I have a slight struggle that I wonder if anyone else can relate to. I'm a creative "type" in that both my job (scientist) and hobbies (many, over the years) require constant innovation, in addition to the usual labor, to keep them going.

I have a note/journal app where I store my ideas. Sometimes these are ideas with acute utility e.g. an experiment design that I can test out the next day at work or maybe an idea for a paper. Other ideas are what I would consider "highdeas" - insights or thoughts that seem amazing when you're stoned but after you sober up they're kind of nonsense. The former are productive and the latter are non-productive forms of creativity (barring any offshoots of the latter that prove useful later on).

But then sometimes I get idea in-between. Say, an insight into how certain human behaviors are a certain way or maybe a rant on a topic/issue in my lab work that is interesting but not valuable enough to publish or bring up in a formal meeting. My question / discussion topic for you, is, what do you do with these sort of self-ascribed interesting ideas that have no immediate value? One option is to write them out on a forum, as I am currently doing, but I would end up writing all day. Does anyone else keep track of these? Do you schedule a follow-up with these intermediate ideas for future inspiration? I currently use Joplin which is great but I don't think there are any features to stimulate creativity in this manner.

Basically, I'm struggling to arrive to a conclusion on this matter on my own. And in these situations I like discussing the topic with other people so I can see other sides that I have not considered and can submit my arguments for review and see if my logic follows or is faulty.

I apologize in advance for the disorganized ramble format, it's just a very messy subject for me. I guess I could tidy it up better and present it like a mini essay, but it would be somewhat dishonest or misleading to pretend that I have a hold of this horse when I absolutely don't. So, I think the stream of consciousness is a more honest and appropriate –even if messy– approach.

With that said, here it goes:

The way I understand it, the main reason for supporting antinatalism is that there's always pain in life.

There are varying amounts of it, of course, but you have no way of knowing what kind of pain your child will be exposed to. Thus, you're sort of taking a gamble with someone's life. And that, antinatalists say, is immoral.

I used to deeply agree with that sentiment. Now I don't agree with it so much, but I still cannot debunk it. I feel emotionally and irrationally, that it isn't quite right. But, I cannot defend these feelings rationally.

I think, if you're serious about antinatalism, that you are against creating life. Since life always comes with the possibility of pain. And, you cannot just end all the life forms that can feel pain and call it a day; on the contrary: you'd also have to end all the forms of life that cannot feel pain too, since, even though they cannot feel pain, they can create other life forms that can feel pain.

I guess a point could be made to only apply the antinatalist values to humans. Since only we have concepts of morally right and wrong, and animals don't know what they're donig. But we do know what they're doing, and why would you try to prevent other humans from creating life that can suffer but leave other animals able to do it? It's all suffering for innocent creatures, is it not?

I guess we could also imagine a form of life without pain. For example, a future with very advanced technology and medicine, artificial meat, etc. But getting there would mean subjecting a lot of people to a lot of pain. And even in that future, the possibility of pain is still there, which is what makes creating life immoral. It's not just the certainty of pain, but also the possibility of it alone.

So, in the end, the way I see it, being antinatalist means being anti-life. Sure, you can just be an antinatalist to yourself and not impose your values on other people. But if you're consistent with the antinatalist argument, then if it's wrong for you to have kids because they can suffer, it's also wrong for other people and even for animals.

And this doesn't seem right to me. Because, I mean, it's life. And I think ridding the world of life woud be a very sad thing, would it not?

But, again, this is just feelings. If I think about it rationally, the world and the universe are completely indifferent to the existence of life. A world without life, what does it matter? Specially if there's no one there to see it. Nothing makes life inherently better than no life. Since ethics doesn't really exist in the physical world.

It's neither right nor wrong for life to exist. But bringing life into a world of pain does certainly feel wrong from a morality standpoint.

But why is it wrong? We didn't create life. We didn't create pain. The injustice of it all exists not because of us.

But, we do have the power to end that suffering. And if we have the power to end suffering, shouldn't we end suffering? Isn't that what the moral values taught to us say (except for religious communities, I guess)?

You could always say, “well, it's not my fault that life is unfair, and it's not my responsibility to tackle that issue” or “the joy compensates for the pain”. Which might be valid points, but they don't take away the selfishness of having kids, do they? You're just ignoring the issue.

On the other hand, however, there are a lot of people who were born (which is an unfair act), but they aren't mad about it, they don't resent their parents, and they're happy and they wouldn't choose not to have been born. But does this make it okay? I think that it makes it not so bad, but at the end of the day it's still wrong, just “forgivable wrong” if that's even a thing.

Also, isn't it going too far? Applying morality to something so primitive, so abstract, so before morality, something that isn't even human?

