apparatus is at an angle phi to the first apparatus, then the chance of the particles deflecting one way is cos^2(phi/2)[up] and sin^2(phi/2)[down]. So even if there's only a 1 degree difference between the two apparatuses, there's still a chance that the spin will come out 89 degrees rotated rather than 1 degree rotated.

feels like we should probably have one of these in here since it doesn't appear we've had one of these as a community in ~creative in awhile--if ever.

i've spent the better portion of my day today working on a census form for the kryfona kingdom, which is one of the many countries in my fairly large worldbuilding effort. the first page actually came out really well, i think, so that was time well spent. i've considered making a post about some of its more intricate detail since i think some people on here might enjoy that, but for now i've opted to just make this general thread since i dunno how well it'd go as a discussion topic. maybe if y'all think it's worthy of one? idk.

anyways, what creative things have you been working on recently?

Hey, we made it to week 20! Here we've got this week's user-voted record: Washing Machine by Sonic Youth!

Washing Machine is the ninth studio album by the American experimental rock band Sonic Youth, released on September 26, 1995 by DGC Records. It was recorded at Easley Studios in Memphis, Tennessee and produced by the band and John Siket, who also engineered the band's previous two albums. The album features more open-ended pieces than its predecessors and contains some of the band's longest songs, including the 20-minute ballad "The Diamond Sea", which is the lengthiest track to feature on any of Sonic Youth's studio albums.

Taken from @Cleb's pitch:

I listened to this fairly recently and after my previous experience with Sonic Youth (Daydream Nation, Sister), which I thought was mostly just okay, fine, whatever, I did not expect to get as much enjoyment out of this album as I did. Yeah, it's Sonic Youth going even less no-wave inspired than before, but I think they fit far better into that groove of noisy-ish alt rock without the no-wave coming in at times. Maybe I just think the writing is cooler. All I know is it made me finally able to say "I appreciate Sonic Youth."

Here's the place to discuss your thoughts on the record, your history with it or the artist, and basically talk about whatever you want to that goes along with Washing Machine. Remember that this is intended to be a slow moving thing, feel free to take your time and comment at any point in the week!

If you'd like to stream or buy the album, it can be found on most platforms here.

For those that don't know, NaNoWriMo (National Novel Writing Month) is an annual challenge to write a 50,000 word novel over the course of the month of November. That translates to roughly 1,600 words a day. More info on NaNoWriMo here.

I first tried it two years ago though I fizzled out at around 10,000 words and moved on to another WIP. Last year I didn't formally participate though I made an effort to write something every day. Not sure about my word count.

This year I'm doing a series of short stories in a shared setting since I've been doing more short form writing as of late and I've been mulling over the idea for a few weeks now. It's a nice way to experiment with different settings and themes within a "singular" work. I've made some notes on plot hooks, settings, characters, and ideas I wanted to explore, so it's only a matter of writing the stories now. Maybe I'll even share excerpts as I go along.

So has anyone else made plans to do it this year?

peep the inspo at the bottom

i finnally found some shit i lvoe

fuggg i hate to post this much because i'm certain my shit gets annoying. i bet there's hella people on here who view my posts as "fluff" and want it gone but highkey idgaf.

i know tildes likes to be open to discussion and likes to look deeper into things - ain't my fault i don't get that many comments ¯\(ツ)/¯. i tried writing more secretive and intricate shit people could pick apart if they want, but those weren't received as well as some of my more blunt posts.

though that one poem i did where i referenced rocky horror did really well.

i dunno.

i just hope my shit belongs here 😂 but i guess if i've been allowed to make over thirty posts in the past three months that means i'm in the clear.

dont be afraid to keep me in check, and dont be afraid to comment on my stuff.

i invite your questions, your critique, your thoughts in general. i may be fucxed in the head, but i'm an artist above all else (is that true?). if you want to dig into my shit or have any ways i can improve on my work, i'd be so glad to know you have no idea

i write my stuff to express myself but that does no good if no one's listening lmao so i want to write shit people like. i welcome all feedback.

