Some of you may remember this post from last year. Well, it has happened: the last BronyCon. 10,215 people attended (with rumors that there were enough uncollected badges to hit the 11,000 hard-cap), beating their previous record of 10,011 in 2015. They chose to make this the last year because attendance has been trending downward, and the show it is built around (My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic) is in its final season.

I was there, and it truly was the experience of a lifetime. They intended to go out with a bang, and they absolutely delivered. Did anyone else here attend (or want to attend)? What were your thoughts on the event this year? Any other current (or former) Bronies on the site?

Some news articles about the event:

• https://baltimore.cbslocal.com/2019/08/02/end-of-bronycon-in-baltimore/

• https://www.baltimoresun.com/entertainment/bs-fe-bronycon-20190731-g5zqppemhfa7nb7xnia6vheqcq-story.html

Also, people made a memorial on the 200 level of the Baltimore Convention Center. This was from August 2 at 2:37 PM, and this was from August 4 at 2:05 PM.

Inspired by @Lawrencium265's suggestion from a few days ago on advanced topic tag filtering:

After the discussion the other day on expanding groups into sub groups I had an idea about topic tags, advanced tag filtering rules. The main argument against sub groups is that it would sequester people away from each other. By allowing more advanced tag rules you could subscribe to topics that you're interested in, but further filter those if they include topics you don't like or allow certain threads that would get filtered out unless they contain a tag you are interested in or are within a certain group. I think this would attract different people to threads that wouldn't normally be and allow more diverse discussion and insight. So instead of having gaming.tabletop you would use the tabletop tag under gaming and those who are not interested in it can filter it out and those who are solely interested in it can subscribe to it, and then if a topic gets tagged in an unrelated group that you otherwise wouldn't be interested inyou will know about. This also has the side benefit if preventing cross posting or duplicates.

I have decided that the topic of this week's unofficial discussion is going to be on the Tildes topic tag system. But rather than make it specifically on topic tag filtering and that idea in particular, I figured we could open the discussion up a bit more and have a community brainstorming session on the topic tag system in general. I.e. Anything related to tag browsing, tag filtering, tag organization/standardization, etc.

Feel free to comment on any of the open "topic tag" related issues on Tildes Gitlab that pique your interest and you would like to discuss more in depth, propose your own new ideas related to topic tags, or even just spitball.

The point here is to open up the conversation and get ideas flowing freely, so with that in mind, let's please try to keep things positive, and keep any criticism purely constructive and friendly so as not to discourage people from participating.

Previous Unofficial Weekly Discussions:

Week - #1

Other relevant links:
Donate to Tildes - Tildes Gitlab : Issues Board - Tildes Official Docs

Here's the idea: feature any artist you love, especially those you think deserve more attention (though that's not a requirement--anyone is fair game!).

• Give the artist/band, their genre(s), and three songs that give a good introduction/overview to their sound and style. Think appetizer, entree, and dessert. (Or just three appetizers--it's good to get us wanting more!)

• Include a brief description of the artist and each of the tracks. Include any other information you feel is relevant.

Feel free to feature more than one band/artist, but in the interest of organization, make each its own separate top-level comment.

(See my example comment below to get a better idea of what I'm going for.)

this is kind of an offshoot of this thread which is still going, because i'm noticing an interesting pattern in that thread of reform to the system going beyond just the voting age, and i think it's worth examining that in much broader, larger details than just being centered around how people respond to the idea of voting age because democracy is very multi-dimensional. here are a few questions to jump off of; feel free to utilize them or not utilize them as you wish.

(let's also assume that there are no constraints whatsoever, for maximum possibility here. essentially, you get to invent a system that is utilized by people on the spot regardless of how things are currently for them.):

• Is this democratic system liberal, like most are (or perhaps illiberal in the service of some greater aim like climate change)?
• What variety of democracy is utilized by the system? (there are a lot of these ranging from classic representative democracy to direct democracy to soviet-style council democracy to sortition to more esoteric things like cellular, grassroots, and liquid democracy. see wikipedia for more)
• What voting method (FPTP, IRV, preferential voting, etc. again see wikipedia), is used by the system, if any? Or are things done mostly or largely without voting where possible, as is true in participatory, deliberative and consensus democracies and similar systems?
• Are formal political parties allowed in this system?
• Is voting in this system compulsory?
• Are certain people in this system (criminals, older people, younger people, certain groups or professions of people perhaps even) disenfranchised?
• Does the government have a hand in educating people on voting in this system, or is it the civic duty of people instead, or is there some in between, or even neither? What does that education look like?

and, if you'd like to get particularly esoteric or wonky, you might also choose to answer or consider some of these:

• Are voters allowed to do things like recall their representatives, or is the will of the people binding for a term?
• Does democracy in this system extend to even things like cabinet positions, which in most systems are determined by the head of state?
• Does democracy in this system include things like amendments to constitutions?

A free form poem.

You sing the devotion song and
your people drink from your font
of well-meant falsehoods.
They sway in the breeze,
roses ripe for cutting,
so you reap. And I deal with it.

Brain revolting, hands shaking, heart beating
Sweating, aching, freezing, creeping thoughts
that I'm not enough.
I'm a failure. I don't deserve it. What if this goes wrong?
"Sometimes it can take awhile to find the right combination of medications."
And I deal with it.

The blood in the streets is cleaned, pristine,
likewise the crimes of an otherwise good man.
Heads shake and hands pray,
repeating robotic platitudes, but I do
nothing.
And I deal with it.

The sun shines high and the wind blows cool.
Our future dances and plays in the light.
We watch and her skin is soft, her hair yet softer, and I hold her
against me.
This too shall pass, my gut twists in knots.
And I deal with it.

Dark nights, dark thoughts
in front of a washroom mirror.
Lightning thunders, they come and go.
Drinking my hopes to keep them gone,
I tell myself, "This isn't you," but it hurts and it's true and I can't stop the dreaming of passing this down
And I deal with it.

good morning, tildes--this is not a test. we are 461 days and dropping away from possibly the biggest election day in recent american history. the coverage is even more spread out this week, with pieces from gillibrand to gabbard and delaney to de blasio; unfortunately, however, our opinion pieces continue to tread water and there is but one piece which even sniffs being longform. (nevertheless, expect a flurry of pieces after the debates today and tonight.)

