The series is done! Let's have a bit of fun with it now that it's over.

Choose characters from the show and assign them a popular song based on their story arc, characteristics, or whatever else you feel like highlighting.

Example:

• Daenerys gets Bon Jovi's "You Give Love a Bad Name" because she's grappling with the fact that Jon gives love a bad name (namely, Targaryen). Oh, and she's also shot through the heart.

Be serious or be cheeky--whatever floats your boat as we sail to find out what's west of Westeros.

a couple of people have commented on this thread being helpful for them since tildes is a pretty welcoming community and this thread seems like something that would be nice to make regular anyways, so let's do that. this is pretty straightforward, i think: vent your experiences or things you need to get off your chest/share whatever you've found helps you mentally/etc.

resources that might also be of some benefit to you, since i have a list i informally maintain (s/o to cfabbro also for supplementing this list):

• there is, as always, the invaluable list of country hotlines maintained by /r/SuicideWatch
• https://findtreatment.samhsa.gov/ ("an online source of information for persons seeking treatment facilities in the United States or U.S. Territories for substance abuse/addiction and/or mental health problems")
• https://therapists.psychologytoday.com/rms/ (probably one of the best resources for finding a therapist)
• https://psychiatrists.psychologytoday.com/rms (ditto, with finding a psychiatrist)
• https://www.nimh.nih.gov/health/topics/index.shtml (covers some of the major mental disorders, their symptoms and treatments, and general topics like that)
• https://www.mentalhealth.gov/what-to-look-for (what symptoms to look for for major mental disorders)
• https://suicidepreventionlifeline.org/help-yourself/ (US specific, but also covers ways you can help yourself and a bunch of ways to seek treatment or support)
• there's also some stuff over at /r/SWResources that might be worth checking out which is consistently updated.

week nine is here, and while we don't have a lot of candidates this time, we still have a bunch of stuff to go through. the opinion section is back this week, since there were a few pieces of the sort, but it's pretty short this week. we actually have more [LONGFORM] tagged pieces this week than op-eds, so that's always interesting. anyways.

the usual note: common sense should be able to generally dictate what does and does not get posted in this thread. if it's big news or feels like big news, probably make it its own post instead of lobbing it in here. like the other weekly threads, this one is going to try to focus on things that are still discussion worthy, but wouldn't necessarily make good/unique/non-repetitive discussion starters as their own posts.

Week 1 • Week 2 • Week 3 • Week 4 • Week 5 • Week 6 • Week 7 • Week 8

News

General Stuff

• from Buzzfeed News: [LONGFORM] “Abolish ICE” Was The Call Of Last Summer. 2020 Democrats Have Moved On.. despite the big hooplah surrounding this last year, it's been surprisingly quiet on the abolish ICE front since then, to the chagrin of many immigration activists. given the fact that it's fairly radical (despite ICE only being an agency since 2002), don't expect a lot of movement here; many of the democrats running who adopted the drumbeat last year have almost totally dropped it and show no signs of really picking it back up.

• from The Atlantic: [LONGFORM] The 2020 Presidential Candidates’ Families Look Like Americans’. this is an interesting piece which analyzes how even the "nuclear" family which we're all so used to has essentially ceased to exist on the campaign trail, on both sides of the aisle, and become more reflective of what you'd expect of such a large and diverse country:

Of the 24 candidates, eight have blended families: Donald Trump has children with multiple partners; the candidates Elizabeth Warren, John Hickenlooper, Bill Weld, and Joe Biden are married and have children from previous marriages, while Bernie Sanders is married and has a son from a previous relationship; Sanders, Tim Ryan, and Kamala Harris all have stepchildren. Seven are remarried divorcés or divorcées (Trump, Warren, Hickenlooper, Weld, Sanders, Eric Swalwell, and Tulsi Gabbard), and four have no children of their own (Harris, Gabbard, Pete Buttigieg, and Cory Booker). One has a spouse of the same sex (Buttigieg), one is a remarried widower (Biden), and two are unmarried (Booker and the self-help and spirituality author Marianne Williamson). Two candidates have at some point lived as single mothers (Warren and Williamson).

• from Pacific Standard: What Role Will Religion Play for Democratic Presidential Candidates in 2020?. religion has been largely absent from the democratic side of presidential elections for awhile, but interestingly even as organized religion starts to decay in america, this year you're seeing a few democrats pick up the banner of religion in their campaigning. this might be because WASP-types tend to vote heavily republican and even scalping a few of them or making them more hesitant to pull the lever for republicans could render a republican unable to win nationwide except in particularly unique circumstances--but it could also just be that there are a lot of candidates this year, and some of them just happen to be openly religious and democratic. either way, it's too early to really say how this will shake out in future elections, but keep an eye on it.

• from FiveThirtyEight: [LONGFORM] How Will Democrats’ Move Away From Caucuses Affect The 2020 Race?. a lot of states which used caucuses in 2016 are not going to be doing so again in 2020; in fact, the caucus system is basically dead at this point in the democratic party. besides turnout, though, it's unclear how this will actually affect the 2020 race. maybe the biggest subplot of this will be the party-run primaries some states will be having (which differ significantly from government-run primaries: "While state governments might open hundreds or thousands of polling places statewide for 12 hours or more, party-run votes might provide less than one voting location per county or keep the polls open for just four hours on primary day. These party-run affairs will likely offer forms of early and absentee voting in 2020, but seeing as they won’t be able to rely on the state-run systems that normally handle these kinds of election administration, it’s unclear how effective the parties will be at managing this on their own.") beyond that? shruggie.

Joe Biden

• from POLITICO: ‘Slow and steady’ strategy pays off for Biden. biden's early game so far has been pretty laid back compared to just about everybody else. this is very much intentional--biden has several reasons to not want to attempt the wild pace of everybody else, namely that he's old and gaffe prone--and so far, seems to be working. biden's lead has been retained thus far in the primary and doesn't seem to be really abetting yet.

• from The Atlantic: Joe Biden’s Bet That 2016 Didn’t Change Everything. this piece by The Atlantic goes into a bit of detail about the big bet of the biden campaign: "that in the four years since Trump launched his campaign, the country hasn’t changed, the Democratic Party hasn’t changed, and politics hasn’t changed." it's an interesting bet, one which i'm not sure is exactly correct. also, this feels like possibly the most accurate summary of biden's case for the presidency thus far:

[...]It’s early days yet in the Democratic primary, but Biden’s campaign is discussed in some circles as a self-fulfilling prophecy: that he will win the Democratic nomination simply because he appears the likeliest to win the nomination, that he will beat Trump simply because everyone is talking about how electable he is—not because voters are actually excited about him or the specifics of what he’s running on.

• from NBC News: Joe Biden at rally casts himself as candidate who could unify the nation. not surprisingly, biden's angling remains as the centrist unity candidate. in his words:

"I know some of the really smart folks said that Democrats do not want to hear about unity. The Democrats are so angry, the angrier that candidate could be the better chance to win the nomination. I do not believe it," Biden said. "I believe Democrats want to unify this nation."
[...]
"I am running to offer our country — Democrats, Republicans and Independents — a different path, not back to a past that never was but to a future that fulfills our true potential,” he said.

Elizabeth Warren

• from POLITICO: How Sen. Elizabeth Warren would protect abortion rights. warren is pushing a few new proposals on protecting reproductive rights. specifically:

Warren would call on Congress to pass laws enshrining the right to an abortion that would preempt any state attempt to ban the procedure or impose onerous regulations on abortion providers. She would also push for the repeal of the Hyde amendment, a long-time prohibition on federal funding for abortion and sign executive orders rolling back recent Trump administration moves aimed at cutting Planned Parenthood out of the Title X family planning program.

a lot of this is contingent on congress, you might note, and this is one of the big weaknesses of her plan here. democratic control of the senate in either 2020 or 2022 is far from a given, meaning that in the event they fail to take control of the senate this plan basically cannot go through since it'd fail on a party-line vote. (she might be banking on the democrats splitting the chamber 50-50 since it is unlikely they'd--in 2020 anyways--outright win the senate.)

• from CBS News: Elizabeth Warren introduces bill to curb defense lobbying. warren's also introduced a bill in congress which, among other things, seeks to "ban defense contractors from hiring senior officials directly from the Defense Department and extend to four years the ban on former generals lobbying the Pentagon", "[disqualify former contractors who join the government] from working on any issue that could help or hurt their former employer for four years", and "limit foreign governments' hirings of U.S. national security officials."

• from CBS News: Elizabeth Warren introduces plan to reduce military's carbon footprint. aside from abortion and lobbying, warren's also been busy with climate policy. specifically she's pushing for "the military to reach zero carbon emissions for all non-combat bases and infrastructure by 2030." this is a surprisingly ambitious goal, because the military's carbon emissions have been increasing recently.

• from Jacobin: How Warren’s Climate Defense Bill Undermines Itself. of course, warren's bill isn't without some controversy. jacobin argues that some of the provisions of the bill essentially undermine it completely, specifically the "market waiver" and the "war waiver":

WAIVER: the Secretary of Defense may waive the requirements of this section . . . [if] he determines that market conditions for a product or service make it difficult for the Department to acquire that product or service and the waiver will accelerate the Department’s acquisition of the product or service.
[...]
WAIVER: the Secretary of Defense may waive the requirements of this section . . . [if] he determines that meeting these requirements would adversely affect the national security interests of the United States . . .

in their view these waivers are likely to be exploited to such an extent by the government that they essentially offset any benefits the bill could have and render it incapable of addressing climate change in the way climate change needs to be addressed in the time we have.

• from In These Times: [LONGFORM] When It Comes to U.S. Militarism, Elizabeth Warren Is No Progressive. more broadly, In These Times makes an argument for warren being basically joined at the hip with military interests, even as she tries to address some of the biggest problems with it. specifically they note that her voting record outside of yemen on military issues is not the best, and they often stand in contrast to some of the policies and rhetoric she espouses on the issue.

• from Vanity Fair: Can MAGA Country Learn to Love Elizabeth Warren?. vanity fair notes meanwhile that warren seems to be gaining some traction with trump voters, at least on policy issues:

[...]In a recent focus group observed by Axios in Sioux City, Iowa, voters who flipped from Obama to Trump “strongly supported” Warren’s plan to cancel up to $50,000 in student debt for voters whose families made less than $100,000 a year. They echoed her message that many Americans are not reaping the benefits of a booming economy, pointing to stagnant wages and a declining quality of life. And there was a strong consensus that big financial institutions should be taxed to pay for infrastructure.
The only catch? The focus group wasn’t told that the student debt plan was Warren’s. All but 1 of the 11 Obama-Trump swing voters in the group said they would re-elect Trump if he were running against Clinton.

Kamala Harris

• from POLITICO: Kamala Harris' next target: Banning AR-15-style assault weapons. a few weeks back harris outlined her plan for gun control (Kamala Harris Says She’ll Take Gun Control Into Her Own Hands As President If Congress Doesn't Act), and this seems to be an extension of that. this would be an extensive measure:

Harris wants to ban AR-15-style assault weapon imports and suspend all other assault weapon imports until the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives can analyze whether they should be permanently banned under U.S. law. Her campaign argues the weapons could be banned because they aren't "suitable for or readily adaptable to sporting purposes." This includes all 44 AR-type models listed in the latest assault weapons ban that was introduced in Congress.

• from POLITICO: Kamala Harris: Biden would make ‘great’ running mate. one of the weirder subplots of the week is the row that's been stirred up by a few members of the Congressional Black Caucus suggesting harris would make a good running mate for joe biden. harris herself mostly dismissed this with the humorous jab in the title here, but...

• from POLITICO: 'It's infuriating': Kamala Harris team galled by Biden veep talk. ...her campaign was less than enthralled with this, to say the least. making it doubly awkward, harris is--as a significant black democrat--a pretty visible member of the CBC, so they had to figure out how to address this without egging this on further. this ultimately seems to have been where harris's jab came from:

Anticipating questions from news media on Wednesday, Harris and her advisers settled on the humorous one-liner, according to an aide.

harris remains committed to running for president, obviously.

Cory Booker

• from Mother Jones: Can Cory Booker Really Turn His Back on Silicon Valley?. a significant booker sticking point so far (although it's gone mostly unreported) is his desire to step in on silicon valley and social media; he's been angling himself in this way for the past few years. the problem with this, of course, is that booker has a long history with silicon valley himself. for the most part, he hasn't really been punished for this by the voters, it seems (not that there are many to punish him in the first place of course--he's sitting on like, 4% in the polls now), but it is a legitimate question whether or not his barnstorming on this issue can necessarily be backed up.