anyway i'm ranting again and i'm only tipsy. imma finnish this drink (kuinka voit?), then imma find a beat and ride on some shit.

y'all know the drill.

say it with me.

esskeeetiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiit,

i'm actually crying right now. i found a beat that sounds just like the kind of shit i want to make and everything is just rushing to me. this is insane.

this is the blues moderna i want to make. i feel like Taj Mahal

ain't nothing truer in my heart
than missouri blues
remember driving through St. Louis
sitting next to you
remembering the times you said you loved me
guess it wasn't true
told me you'd love me forever
now i'm feeling all confused.

baby where'd you go and why'd
you take my heart away from me
now i write pathetic songs and
can't stop thinking pitifully
wonder if you talk me good
or speak on me in mimicry
i can't stop hating myself
and looking at me critically

mirrors are the worst friend
a man could ever have
when a pretty blonde girl went
and tore his heart in half
when he's sure he's lived the best
years he'd ever have
what good is any man, girl,
without his better half?

take me to the delta where
a man can sing in peace
laughing at me, drunk
when i'm just tryna find relief
can't afford the therapy,
for shit you did to me
i'd let you take my life if
you just killed me in your sheets

(chorus)

baby please
tell me that you care a-bout me
promise you don't laugh at me
tell me that you'll come on close and hold me

-.

baby hear me howlin' at your back door
wonder what you're not talkin to me for
hoping that you answer and take me home
take me back before everything went wrong

take me back to days when i still loved good
it was us against the world but girl we endured
our thoughts were caked in sin although our hearts pure
we got all cuddled close and smoked a backwood

take me back to days when you still liked me
and my body wasn't cause for anxiety
wanna go back to twenty sixteen
eyes blue, hearts black, minds pristine

baby hear me howlin' at your back door
wonder what you're not talkin to me for
hoping that you answer and take me home
take me back before everything went wrong

(chorus)

baby please
tell me that you care a-bout me
promise you don't laugh at me
tell me that you'll come on close and hold me

i feel like if i write any more on this one imma ruin it. i don't like that.

peep the inspo

(iit's not rap. it's blues. actually peep the inspo)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J4YPMiFaPWo (oooooof jesus christ, 1:13!!!!!!)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-iqTRNUOsFI

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c0_eRVroLqs

i fucxing hate dallas, i fucxing hate texas.

Introduction

I want to give an introduction on several physics topics at a level understandable to laypeople (high school level physics background). Making physics accessible to laypeople is a much discussed topic at universities. It can be very hard to translate the professional terms into a language understandable by people outside the field. So I will take this opportunity to challenge myself to (hopefully) create an understandable introduction to interesting topics in modern physics. To this end, I will take liberties in explaining things, and not always go for full scientific accuracy, while hopefully still getting the core concepts across. If a more in-depth explanation is wanted, please ask in the comments and I will do my best to answer.

Previous topics

Spintronics
Quantum Oscillations

Today's topic

Today's topic will be quantisation, explained through the results of the Stern-Gerlach experiment which was first performed in 1922. This topic treats a much more fundamental concept of quantum physics than my previous topics.

What is the Stern-Gerlach experiment?

In 1922 physicists Stern and Gerlach set up an experiment where they shot silver atoms through a magnetic field, the results of this experiment gave conclusive support for the concept of quantisation. I will now first explain the experiment and then, using the results, explain what quantisation is. If you would rather watch a video on the experiment, wikipedia provided one here, it can be watched without sound. Note that I will dive a bit deeper into the results than this video does.

The experiment consists of two magnets, put on top of each other with a gap in the middle. The top magnet has its north pole facing the gap, the bottom magnet has its south pole facing the gap. See this illustration. Now we can shoot things through the gap. What do we expect would happen? Let's first shoot through simple bar magnets. Depending on how its poles are oriented, it will either bend downwards, upwards or not at all. If the bar magnet's north pole is facing the top magnet, it will be pushed downwards (because then north is facing north). If the bar magnet's south pole is facing the top magnet, it will instead be pushed upwards. If the bar magnet's poles are at a 90 degree angle to the two magnets it will fly straight through, without bending. Lastly, if the bar magnet's poles are at any other angle, say 45 degrees, it will still bend but less so. If we send through a lot of magnets, all with a random orientation, and measure how much they got deflected at the other side of the set-up we expect to see a line, see 4 in the illustration.