But we also say murder, torture and rape are wrong, yet murder, torture and rape have been happening forever since they were first possible, for far longer than we humans have existed. So, how are they any different? If they can be wrong, so can life.

Furthermore, don't we have a right to follow our primitive instincts and reproduce? Allowing someone to “bring a life into a world of pain” is wrong, but so is taking away their right to fulfill their “naturally unjust” life.

I guess, if I was forced to give a conclusion, it would be something along the lines of: Creating life is wrong and selfish, yes. But it's okay because most people don't mind it and it's not really our fault that it exists nor our responsibility to end it. So, tough luck and YOLO?

I'm not too happy about that conclusion but it's the best I can come up with.

And as a corollary: to diminish the unfairness of birth, we should facilitate euthanasia and accept self-check-outs as a fair decision.

So, what do you think?

Is antinatalism right? Is my antinatalism right? Is it wrong? Is mine wrong? Why?

Is creating life fair? Is it not? Is it not but still okay? Why?

A few years ago I got into improving my knowledgebase of personal security - theory and tools - but it didn't go much farther than reinforcing everything with 2FA and setting up a password manager, plus setting up a VPN and full disk encryption.

It seems like we're amidst a rising tide of data breaches due to, IMHO, laziness and cheapness on the part of many companies storing personal data.

So, recently I've embarked on my second journey to improve my own security via habits and software and teaching myself. Privacytools has been a super helpful resource. My main lesson this time is to take ownership/responsibility for my own data. To that end, I have switched to KeyPass with yubikey 2FA (still trying to figure out how to get 2FA with yubi on my android without NFC), moved over to Joplin for my note taking (away from Google and Evernote) and also switched to NextCloud for all of my data storage and synchronization. I'm also de-Googling myself, current due-date is end of March when Inbox is shut down.

So my question / discussion topic here, is, what are everyone's thoughts on the future of practical personal security and privacy? More decentralization and self-hosting? That's what it looks like to me. Blockchain tech would be cool for public objects like news articles, images etc. but from what I understand that has zero implication for anything personal. The other newish tech is PGP signatures, which I'm still having trouble implementing/finding use for, but surely that will change.

There is this topic but that ended up just being about encryption which I think is a no-brainer at this point. I'm more so looking for the leading edge trends.

I can install Linux or Windows or even BSD on my laptop without much hassle, and get the updates directly from the OS vendors.

This isn't the case for smartphones. You don't have choice over your OS. You don't even get android updates directly from Google, and have to wait for device manufacturers to release the updates. Why is it so?

I'm new to Tildes, but I've been using Markdown-based comment systems
for more than a decade: both Reddit and GitHub. My programming blog has
been written in Markdown for the past 8 years. Overall I've probably
written several novels worth of content in Markdown in my life.

I've already noticed that Tildes has made a serious mistake in its
handling of line endings: All line endings are treated as hard line
breaks. This diverges from CommonMark and most uses of Markdown in
practice. If I wanted a hard line break, I'd put two spaces at the end
of the line, as specified by both CommonMark and the original Markdown.
Line endings should be otherwise be soft.

GitHub made the same mistake with its "GitHub-flavored Markdown," though
fortunately this mistake has been limited to issues. GitHub README.md
files don't have this behavior, nor does GitHub Pages. It the only other
Markdown system I've used with this flaw.

Why does this matter? If I'm writing more than a single sentence, I
never edit my comment inside my web browser. I edit it using my text
editor of choice, Vim, since it's far more comfortable. I don't even
have to copy-paste the text between applications. Instead, I have an
add-on, Tridactyl, that does this seemlessly and effortlessly.

Hard line endings just don't work well with long prose — exactly the
type of content that Tildes is encouraging — particularly when edited in
a proper text editor that knows about paragraphs and can do its own line
wrapping. Editing long lines is annoying and takes extra care. That's
why we have soft line endings after all.

I'm leaving all my line endings in this post so that you can see the
mess Tildes makes with it, with the ragged right-hand side due to font
differences. If I had written this in nearly any other Markdown system,
the text would have flowed into the page without issues. It is a mistake
for Tildes to do differently. This sort of compatibility issue is
probably going to be annoying enough to keep me off the site.

I've been semi into this for a short while. I've done a few brews over the last year or so, three single gallon mead brews (one being a joam), one 5 gal cider brew and I've just started 3 different single gallon brews, with two being wine and one cider. From here on out I'll be starting a new batch each week to create something I really enjoy, most likely ciders.

I would enjoy talking to anyone that is also interested in this subject.

I'm making an effort to cut out meat from my diet and I'd love to hear what everyone's favourite vegetarian meals are.

For a long time I have been making pasta with ground beef and I recently found out that I can just not put the beef in and it tastes even better. The tomato sauce really gets a chance to shine without the beef.