• from Buzzfeed News: Cory Booker Vows To Make Roe V. Wade The Law Of The Land As President. on another note, he is one of several candidates who have pledged to do this. not surprising, and i'd be shocked if anybody besides maybe biden eschewed eventually stumping on this, but it's interesting to see how openly people are running on this.

• from POLITICO: Booker campaign official urges donations for Gillibrand to ensure debate spot. also, perhaps demonstrating the extent to which democrats are trying to avoid conflict, booker's campaign is encouraging people to donate to the perennial disappointment of a campaign that gillibrand has been running so she doesn't miss out on a debate spot. kinda wild!

Everybody Else

• from Buzzfeed News: Bernie Sanders Has A Plan To Fix Racial Segregation In American Schools. bernie sanders unveiled a proposal combatting racial segregation in schools this week while swinging through the south on a four-day, four-state tour:

Sanders’ plan would ban for-profit charter schools, which make up a small slice of charters nationwide, and put strict limits on nonprofit charter schools, temporarily banning federal funding for new charters. Charter schools tend to be more segregated than public schools — the NAACP has called to ban them outright — though they are also popular among black voters.
[...]
One significant roadblock for Sanders’ sweeping plan: the reality that the federal government plays a relatively small role in K-12 education. The vast majority of money for education comes from states, which set their own policies; some states ban for-profit charters, and others allow them to proliferate.

• from Buzzfeed News: This Democrat Is Running For President Behind A $9 Trillion Climate Change Plan. jay inslee is getting some attention this week from the media, mostly for his extensive second climate proposal. seriously, it's huge:

Other notable components of Inslee’s new 38-page policy proposal includes investing $35 billion in clean energy and climate solutions research, a big increase over current levels; creating a $90 billion "Green Bank" at the federal level to help finance clean energy development; phasing out potent greenhouse gases called hydrofluorocarbons, or HFCs, in line with global agreements; proposing federal agencies get all of their domestic energy production from clean energy sources and purchase only zero-emission vehicles by 2024.
To pay for it all, Inslee proposes a federal investment of about $300 billion a year, which his campaign anticipates will generate an additional $600 billion a year in outside funding. This adds up to $9 trillion in total investment over a decade.

• from POLITICO: ‘He’s white, male and gay’: Buttigieg hits obstacles with black voters. buttigieg is one of the few democrats who might have genuine problems appealing to black voters, most of which is outlined in this POLITICO piece. in a field this large with multiple minority candidates, he's going to have a hard time (and already is having a hard time, honestly) establishing himself as a candidate minorities should go for. for the most part, i think that his status as white is going to be the bigger barrier than him being gay (at least with the majority of black voters--the article notes the big generational disparity on that: "In 2017, 69 percent of African Americans aged 18 to 29 backed same-sex marriage, but just 40 percent of African Americans aged 65 and older did, according to a Public Religion Research Institute poll."), but we'll see.

• from The Atlantic: [LONGFORM] Democrat Steve Bullock Won a Red State in 2016. Can He Beat Trump in 2020?. steve bullock is one of the latest candidates to throw himself into the woodchipper. hailing from the nominally red state of montana, though, he probably has a better case for the presidency than most of the perennial 1% polling crowd. this article mostly outlines who he is, what he wants, and what he's shooting for, because honestly unless you're a politico, you probably have no clue who he is or what he stands for (he's the governor of montana, for the record).

Opinions & Other

• from GQ: Elizabeth Warren Deserves Your Undivided Attention. this piece by drew magary is basically an op-ed, even though it's not labeled such by GQ. anyways, magary basically lays out all of the places where warren's policies would be good, and why in his view they'd be good. it's not that special nor is it the most elegant basically-an-oped ever written, but GQ doesn't exactly run a lot of pieces like this so i figured i shouldn't pass it over.

• from The Guardian: Joe Biden would be a disaster for climate change. this was a theme with last week's post where people raked biden for his awful climate change policy. maybe the biggest takeaway from this op-ed, though, is this line: "As atmosphere scientists Andrew Dessler told HuffPost’s Alexander Kaufman, Biden’s plans would “be more in line with stabilizing at 3-4C of warming, rather than staying below 2C”." this is... not optimal! it's actually barely an improvement over donald's policy, which is in line with 4C+ warming.

• from The Guardian: If New Yorkers won't back Bill de Blasio, nobody else will. oh, by the way, bill de blasio is running for president. nobody cares about him, though, and he's a perennial 1% candidate. super funny how badly he polls, though:

In a Quinnipiac poll last month, 76% of New Yorkers agreed that their mayor should not run for president. This included 70% of black voters, who usually make up De Blasio’s strongest base of support. As the Washington Post’s Philip Bump pointed out, De Blasio was a standout in another poll, this time of national Democratic primary voters, for being the candidate with the highest unfavorability ratings. He was also the only candidate with net unfavorability, with more respondents having an unfavorable than favorable view of him. The Quinnipiac poll even showed that one-third of Democrats in De Blasio’s home city – what ought to be his main bulwark of support – disapprove of his job performance.

anyways, feel free to as always contribute other interesting articles you stumble across, or comment on some of the ones up there.

EDIT: minor spelling stuff

among the things i have been working on for the past day and change is documentation of the novel uses of hierarchical tags on tildes, how they vary by group (or in the cases here, across most or all of the site), and how we might best begin to standardize, introduce, or deprecate them going forward so we're on the same page and end up with tags that aren't a giant, unfriendly, user-unintuitive mess.

obviously, though, this is something that should probably include community input since the community generally determines the tags used in the first place; therefore, this is your chance to check my work, suggest additions, removals, etc. to this draft and in the end, hopefully help craft a standard of hierarchical tagging that's simpler, more intuitive, and more consistent for everybody on the website to use so we can reduce future meta discussions on this and make tags better overall.

this will be done in chunks for convenience purposes (your sake and mine). therefore, if you would be so kind as to try and limit your suggestions to the pertinent tags, that would be most helpful.

Mostly group non-specific tags

There are also a number of tags which are more general and occur or can occur in several or all groups on the website. Some of the more common conventions of hierarchical tags that are generally not group-specific are:

economics. and similar tags

The economics tag can occur in several groups, most often ~science, ~news, and ~misc. While it can take hierarchical tags, standalone economics is usually fine. Nonetheless, with specific branches of economics like microeconomics and macroeconomics, hierarchical tags should probably be used (thus economics.micro, economics.macro, economics.applied, and so on). Examples of this in action (and further specification under this scheme) are:

• economics.trade (economics and trade)
• economics.micro.urban (urban microeconomics)
• economics.policy.employment (economic policy with respect to employment)

However, when placed in ~science, the standard is always socialsciences.economics over economics. to align with the standards of tagging in that group, thus socialsciences.economics.trade instead of economics.trade. Given that economics. in this case is itself a hierarchical tag, it may be pertinent to break off the last hierarchical tag into its own tag where it would lead to three consecutive hierarchical tags, like so:

• socialsciences.economics.micro and urban areas
• socialsciences.economics.policy and employment

law.

The law tag takes a very large number of modifiers and can be used in just about every group due to the fact that law generally transcends the current set of groups Tildes has. Historically, topics related to law have been tagged in the [modifier] law format (i.e. medical law, copyright law, us law, and so on); however, this has generally been phased out by the community in favor of using hierarchical tags for the modifiers. Therefore, with respect to pre-existing tags, constructions like medical law should be deprecated in favor of law.medical. In addition, the following tags which do exist should be converted accordingly:

• medical law (convert to law.medical)
• international law (convert to law.international)
• labor law (convert to law.labor)
• employment law (convert to law.employment)
• antidiscrimination laws (convert to law.antidiscrimination)
• copyright law (convert to law.copyright)
• maritime law (convert to law.maritime)
• environmental law (convert to law.environmental)
• gun laws (convert to law.guns)

All single modifier tags should follow a pattern like this. In other words, if you were going to tag something as "abortion law", you should do law.abortion instead of abortion law. Currently well established tags following this format are: law.citizenship, law.international, law.labor, law.marriage, and law.juvenile.

The following tags with location tags in them (and similar tags like them) should be converted slightly differently from the above tags. Instead of being rolled directly, the locator tag (or what would be the locator tag) should be broken out from the tag, and the tag that is left should have its modifier turned into a hierarchical tag if possible. Thus:

• usa federal laws is converted to law.federal and usa. (To elaborate in this case, the usa is separated, leaving federal laws which can be converted into law.federal)
• us law is similarly converted to law and usa
• european law is converted to law and european union

However, this should generally not be done with tags which refer to specific laws. For example religious neutrality law, blue laws and safe haven law are tags which should not be converted to use hierarchical tags because it makes little sense to do so.

There are also two specific tags which should generally not be rolled, which are martial law and law enforcement. Martial law is mostly used to refer to a specific state of affairs rather than an actual subset of law, so it makes little sense for this to be grouped into the law tag, while law enforcement is not really law in the sense being tagged here and is also covered by other tags like policing; using law.enforcement for this purpose would also be ambiguous, since it more likely would refer to enforcement of legal doctrine.

The use of the sharia law tag is ambiguous. Since sharia is de jure a form of law, it would make sense to roll it like the other examples so that the tag is law.sharia; however the two uses of it on Tildes are sharia law and there is currently no real consensus on whether or not to roll it in this manner.

nsfw., trigger., tw., cw. and similar tags

nsfw., trigger., tw, and cw. are all universal tags that have been used in one form or another to separate out content which might be objectionable and which are still useful for these purposes. Although all four have been used, the community has largely settled on a standard of using trigger. over tw. and cw. with potentially triggering content primarily for reasons of clarity (the trigger. tag also been put forward by Deimos previously as a way of handing potentially triggering and objectionable content). nsfw. is also sometimes used, but this is less frequent and usually carries a different implication than trigger. does.

As mentioned above, if you are using intending to use a tag of this sort, the preferred option in almost all cases is trigger. over tw. or cw.. For all intents and purposes, tw. and cw. should be considered mothballed and previous uses of them should probably be converted into trigger. at some point (particularly the duplicates tw.death, tw.suicide, and tw.selfharm).

The main established tags under the trigger. banner are:

• trigger.death
• trigger.selfharm
• trigger.suicide
• trigger.sexual violence
• trigger.rape
• trigger.assault
• trigger.child abuse
• trigger.transphobia
• trigger.homophobia (not used yet, but presumably applicable due to trigger.transphobia's existence)

These are self explanatory for the most part, and cover most bases; however, if you feel that a particular topic is likely to be triggering for some people, it would be courteous to tag it accordingly in line the above tags. (Do also note that all of these tags can be and often are applied as standalone tags instead of being grouped under trigger. due to the fact that trigger. has waxed and waned in popularity over Tildes's existence.)

If you are intending to post graphic content, or content which has the potential of exposing people to graphic content (broadly construed) and want to tag it accordingly, nsfw. is generally preferable over trigger.. nsfw. is quite rare, but one example of it in action is the nsfw.racism tag on Ignore The Poway Synagogue Shooter’s Manifesto: Pay Attention To 8chan’s /pol/ Board due to the exceptionally racist content screencapped as a part of the submitted article. nsfw.sex is also seen on Do Police Know How To Handle Abuse Within Kinky Relationships? due to the explicitly sexual nature of the article's subject, but this is more of a courteous measure than a necessary one--a qualified nsfw tag is generally not necessary, and if one is a moderator will most likely add it after the fact.

hurricanes., cyclones., and typhoons.

Tropical cyclone news generally fits into several places, most often ~news, ~enviro, or ~science. Generally, the standard for tagging tropical cyclones, whether they are hurricanes, cyclones, typhoons, or other similar storms is to use the applicable term for the storm in question, and then use a hierarchical tag for the storm's name. Actual examples of this are:

• typhoons.yutu for the Pacific typhoon basin's Typhoon Yutu
• hurricanes.michael for the Atlantic basin's Hurricane Michael
• cyclones.idai for the South-West Indian basin's Cyclone Idai

This is relatively straightforward, and covers the nomenclature of all existing basins. However, some basins have not been represented on Tildes thus far, so here are the two cases where standards overlap for reference:

• the Pacific hurricane basin and the South Atlantic basin would both be represented by the same standard as the Atlantic basin (thus, hurricanes.patricia for the Pacific Hurricane Patricia and hurricanes.catarina for the South Atlantic Hurricane Catarina)
• the Australian, North Indian, and South Pacific basins would be represented by the South-West Indian basin's standard (thus, cyclones.tracy for Australian Cyclone Tracy, cyclones.fani for North Indian Cyclone Fani, and cyclones.gita for South Pacific Cyclone Gita).