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 15 • Week 16 • Week 17 • Week 18

News

General News

• from CNN: CNN to host climate crisis town hall with 2020 Democratic candidates. in some surprising, good news, CNN is hosting a climate crisis town hall on september 4th, regardless of the decisions the DNC makes on whether or not to host a debate on climate change. while a town hall isn't quite the same thing as a debate, it's still a significant improvement over what was. CNN is also, to presumably make things not a giant clusterfuck beyond words, applying the 2% in 4 polls threshold for the 3rd debate to invitations here; this means that only 8 or so candidates have qualified so far, but a few others likely will too.
• from VICE: 2020 Democrats Are Doubling Down on Impeachment Calls as Mueller Testifies. while the mueller testimony has come and gone largely without public movement, it was never going to be a factor in whether or not democrats in the presidential race called for impeachment or not. among those who doubled down on their calls for impeachment proceedings this week: warren, harris, sanders, klobuchar, and booker.
• from In These Times: The First Labor Plans of the 2020 Race Just Dropped. Here’s What to Make of Them. in these times has analysis of the first specifically labor focused plans in the 2020 race to drop, which are courtesy of pete buttigieg and bill de blasio; in general: they're fine. not particularly groundbreaking on either count, although de blasio has actually implemented a lot of what he has in his plan in NYC. the main problem with these plans is that "fine" isn't really good enough, because the status quo is shit for labor and has only gotten worse for the past 30 years--to realistically undo the damage done by the erosion of labor power, plans most likely need to be bold and sweeping at this point.
• from CBS News: As they woo Iowa's religious voters, 2020 Democrats talk faith. one of the consequences of such a large field this time around is that there are a number of democrats taking the religious ground that has usually been ceded to evangelical republicans and running with it as a par of their campaign. typically this is a muted part of the democratic party, on account of the party being the "secular" party of the US (implicitly or explicitly), but between openly religious candidates like buttigieg and delaney and lower-key-but-still-spiritual candidates like warren and booker there are signs the party might be willing to embrace a more religious aspect in the future.

Joe Biden

• from CBS News: Biden at next debate will go on offense with criminal justice plan, adviser says. leading into the debates, biden has made it very clear that he's not going to be turned into the punching bag--in theory, anyways--and instead he intends to flaunt his record, establish his new plans, and bring the offensive to other candidates. this is and interesting strategy, and i'm not sure it's gonna work. on one hand, biden obviously can't just sit back and take it like he did at the first debate, but on the other hand for every thing he can hit other candidates on, he has two things he's either guilty of similarly, or two things he can be beaten over the head with that probably won't play wth the american public that well. his best bet may be to just weather the storm.
• from Buzzfeed News: Joe Biden’s Time As A Public Defender Was A Brief Line On His Résumé. Now It’s A Virtue Signal For His Campaign. biden is also touting an interesting part of his career, one which he probably wasn't at for more than a year: his record as a public defender. biden spent some period of his life between 1969 and 1970--when he got into politics--on the public defender beat, but until very recently it was basically irrelevant to any of his political campaigns because it was basically irrelevant to anything he did afterwards. it's an interesting piece of his life to revive, but i'm not sure it's exactly something he wants to keep harping on either given that it seems mildly opportunistic and there's not actually that much record of him doing anything as a public defender.
• from NBC News: Two longtime Biden African American supporters in S. Carolina defect to Tim Ryan. on an unrelated note, somehow he lost two of the people who played senior roles in his 2008 presidential bid to tim ryan, of all people. this probably doesn't mean anything in the long term, but it's a reminder that biden--frontrunner as he is--has by no means sewn up support from the vast majority of people you'd expect to be in his camp.

Beto O'Rourke

• from the Atlantic: Searching for Beto. here is the latest piece on beto's increasingly wilted campaign. he does still have time to turn this around as has been mentioned previously, and he's certainly not given up the campaign trail nor his hyperlocal campaign efforts, but it's obviously a bit of a steep climb. realistically, he'd probably need an exceptionally good debate performance in this week's debates to vault him back into relevance, and even then it's far from a given that it would be enough (see also: julian castro).
• from Texas Monthly: The 2020 Texas Polling is Much Better for Beto O’Rourke than Julián Castro. that said, he is doing way fucking better than he has any business doing in this race (and he does way better than castro, who polls equally to him) purely because he's a favorite son in texas. even at his 1-2%, he's on track to win delegates because of that fact--this was something i touched upon with last week's delegate polling, and how the popular vote doesn't inherently track with the delegate totals because of the way the DNC and states apportion their delegates. this means that, conceivably, he's still in the running for president even if he does quite badly and doesn't recover from his tailspin, and it also means he has an incentive to stay in even if things go to shit.
• from CBS News: Beto O'Rourke calls for a sweeping $500 billion fund to address education inequality. policy wise, o'rourke wants to create "a $500 billion 'Permanent Fund for Equity and Excellence' in an effort to close the funding gap between predominately white and non-white school districts." this would, according to the plan, "aim to close [the school funding] gap while also making sure states and districts allocate funds weighted based on the number of 'low income students, English learners, students with disabilities or other groups of students in need of additional resources.'" o'rourke would pay for that with a tax on wall street speculation.

Pete Buttigieg

• Can Pete Buttigieg Fix America's Vacancy Problem?. one of the aspects of pete buttigieg's douglass plan that has not been touched on that much are the provisions which seek to deal with the vacancy problem that exists in many places, particularly in former rust belt boomtowns like gary, indiana and detroit. the hemorrhaging of population from the urban north in particular has left huge areas underpopulated and hundreds of thousands of lots vacant. buttigieg, being the mayor of one such boomtown, naturally had to deal with a similar problem (his somewhat controversial 1,000 houses in 1,000 days initiative) and so it's not a surprise that he has provisions on this issue. noteworthy is the fact that he's the only candidate with such provisions. it's not a given, of course, that those provisions will do something--but it is a start for something that basically gets no attention in the first place.
• Pete Buttigieg reveals details on how he’d tackle climate change. buttigieg does not, however, have very many current provisions on how to deal with climate change. he has skeletons of a plan namely in carbon taxes and climatecorps, but nothing like most of the candidates in the race so far, a curious absence for someone who is--like warren--very much policy oriented. it goes without saying that we'll probably see a real plan eventually, but until we do it can only make people wonder what the hangup is.