Many websites like hacker news, lobsters and stack exchange put an indicator next to usernames to show that the user is new. This lets regular users know that this user may need some help fitting in and following the rules.

What does everyone think about such a feature on tildes?

(Still don't know if Tilders is a thing, but I'm rolling with it.)

Red Dead Redemption 2 has hooked me like no other game has in years, and that's saying something. My collection is massive between my Steam library, PS4 library, and all the older titles I hoard. But ever since RDR2 came out a few months ago, it's almost all I have played on a daily basis.

Aside from the fact that the graphics and animations are objectively jaw-drop gorgeous, there is something about this game's pacing, writing, thematic story telling, game-play, and characters that has absolutely captured my imagination, and has become my go-to way to unwind after a long day. Most of this applies to the story mode.

But I also dove completely head first in the Online Beta for a few months straight. I'm now rank 101, have all I want really for online as it stands, and I loved every minute of my crazy solo-hunting/fishing/griefer oblitherating grind. Taking a break for new content coming on the 26th of this month, and also really need to get some friends to play with... (I have a perma-posse on PS4 named "The Pariah" as well if anyone decides they may be interested)

I'm a lifelong vegetarian, and somehow, RD2 MADE ME FALL IN LOVE WITH HUNTING IN IT. I could go on, but I'm hoping to get some discussion out of this and not just blabber on and on like I do in real life about it.

So... please tell me I'm not the only freak on here that loves this game. The Reddit communities for this game are a toxic dumpster fire, and I really want to discuss it with some people who actually like to... discuss.

Hey everyone!

I'm pretty new here, and I'm already enjoying this place, but I was wondering when there will be a group to post photos. I take photos and I'm sure some of you do as well, and I thought it would be cool to be able to share the photos we take and get honest feedback on them like we have honest discussions in the news articles, share tips and tricks, and generally have another way to connect.

I know generally photos are kind of taboo, as places like instagram have kind of ruined it and turned every single person with a camera on their phone into a photographer, so I get it if you have reservations. I have some myself, but I still want to take the chance.

Idk, I thought it would be cool. If not, then whatever, I ain't picky about this place I enjoy it very much.

Hello y'all!

I wanted to make a post where all us trans peeps can introduce themselves and say hey to each other, since I find it nice to have other trans peeps to chat with. Come say hey, or drop me a line!

For my own intro: I normally go by Nihilistic Janitor online, and before you ask I really don't know jack about philosophy I just thought the phrase "cleanliness is next to meaninglessness" is funny. I'm a nineteen year old pan trans woman, currently wheelchair-bound, who enjoys reading and writing and who recently finished a draft of a fun cheesy gay romance novel. I'm also in with some other trans-heavy communities, so if you're curious and want to check those out, message me!

In today’s age, we have a wealth of knowledge available on the fly, and a wealth of misinformation too. Every day I see someone on the internet either mis-informed or ill-informed, even with google and research at their fingertips. What is something you wish the general public would actually take the time to learn about beyond a very surface level interpretation?
Many issues can’t be solved based on just surface level knowlege.

My biggest answer is politics in general, because it controls our world yet it feels like 70%+ of people don’t know what they are talking about beyond layman knowlege, and we’ve seen what happens when tons of people set themselves on a belief and even argue for it when they don’t know what they don’t know.

I don’t know anything about politics but even I can see that people are talking out of straight emotion most of the time.

So, i ask you nice tildes’ers Tilderds Tilderotatoes, what’s something you wish to inform us about that most people don’t read into very much? Can be political or otherwise.

It’s a broad question I know, but that leaves room for a lot of discussion.
Thanks for reading

I'm downsizing my digital life. I deleted my account on reddit, on another phpbb forum and i don't have instagram/facebook apps anymore.

This subject got me thinking about my music.

I grab/buy albums in mp3 and i have so many that it's impossible to listen to everything. I don't pay for any service like spotify because i don't like. I prefer to download and/or buy in places like bandcamp where i can download the album.

I started reading about other codecs like flac and opus. The availability of albums in flac are way less than mp3 and it's a lossless format. If i focus on it i will be forced to downsize my music library.

The problem is disk space in my smartphone. I'm not an audiophile so i'm not able to hear the difference between flac and 320kpbs mp3. This is where opus enters. This codec gives half the size with better quality than mp3. Soundcloud uses it. A 96kbps opus is the same quality as 320kbps mp3.

Now that Android can play opus i don't see a reason to keep using mp3. The downside is converting flac files every time i want to put on my phone.

I could just convert flac to opus and just live with opus everywhere, freeing a lot of space. But i think keeping flac files is better for archiving because it's lossless. If opus for some reason disappears, i'll have a lossy format and would have convert to another one losing more quality.

How do you deal with music?