For convenience purposes, storms which are named but have not hit hurricane status should probably still be referred to with the corresponding cyclonic storm tag for their basin, even though they have not formally reached hurricane, cyclone, or typhoon status.

If there is no name to refer to (i.e. a name has not been designated for the storm), a hierarchical tag should probably not be applied at all, since that would get messy and likely necessitate updates. With storms that have only nicknames or lack a name under the nomenclature since they predate cyclone naming (for example, the 1938 New England Hurricane) there's really no best way to do things, however, using a truncation of the nickname may be the most preferable option (for example: hurricanes.1938 new england).

I finally got around to sinking some decent time into it over the last couple of days. I'm addicted. It's fun to go up against so many competitors and watch as people get knocked out of the competition over time. Not to mention, it's frickin' Tetris so of course it's great! I'm really looking forward to the special event that Nintendo's running this weekend. You can earn an old-school Gameboy theme!

This is something I've been thinking about for a while.

One of the future mechanics for tildes is the trust system (see https://docs.tildes.net/mechanics-future). People talk about building it but I think we already have a small part of it in place.

Invites are a form of trust.

By allowing inviting the community is trusting you with the ability to add new members. That ability can be taken away or could even result in the banhammer if you persistantly invite assholes. I know that made me cautious with who I've invited to join.

With there being a clear trail of who invited who, bad actors will have to work harder to get a foothold here. I also think that spammers are deterred with having to get an invite for every new account they make.

A simple analogy is that you're having a party and a friend asks if they can bring a friend of theirs you don't know. Your friend says they're cool and you trust your friend due to past experiences with them so along they come. Now if this person ends up kicking your cat, pissing in the fridge, and then trying to burn your house down then the trust you had in your friend is going to diminish. Next time they want to bring a guest the answer is hell no!

We can use the invite system as an initial way to build trust.

You know they’ve got poetry on Spotify? That’s some cool shit. Ended up following John Cooper Clarke into a rabbit hole of other British poets.

Decided to bite and try writing a bit of poetry for poetry’s sake.

Anyway. ‘Ere go. “June.”

I thought your voice was music

And your beauty - work of art.

I found your jokes amusing,

Ponygirl, a golden heart.

Your company, a journey

Which I never could depart

I really felt I loved you,

Well, I did once, at the start.

.

See, music can be different

Some songs good, and others crap.

Some begin melodically,

Then get crashing in a snap.

Starting subtle violins,

Then it blares with metal scrap

They lure you malevolent

Some music is a trap.

.

Some artists Donatello,

Others Jackson Pollock.

Some art goes well with wine,

Some turns you alcoholic.

Some is deep and intricate,

Some is purely bollocks

Can’t call this a masterpiece

I’m not sure what to call it.

.

Thought your lips were pure cuisine

And your beauty - work of art.

I never thought the kitchen

Would have mold and rot at heart.

The oven sent asunder

All the counters ripped apart

You’re a diner with one dish,

And it’s a dry and sour tart.

I wasn't too sure whether that movie warranted a Discussion Thread, given only Endgame got one here so far but… hey, I really liked the movie.

The pokemon CGI was amazing. Storyline was not half-bad (not great tho); somewhat predictable although with a nice twist I personally didn't see coming.

I'm not even a huge pokemon fan or anything, but this took me back to my childhood quite a bit. I really like how they mostly featured pokemon from the original 151, which made the movie very approachable to old-timers.

It also didn't feel awkward or childish or cringey or anything you might expect from, well, a pokemon movie. Loved hearing the theme music in the TV background early on. Loved pikachu's singing, that was pretty hilarious, felt like a nice place for the movie to poke some fun towards itself.

Coming out, I was reminded of how I felt after seeing the Warcraft movie: Seeing characters that have played such a special part in my life, being brought to a full-feature live-action. It's really a unique feeling. I guess that's why I'm looking forward to both Aladdin and The Lion King coming out this year; even though neither were as special as Warcraft/Pokemon, I still get chills thinking about the unbelievable CGI quality we get for what a few years ago we'd never have thought would go beyond plain animation.

I tried to keep the post body mostly spoilerfree but this is tagged spoiler so I guess go nuts in the comments.

I work for a school in China and they are going to have an art festival soon. Today they were setting up some of those pictures where you can stick your face in it and take a photo. They did this to The Last Supper and it’s a very big picture set up right in front of the main gate for all the children to play with. They cut out Jesus’ face and most of his disciples’. All of the expats that work for my school were outraged and told the administration to take it down right away. At first the administration said they would just glue Jesus’ face back on. But this just made people angrier, so they promised to take it down in the morning when they could get some workers to do it.

So what cultural misunderstandings have you experienced? How did you deal with it?

So, this is, in part, in response to the alibaba ban.

I think it's bad practice not to know why someone got banned. Firstly, it may lead to excessives from your part ("I will ban anyone and everyone I want and no one will know"). Secondly, it fails to show other posters that X behaviour will get you banned.

week eight graces us with a particularly large edition of This Week in Election Night, 2020. a lot of candidates have been in the news, for good reasons and bad, and there's a bunch of stuff to go through. no opinion pieces this week, since i didn't end up compiling any particularly good ones and this is going to be pretty long already.

the usual note: common sense should be able to generally dictate what does and does not get posted in this thread. if it's big news or feels like big news, probably make it its own post instead of lobbing it in here. like the other weekly threads, this one is going to try to focus on things that are still discussion worthy, but wouldn't necessarily make good/unique/non-repetitive discussion starters as their own posts.

Week 1 thread • Week 2 thread • Week 3 thread • Week 4 thread • Week 5 thread • Week 6 thread • Week 7 thread

News

General Stuff

• from NBC News: As Biden predicts a shorter race, rivals dig in for long fight. we begin with a prediction by biden, and disputes by everybody else, basically. this could honestly go either way, and it's really contingent on what happens on super tuesday in 2020. so many states vote on that day (13 states, falling on march 3) and they represent such a large share of delegates (almost half of them in total) that if anybody takes super tuesday decisively they're pretty much a lock for being the favorite at the convention--however, if super tuesday isn't decisive, it could very well come down to the wire.

• from the Guardian: California: why the cash cow state will take center stage in the 2020 race. in that vein, the biggest crown jewel of the super tuesday states will by far be california, having something obscene like 500 delegates. any candidate which decisively carries california is setting themselves up well for the convention (and incidentally in this respect harris has an inherent advantage since it's her homestate), so expect candidates to really target this state as we get closer to primary day and try and build a ground game there for the future.

• from Fast Company: Black women are the key to victory in 2020. Stop ignoring them. i said in the last thread that this was unlikely to go away, and unsurprisingly it remains an issue. see also last week's Women of color want 2020 Democrats to work for their vote and week 6's Black female voters to Democrats: 'You won't win the White House without us'.

Joe Biden

• from Reuters: Exclusive: Presidential hopeful Biden looking for ‘middle ground’ climate policy. we begin on a high note, with joe biden deciding... well... this: "Democratic presidential hopeful Joe Biden is crafting a climate change policy he hopes will appeal to both environmentalists and the blue-collar voters who elected Donald Trump, according to two sources, carving out a middle ground approach that will likely face heavy resistance from green activists." as far as details, this appears to be the most we have so far:

The backbone of the policy will likely include the United States re-joining the Paris Climate Agreement and preserving U.S. regulations on emissions and vehicle fuel efficiency that Trump has sought to undo...
The second source, a former energy department official advising Biden’s campaign who asked not to be named, said the policy could also be supportive of nuclear energy and fossil fuel options like natural gas and carbon capture technology, which limit emissions from coal plants and other industrial facilities.

• from VICE: A Biden Presidency Would Be a 'Death Sentence,' Climate Activists Warn. to put it lightly, biden's plan is getting fucking obliterated by climate activists. activists are unsurprisingly worried that biden, by trying to seek a middle ground, is basically just going to bring us into hellworld--a likely prospect, honestly, just going off what we have. VICE also expounds on just how unhelpful and non-specific biden's climate policy is so far with this detail:

Biden’s campaign website contains only three sentences about the greatest crisis ever to face humankind, and these are located midway down a secondary page. “We must turbocharge our efforts to address climate change and ensure that every American has access to clean drinking water, clean air, and an environment free from pollutants,” the site reads.

• from Mother Jones: The Planet Is Heading to Catastrophe and Joe Biden Apparently Wants to Take the “Middle Ground”. Mother Jones also has some other reporting which expounds on the amazing fact that biden somehow was the first person to really introduce climate change into the political arena, and yet his policy on it is borderline regressive nowadays. not the best look, although i doubt it'll change votes

• from POLITICO: Bernie Sanders: Biden’s reported climate plan ‘will doom future generations’. if you thought this criticism stopped at voters though, you'd be wrong, because sanders is just as unimpressed with this plan, and i'd imagine he is not the only candidate like this. this is probably about as strong of a rebuke as you'll ever see this early on: “There is no ‘middle ground’ when it comes to climate policy,” Sanders tweeted Friday. “If we don't commit to fully transforming our energy system away from fossil fuels, we will doom future generations.”

• from POLITICO: Florida takes shape as Joe Biden’s firewall. on a lighter note for biden, he is--for now anyways--the solid frontrunning candidate. florida in particular looks like a key state for him to win, which would be good news for him since it'll give him an advantage in the later half of the primaries (it will, in 2020, be one of the last large states to vote on account of not being a super tuesday state). given its demography, if he's on track to lose in this state, don't count on him realistically winning the primary.

Bernie Sanders

• from Roll Call: Bernie 2020 becomes first unionized presidential campaign in history. bernie sanders made history earlier this year by having his staff unionize (tildes discussion), and this seems to have finally been completely formalized this week. will this be a forebearer of a future presidential standard? i dunno, but it doesn't look like anybody else is going to pick up the idea this cycle, at least as things currently are, so probably not.

• from Pacific Standard: Bernie Sanders Says His Campaign's New Sexual Misconduct Policy Is the 'Gold Standard'. this was an issue in sanders's last presidential campaign (and it's also increasingly a campaign issue in general), so unsurprisingly sanders has rolled out a sexual misconduct policy this time around. this article mostly focuses on dos and don'ts, i should note; the original reporting here was done by the guardian o'er yonder and you can find the actual document for the campaign here.

• [LONGFORM] How Can Dems Win Back Rural America? Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren Agree on the Answer. this is both a sanders and a warren piece, focusing mostly on their commonalities in agricultural policy. this has been a theme for the both of them early on; sanders has a very comprehensive set of proposals; of course so does warren. this article also goes into the general background of the issues they're trying to tackle.

Elizabeth Warren

• [LONGFORM] from TIME: 'I Have a Plan for That.' Elizabeth Warren Is Betting That Americans Are Ready for Her Big Ideas. i don't have a whole lot to say here. we have a tildes discussion on this piece, as it was posted earlier this week, so i would encourage you to post there if you have thoughts on this one like i did.

• from POLITICO: Trump backers applaud Warren in heart of MAGA country. warren's been hustling around a bit in the past week and change, even stopping over in rural west virginia on friday to talk about the opioid crisis and other socioeconomic factors which have been massively fucking over the region. pitstops like these presumably aren't going to be swinging things blue in west virginia again anytime soon, but as the article notes: "...Warren was here to try to send a message that she’s serious about tackling the problems of remote communities like this one." also, in case you're curious, you can find her policy on the opioid crisis here.

• from Reuters: Democrat Warren confronts 2020 electability question head-on in Ohio. she was also over in ohio this weekend, where she barnstormed on similar issues of tackling income inequality and the likes of that.

• from Slate: Warren Has Earned Her Wonk Reputation. this article from Slate is mostly an overview of the many, many policies that elizabeth warren has proposed just over the course of the campaign so far. it's a lot! the article does note that currently she seems to lack detailed policies on many of the big issues prioritized by democratic voters, but we're still pretty early in the campaign so i assume she'll roll those out in the future.