Everybody Else

• from Buzzfeed News: This Presidential Candidate Has The First Plan To Fix Disparities Faced By Native American Communities. julian castro has a plan for native americans, which makes him the first candidate this cycle--and, as far as i'm aware, in recent memory--to do that. among other things, this plan "proposes additional investments in health care, housing, education, economic development, and other areas for Native Americans. It also pushes for Native American communities to have greater input in Washington by setting up a White House Council on Indigenous Communities and establishing advisory committees within every federal agency by 2024." it would also seek to address the ever-present issue of missing and murdered native women, which is possibly the least-reported-on high-key issue that exists in native communities.
• from Jacobin: Will Elizabeth Warren Keep Her Promise to “End the Occupation”?. warren is in an interesting position as someone who has gone from one of the more staunch defenders of israel in congress to someone who is increasingly critical of them; this has, naturally, raised questions as we come into this cycle and she's pressed on things like ending the occupation of palestine by israel. jacobin's line here is that while warren is commendable, it's also easy to say something but not do it: if warren is committed to this promise, she'll have to demonstrate that.
• from NPR: Kamala Harris Releases 'Medicare For All' Plan With A Role For Private Insurers. kamala harris has a healthcare plan named 'medicare for all' and it's, naturally, not that much like the bill that she literally is a cosponsor of named the same thing. among the key differences here are that harris pays for this with tax increases for people over $100k income, harris preserves private insurance and, probably most importantly, harris is basically banking on a democrat being in office in 2030, because her transition period for going from what exists now to her plan is 10 years. (that, and the fact that her plan currently has an outline, but very few details.)
• from CNN: Kirsten Gillibrand releases $10 trillion, 10-year plan to combat climate change. kirsten gillibrand's climate change plan is basically the green new deal, which means it's the largest of the so-far-released climate change plans of running candidates. among other things, it phases out fossil fuels, ends fracking, includes a carbon tax of $52 per metric ton, intends to build an economy of green jobs, and will upgrade the power grid.
• from The Verge: Democratic presidential candidate Tulsi Gabbard sues Google for suspending her ad account. tulsi gabbard's problems continue, as she's now suing google for suspending her ad account and consequentially gimping her campaign site. google maintains that this was innocuous, but gabbard is stumping on the idea that it was politically motivated by her criticisms of google and other tech companies (although this would beg the question of why they'd go after gabbard specifically, who is nearly irrelevant, and not the literally dozens of more prominent political candidates advocating for breaking up big tech who have plans to do so).
• from CNN: Delaney proposes ambitious mandatory national service plan. john delaney, a one-percenter, wants to make national service mandatory. delaney's plan is "[...]compulsory for all Americans upon high school graduation or upon turning 18. The proposal would apply only to those born after 2006, and would phase in over time, according to the campaign." what are the benefits of doing this, you ask? well, it's basically just a front for delaney to cover tuition: "The plan would provide two years of free tuition at a public college or university, and three years of tuition for those who extended their national service year to two years. Tuition could also be applied to vocational or technical training, the Delaney campaign told reporters."

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

Since @Deimos has stated he will likely not be restarting the tradition of the Official Daily Tildes Discussions, which is something I and a number of other users greatly enjoyed and miss, I have decided to attempt to take on the responsibility of continuing them unofficially (with his blessing). And since these are not official (so won't be in ~tildes.official, which everyone is subscribed to and probably shouldn't unsubscribe from), I will only be doing them weekly instead of daily, and we now have topic tag filtering (so unofficial weekly discussion can be filtered out), hopefully the people who found the official daily discussions annoying can more easily ignore/hide these unofficial ones.

With the explanation out of the way, on to the topic for this week:

Suggestions/ideas/concerns for future unofficial weekly discussions

I thought it would be appropriate to have the first one of these be a bit of an open-ended, meta-meta discussion on the future of these topics. And to kick things off:

• What would everyone here like to see discussed in these topics in the future? Are there any particular site features (planned, suggested or theoretical), policies (tagging, moderation, etc), or other meta issues/subjects you would like to be the topic in future discussions?

• What would you like us to try to achieve with these discussions? Should we have any specific goals in mind, or should they just be fun brainstorming/theory-crafting/naval-gazing sessions?

• Does anyone have any suggestions for me with regards to how I should handle these discussions? Is there anyone out there who would like to help me with these in some capacity going forwards?

• Does anyone have any concerns regarding these unofficial discussions, and if so, can you think of any ways we can try to address them?

The floor is open, and I am all ears. :)

Tildes Official Docs : Donate to Tildes | Tildes Gitlab : Issues Board

I am considering starting a wiki project for an academic niche. I've already started prototyping using Gitit, I've written a bit easy pages to get a feel for the software and am planning to start working on the most important page that summarises the topic itself, which I believe will help guide me to which pages to create first.

Now, here I'm asking for general advice to a newcomer n00bie wiki admin like me: what to expect, what software, etc. Any advice welcome, but I'll list a few questions below:

• What wiki software? I am liking Gitit, it is nice and easy to set up, and comes with its own server which I run with a systemctl user unit in the background. I tried Oddmuse but couldn't get it to work with a simple server; Ikiwiki setup is too clumsy for my liking (it friggin put stuff on my $HOME by default!); I want to avoid PHP stuff in general; I want a simple wiki that serves simple HTML pages.

• How to defend against spam? My plan is to keep it invite-only for as long as I can. IDK how to do that with Gitit yet.

• How to serve it securely and for cheap, once I decide to publish? It probably won't ever grow beyond a few dozens of megabytes in file size.

• How do you go about promoting a wiki?

• What peripheral services (issue tracker, mailing list, IRC/Discord/etc channels) go well with a wiki?

• What tools are available to ensure content quality (no plagiarism, enforce conventions, monitor changes, ...)?

I know that this has been discussed before (I personally participated in some of that), but, to my knowledge, it's been quite a while since it was brought up.

Currently, the three groups that seem to make the most sense for space exploration news are ~tech, ~science, and ~misc. Personally, I perceive ~tech as being best suited for general news about what's going on in the tech industry, more or less "hey, Google released this" or "these researchers are working on graphene batteries". Similarly, I understand ~science as a place for discussing scientific discoveries and "meta" discussion about science as a whole. I think that most would agree with me on those characterizations after looking at those groups when sorted by activity or new.

Space exploration, on the other hand, doesn't really fit in either. It's not exactly ~tech material, and it's also not really the right material for ~science, since much of it isn't about specific new discoveries or studies, etc. If we had an ~engineering, I would say that that would be the correct place for space discussion, but we don't have one.

If you look at what's been happening over the last few months in the realm of space exploration, I think that it's also pretty easy to see that there's enough going on to generate enough content and discussion for a dedicated group. There've been new launches on a weekly or biweekly basis, interesting moves made by different new entrants to the industry, all of the NASA Artemis news, plenty of things from SpaceX, etc.