Now we'll send through atoms, Stern and Gerlach chose silver atoms because they were easy to generate back in 1922 and because they have so-called spin, which we will get back to shortly. We send these silver atoms through in the same way we sent through the bar magnets; lots of them and all of them with a random orientation. Now what will happen? As it turns out all the atoms will either end up being deflected all the way up or all the way down, with nothing in between. 50% will be bent upwards, 50% downwards. So silver atoms seem to respond as if they were bar magnets that either bend maximally up or maximally down. In the illustration this is labeled 5.

If we were to take only the silver atoms that bent upwards and sent them through the experiment again, all of them would bend upwards again. They seem to remember if they previously went up or down rather than just deciding on the spot each time if they go up or down. What model can we think of that would explain this behaviour? The silver atoms must have some property that will make them decide to bend up or down. Let's call this property spin, and say that if the silver atoms chose to bend up they have spin up, if they chose to bend down they have spin down. It seems that these are the only two values spin can have, because we see them bend either maximally up or maximally down. So we can say the spin is quantised; it has two discrete values, up or down, and nothing in between.

Conclusion

We have found a property of atoms (and indeed other particles like electrons have spin too) that is quantised. This goes against classical physics where properties are continuous. This shows one of the ways in which physics at the smallest scales is fundamentally different from the physics of everyday life.

Next time

Next time we will investigate what happens when we rotate the angle of the magnets used in the experiment. This will lead us to discover other fundamental aspects of physics and nature, quantum superpositions and the inherent randomness of nature.

EDIT: part 2 is now up here.

Feedback

As discussed in the last post, I am trying something different for this post. Talking about more fundamental quantum physics that was discovered 100 years ago rather than modern physics. Did you like it? Let me know in the comments!

Yesterday @talklittle posted the topic Halloween game sales are live. What are your Horror/Halloween-themed recommendations?. There have been some good recommendations and whatnot. If you like horror games and weren't aware of the ongoing sales, go check out the comments for some recommendations.

Being the meta-killjoy that I am, I started this sidebar about the top comment. tl;dr: I don't think this type of content engenders Tildes's discussion forward community.

Fell free to read the whole thread of comments for some civil discussion on the matter, but I do want to open this up to all of Tildes: should this type of comment be policed on Tildes?

Also: do you think this type of comment is good? Do you agree with me that it's retroactive to Tildes's goals? Am I just a big killjoy? Given that the comment I'm calling into question is the top comment of that topic, I'm probably David in this arena but I want to hear it from everyone else.

today's different -

or at least, this part of it.

a lot of the posts i been making the past couple months have been out of this empty kinda want to write something.

as per the usual, i came to starbucks to work on some shit, but i felt something in my chest, got some inspo, and here we are again lmao.

fair warning ahead, this is one of my more...idk, "brazen" posts. i dunno, superficial as hell save for one or two bars. enjoy it or not - love you anyways.

peep the inspo at the bottom

esskeetit.

seeing all these people walking
round arm in arm
while im sitting in my house in
the dark - pop bars
crash cars - cop cars
hella sirens in the distance
blood in the moonlight glistens
bishy getting distant
what's going on in your
head causing dissonance?
what's weighing up with suicide
in equivalence?
still hooked on to
the past in imprisonment?
keep looking back at
what you had and you're missing it?