Kamala Harris

• from NBC News: Kamala Harris blows past Democratic rivals in fundraising in communities of color. kamala harris has been relatively quiet on the media for the past bit, but she's making headlines this week for her fundraising. she seems to be the significant frontrunner among minority communities as far as that goes. NBC finds that:

Harris pulled in at least $1 million from ZIP codes where most residents are not white, about two-and-a-half times the total of former Rep. Beto O'Rourke of Texas, who was second to Harris, raising more than $408,000 from the same set of neighborhoods, the analysis showed. Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., was third, about $1,400 behind O'Rourke, and Sen. Cory Booker, D-N.J., was fourth, with at least $391,000.

• from CNN: Kamala Harris eyes black voters, women in campaign tour to win over Midwest. aside from fundraising, harris spend most of last week swinging through the midwest barnstorming in minority communities; her current angle seems to mostly run through women and minorities, and while she's doing relatively poorly in polling, people do seem to have interest in her campaign. CNN's most recent polling found "...Harris at 5% but leading the field at 23% among those polled when asked which candidate they'd most like to hear more about."

• from Reuters: Kamala Harris stood up to big banks, with mixed results for consumers in crisis. one of harris's signature points on which she's been campaigning is, in Reuters's words, "the $20 billion relief settlement she secured as California attorney general for homeowners hit hard by the foreclosure crisis"; this article proceeds to pour a bit of cold water on how this played out in practice, though, as harris's actions didn't prevent significant damage to many people's livelihoods.

Amy Klobuchar

• from The Guardian: 'Iowa slingshot': Amy Klobuchar plots midwest route to victory in 2020. klobuchar has also been pretty quiet (and been polling quite badly), but she's also gotten some attention this week. as this article talks about, her path to the presidency has always been basically the same: win over midwestern voters which democrats have been collapsing with since obama cleaned house in 2008. she has the electoral history to back this up: despite relatively close races up-ballot being pretty regular in minnesota since 2000, klobuchar has regularly destroyed her republican opponents statewide and won otherwise-republican-voting white people.

• from Politico: Klobuchar says she isn't worried that older white men are leading the 2020 race. she's also pretty optimistic about her chances. she notes that her campaign is still in the early stages and that despite the dominance of white men, there's still harris and warren in the top-eight, which suggests that she too could have capital as her campaign continues.

• from the Huffington Post: Amy Klobuchar On Female Presidential Candidates: ‘Discount Them At Your Own Peril’. and of course, she notes that discounting female candidates is something to be done at your own peril--female candidates have been particularly successful in recent electoral cycles.

• from Reuters: Klobuchar pitches pragmatism as she seeks to carve identity in Democratic presidential field. klobuchar's main ideological approach so far has been to be the "pragmatic" female candidate, advocating for a more incremental tackling of the issues instead of sweeping progressivism as advocated by people like warren. no signs of this changing, although she does openly consider herself to be a progressive in the same vein as people like warren and sanders.

Pete Buttigieg

• from POLITICO: Mayor Pete blindsides Kamala Harris in California. california has been a state targeted by just about every candidate so far, but the one with probably the biggest impact relative to how they poll has been buttigieg, who is putting a lot of people who might otherwise be donating to or endorsing harris in an interesting position with where they're going to place their support. LA mayor eric garcetti, who appeared at an event with buttigieg on thursday, might summarize this best:

“We have a lot of people who are very candidate curious,” Garcetti notes. “Kamala has a ton of love up and down the state, but people might say, ‘That doesn’t mean I’m not going to shop around … Maybe I’ll keep her as my senator and go with somebody else as president.’”

• from CBS News: Could Pete Buttigieg make history in LGBTQ-friendly Nevada?. buttigieg is also, obviously, hoping to make history with his candidacy, and he's been making overtures toward LGBT organizations accordingly. on saturday he was a headliner at the human rights campaign gala in nevada--nevada it should also be noted has a pretty large LGBT population, which is likely to help him significantly in the state.

• from NBC News: Buttigieg is the only top 2020 candidate not offering staffers health care yet. however, buttigieg hasn't had all good headlines this week. NBC news highlighted his campaign's failure to offer healthcare to staffers, an ignominious feat for him and something which stands in contrast to the rhetoric he's espoused on the campaign trail so far. NBC reports:

Buttigieg’s campaign currently has 49 workers, but has been staffing up rapidly, and plans to hit the 50 mark imminently.
“Crossing this threshold will put us in a position to get a good multi-state group plan, which we are currently negotiating,” said Buttigieg press secretary Chris Meagher.
In the meantime, the campaign is giving salaried staffers a $400 monthly stipend to buy health care themselves. That’s just enough for a single adult with no children to cover a “silver plan” through the Obamacare exchanges, according to national cost data analyzed by the Kaiser Family Foundation.

Everybody Else

• from Buzzfeed News: Beto O’Rourke Has Hired The “Unsung Hero” Of Obama’s First Campaign. beto o'rourke scalped jeff berman, one of obama's most important staffers, which seems like pretty good news for him given that his campaign has been a bit of a mess with staffing in the past few weeks. berman was integral to obama's first presidential campaign, and was also on clinton's staff in 2016.

• [LONGFORM] from The Guardian: The astonishing disappearing act of Beto O’Rourke. of course, o'rourke is still in a great deal of trouble, having slid back into middling popularity with the democratic base, and this piece by The Guardian goes into detail both on his past, his current, and what he's hoping will be his future.

• from the Huffington Post: Kirsten Gillibrand Vows To Only Nominate Judges Who Uphold Roe v. Wade. despite only polling at like, 2%, gillibrand is still pushing the resistance angle. in contrast to donald, she is pledging to only nominate pro-choice judges.

• from CBS News: Cory Booker unveils "Justice Academy" to recruit, teach volunteers. cory booker meanwhile is kicking up his campaign organizing, setting up training camps for volunteers and all that fun stuff. the purpose of these: "Volunteers ... will learn community organizing techniques to engage supporters around a wide array of Booker's main campaign issues, including criminal justice reform, gun violence prevention, and health care."

anyways, feel free to as always contribute other interesting articles you stumble across, or comment on some of the ones up there.

What sites do people use for movie reviews and news? I've been following movie news via the internet since the late 90s. I used to frequent sites like Coming Attractions and C.H.U.D. multiple times per day.

For the past few years, I've mostly been using Twitter to follow news, but I'm trying to use Twitter less so I was curious where other people get their movie news...

This is just a quick list based on my bookmarks...

News Sites

• Birth.Movies.Death - For general movie news
• Bloody Disgusting - For horror specific movie news

Reviews/Thinkpieces

• Bright Wall/Dark Room - Good longform articles
• Horror Movie a Day - My go to reviewer for horror movies
• Jordy Reviews It
• Outlaw Vern - My go to reviewer to find out if an action/martial arts movie is worth watching
• Talk Film Society

When Edge died, I got worried about loosing competition to the Blink engine and as such, I went exploring other alternatives to realize.. there's not a whole lot, there's blink, gecko and webkit.

So with that, I decided to try epiphany - Gnome's web browser. It uses Webkit which is what Blink was forked from so it's not terribly different in theory but the years apart has made that more apparent. It's fairly elegant in my opinion and it lacks some features, sure.

Anyways, to get to what I wanted to do this week, well, I'd like to challenge you all to use it for a week, mostly for bug hunting purposes and possibly to throw ideas at the project. Worth mentioning, I'm not affiliated with the project, just a user.

So to make sure we're all on the same page, we'll use the development Epiphany flatpak, this way we can be sure that the problem is in the current codebase. So, to install it :

Let's install the gnome-nightly repos as per instructions here :

flatpak remote-add --if-not-exists gnome-nightly https://sdk.gnome.org/gnome-nightly.flatpakrepo
flatpak remote-add --if-not-exists gnome-apps-nightly --from https://sdk.gnome.org/gnome-apps-nightly.flatpakrepo

Then, let's install the development version by doing so :

flatpak install org.gnome.Epiphany.Devel

Then just launch it and have fun with it!

if you run into any bugs, look at the contribution guide here and report the bugs in the repo after checking that the bug is not already present of course!

Looking for some new games to play. This is my list of liked games so far

1. Worms WMD. This style of game just never gets old for me
2. Mario kart. Looks really nice in 60fps and a ton of fun
3. Golf story. Surprisingly fun golf RPG game, also great 2 player multiplayer
4. Arms. Quite a bit more fun than wii sports boxing
5. Baba is you. Really fun puzzle game with a unique idea
6. Korg gadget. Not a game but I love playing with synths
7. Night in the woods. I never got to playing this when it came out but I tried it on the switch and I like it

Hello hello!

Not sure if this is going to gain much traction but I thought I might as well give it a try. Is there anyone out in Tildes who is looking to start making a lifestyle change that would benefit from having a sense of community? Trying to make diet changes (cutting back on sugar, no more fast food)? Starting a new diet? Starting going to the gym? Cutting alcohol out of your life? Trying to start sleeping more (because not getting sleep is real bad )?

I'm trying to gauge if there is interest in a weekly (or maybe more frequent?) discussion thread for people to talk about what changes they are making to live a healthier life, have people to talk about and discuss their struggles with, and just form a community to help us all succeed.

For example, I'm sadly am quitting my current gym membership. I have been boxing with the same coaches for 3 years now, but with my new job the gym is now 30 minutes out of my way rather than along my commute home, and at $120 a month I can't make it there often enough to justify the cost. My company has a gym in-building that is really solid, and I met with a trainer to get a workout plan made tailor-made to my goals. However, I am SO LAZY without a community of people keeping on me. I really relied on my gym friends and coaches to call me out when I wasn't going to the gym and when I was half-assing classes. Mostly what I'm looking for is people to talk to about working out, the struggles of forcing yourself to go when you don't want to, struggles of being an ex-athlete and losing all the structure your use to your workouts having, and how people are fueling their bodies to succeed. But I recognize that my health issues aren't universal, so I don't want this post to be just what I want/need. I want to hear if there is interest, and try to build something for the community, not just me.

Alright so some stuff happened preventing last week's list from coming together until late enough where it would be too close to this one. As a result, I'm going to rework this to make it easier for the person I'm working with and plan on these coming out on Friday nights. This week, we have a big-ass list with both weeks shoved together. Sorry for the delay...enjoy :)

Here's a list of a lot of things that came out in this past week (and this time, the week before). Of course, there's no way to be completely comprehensive with this and I avoided including things where information was too lacking, so feel free to mention anything that isn't on here that you think is worth mentioning. Beyond that, if you have any thoughts of any of these albums, it would be great to hear them :)

Thank you to @Cleb for the help and @cfabbro for the links!

Notes:
If you spot any mistakes please let us know.

Charlotte - Nowhere To Hide EP || Couldn't find EP, so linked to two singles included on it.

Jay Gwuapo - From Nothing, Pt. 1 || Linked to no "parental-advisory" version. So presumably NSFW language. ;)

Jeffrey Brooks - The Passion || No song.link. Linked to bandcamp instead.

Leven Kali - Leven Kali: Low Tide || Linked to no "parental-advisory" version as well.

Newsboys - United || "Deluxe" album linked to.

NOTS - 3 || No song.link. Linked to bandcamp instead.

PnB Rock - TrapStar Turnt PopStar || "Deluxe" album linked to.

Smokepurpp - Lost Planet 2.0 || Linked to no "parental-advisory" version as well.

Stunna 4 Vegas - Big 4X || Linked to no "parental-advisory" version as well.

Young Nudy & Pi'erre Bourne - Sli'merre || Linked to no "parental-advisory" version as well.

Project Gutenberg is a great resource for free books, but its 50,000+ titles are intimidating in number (if not outright impenetrable). The same goes for other free ebook aggregators/feeds, of which there are many. There are also lots of authors who offer up their books for free. And, of course, there are tons of free options available in, say, the Kindle store. While it's nice to have so many choices, it hinders discoverability. Individual books get lost in all the noise.

As such, I'd like to know: what are some standout, recommended books that are available to readers for free?

Obvious disclaimer: I am not interested in pirated content.

Wow it was hard to describe this in the title! I should have said "data-centric APP" not UI. Sorry! LOL
I have had an idea for 25 years that I keep NOT pursuing because I was convinced that the next big version of Linux/Windows/etc would include a more civilized way to manage data. It just seems obvious in my strange mind, I guess that means intuitive. I've discussed the idea and worked on refining the concepts with about 20 people and they all agreed.