One thing I really like about Tildes is the exemplary tags for comments. I love being able to let someone know I thought they had a great post, and I especially like that it's anonymous (though I realize some people like signing theirs, which I'm fine with too).

One thing I've found myself wanting to be able to do is give someone an exemplary label not for any one individual comment but for their contributions to the community at large. Maybe they're consistently thoughtful and insightful; maybe they go out of their way to post a lot of content for the community; maybe they're contributing code to the platform. It's less that any one particular thing they've done is amazing (though they often have individually great contributions too) and more that they've demonstrated a noteworthy and consistent pattern of good behavior.

As such, I think having something similar to the exemplary tag but applicable to a particular user could be very beneficial. I realize privately PMing a given user can currently accomplish this, but those are not anonymous, and I really like the idea of supporting others without revealing who I am, since I don't want my praise of others to influence their opinion of me. Furthermore, for the community at large, I think there's a benefit to praise of that type coming from "a voice in the crowd" rather than specific identifiable users, as it promotes community goodwill rather than person-to-person cheer.

Of course, with any type of anonymous feedback the thing to consider will be the potential for misuse. Someone could easily target/harass someone using an exemplary user feature by writing a nasty message, but this is also currently possible with exemplary tags and I don't know if it's been a problem? Nevertheless, it's something to consider. Perhaps a built-in report feature should something cross a line?

Furthermore, if such an appreciation mechanism were to be implemented, I would strongly advocate against any sort of publicly visual indicator on the site (like the blue stripe on comments). I think applying differences to that at the user level can create an appearance of user hierarchy, which is undesirable for a variety of reasons. Instead, I feel like it should be invisible to everyone except the recipient--basically an anonymous PM that they can't respond to, letting them know that they're awesome and why. I also think a similar "cooldown" system would benefit it. In fact, I'd probably advocate that it be longer than the one for comment tags.

Thoughts?

I recently started jumping around various browsers and machines. I sometimes keep instinctually going to Google News in all of these environments. I am often signed-out in these other browsers. This has been an eye-opening experience for me.

Many years ago I had blocked Fox, RT, and other crap out of my GNews feed. I was living in a bubble of my own making. I actually prefer that bubble, as there is more factual information in it, but it comes at a cost. I had lost a lot of my situational awareness of the political and media climate.

I am not trying to be centrist here, I just think that one should know the entire battlefield, not just the news given from their comfortable sources. For one thing, I had no idea of the dominance which Fox News had in Google News, also that RT was so prevalent, also that there was so many other sources of utter right-wing propaganda that had been normalized. How can I fight disinformation if I am unaware of its origins?

What do you think about this? Would you take me up on my challenge of reading the uncustomised news? Do you ever try to get out of your comfort zone in the news? Does it help inform you?

_{edit: Just FYI, to easily use Google News, or any other news site signed-out, first open a "private window" in your browser.}

It's obviously unfamiliar, but I have to say that I don't think it's that much worse than the one we had before. It does obviously follow the trend of making everything look so much more mobile-y, but unlike Reddit they haven't really messed with the core display of content - in fact, I'd say the tweets themselves have gotten a bit larger. I've heard that the timeline gets reset to algorithmic sorting every 24h, which is an absolute no-go for me, but I haven't experienced that aspect myself.

Related: I've recently started using Tweetdeck and honestly have no idea why I should ever switch back to the main Twitter feed, redesign or not. Columns, lists, the customisation - it's pretty much everything I've ever wanted. Any tips or opinions on that?

Shortly after my son was born I started calling him "Buddy." I love it and he answers to it like a name now. My daughter is two and she calls him Buddy, which I think is the most adorable thing ever.

I'd like to do this with my daughter, but I'm not really a fan of things like "honey" or "sweetheart," though I do wind up calling her sweetheart pretty frequently.

Buddy is like friend, which is what I'm going for, but that's taken already. What else could I use?

good morning, tildes--this is not a test. we are 468 days and dropping away from possibly the biggest election day in recent american history. the coverage is more spread out this week, with candidates that normally don't catch the media's attention getting some; there are, alas, no opinion pieces this week. we do have a very important poll, however, which i elaborate on in detail.

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 15 • Week 16 • Week 17

News

Polling

from CBS News: Early contests by the numbers: Democratic delegate race tightens — CBS News Battleground Tracker. CBS News is out with an update to its important poll that is based on delegate allocation rather than voter preferences. as some of you may or may not know, primary contests are not purely FPTP affairs when it comes to delegate allocation, but instead based on rules of proportional allocation at district and statewide levels. complicating matters, the DNC has a rule which states a candidate must win 15% or more of the vote in a state to be eligible for any delegates. this means that national/state polling does not inherently jive with the projected results of the primaries, and this poll actually is an example of that:

the order is Biden (581 delegates of 1494 possible in the 18 "early contests"), Warren (430 of 1494), Sanders (249 of 1494), Harris (173 of 1494), O'Rourke (48 of 1494), and Klobuchar (13 of 1494). no other candidates would currently receive delegates. obviously, this does not jive with the polling completely: biden, warren, and sanders all punch above their polling; harris, buttigieg, o'rourke, and klobuchar do not. buttigieg, who generally polls better than klobuchar and o'rourke by a mile, also doesn't benefit from his homestate and doesn't appeal enough elsewhere to win delegates with his polling. harris, meanwhile, is really only tethered by california in her delegate count despite polling similarly to sanders. basically, it's a bit of a shitshow.

as far as shifts: biden has eaten a loss of 150 delegates since june; warren is up 75; sanders is down 68; harris is up 97; o'rourke is down 25; klobuchar is down 8; buttigieg is down 2.

General News

• from Pacific Standard: There Are Many Democratic Candidates. Party Insiders View a Bunch as the Same.. among the more interesting trends that exist within the democratic primary so far is the fact that the activist base of the democratic party and the broader public are somewhat at odds with each other currently. while biden, warren, sanders, harris, and buttigieg round out the five major candidates with more than token public support, party insiders back a much broader set of candidates which expands to booker, klobuchar, castro, and gillibrand. sanders, naturally, is mostly absent from insider support--this is partly because most insiders don't support him to begin with, but also because the ones that do are generally not considering other candidates.
• from NBC News: Democrats duel over health care in new campaign dust-up. healthcare is shaping up to be a big part of the democratic stategy to win back the white house, and naturally that's the first big faultline in the primary since it's one of the things which most divides candidates into ideological quadrants. biden, who is mostly pushing for improved obamacare, disputes the idea of medicare for all as too expensive and "starting over", which sanders has of course derided as misinformation and basically jacking conservative talking points. while they won't be sharing the debate stage in july, don't be surprised to see similar issues litigated by more moderate candidates against sanders and warren, and don't be surprised if biden has similar disputes with his more progressive leaning debate stage.
• from Buzfeed: The Best Day Of Joe Biden's Presidential Campaign Was The First One (and other things you can learn from new data on how many donors contributed to Democratic presidential campaigns each day this year). with fundraising now in, analysis of that fundraising begins, and to say the least it looks pretty bad for most candidates outside of the front six or so as far as keeping donors interested. most candidates barely register donors above the $200 threshold set here by Buzzfeed, even as they raise what might be respectable amounts of money; meanwhile, even frontrunning candidates are having difficulties creating an upward trajectory in their donor bases.