-.

fuck that - cut that
sideswipe - bone crack
i wouldn't go back
despite all the flashbacks
i still got hopes
want my life back
i do this shit 'cus
my soul went bad
layin in a bed full of
pressed pills and porn mags
filling up a pool with
self-hatred and cognac
pistol labeled "lovers"
and the bullet "no contact"
wanna ski slopes 'til
my eyes go all black

-.

i don't hate that girl
i hate my self
don't hate this world
i hate my self
spent red candles
on my shelf
lost 21 grams when
i weighed myself

ave satani
my fear and my secrets
my tears and my blood
my devotion and regrets
my love and disdain and
my pain and forgiveness
these things are my own
and my self is my weakness
so bring my destruction
and make me a demon

bishop.

inspo:

https://youtu.be/ShI6axFfqj4

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2p09lM19FpU

https://youtu.be/9M1PY4lTY3g

bonus: https://youtu.be/DxvLc2a6Iao

Halloween has always been one of my favourite events of the year. I loved dressing up (though we always had to wear a winter coat over our costumes), I loved going trick-or-treating with my friends, and I loved sorting through our pillowcase of loot at the end of the night. I remember entire streets decorated as graveyards and how lively it was with kids everywhere. A few houses down from us, a neighbour set up a haunted house in their garage every year, and it ended with a warm hot chocolate with little marshmallows. We always planned to hit that house when we started getting cold.

When my partner and I starting handing out candy, we were in a relatively newly developed neighbourhood, and had very few kids. We handed out full sized chocolate bars and chips, the best prizes when we were trick-or-treating! We took turns answering the door and just loved to see the costumes. We counted Darth Vaders and witches and whatever was popular that year. It was always a lot of fun.

We stopped handing out candy about two years ago, mostly because I didn't want to get Nestle candy, which was the nut-free stuff that we usually got, and because it felt wasteful. There are a lot of drives right after Halloween where people basically dumped pounds of chocolate (either trading them to their dentist, or using them to make Halloween art). At work, every parent would bring in bags of candy to share. It was honestly just too much, especially considering the individually wrapped plastic. I've also started noticing that everyone is starting to sell plastic "Halloween candy reusable" bags, and I just really dislike that.

We're always looking for an alternative because I still really want to take part in Halloween again. This year, we again decided against handing out candy, and I'm already missing seeing the little trick-or-treators and their costumes, and their joy in getting a little treat.

I've been using Jimmy Joy (used to be called Joylent) for a few years. I think it's a great meal replacement for when you don't have time or just don't feel like cooking. On the other hand, it's just a mix of oats, rapeseed, and vitamins. And it doesn't taste that great. So I wouldn't go 100%.

I would love to hear your thoughts? Also, which brands do you prefer? I'm in Europe, so unfortunately original Soylent is not available for me.

So, I am far from the most experienced, or the most knowledgeable, or the most active amateur radio operator out there, but it is something that has piqued my interest none the less. Before I got into the hobby, I always assumed that the FCC just game amateurs a small bucket of useless spectrum and that was it. Maybe you could fly an RC plane, but surely that is about as cool as it gets.

It turns out I was dead wrong. Amateurs are allocated bands all across the RF spectrum - more or less. Bands from way below the AM broadcast frequency to way above the microwave frequencies used by our cell phones and wireless routers. Also, you are allowed to legally transmit at up to 1.5 kilowatts of power! That's 3,000 times as much power as your average walkie talkie! :) Also, importantly, the license exam only costs $15.

At many of the lower frequencies, the signals bounce off the ionosphere and you can make contact with people all over the world (propagation gods permitting). At the higher frequencies, you lose that "skip propagation," but more bandwidth is available. There are analog voice repeater networks, digital packet networks, mesh networks running on modified commercial WiFi gear, and even a handful of old school packet BBSes. There are some LEO satellites which run voice repeaters which allow you make international contacts, and sometimes even the International Space Station will participate in events. Lots of cool stuff going on. This hobby is kind of a bottomless rabbit hole of possibilities.

I got my technician license about a year ago, and I have been most interested in the data networking end of the hobby. Despite being a pile of hacks, APRS is still very cool, and sometime soon I hope to set up an AREDN node of my own. Every once in a while I'll call into the local repeaters and shoot the breeze.

So there's my story. Are there any other hams out there?

I’ll go first:

I had this thought a few years ago, and for me it was my desire to write and perform music. Yes, I wanted to be a “rock star” in a way. I had a bit of skill, and some song ideas, while at the same time the idea of putting my soul out in front of everyone scared the crap out of me. I have major stage fright.