My idea is based on a huge paradigm shift about managing all forms of data by the user. It's about how we manage data, not just file-system stuff or yet-another Windows/File Explorer or any of the numerous current Linux varieties. I'm honestly shocked that in 2019, the most original idea that's come about is to remove all the menus and toolbars (freeman) or add a bunch of tabs and hundreds of buttons (pretty much everything on Windows).

I am a software engineer and designer with 35 years experience - but with business class apps, not OS stuff. I am semi-retired and have a great deal of time to work on whatever interests me. And please note: Despite my advanced years ;-) LOL I am very current on the technologies I work with daily, which is mainly .net/c#. However, I just finished a year-long project that had a Java client running on a Raspberry Pi (which I love) paired with a WCF service running in IIS, along with an asp.net web client. Now I'm not an expert in any of that, but I'm not too shabby I don't think as I've made a good living and do mostly volunteer work right now.

I currently manage a massive amount of data, from files/dirs on Windows and Linux file-systems, to MSSQL and mySQL on both Windows and Linux, and of course some cloud data. And it takes several tools as you know, and it's incredibly inefficient and painful. And of course on Windows, Windows/File Explorer is - eh, I can't find a word strong enough. On Linux not much better. And I've spent the past two years searching, researching, testing, and praying.

My idea is to build an app that allows users - not just developers like me - but mostly aimed at business users - to manage data from various sources/technologies in a single unified and intuitive manner. The physical aspect is divorced from the UI which is divorced from the management engine. And it's grouped the way the user THINKS and WORKS with it. For example, let's say for PROJECT-A (and Client-1) I have various source code locations on 2 local hard drives, but also documents (technical specs, or maybe letters to the client, spreadsheets or timelines), and of course likely a database or two, some web-site links. How many places and how many apps would I have to use today to keep them all close by so I could get to them? Well, there'd be a couple of drive letters probably, maybe a few sub-folder levels deep, maybe documents on a network share, some collaborative docs in the cloud, and some web-site links in whatever-browser-you-use. You get the idea.

No file manager on any OS can give you much more than "Places" or file-system - drive letters on Windows or some mount points on Linux. Things like MyDocuments, MyMusic, MyInsanity - that stuff makes no sense because it's not how people work. What I want is a "work-space" where I can have any number of what I call "Data Sources" - and it doesn't matter what physical technology is underneath it - local hard drive, local sub-folder, mapped drive, unc mount, cloud, ftp - don't care - don't need to. I create a work-space, add data sources, order them however I want, name them whatever I want, and each "Data Source" has a manager or provider. A filesystem provider would make your data source look like Windows Explorer. But a database provider could look like MS SQL Server Manager or other db admin tool. And you put that workspace in a tab if you want, and have as many others in other tabs - or you put them on a menu, or on a popup that a middle-click brings up - doesn't matter. And everything I've just written, plus it's settings, is represented by Viewer objects. A hierarchical - tree-view or the likes - a flat view - a list-view - a preview pane, or editor pane - navigation tool (path/breadcrumbs) - a command line shell pane - drag/dock wherever in the tab you want. A main menu/toolbar + status-bar would be global and shared. And all THAT is bundled into a PARENT object - which contains the work-spaces, which contains the tabs, which contains the data sources + provider views/panes. And you can have as many of THOSE - parent objects - as you need, easily accessible in the custom titlebar at the top, or bottom, etc..

The point is - when I am working on PROJECT-A I manage it in a tab that contains ONLY the drive letters, or mount points, that are relevant (and named what I choose, meaning no drive letters forced on me even if that is the underlying reality nor any full paths or full URLs - just logical names I assign). This will NOT be some massive file manager with every folder on the system or 18 drive letters I'll never use. It will have all the web-site bookmarks I need, as well as databases I'm working with. This won't be an ALL-IN-ONE type of thing - you will STILL use your external apps, web browser, IDE or editor, mail app - but it will be a SINGLE place where ALL those data items get represented and where you can manage them in exactly the same way. I can copy/paste an email message to a file on my workstation, or copy a file from a network share to some machine remotely using ftp or http.

I hope this makes some kinda sense and doesn't just sound like the ramblings of yet-another aging geek who thinks he's got a great new idea. My usage scenarios are literally based on things I do every day, and are the result of observing myself as I work to see what my mind is doing. I do realize that we all work in our own way, and I've taken that into account. But there are basic things we all do concerning data management. And as I have hired, trained, and worked with a huge number of fellow programmers over my 35 years - without exception this was the most common soft point for them all. Keeping track of data. The same applies to all my clients. I've written software for accountants and attorneys, and a wide variety of business types - and without exception - every one of them had trouble with managing their data. One look at their Desktop or MyDocuments - or just watching them trying to find a letter in MS-Word - tells the whole story.

Ok there's my pitch - I'm looking for anyone who has interest, no matter what your skill level or how much time you can or cannot devote. We need people who can contribute only opinion and advice, as well as hardcore keyboard jocks like me who love to code for 36 hours at a clip ;-) LOL

I had an interesting conversation with my housemate last night, which opened my eyes to just how easily fake news gets into ordinary people's minds.

We were discussing an episode of 'The Orville' we had just watched, and conversation shifted topics (as it does), and we ended up talking about free speech and political correctness - and he told me, quite matter-of-factly, that at least one local school had removed all books which referred to "boys" or "girls" from its library, and that other schools wanted to ban children from referring to themselves as "boys" or "girls". This was part of a politically correct drive to remove all references to gender, so that noone is "male" or "female".

My housemate is not a raving lunatic. He's not a rabid fascist or alt-right person. He's just an ordinary Aussie guy, going about his ordinary life, with no malice to anyone.

But his extended family watches certain TV channels and reads certain newspapers, and he had picked up this little nugget of knowledge from a TV show one of them was watching.

We discussed the matter, and I told him that what he had just said is fake news. I explained that I didn't think he was wrong, but that his sources were wrong. He wouldn't believe me - to the point where he demanded that we go to a computer and double-check it.

It didn't take me long to find both the newspaper articles and television segments spreading this fake news, and the other sources debunking it (because I knew what I was looking for). It turns out that some ivory-tower academics had done a study which showed that making little girls play with "hyper-feminised toys like Barbies" was reinforcing certain sexist stereotypes, and maybe that should be changed. That was it. But certain newspapers (owned by a certain media tycoon) had twisted this into a scare story involving evil teachers who were coming to steal your children's identities by stopping them from being boys and girls and removing everything that said "boys" and "girls" from libraries - and other news outlets had picked up this story and run with it, adding their own touches as it bounced from one outlet to another.

As soon as I showed him the debunking sources, he accepted them. He got a bit defensive, and deflected blame on to his family and the news - but he believed the truth when I showed it to him. He's not stupid or malicious, just misinformed. I agreed with him that it wasn't his fault. As he said, most normal people aren't like me, reading deep into the news and double-checking what they say. Most people just read the paper or watch the TV and accept what they're told.

Fake news is so easy to spread. Most people don't question their news sources. If a newspaper or newsreader tells them something, they believe it because it's coming from a supposedly reliable source.

What's something that people keep getting wrong? (Especially something they don't even know they're getting wrong)

It can be something as simple as wanting to enforce "mischievous" over "mischievious," or something much bigger like "the earth isn't flat". It can be funny or serious.

Also, even though I said "common", I'm definitely okay with domain-specific or more narrowly-focused ones, so if there's something that really bothers you about your particular job, discipline, or hobby, feel free to share!

week seven comes a bit early this week again because this week offers up what might be the most articles that i've covered in one of these so far. no [LONGFORM] articles this week, but we do have a lot of policy stuff, mostly from the secondary and lesser candidates!

the usual note: common sense should be able to generally dictate what does and does not get posted in this thread. if it's big news or feels like big news, probably make it its own post instead of lobbing it in here. like the other weekly threads, this one is going to try to focus on things that are still discussion worthy, but wouldn't necessarily make good/unique/non-repetitive discussion starters as their own posts.

Week 1 thread • Week 2 thread • Week 3 thread • Week 4 thread • Week 5 thread • Week 6 thread

News

General Stuff

• from NBC News: Democrats face defining 2020 question: Does defeating Trump outweigh all else?. this is possibly the biggest question democrats have to answer this election cycle, and it's not a question that is readily or easily answered since a lot of it ties into other problems like representation and electability. expect this to continue to be a major theme since it's already been one from the beginning.

• from Pacific Standard: The 2020 Democratic Candidates Are Split on Letting Incarcerated People Vote. one low-key issue that seems to be becoming a defining issue is the matter of incarcerated people voting. i imagine this is an issue that is not going to receive much coverage, nor be center fold in most candidate's platforms, but nonetheless, some people have already taken stances on it (sanders is a yes, buttigieg is a no).

• from Vox: Women of color want 2020 Democrats to work for their vote. this was also a point of note last week in the Guardian (see Black female voters to Democrats: 'You won't win the White House without us' with the 'She the People' forum, and i anticipate this is not an issue that's going to go away.

Joe Biden

• from NBC News: Biden is the Democratic front-runner, but a vulnerable one. we begin with NBC News and their big takeaway from biden's entry to the democratic primary:

Bottom line: 96 hours in, Biden looks more like John Kerry of 2004 (the slight front-runner in a volatile Democratic field) than Al Gore of 2000 or Hillary Clinton of 2016.

• from Jacobin: Joe Biden Is Not a Blue-Collar Candidate. jacobin offers up this take, arguing that biden is not a blue-collar candidate because his voting record suggests he sells out the working class often, and while he is generally acceptable at representing the white working class, he fails to really represent minority working class voters and therefore cannot be a properly blue-collar candidate.

• from the Atlantic: Biden Is Betting on Unions. They Might Bet on Someone Else. biden is of course angling for the union vote and union endorsements, which he's already winning to some extent with an endorsement from the (admittedly in the biden tank) International Association of Fire Fighters (membership: 300,000). he's going to have a hard time garnering labor endorsements, though, because he is far from the only candidate with union ties. as the article notes, among the other candidates vying for the backing of the unions are sanders, warren and harris, and each of them have arguably just as much claim to the working-class as biden does (see also last week's Democratic presidential candidates seek union support at workers' forum).

Bernie Sanders

• from CBS News: Bernie and Biden: Fighting for Trump voters. one of the side effects of how this primary is being waged is that obama-trump voters are being targeted significantly by just about everybody involved. this targeting by the two ends of the primary (and the related issues involved with that) is the subject of this article by CBS News.

• from Reuters: Bernie Sanders promises help for family farms, rural residents on trip to Iowa. policy-wise, sanders has focused on rural communities in recent weeks, promising among other things to "strengthen anti-trust laws to block new corporate agriculture mergers and break up existing monopolies" and "changes to farm subsidy programs to shift the benefits away from bigger farms to smaller and mid-sized operations".

Everybody Else

• from Buzzfeed News: Almost Two Months In, Beto 2020 Is Still In Flux. Staffers Know They’re Behind. despite looking like a relatively early frontrunner in the race, beto has been worse-than-stagnant in the past few weeks, dropping back behind warren, harris, and buttigieg. things aren't looking up either: as the article notes, the campaign is still in the process of trying to fill positions and not lose people (see also, week 5's somewhat related A Top Adviser To Beto O’Rourke Has Left His Presidential Campaign).

• from CBS News: Elizabeth Warren bets big on policy to break through crowded Democratic field. warren's focus on policy so far has been well documented, and this CBS news article mostly focuses on that in comparison to other candidates, who barely have sketches. it also tackles the electability issue, though, which it notes could be a problem that weighs down warren's prospects (cf. last week's Can a woman beat Trump? Some Democrats wonder if it's worth the risk):

New Hampshire is a state where Massachusetts candidates like Warren typically do quite well, but a Suffolk University survey of Granite State Democrats released earlier this week had her in fourth place behind Biden, Sanders, and Buttigieg. When asked why, nearly 1-in-5 non-Warren voters said the main reason they don't support her is because they doubt she can beat Mr. Trump.

• from the Atlantic: Mayor Buttigieg Is Working Remotely Today. this article mostly focuses on the interesting issue buttigieg has--which is, of course, that he is still the mayor of south bend while he's out campaigning. since buttigieg has state he has no intentions of stepping down from the mayoral position he holds (and his term expires in november), this is probably going to be an interested background note of his campaign for the next little while.