Joe Biden

• from NPR: Why Progressives Think Joe Biden Is Not 'Electable'. the progressive argument against joe biden is relatively straightforward: he has a bad track record and is effectively on the right-wing of the party right now in a time where voters seem to be clamoring for some answer to the increasingly radical rhetoric of the republican party. in a time where change seems to be necessary or we're fucked, biden wants to keep the status quo almost exactly as it is, but "better" in some unknown sense. more moderate elements of the party argue that this approach is necessary to win the house, senate, and presidency, but for somewhat obvious reasons progressives don't buy that argument very much either.
• from Jacobin: Bidencare Is a Scam. biden's healthcare plan, by extension, isn't particularly fondly regarded either by people left-of-center. billed mostly as an extension of obamacare, jacobin notes that biden's plan doesn't do a whole lot to address places where obamacare has been unhelpful or to fix things which obamacare hasn't addressed. it more or less has the same failings as obamacare, just for less people--while also most likely setting back the fight for equitable healthcare.

Kamala Harris

• from CBS News: Kamala Harris introduces plan to lower prescription drug prices. kamala harris has some policy out this week which seeks to regulate how the government would handle drug prices. per CBS here, "The senator's plan would task the Department of Health and Human Services with setting "fair" prescription drug prices ... determined in part by looking at the prices for the drug in other industrialized countries such as the United Kingdom and Canada." should companies try to sell higher than that price set by HHS, "the government [would] tax their profits from the drug at 100%, with the money reallocated to consumers in the form of rebates." in the event congress doesn't advance this within the first 100 days of her presidency, she would use executive orders to investigate price gouging (along with the attorney general) and HHS would, after a 30-day warning period, be allowed to import drugs from countries where they are cheaper. further failure to comply with reducing drug prices would also lead harris to award patents for drugs produced in part with federal funding to companies which produce the drug cheaper.
• from CBS News: Kamala Harris to propose decriminalizing marijuana at the federal level. harris is also looking to legalize marijuana, and in doing so not just promote minority business but expunge the records of people convicted on marijuana charges. her plan would also make it illegal to deny federal benefits on the basis of marijuana possession or use, and prevent immigrants from being deported or denied citizenship purely because of marijuana infractions.

Beto O'Rourke

• from Texas Monthly: Should Beto O’Rourke Drop Out?. the question posed most to the beto campaign is this. o'rourke severely undershot his fundraising in Q2 and has been consistently dropping in the polls basically since he entered the race because what worked for him in texas is not what works nationally. but at the same time, there's a question of where he has to go if he drops out: the senate seat cornyn currently occupies is already subject to a pretty big primary on the democratic side, and o'rourke might be spoiled goods if he becomes a presidential failson. it's a fun dynamic, one which will probably ruin him and send him packing back down to a more reasonable role in the future, provided it doesn't kill his political aspirations completely.
• from NBC News: O'Rourke's campaign is cratering. But he's got a plan to bring back 'Betomania.' nonetheless, the beto campaign remains optimistic. o'rourke after all was a dark horse candidate for the majority of his senate race and certainly not a stranger to adversity. o'rourke also has the benefit of it still being like, 7 months before any votes are cast at all, which is plenty of time to turn things around. still, not the best situation to be in.
• from CBS News: Despite a tumble in polls and fundraising O'Rourke campaign betting it all on Beto. the campaign, in the mean time, is also setting up new infrastructure with what it has, having continued its shift from a person-first strategy to one which involves much more media limelight. (i also assume they're getting better debate prep.)

Everyone Else

• from CBS News: On the road with Cory Booker in New Hampshire. this is a small profile of cory booker that CBS did a few days ago. booker, who has struggled to get out of the logjam of lower candidates now that buttigieg has risen, has yet to have a true breakout moment in his campaign. additionally, although he has constituencies he appeals to, many of those constituencies are also occupied by one or more candidates currently doing better than he is. nonetheless, booker has an extensive ground game in new hampshire and a pretty experienced campaign team coordinating his movements on the campaign trail. if he fails in his endeavors, it certainly won't be for lack of a network or experienced advisers.
• from the Atlantic: Elizabeth Warren Has Momentum. Can She Build a Movement?. one of the more underrated aspects of the rise of warren's campaign is that, in many ways, it mirrors the coalition that bernie sanders built in 2016 and has serious potential to turn into a political movement of its own--although probably at the expense of the political machinery which has enabled sanders to be a frontrunner. warren's campaign is also noteworthy in that it's managed this feat so far without any particularly splash-worthy moments. warren hasn't especially dominated the soundbyte market, nor is she the frontrunner most media scrambles to cover; yet, she is polling just behind biden, just ahead of sanders and harris, and seems only capable of climbing further from there. there's still time for some gaffe to derail her or for her rise to be blunted, but at least in the present, it seems pretty likely that her campaign is on track to be the next popular political movement.
• from CBS News: Buttigieg says white Americans "can't be defensive" when talking about race. pete buttigieg meanwhile continues to navigate the question of race, something that could be a great boon to his campaign if he is able to effectively harness it--but which currently is burdening him pretty badly both politically and polling-wise. of note in buttigieg's remarks:

"When somebody is saying that we are benefitting from living in a system that creates privileges associated with systemic racism, we can't kind of retreat into this idea that, 'We're being personally attacked, so we're not going to want to talk about that.' Or that, 'Hey these were distant historic problems, we can't be held accountable for dealing with that,'" he said. "No."
...
"I am worried that in different ways we may not be able to imagine, in the 21st century, if these inequalities keep getting worse, then that could once again threaten to unravel the American project."