So.. being the nerdy control freak that I am, I started my own Open Mic night at a friend’s bar. For many weeks I drove all of my audio gear there, I hosted lots of amazing people.. and eventually I performed. I played and sang my three songs. People loved it, but all the while my lips turned blue due to lack of normal breathing, and I certainly never made eye contact with the crowd more than once. That night I felt like I accomplished my goal, and learned my limits. Mission accomplished, I am now ready for the theoretical end.

Would you have any regrets in a similar thought experiment?

i think i've stopped writing for myself recently.

i've been looking at my writing as "art" instead of self expression.

as if things have to have a certain depth, air of mystery, or room for interpretation in order for them to be valid.

i'm getting wine drunk and writing for me tonight.

this is a poem about love, drugs, and crashing cars. that's all.

tildes suggestion: ability to hide the amt of votes on a post.

"The wise man will live as long as he ought, not as long as he can."

• Seneca the younger

turned into a wino
'least im still alive tho
90 on the highway
drive into the signpost
fuckin on the yayo
stoic like im cato
i loved you to the nines
and you fucxed me over tenfold

choked me til my eyes closed
baby got a blindfold
didn't think youd hurt me
gave you all the control
used to be my handhold,
only wanted billfolds
tonight im gettin fucked up,
baby, where'd my gun go?

-.

used to be so cute
starin at your rosy cheeks
now i'm kissin on the
wine glass to the left of me
broken mirror shows the
shattered pieces of what's left of me
i dont even hate you
but baby, i am dead to me

-.

i recommend listening to this song before you jump into this next part if youre going to read it. i borrow the flow here

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bmFkCNvfojg

plus, it's a damn good song.

hope he treats you well,
i'll see you in hell
wonder if you hate him,
wonder if you yell
wonder if you stress him
til his troubles swell
wonder if you make him
hide inside his shell

wonder if his money
towers high enough
if you ever got a
lexus to feel good enough
if you ever make him
dinner when his day was rough
if you ever drop your
bullshit and just show him love.

all i ever needed
was a cuddlebug
i swear i tried
my hardest, never good enough
tried to build a home
tried to show you love.
i was never good enough.

all the screaming, all
the fighting i got used to.
just wanted you to smile
cus deep down i really missed you
all it ever came to
was lies and "i hate you"s
i can still hear it
"you look like i abused you."

i felt my eyes going
wide, i was never fine.
dreaming 'bout a better
life almost all the time
'bout a day when we
were married, i could call you mine (&&)
had a home in missouri
everything was right

but any time i tried to
love you, you pushed me away
any time i tried to
hold you, told me "go away"
tried to build a better life for
us every day
then i guess you got your
lexus, made your getaway

claiming that you love me (this block isnt mine)
but you don't mean shit,
claiming that you had me
but you never did,
claiming that you love me
but you don't mean shit,
claiming that you had me
but you never did

pushed me to the side,
made me fade away.
vision fadin' black
i wont be okay
im stuck on this shit
each and every day
if i kill myself,
the dreams will go away.

This is a broad question, but I don't really want to narrow it down because I feel like we see unethical issues across so many industries. I want to be able to buy clothes knowing that I'm not supporting child/slave labor just as I want to be able to buy a videogame knowing that the people who created it had time to go home to their families each night. And if the clothes were made with child labor and the game did have a horrible development crunch? Well, those aren't places I want to put my money, even if I'm interested in the product.

Price and convenience used to be the kings of my spending habits, and I was solely interested in products on my own terms. I have no doubt that I have bought many items that have supported the suffering of others. Now, I am much more concerned with a product as it exists in context, and I'm willing to pay more for companies that do things "right." The problem is that this context isn't always available. Most companies are not exactly upfront with their shady practices, after all. How do I know if, say, the bluetooth speaker, quinoa, or dinnerware that I'm looking at was responsibly produced?

What are some ways can I make more informed decisions about what I choose to buy so that I can lessen harm (be it personal, environmental, or otherwise)?

How can I find out which companies support practices that are in line with my values? If anyone has any insight into particular industries, that would be especially valuable.