• from POLITICO: Gillibrand proposes public campaign financing plan. kirsten gillibrand has policy too, folks! admittedly, i have no idea why her policy takes this form, but she nonetheless proposes that:

...eligible voters could opt into her “Democracy Dollars” program and register for vouchers, provided by the Federal Elections Commission, to donate up to $100 in a primary election and $100 in a general election each cycle. Each participant would get $200 for each type of federal contest: House, Senate and presidential elections.
But there would be limits on both donors and candidates in order to use the public voucher program. Voters could contribute only to candidates in their state — including House candidates outside their district but within their state. In order to accept the public money, candidates would have to restrict themselves to accepting only donations of $200 or less.

• from Roll Call: Klobuchar plan to combat addiction draws on experience with her dad. klobuchar also has policy! this mostly focuses on addiction and mental health, and a summary was helpfully provided by a press release i don't have on hand:

“Amy will support incentives for state governments to enact ignition interlock laws for those convicted of drunk driving to help reduce repeat offenders. Since problems with alcoholism often start early, Amy will support educational initiatives that focus on the risks of alcohol as well as early identification and treatment of alcoholism,” a summary said.

supplemental reporting by CBS News also notes the following: "The Minnesota Democrat wants to pay for treatment for those addicted to opioids by charging a two-cents-per-milligram fee to companies that make the drug."

• from Vox: Cory Booker now has the most ambitious gun control proposal of any 2020 candidate. cory booker meanwhile is focusing on gun policy. as vox writes:

His plan includes the typical Democratic proposals: universal background checks, an assault weapons ban, better enforcement of existing gun laws, and more funding for gun violence research. But Booker’s plan goes further by requiring that gun owners not just pass a background check but obtain a license to be able to purchase and own a firearm. It’s a far more robust gun control proposal than any other presidential candidate has proposed.

in many respects this is similar (but more comprehensive in some respects and les comprehensive in others) to the current gun policy of massachusetts. booker's plan also includes a national database for tracking firearms, and also limits on purchases to prevent things like resale. vox's part of the writing here also has info on the underlying research and statistics with respect to whether or not these policies work (for the most part, they seem to).

• from CBS News: Jay Inslee unveils plan for 100 percent clean energy by 2030. jay inslee is a lower-rung candidate, but that hasn't stopped him from pushing the limits on climate policy. among other things, his ideas include: "100 percent clean energy, mak[ing] all new vehicles zero-emission, and [eliminating] the carbon footprint for all new buildings." you can find his policy specifically here.

• from Grist: A tale of two Washingtons: How Jay Inslee aims to take his climate plan nationwide. Grist goes into more detail on inslee's policy, mostly focusing on how they're being implemented in washington, inslee's home state, and how they compare to the other climate policies in the race already like beto's.

• from CBS News: 2020 hopeful John Hickenlooper unveils plan to "re-energize trade with the world". john hickenlooper has hitched his wagon to trade, of all things. the main planks of his policy on fair trade, which is possibly one of the least energizing seminal issues a campaign can run on, are:

• Ensure trading partners adopt and enforce fair labor and safety standards
• Ensure the protection of IP rights of American companies
• Require trading partners to enforce environmental and climate standards
• Ensure U.S. firms enjoy equitable and comparable investment rights abroad
• Ensure U.S. workers have assistance to adjust to job displacement from trade

if you're interested in that sort of thing, CBS also helpfully embedded the five-page outline going into more detail on those planks in the article.

Opinion/Ideology-driven

• from Pacific Standard: There's No Good Way to Determine Electability Other Than Holding Elections. this is an interesting piece which is hard to summarize, but probably the best summary of it is what it concludes on the matter of electability:

...the discussion around the topic is fraught, particularly for the Democratic Party, which has defined itself in recent decades as the party that embraces and seeks inclusion and diversity. If you're going to assert that a white man is better qualified for a job (the party's nominee) by virtue of being a white man, you really need to be sure on your facts. And the facts just aren't there.

• from Jacobin: Stick With Bernie. this jacobin piece argues that progressive/leftist types need to rally behind bernie given biden's strength, or else they risk a biden v trump general election which would likely (in their view) go the same way as clinton v trump did in 2016. it's pretty much impossible to tell this far out, but honestly, it's pretty easy to see their point here given biden's circumstances.

• from Truthout: The Era of “Centrist” Establishment Democrats Is Over. this op-ed from Truthout strongly rebukes the "centrist" tendency of the democratic party, arguing that there is basically no place for that tendency anymore and that it simply does not and cannot produce a winning coalition at this point. bold and new ideas which buck the traditional orthodoxy in this view are the only way to mobilize and produce a winning coalition, because otherwise either too many people stay home, or not enough people vote democratic.

• from the Guardian: Bernie Sanders needs black women's support. So what's his plan to win us over?. bernie's biggest failing so far between his two presidential runs has almost certainly been his failure to appeal to minority voters, particularly black women. this is of course an issue because he likely needs black women to win the primary and the general. as allison writes here: "Black voters and women of color do not want another president who does not see or value us. Sanders needs to let us know that he understands deeply how frightening, difficult and dangerous this political moment is for us, and for the entire country."

• from the Guardian: Joe Biden wants us to forget his past. We won't. perhaps the biggest failing of biden on the other hand is his absolutely god awful track record, for which he is raked here and will likely continue to be raked. the main crux of the op-ed:

As times have changed, Biden has expressed retrospective misgivings about some of those earlier actions and stances. For example, he very recently attempted to offer an apology of sorts, more like an unpology, to Anita Hill, which she quite understandably rejected. And he remains a pure, dyed-in-the-wool neoliberal, as much as ever a tool of Wall Street and corporations. We deserve better than a candidate who wants us to look past his record and focus only on the image he wants to project and, when that tack fails, can offer progressives only a “my bad”.

• from the Guardian: We can't save the planet with half measures. We need to go all the way. this is one part an op-ed written about climate change, one part an op-ed responding to beto o'rourke's climate plan. on one hand, it does note that o'rourke's plan is good--but it also notes that "good" is not nearly enough to avert the problem, and it's also a downgrade from what o'rourke originally endorsed, which was net-zero emissions by 2030.

• from the Guardian: Is Elizabeth Warren's college plan really progressive? Yes. this op-ed is pretty straightforward and argues against the somewhat-weird position that warren's college plan isn't progressive because it also helps middle-and-upper-class people that's been advanced by a few people.

anyways, feel free to as always contribute other interesting articles you stumble across, or comment on some of the ones up there.

Cooking is a hobby of mine, and as a result I really enjoy watching food related YouTube channels. Some of the ones I like are

• Alex French Guy Cooking - A fun channel of a creative french amateur cook. I like this channel because I have similar taste in food to him (check out his instant ramen series!), but his solutions to problems in the kitchen are seriously creative. To give an example, he builds a dough sheeter in his croissant series in order to get the perfect thickness of dough, and he makes a makeshift dehydrator in the ramen series. Stuff I would never do in the kitchen, but it's fun to watch.

• Bon Appetit - I totally did not expect Bon Appetit to have such a well put together web presence (for some reason I considered them an old fashioned publication). In any case, check out the "It's Alive with Brad" series. It starts out as a series about all things related to fermentation (beer, hot sauce, kombucha, sourdough, etc), but expands a bit in scope.

• Binging with Babish - Perhaps the most well known of recent food related YouTubers, Babish recreates meals from movies and TV. He also has a nice series on cooking tutorials. I don't watch him as much as I used to, but he's still a lot of fun.

• Townsends - A bit different than the rest, and not exlusively food related. Townsends is a historical enthusiast focusing on the colonial era, and he has a lot of videos recreating recipes and techniques from the time period.

EDIT:

Forgot to include

• Jun's Kitchen - Some seriously therapeutic cooking videos featuring sushi and cats.

Hi,

I'm wondering how and if you're taking notes and how you manage them. I feel like I can't get to the right solution. I want something open and own my data, so I tend to prefer plain text / markdown files and I want to manage them on my own for privacy reasons but still be able to sync and edit them on my mobile device (iOS), desktop (macOS) and ideally online and also have full text search.

I know about Microsoft OneNote, Google Docs/Keep, Evernote - but I just can't overcome myself to use them since it's hard to impossible to get data out of there.

Right now I'm hosting my own git repository with gitea.io and I'm able to edit my notes on the web, on my desktop (using git clone/pull/commit/push) and with a git client (working copy) on my phone. The downside: I need to manually commit and push my changes and also pull them, it's not really in sync.

Now that it's legal in Canada to grow cannabis, I decided to try my hand at growing a few plants indoors. I started with a simple setup and a couple of seeds in a closet. As I did more research, I slowly started upgrading my equipment and methods. There is so much more to growing good cannabis indoors than I originally thought, and it's become a very interesting hobby for me. There is also a lot of misinformation and pseudoscience out there, which can make it difficult for new growers.

Anyone else into this hobby? What's your setup like? Anyone thinking of getting into it?

It’s no secret that data science is a good career path. The jobs are in demand, the salaries are compelling, and the work is interesting. So how does someone break in?

In particular, I’m interested in how an experienced IT professional can move into data science. What advice would you give to someone with, say, five years of computing experience, who wants to break into the field? Tell me about the skills required, where you’d tell your friend to go to acquire them, and how to get a job without a specialized degree. What would make you say, “I want to hire this person, even if the individual lacks the relevant schooling”?

For example: I've got mild issues with what I'll call "big dark things within emptiness." I'm sure there's probably a very specific term and associated subreddit for this, but I don't particularly enjoy searching it up.

An example would be looking at a planet in Celestia or Google Earth, especially the unlit side. Another example would be seeing the hull of a submerged ship underwater. I have no idea why these kind of things give me the willies, but they do.

Intellectually I think it's absurd and will often try to will myself to ignore the nonsense feeling based on completely unthreatening stimuli, but that doesn't seem to alleviate my instantaneous lizard-brain reaction. For whatever reason, I can't get past it.

It's been this way for a long time, too. I can remember when I was very young, I had a picture book about space. It had shots of all the planets, most of which I was fine with, but there was a close-up of Jupiter in shadow that I would deliberately avoid looking at.

Another book had a very dark picture of a giant squid that caused the same reaction in me. I remember memorizing the page numbers for these two photos so that I could skip them whevener I looked at the books. If I ever opened the book to a random page, I would crack it ever so slightly so that I could peek the page number to make sure it was safe.

Do you have something like this? Some absurd fear, phobia, or aversion to something strangely specific or benign? When's the first time you realized it? Has it stayed that way over time?

Someone pings you in slack or github (or discord or on a forum post or wherever) asking for something. Perhaps some advice or a code review. After you help them out, they say "Thanks!". In normal conversation, I would respond with a "You're welcome" or "no problem" or something.

The problem I have is that while I want to be polite and acknowledge their thank you message, I don't want to generate notifications or otherwise distract people. Responding with a github comment will notify and probably email any involved persons. Slack and discord it depends on the channel, but many channels have low enough traffic that I will check every time theres a new message in that channel (and I'm sure I'm not the only one monitoring those channels).

Its not really a big deal and no one is going to get angry about it - but it can distract people or ruin their flow while working and I want to avoid that. In my mind, a reaction emoji is perfect for this. It acknowledges the comment or message if someone looks, but doesn't send notifications or light up the channel name.

...but which reaction should I use? I've never seen a "you're welcome" emoji. I've been typically using a thumbs up (:+1:), but that can look as if someone is seconding the thanks rather than me trying to acknowledge it.

Is there a better way to say "you're welcome" or "no problem" in this situation? Is there a better reaction emoji on github/slack/discord/your communication platform of choice? Should I stop worrying about possibly savings other people an email or small distraction and just say "np" or something?

week six comes slightly early, because i have way too many links and i actually started writing this yesterday because it's just over a page and fuck writing all this in one day, lol. the [LONGFORM] tag continues and finally returns, offering up two pieces to us today.

the usual note: common sense should be able to generally dictate what does and does not get posted in this thread. if it's big news or feels like big news, probably make it its own post instead of lobbing it in here. like the other weekly threads, this one is going to try to focus on things that are still discussion worthy, but wouldn't necessarily make good/unique/non-repetitive discussion starters as their own posts.

Week 1 thread • Week 2 thread • Week 3 thread • Week 4 thread • Week 5 thread

News

General Stuff

• from FiveThirtyEight: What The Potential 2020 Candidates Are Doing And Saying, Vol. 16. a pretty quiet week for most of the candidates. most of the highlights came after the end-date for this volume and will be reflected in next week's.