• from New Hampshire Public Radio: Klobuchar in N.H.: To Beat Trump, Dems Need Positive Message and Some Humor. amy klobuchar, who hasn't made much news recently, continues to pitch herself as a moderate who can win in red, rural america and takes the line of thinking that any democratic candidate wanting to unseat trump will have to come at it from a message of positivity--and probably also have some wit. in her words: "I think sort of making fun of [Donald Trump], the absurdity of him. And I know that every day we think to ourselves this isn’t a laughing matter. We know that right? But you also know one of the cardinal rules of politics is you take your work seriously but you can’t always take yourself seriously."
• from Colorado Public Radio: After Crickets Following The First Debate, Hickenlooper Campaign Goes All In On Iowa. despite some frankly awful fundraising and being nowhere near the frontrunners, the john hickenlooper campaign is pushing the pedal to the floor and investing heavily in iowa. hickenlooper intends to spend much more time in the state than he has previously--he had previously been darting across the country--with the hopes of garnering some sort of traction. however, it's going to be quite an uphill climb for him, given that he polls worse than 1%, and it seems reasonable to assume that if he fails to gain traction in the next few months he'll cut his losses early (perhaps in favor of the colorado senate race? who knows).
• from CBS News: Delaney disputes reports he's dropping out of 2020 presidential race. y'all remember john delaney? he still exists, and he's fighting rumors he's dropping out, which is always a sign of a healthy campaign. delaney has mostly self funded and is the longest candidate in the race, having announced all the way back in 2017, but has pretty much entirely failed to take off with the electorate. he does not show signs of taking off, either.

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

This was written for a themed flash fiction contest (the theme was Technological Dystopia) and ended up losing, but I figured it wouldn't hurt to share it here. It's not my proudest work but, as flash fiction, I think it works well enough. I hope you enjoy!

She was three floors from the bottom of the sunken tower when the crying first reached her. A quick swipe earned her a pair from the rack nearby and she continued her descent.

With the aid of technology this process had been streamlined and systematized such that these checks were only needed once a month, but everyone dreaded them. She had drawn the short straw this time and, though it had been years since last she’d ventured to The Lab, she still remembered her last haunting experience. It wasn’t that she was a dissenter or rebelled against that which needed to be done. This was a necessary evil to save their species, but she was still a human being. Seeing them all like that, all tubes and tapes running from frail flesh, was enough to turn any stomach.

A pair of heavy iron doors sat ominously in her way as she bottomed out. She could see the white, crisp interior of The Lab beyond and pushed forward, swallowing her hesitance as best she could.

Before her lay a large room with clean white tile, walls and harsh, flourescent light. It smelled and looked like a hospital because that’s exactly what it was. 10 rows and columns of small, clear, plastic boxes stretched between her and the far wall. The muffs were doing their job exceedingly well, but she could still hear the awful racket bouncing around her memory. She took a deep breath, steadied herself, and started working.

Her primary duty was to make sure the machines were functioning correctly, mostly the arm that glided to and fro above the boxes, administering medicine or changing bags of various fluids as need be. She would also be checking the tubes for clogs that may have been missed by any old or worn out sensors; this was the part she dreaded the most. She flipped the lid on the nearest box and checked the left, then the right, and lastly the tube running into its belly button, and closed the box quickly.

It couldn’t have taken her more than 5 seconds but that short time was enough for the anguished face to plaster itself onto her mind. Everyone does their part, she reminded herself, from the start to the end. It didn’t serve a purpose to bemoan that which she could not change. She moved on to the next crib, hoping this would go by faster than she expected.

Halfway through her checks she hit a snag. There was a clog in Crib 54. She could register the fault in the system and it would fix it on its next hourly cycle, as were her orders, but it was such a small clog. The tube simply needed to be changed, and as a nurse she was well-versed in the procedure. In that moment it was decided.

The tubes themselves were specially designed to be thin and flexible, but rigid enough to fit the shape of a tear duct. Her first task, after finding a pair of gloves, was to gently remove the tube currently in the eye. She hovered over the crib and gently pulled the tube out of the right tear duct. It came slowly, millimeter by millimeter, each bit covered in more goop and mucus than the last. It wound its way up into the sinuses which meant, by the end of it, she had pulled at least five inches of tubing. This she discarded.

Next she had to insert the new tube (these were kept in abundance in a draw underneath the crib). She grabbed one, snipped it to length with a pair of scissors hanging from the IV stand, and took a moment to recent herself. Inserting the tube while the child was crying would be much more difficult than removing it.

As gently as she could she reached down and, with her index finger and thumb, pried open the eye of the little one. With one came the other, the muscles young and unwilling to work independently, and she found herself staring into a pair of brilliant green pools. Her heart melted and, for the briefest moment, she thought of taking it. She could smuggle it out. The bed being empty would trip the system but she could clear the error and explain it away somehow. But no, that was silly. This wasn’t a decision for her to make; things were done this way because there was no other choice.

She pushed the tip of the tube into the tear duct confidently, shoving the traitorous thoughts from her mind as the child’s cries were renewed with pain. She was here to do a job, cold and emotionless. It wasn’t her place to question the way things were done. The tube went in without a hitch and the child’s eyes snapped closed again once she released them. The little bundle of agony before her squirmed and she saw the tears begin to flow anew. With swift, definite movement she closed and latched the lid.

The rest of her checks went smoothly, but she couldn’t shake the uneasy feeling that now ran rampant in her gut. She hated Lab duty, and she expected that would always be the way. With a heavy heart she signed the documents needed to record her visit, noted the tube change in the work log, and left The Lab through its heavy iron doors. The trip upstairs would be long and tiring, but at least she could try and forget ever having been here.

It's no secret that social media is used by a large amount of people. The Pew Research Center has a social media fact sheet if you'd like to see the numbers.

• They claim that 72% of the American population uses some form of social media.
• In 2018 twitter reported 326 million active monthly users.
• Facebook posted record number profits last year.
• Reddit had 330 million users in 2018
• One of the most amazing parts of social media's rise is how quickly that it happened. As stated in the Pew Research article:
  when Pew Research Center began tracking social media adoption in 2005, just 5% of American adults used at least one of these platforms. By 2011 that share had risen to half of all Americans

With no signs of slowing down, social media is certainly going to be part of our lives for the foreseeable future. What sort of impact do you think it has had upon our society? Has it connected the people of the world, or disconnected them? Do the positive aspects outweigh the negative? If you believe social media's impact has been negative, do you think it can be fixed? How do you see social media evolving?

i got fire in my blood

Wild Turkey and the nicotine

might just call my doctor

have him put me on amphetamines

driving past the memories

i'm pushing on 100 speed

crossing single-white lines

with a blade til my bones weak.

cold-brew hipster

gothboi fantasies

hard to think straight when

my thoughts are attacking me

here i let the voices out

inner demons writing rhapsodies

before i go and swing from

a noose and a dramatic tree

.

can't decide what i want between

freedom and consistency

i say i want it done

but i think i want her missing me

last week i bought a gun*

this week i went to therapy

when will i be free from all the

thermo-manic tendencies?