• from NBC News: Can a woman beat Trump? Some Democrats wonder if it's worth the risk. even though it's pretty inane, this topic is probably going to be a recurring theme, because voter preferences are some of the absolute weirdest, most unfathomably illogical shit possible. electability is a large part of why this is probably going to be a theme: clinton might have poisoned the well for all of this year's "first" candidates by fucking up in 2016, and that might make voters hesitant to pull the lever for another one. but again, who the fuck knows. voter preferences have an uncanny tendency to make zero sense.

• from the Guardian: Black female voters to Democrats: 'You won't win the White House without us'. another recurring topic is going to be the black female vote, which is consistently the most democratic bloc possible. in really any place where there's a significant minority vote, democrats have to turn these voters out significantly, and obviously presidential primaries and elections aren't exceptions to that rule. most of the candidates don't seem to be doing the best job of winning them over yet.

• from Reuters: Democratic presidential candidates seek union support at workers' forum. union voters could be significant in the democratic path to the presidency, and so you're seeing a lot of democrats try and angle themselves as union candidates also. which one will win out here? i have no fucking clue.

• from NPR: The Democratic Field Is Set: 8 Questions About What Comes Next. NPR offers up a series of questions about the trajectory of the primary, which will probably aid us in the coming months:

1. How far does name identification go?
2. It's there for Biden now, but can he prove himself?
3. Can Bernie Sanders expand beyond his loyal base?
4. Does Pete Buttigieg continue his momentum?
5. Does Elizabeth Warren find her lane?
6. Does Beto O'Rourke get edged out or does he find his way in?
7. Can Kamala Harris supercharge her candidacy – and fend off Biden in South Carolina?
8. Can others have a breakout moment?

Joe Biden

• from the Atlantic: Unlike His Rivals, Biden Sees Trump as an Aberration. we begin this week with how biden is framing his candidacy. one of the cruxes of biden's campaign is that trump doesn't reflect a change of values in the american public or even in the republican party, necessarily. in his view, the status quo hasn't really changed, and if we return to electing people like biden then trumpism will effectively cease. whether you buy that, i leave up to you.

• from Vox: The health care industry is betting on Joe Biden in its war against Medicare-for-all. another thing about biden is that he has very decisively positioned himself against medicare-for-all, which mostly reflects his status as an establishment candidate. this, as it happens, is super great if you're a lobbyist for the healthcare industry, which is unsurprisingly and firmly in biden's camp in this election.

• from Buzzfeed News: Joe Biden Backs A Public Option — Not Medicare For All — As He Argues For Electability. as far as biden is concerned though, this is mostly a matter of electability. among his other points of policy: "[a] on noncompete clauses ... a $15 minimum wage and ... a more simplified process for issuing professional licenses."

• from the Guardian: 'Battle for America's soul': Biden comes out swinging at first 2020 event. beyond that, biden also has this for policy: "reversing Trump’s tax cuts for the wealthy and corporations" and "enacting the so-called “Buffett Rule” – which would apply a minimum tax rate of 30% on individuals making more than $1m". he's supposed to unveil more of this in the near future.

• from Slate: 10 Questions Joe Biden Needs to Answer About His Views on Race. Slate offers up 10 questions that they feel joe biden is obligated to give us better answers on, thanks in no small part to his incredibly long history of being a dumb politician who might now be on the wrong side of the political traintracks.

Bernie Sanders

• from Buzzfeed News: Bernie Sanders Is Getting A Shadow Organizing Campaign In The Midwest. bernie sanders has had a quiet week in the media, relatively speaking. one of the only notes from this week about him came in the form of people realizing that yes, our revolution does actually exist and yes, it does actually do things. the sanders campaign is probably going to need things like this to win this year.

Beto O'Rourke

• from the Guardian: Beto O'Rourke is coming to California. Can the trip redeem his campaign?. beto has been busy in california the past few days trying to drum up support, which is easier said than done because he's on the wrong side of a wave now. he's been quietly slipping in the polls for the past little while, to a point where he's now usually sixth or so in the order. will stumping in california help with this at all? probably not, but he's gotta do it at some point.

• from NBC News: Beto O'Rourke releases $5 trillion plan to combat climate crisis. on the policy front, he's finally getting around to expanding on what he's running on. his climate change plan is fairly extensive:

The plan begins with proposed executive actions, including rejoining the Paris climate agreement on day one of an O’Rourke administration and moving quickly to raise efficiency standards for buildings, cars and appliances. Longer term executive actions include setting a net-zero emissions carbon budget for federal lands by 2030 and adding more national parks and monuments to protect land and seascapes.
The meat of the O’Rourke plan is a promise to send Congress, as his first piece of legislation, a bill that would mobilize $5 trillion over the next 10 years to upgrade infrastructure and spur innovation — including more than a trillion dollars in tax incentives to reduce emissions, and $250 billion dedicated directly to research and development.

• from Buzzfeed News: Beto O’Rourke Is The Latest Democrat To Make Climate Change Central To His Campaign. Buzzfeed News helpfully fills in some of the other details, such as this:

His plan, starting day one in the White House, would include spending a record $5 trillion on climate action over ten years and mandating the US reduce its emissions to net zero by 2050. (This means the nation, by midcentury, would no longer be emitting more climate pollution into the atmosphere than it was pulling out of it through trees and other ways.)

Elizabeth Warren

• from POLITICO: Warren puts Bernie on defense. POLITICO pitches the interesting take that warren is putting sanders on defense by pushing a shit ton of policy. this seems... dubious? at best, given that warren is polling at literally half of what sanders does, sanders has greatly outraised her, and in general the two just have not interacted especially significantly at any point in the campaign so far. but a take is a take.

• from Truthout: [LONGFORM] Elizabeth Warren’s Student Debt Plan: An Outsized Economic Boon for People of Color. truthout provides an analysis of elizabeth warren's student debt plan, suggesting that it would be the best for people of color. this is interesting, because...

• from Slate: Elizabeth Warren’s Student Loan Forgiveness Plan Mostly Helps the Middle Class, Think Tank Finds. one of the big takeways most other sources have had is that it would be a boon for the middle class instead. figure that one out.

Pete Buttigieg

• from the Atlantic: Authenticity Just Means Faking It Well. this article is more about authenticity than it is about buttigieg, but its catalyst is buttigieg so i'm placing it in this section. what constitutes "authenticity"? who the fuck knows, honestly, but buttigieg is apparently it in a way that resonates with voters.

Opinion/Ideology-driven

• from Truthout: [LONGFORM] None of the 2020 Frontrunners Go Far Enough on Climate. Truthout opines that realistically, absolutely none of the current frontrunner candidates have a compelling platform on climate change that will work. this might change now that o'rourke has actually unveiled a comprehensive plan, but in general outside of inslee (who is running as The Climate Change Candidate), so far climate change hasn't really played much of a role in the primary.

• from the Guardian: Joe Biden is the Hillary Clinton of 2020 – and it won't end well this time either. this take opines that biden is basically this cycle's hillary clinton and that biden basically does not get it. perhaps the best distilling of this argument is in this paragraph:

Biden’s answer to Trump isn’t systemic change that will make America a more equitable place. He’s not offering progressive policies like Bernie Sanders or Elizabeth Warren. His is the vaguest and most centrist of battle cries: let’s go back to, you know, “all those good things”. Let’s go back to a time where racism was a little more polite and white people could pretend America was a post-racial society. Let’s fight for the soul of America by pretending that Trump is the problem, not just a symptom of the problem. Let’s pretend that Charlottesville was a direct result of Trump – an aberration – and not a product of a racism that has always existed in America. Let’s rewind the clock a few years to when everything was just fine and dandy.

• from the Guardian: Bernie Sanders v the Democratic establishment: what the battle is really about. this piece takes an interesting alternative frame on the major split that seems to divide sanders from the rest of the democratic party. in essence, it is this:

The Shakir-Tanden debate about money in politics at Cap is also the larger debate Sanders is sparking in the Democratic party. Joe Biden opened his presidential bid by allowing a Comcast executive to host a fundraiser for him at his home in Pennsylvania. Sanders, on the other hand, has written off such fundraisers and is insisting on relying on small donor funders, not corporate executives or lobbyists.

anyways, feel free to as always contribute other interesting articles you stumble across, or comment on some of the ones up there.

EDIT: minor grammatical stuff

Father God

I've got a favor

to ask of you.

.

It is said

you can justify

the hell I knew.

.

So now I raise

my tired eyes

to the morning blue.

.

God above,

I've got a favor

to ask of you.

.

If I don't wake up

dead in the morning

could you stand by me

if just for a moment

give pause to the pain

put a break to the moaning

while I'm stuck in this mind

and I just can't control it.

.

If you're gonna drag me out

of my bed in the morning

then I ask I wake in

a place I feel at home and

I can pour a little brown, light

a green, and get to hoping

that I'll find good work,

good love, and consoling.

.

Ya Allah

Ana mish aerif

Ana riyeh feyn.

.

My head

is clouded, dark

and the sky is grey.

.

I've found

I hate the sun,

and dance in the rain.

.

And at night,

I close my eyes,

dream of the grave.

.

If you're gonna drag me out

of my bed in the morning

then I ask I wake in

a place I feel at home and

I can pour a little brown, light

a green, and get to hoping

that I'll find good work,

good love, and consoling.

Howdy folks.

Had a recent interest in large-scale art projects, and I'm not sure where to start looking to find more.

Anything that by nature has to exist outside of a museum. I'm looking for big displays. Whether it be large scale performance art, buildings erected at the will of an artist, or things like the Dumb Starbucks event that took place out in Los Angeles.

Installments that took any measure of great coordination, investment, or raw personal effort.

I feel like I'm doing a right shit job of describing this - but maybe you get the idea. If anyone has links to news articles, blog posts, or whatever about these kinds of art please drop a comment!

My previous recommendations:

• Person of Interest
• Psych

So, I just finished binging all five seasons, and I think I can safely recommend this series to an audience that enjoys adult humor and series that juggle between the very funny and very serious.

BoJack Horseman is a series that starts slow and doesn't really seem to truly find itself until Season 3. I personally didn't enjoy the first half of Season 1 at all (got very bored). The second half of Season 1 got me to keep watching purely on the humor and the gags, which pretty consistently increase in quality as the show continues.

I especially got drawn in on all the "animal" gags. The series at some point early on becomes very comfortable going all out on visual&storytelling gags based on the animal playing them (BJH is an otherwise-normal universe where a significant part of the population is half-animal half-human). The humor is pretty high quality, I would easily compare it to the humor in Arrested Development (early seasons).
It is a series that makes fun of itself, without relying too much on gimmicks or breaking the fourth wall too much. With that said, Seasons 3 and 4 introduce more experimental episodes (including an entirely mute one, similar to the excellent Hush from Buffy, as well as another that only consists of a beautiful entire 22 minute monologue). None of them bored me. I was always extremely impressed with the execution and the quality.

What really gets me to recommend this series is its later seasons. Seasons 3 and 4 are of exceptionally high quality and the show becomes… very dark. But not without losing its humor. BoJack Horseman made me cry three times. I'm not talking about tearing up, I'm talking about the full waterworks like I've done only a couple of times in my entire adult life.
It's a show that punches you in the gut not by having grand romantic storylines; not by having heroic moments with epic music; not sympathetically by having manly characters tear up; not even by killing off beloved characters like Game of Thrones. It's a show that hits you because it's too fucking real.

In many ways, I would say that I enjoyed BJH for similar reasons that I enjoyed early GoT: It's unforgiving to its characters. But I don't want this to put anyone off from watching; it's a unique series to which I have a very hard time finding parallels. Its humor sits between Arrested Development, Futurama and Rick & Morty and is very much its own thing. Very reminiscent of Adult Swim.

BoJack Horseman is available on Netflix. Come for the gags, stay for your own reasons.

• Wikipedia
• IMDb
• TVMaze

Hey Tildians,

This is going to be a really long post that is an ongoing search and conversation I am having with myself. Its going to be about religion and culture. Sorry for the shitty title, I am really bad at coming up with titles, I tend to ramble a lot.

I'm currently going through a crisis both of faith and cultural identity. Not because I am questioning either, but because I have never had either. I'm a white man from america. Growing up as a kid, my parents gave me the option to look at religions and choose one if any that spoke to me. None did, so I didn't go for a long time. In high school I attended Methodist Church every weekend because I felt pressured by my Boy Scout troop to be Christian, the Methodist Church let us use their church for our meetings despite none of the troop being members of the church, and the priest there at the time was a really great guy that I liked a lot. I spent a lot of time talking about faith with him and eventually, he said to me "let's face it, you don't believe the things I am preaching. That is completely fine. You're welcome in the church, it'll always be home, I'm always here to talk about faith or life or anything, but you don't believe in Christianity and you owe it to yourself to try and find something you do believe." And he was right, I didn't. So I studied a few things here and there and none ever stuck. So I've just been agnostic. But I desperately want to believe in a religion and have a sense of community and just, something to tie my individual beliefs to the world and know other people feel the same way I do.

Similarly, I grew up pretty much "American". I know my heritage is from Ireland, Poland, UK, Croatia, Germany because I did reports on ancestry in school, but they've never been a part of my identity. We never talk about being from Poland other than explaining to people why my last name is spelled the way it is (WHICH IS STUPID BECAUSE IT'S NOT A WEIRD SPELLING OR PRONOUNCED DIFFERENT THAN IT LOOKS). It just isn't a thing. I've always envied my friends whose families are very proud and invested in their heritage. And that's not for a lack of trying, I've tried to get invested in them, but there aren't really communities around me for it, my family doesn't give a shit, and even if I did, I'm like 15% everything so it doesn't feel like I'm REALLY from that culture. I guess that's why some people are so extreme about being American. They're such a mix of so many different European countries that if a parent isn't invested in a specific culture, it's hard to identify with any single one, so they rally behind America. It is all they have.

I don't know. It's very weird crisis that came out of nowhere in the stupidest ways (rewatching avatar and then having a crisis of faith looking at a chacra candle in a used book store). I've realized that I am paralyzed by the lack of a foundation of my identity. Personality traits and political views and hobbies are all malleable and change over time and so what I define myself as now could be completely gone and irrelevant in 2 years time and something about that terrifies me. It makes me wish there was something I could tie myself to that doesn't change, like what country my family is from. And if not that, an felling like I undestand the world around me would be great, and something religion provides. Also, the community wouldn't be something I'd hate to have.

Tangentially to this, I'm having a weird relationship with faith in another way. I keep finding myself gravitating towards budhism. I don't know why, but it just is what I keep ending up looking at. I have 6 different bibles, a torrah, and a quran that I've read. None feel quite right. I keep ending up reading more about budism. But I feel SO WEIRD about it. It feels like I'm that white dude everyone hates that wont stop talking about budism. I don’t know. I know I shouldn’t let the outside world’s perceptions affect my religious views. But that doesn’t mean it is easy not to.

Guess to make this more of a convo I’ll ask some questions to generate discussion:

Religious folks: How has growing up with a religion effected your life? Do you think you’d be a drastically different person without it?

Atheists: How weird does this sound to you? Did you go through a similar crisis before landing on atheism

People who grew up with a strong cultural identity: How has that effected your life? Are you generally happy that you have that identity and community? Were there ever times you wished you weren’t a part of it?

...Sunday isn't that far from Thursday...

...I'm sorry!

Here's a list of a lot of things that came out in this past week, mostly up through Friday. Of course, there's no way to be completely comprehensive with this and I avoided including things where information was too lacking, so feel free to mention anything that isn't on here that you think is worth mentioning. Beyond that, if you have any thoughts of any of these albums, it would be great to hear them :)

AJR - Neotheater (Electropop, Trap [EDM]) || Song.link - Spotify

Alan Parsons - The Secret (AOR) || Song.link - Spotify

Aldous Harding - Designer (Singer/Songwriter, Contemporary Folk) || Song.link - Spotify

Amon Tobin - Fear in a Handful of Dust (Electroacoustic, Progressive Electronic) || Song.link - Spotify

Aries - Juramento Mantarraya (Art Pop, Indie Pop, Psychedelic Pop) || Song.link - Spotify

Awaken I Am - The Beauty In Tragedy (Post-Hardcore) || Song.link - Spotify

Bailen - Thrilled To Be Here (Indie Rock, Americana) || Song.link - Spotify

Bear's Den - So That You Might Hear Me (Indie Folk, Indie Rock) || Song.link - Spotify

Billie Marten - Feeding Seahorses by Hand (Singer/Songwriter) || Song.link - Spotify

blackbear - ANONYMOUS (Alternative R&B) || Song.link - Spotify

Black Zone Magick Chant - Voyage Sacrifice (Ambient, Drone) || Song.link - Spotify

Catfish and the Bottlemen - The Balance (Indie Rock, Post-Punk Revival) || Song.link - Spotify

Chelou - Out Of Sight (Indie Pop) || Song.link - Spotify

Claude Fontaine - Claude Fontaine (Psychedelic Pop, Bossa nova, Pop Reggae) || Song.link - Spotify

Co Cash - F.A.C.T.S. (Trap Rap) || Song.link - Spotify

Craig Finn (of the Holy Steady) - I Need A New War (Singer/Songwriter) || Song.link - Spotify

The Cranberries - In the End (Pop Rock, Alternative Rock) || Song.link - Spotify

The Damned Things - High Crimes (Hard Rock) || Song.link - Spotify

Danko Jones - A Rock Supreme (Hard Rock) || Song.link - Spotify

Delsbo Beach Club - A burger in Åkersberga (Indie Pop, Indie Rock) || Song.link - Spotify

DJ Nate - Take Off Mode (Footwork) || Song.link - Spotify

Dub Trio - The Shape of Dub to Come (Math Rock, Dub) || Song.link - Spotify

Dylan Scott - Nothing to Do Town (Dylan Scott) || Song.link - Spotify

El Momo a.k.a Mario Maher - Sueños reales (Hip Hop) || Song.link - Spotify

Ezra Collective - You Can't Steal My Joy (Jazz Fusion) || Song.link - Spotify

Farruko - Gangalee (Reggaeton) || Song.link - Spotify

Foxygen - Seeing Other People (Glam Rock) || Song.link - Spotify

George Benson - Walking to New Orleans (Rock & Roll, Rhythm & Blues) || Song.link - Spotify

The Get Ahead - Deepest Light (Americana) || Song.link - Spotify

Guided by Voices - Warp and Woof (Indie Rock) || Song.link - Spotify

Hannah Cohen - Welcome Home (Art Pop) || Song.link - Spotify

Hardline - Life (Hard Rock) || Song.link - Spotify

Hembree - House On Fire (Alternative Rock, Indie Pop) || Song.link - Spotify

Hillsong United - People (CCM) || Song.link for "LIVE/VISUAL" - for "LIVE" - Spotify

IamSu! - Its Always Pure Love (West Coast Hip Hop) || Song.link - Spotify

In the Valley Below - The Pink Chateau (Indie Rock) || Song.link - Spotify

Jackie Mendoza - LuvHz (Indie Pop, Psychedelic Pop) || Song.link - Spotify

Jacob Latimore - Connection2 (Pop Rap) || Song.link - Spotify

James TW - Chapters (Singer/Songwriter) || Song.link - Spotify

JJ Cale - Stay Around (Blues Rock, Country Rock) || Song.link - Spotify

Josefin Öhrn + The Liberation - Sacred Dreams (Art Pop, Psychedelic Rock) || Song.link - Spotify

Josh Ritter - Fever Breaks (Indie Folk, Folk Rock) || Song.link - Spotify

Justin Garner - Imprint (Contemporary R&B) || Song.link - Spotify

Justin Moore - Late Nights and Longnecks (Contemporary Country) || Song.link - Spotify

Kelly Finnigan - The Tales People Tell (Soul) || Song.link - Spotify

Kevin Abstract - ARIZONA BABY (Alternative R&B, Pop Rap) || Song.link - Spotify

Kevin Morby - Oh My God (Singer/Songwriter, Folk Rock) || Song.link - Spotify

Kiefer Sutherland - Reckless & Me (Country Pop) || Song.link - Spotify

King Gizzard & The Lizard Wizard - Fishing For Fishies (Boogie Rock, Psychedelic Pop) || Song.link - Spotify

Lamb - The Secret Of Letting Go (Art Pop) || Song.link - Spotify

Local Natives - Violet Street (Indie Pop) || Song.link - Spotify

Lord Dying - Mysterium Tremendum (Sludge Metal) || Song.link - Spotify

Maddie & Tae - One Heart To Another EP (Contemporary Country) || Song.link - Spotify

Marina - LOVE+FEAR (Pop) || Song.link - Spotify

Marissa Nadler And Stephen Brodsky - Droneflower (Singer/Songwriter, Ethereal Wave) || Song.link - Spotify

Matt Martians - The Last Party (Alternative R&B) || Song.link - Spotify

The Mountain Goats - In League With Dragons (Indie Folk, Singer/Songwriter) || Song.link - Spotify

NBA Big B - 5th God (Trap Rap) || Song.link - Spotify

New Years Day - Unbreakable (Alternative Metal, Alternative Rock) || Song.link - Spotify

Nick Murphy (AKA Chet Faker) - Run Fast Sleep Naked (Indietronica) || Song.link - Spotify

Nils Lofgren - Blue With Lou (Heartland Rock, Singer/Songwriter) || Song.link - Spotify

Olivia O'Brien - Was It Even Real? (Contemporary R&B) || Song.link - Spotify

OLSSON - Tropical Cologne (Indie Pop) || Song.link - Spotify

OMB Peezy - Preacher To the Streets (West Coast Hip Hop) || Song.link - Spotify

Otoboke Beaver - Itekoma Hits! (Hardcore Punk) || Song.link - Spotify

P!nk - Hurts 2B Human (Pop) || Song.link - Spotify

Party Favor - Layers (Trap [EDM]) || Song.link - Spotify

Peakes - Absent In Person EP (Indie Pop) || Song.link - Spotify

Peter Doherty & The Puta Madres (Indie Pop, Folk Rock) || Song.link - Spotify

The Pilgrim - Walking Into The Forest (Psychedelic Rock, Folk Rock) || Song.link - Spotify

Pure Bathing Culture - Night Pass (Dream Pop, Chillwave) || Song.link - Spotify

Radical Face - Therapy EP (Indie Pop, Folk Pop) || Song.link - Spotify

Rob Thomas - Chip Tooth Smile (Pop Rock) || Song.link - Spotify

Rodrigo y Gabriela - Mettavolution (Acoustic Rock, Flamenco nuevo) || Song.link - Spotify

ScHoolboy Q - CrasH Talk (Pop Rap) || Song.link - Spotify

Sid Le Rock - Scenic Route (Electronic, House) || Song.link - Spotify

Sneakk - SAY LESS (Contemporary R&B) || Song.link - Spotify

SOAK - Grim Town (Singer/Songwriter) || Song.link - Spotify

Spotlights - Love & Decay (Post-Metal, Atmospheric Sludge Metal) || Song.link - Spotify

The Story Changes - To Hell With This Delicate Equation (Alternative Rock, Emo-Pop) || Song.link - Spotify

Sublime With Rome - Blessings (Ska Punk) || YouTube for "Light On" - for "Wicked Heart" - Spotify

SUNN O))) - Life Metal (Drone Metal) || Song.link - Spotify

Teen Daze - Bioluminescence (Chillwave) || Song.link - Spotify

Tesla - Shock (Hard Rock) || Song.link - Spotify

Tiny Fighter - Tell Me EP (Indie Rock, Indie Pop) || Song.link - Spotify

Trade Wind - Certain Freedoms (Alternative Rock) || Song.link - Spotify

Various Artists - For the Throne (Music Inspired by the HBO Series Game of Thrones) (Pop) || Song.link - Spotify

Various Artists - UglyDolls (Original Motion Picture Soundtrack) (Pop) || Song.link - Spotify

Walker Lukens - Adult (Pop Rock, Indie Pop) || Song.link - Spotify

The Well - Death And Consolation (Stoner Rock, Doom Metal) || Song.link - Spotify

Winnetka Bowling League - Cloudy With A Chance Of Sun EP (Indie Pop) || Song.link - Spotify

YFL Kelvin - Neva Lookin Back (Trap Rap) || Song.link - Spotify

Your Heart Breaks - Drone Butch Blues (Indie Folk, Indie Pop) || Song.link - Spotify

Spotify Master playlist, all albums (minus the two 'various artist' sets above)

Notes:
If you spot any mistakes please let us know.

Thank you to @Cleb, @cfabbro, and @Amarok for the help!

Hillsong United - People || has two versions? live and live/visual. linked both since they have different results.
Sublime With Rome - Blessings || album not due til May 31. linked 2 youtube singles, and spotify has 4 tracks.