.

drowning in my bed

breathing wild turkey

i couldn't feel if i were dead,

but i like the way she hurts me

i've come to know the pain

it's like a second home to me

liquor novocaine

im falling from autonomy.

if mecca was a bedroom

girl you were a God to me

and laying here alone is

a wicked act of blasphemy.

never knew you were a snake

feeding hate from an apple tree

I'll chop it down, and build a tomb

so you can hold me,

as an effigy

(* didnt actually buy a gun. me no like. literally 0 plans to.)

I've recently been trying to confront the fact that a lot of the things I want to do online work best if they've got some connection to my real life identity (or will eventually, almost by necessity, become connected). Things like working on open source software, writing, etc. almost always seem to lead back to other people knowing at the very least your real name and probably your email address.

I know that my threat model for people going after my identity is a lot different from someone with nation-state level adversaries like Ed Snowden or various activists, but I still find it hard to decide what gets to be connected to what. Do I put my real name on my GitHub account? Do I post things on my GitHub blog to here? Should I have my real name on my Twitter account? What about the fact that some of my usernames resemble each other?

I'm not necessarily looking for advice about my particular situation, but I would really like to hear how other people have dealt with such situations and what you generally think about things like identity compartmentalization.

short one. wrote it sober, so i couldn't (didn't?) really expand on it.

either way, just bought a bottle for the first time since shit happened but i don't plan on going too crazy this time.

then again, do i plan half the shit i do? or am i just constantly fumbling my way up through life.

either way here's some shit about math.

enjoy.

You said I was the one

But that was only when you managed

To get some rest, and breathe, and

Keep yourself from going rabid

But must of the time you

Wore your claws out like a savage

So if we’re being honest I‘m the

.08 on average.

i'm bored and entirely too fucking tired to still be up, so here's a thing i wrote in a little burst like an hour ago. see also enikő, the considerably longer weird shit i wrote in a similar burst.

I. űrrepülés
having once been the dreamer of many things,
having once been an eternal creator,
having seen the birth of great star systems and galaxies
and life itself
only to be snuffed out
with ignominy
i feel compelled to explain why i too must
inevitably follow them

hurt
is a funny little word. it seems so easy to come
to a common agreement on what it means and yet,
if i told you it hurt
would you really understand that?

would you understand the feeling
of hopelessness,
the vast indignities of having to see
your every piece of art,
your life's work
snuffed out
like the stars?

II. űrlény
you can't play god
with the people in your life,
but that never stopped me from trying,
from creating those great star systems
that people care about.
from creating life where there is none.

and that never stopped me from failing,
and the stars becoming great cataclysms—
black holes destroying the life around them
without regard for its beauty.

you might say it is callous
to try to move the heavens and the earth
and to die when they don't arrange the right way,
but,
i would rather die than be that hurt person again
watching the stars go out one by one.

Anyone in here interesting in plants (growing, propagating, maintaining, etc). Figure we can get a forum started to exchange tips.

On a side note, some of the side categories seem overly broad. Hobbies for example is going to get pretty bonkers.

good morning, tildes--this is not a test. we are 475 days and dropping away from possibly the biggest election day in recent american history. this week saw a return to normal: we not only have opinion pieces this week, but we also have fundraising and polling numbers, and quite a bit of news both in policy and in punditry.

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 15 • Week 16

News

Polling

From Saint Anselm College (MoE +/- 5.2 percent) New Hampshire state poll [PDF warning]:

Biden 21%
Harris 18%
Warren 17%
Buttigieg 12%
Sanders 10%
All others below 5%

Fundraising (Q2, 2019)

(h/t Shane Goldmacher):

Buttigieg $24.8 million
Biden 21.5
Warren 19.1
Sanders 18
Harris 12
...
Booker 4.5
Klobuchar 3.9
O'Rourke 3.6
Inslee 3
Castro 2.8
Bennet 2.8
Yang 2.8
Gillibrand 2.3
Bullock 2
Moulton 1.9
Gabbard 1.5
Hickenlooper 1.1
de Blasio 1.1
Ryan .9

General News

• from POLITICO: Third Democratic primary debate will be in Houston. the third democratic debate series will be held in Houston on Sept. 12 and (potentially) 13. this is a change from the end-of-month dates they've used for june and the coming july debates; note also they will not be having debates in august. the qualifications for this one are being bumped up such that candidates need to receive at least 2 percent in four approved polls and have 130,000 unique donors including at least 400 individual donors in at least 20 states, which makes it pretty likely that there will not be 20 candidates on the stage in september. only 5 people qualify currently.
• from USA Today: Penalizing candidates who interrupt, and other changes coming to the Democratic debates. a welcome change for some of you, USA Today reports that "[...]candidates who interrupt "consistently" will be penalized and have time taken away from them" for the july debates which CNN will be hosting, although they note that "CNN did not specify how it defines the level of interruption that would trigger the penalty nor how much time would be deducted." CNN will also be allowing an opening statement for candidates.
• from FiveThirtyEight: It Won’t Be Easy For Many Democrats To Make The September Debate. as i mentioned above, it's looking pretty unlikely that 20 democrats will meet the qualifications for the september debates. aside from the five frontrunners (sanders, biden, warren, harris, buttigieg) who have all qualified already, only castro, o'rourke, and yang have hit the donor criteria and only booker has hit the polling criteria. the donor criteria will probably be met by at least 15 candidates, but the polling criteria is going to be a big hurdle for most of the remaining candidates.
• from FiveThirtyEight: A Midsummer Overview Of The Democratic Field. FiveThirtyEight puts things a bit more technically: while there are clearly five frontrunners and the rest of the pack, there's reason to believe even the frontrunners are more two clusters of biden, warren, harris and then sanders, buttigieg as of current. everybody else after them of course still has a shot, but it's going to require some agenda setting and, currently, that doesn't look very likely to happen.
• from CNN: Kamala Harris soars in our latest 2020 rankings. CNN's rankings by chris cillizza and FiveThirtyEight alum harry enten not surprisingly look basically identical among the frontrunners. for the most part, it seems as though the popular consensus among the punditry has coalesced for the time being--for good reason, to be clear. it will take quite an act or performance to dislodge the front five from their positions.

Joe Biden

• from POLITICO: Embattled Biden ditches Rose Garden strategy. biden's whole strategy of playing it safe and avoiding gaffes is now out the window, and with it has gone biden's reluctance to draw strong contrasts between himself and other people running. biden has also been increasingly confrontational on his ideas to other candidates, particularly with healthcare which he's recently sparred with bernie sanders over. will the pivot to actually addressing other people work out? who the fuck knows, this is joe biden.
• from the Atlantic: Biden Stops Playing It Safe. in the same vein, the Atlantic has a piece here on how biden's best chance is most likely to continue to exploit the healthcare issue, since it's one where he isn't a spectacular fuckup or one where he's open to consistent attack from all sides. biden's record on healthcare is actually moderate, too, which allows him to play to centrist voters without having to explain votes, for the most part.
• from POLITICO: Biden unveils health care plan: Affordable Care Act 2.0. oh, he also has a health care plan now which is more of the same and predominantly builds on the existing infrastructure of the PPACA. his issues page on it can be found o'er yonder.

Bernie Sanders

• from NBC News: Sanders skips Netroots as Warren strengthens her hold on progressives. bernie sanders was notably absent from the progressive forum and gathering netroots nation this week, primarily because he had other comittments (although there was this whole stupid ordeal about how he wasn't going because markos moulitsas, founder of the daily kos, doesn't like him). sanders, who has been sliding in the polls recently to warren, probably missed out on an opportunity to make his case to the wing of the party he actually needs to win over on some level by not showing up. his base, while significant, remains entirely insufficient to win the nomination of its own.
• from Jacobin: Bernie Sanders’s Campaign Is Different. jacobin meanwhile focuses on an underrated aspect of the sanders campaign which has not been focused on very much by the media, this being the campaign's elevation of labor issues. sanders has made the bully pulpit for labor issues one part of his campaign and, incidentally tying into why he didn't show up at netroots nation this week, has often spent time campaiging and organizing at labor disputes like the one trying to prevent the closing of philadelphia's hahnemann university hospital.

Kamala Harris

• from the Atlantic: Harris Gains Momentum With Democrats’ Most Important Voter Base. kamala harris is in a decent position to win the nomination, and it's mostly on the back of her well-covered recent surge after the first debates. a lot of this comes from the fact that she's improved her standing with black women, who are a constituency that at this point cannot be overlooked by any democrat wanting to seriously win the presidential nomination. harris would be relatively formidable if she manages to win over even a significant plurality of black women, especially given her homestate advantage in early, delegate rich california. she still has a ways to go before that comes to fruition, but she is on the right path.
• from the Guardian: With her back against the wall, Kamala Harris surged. Will it last?. this sorta-profile of harris so far in the race and the history which has gotten us here is an interesting look into how the more things change, the more things stay the same for harris's political strategy. the somewhat cautious, reserved approach which had previously gotten harris somewhat mixed reviews from the punditry and people at large did a pretty big turnaround after the debates. she still has things to reckon for, of course, but on the whole those things seem less likely to derail her campaign now than they did before.

Pete Buttigieg

• from CNN: Pete Buttigieg unveils new details of racial justice plan in bid for black voters. pete buttigieg has new policy this week aimed at black voters in what he's calling the douglass plan. the plan, among other things, entails "increasing federal funding for historically black colleges and universities, increasing investments in minority-held depositories and mandating 25% of government contracts go to minority owned businesses." CNN also notes that "The plan would also seek to reduce incarceration by 50% at the state and federal level and abolish private federal prisons." buttigieg also hopes to address racial inequality in the healthcare system with the plan.
• From Vox: Pete Buttigieg says Americans should have the right to hide personal details from the internet. buttigieg is also, interestingly, in support of importing the right to be forgotten from the european union. we don't hear very much internet related policy from candidates even as the internet looms larger and larger in both politics and the broader culture wars that are being waged by people, so this is a welcome addition to the vast list of policies that people are going to be parsing through for the inevitable nominee to consider putting in their agenda.

Everybody else

• from CNN: Elizabeth Warren pledges to decriminalize border crossings, reverse Trump administration policies in new immigration plan. warren has some more immigration policy to throw onto the pile (medium link). per CNN:

The proposal would decriminalize crossing the border into the United States without authorization and separate law enforcement from immigration enforcement [...] designate a Justice Department task force to investigate accusations of serious violations -- including medical neglect and physical and sexual assaults of detained immigrants." It would be granted "independent authority to pursue any substantiated criminal allegations." [...] end privately-contracted detention facilities and promises that, if Warren is elected, she would "issue guidance ensuring that detention is only used where it is actually necessary because an individual poses a flight or safety risk." [and] expand legal immigration, raising the refugee cap, and making "it easier for those eligible for citizenship to naturalize." She would also reduce "the family reunification backlog" and provide "a fair and achievable pathway to citizenship."

• from CBS News: Amy Klobuchar unveils plan to address medical needs of America's aging population. amy klobuchar has a plan to "provide a cure and treatment options for some of the most aggressive chronic conditions facing the country's elderly population, including Alzheimer's disease, by 2025" and to "strengthen Medicare and Social Security, reduc[e] drug prices, creat[e] personal savings accounts to help Americans save for retirement and ensure paid family leave for all." as part of helping to reduce the strain of an increasingly old population of america. i assume we'll see a few more people with plans of some sort like this, since it's a growing issue and will only continue to be in the future as the boomers begin to die off.
• from POLITICO: Inslee knocks Sanders, 2020 rivals over filibuster support. jay inslee wants to nuke the filibuster and does not like people who do not want to nuke the filibuster. this is something a bunch of democrats, not just inslee, want to do because it's probably the only way anything will ever pass the senate again. godspeed, inslee, godspeed.

Opinions

• from the Guardian: Neoliberal pundits want to write off Bernie Sanders again. That's no surprise:

As New York’s Rebecca Traister aptly pointed out in a recent essay, the pundits aren’t keeping up with the politicians: “In all of their hand-wringing,” she writes, “they seem not to have noticed that … assumptions about a safe center are crumbling in the hands of a new generation of political leaders willing to make a stirring case for radical ideas,” like the Green New Deal and Medicare for All.
Is Bernie Sanders down for the count? Probably not. But you definitely shouldn’t take the mainstream media’s word for it.

• from the Guardian: Kamala Harris might be surging – but her record will soon catch up with her:

Some political evolutions are genuine, and Harris’s “law-and-order” past wasn’t out of place in the Democratic party at the time. But that old wisdom is now being called into question. It’s hard to imagine that a party tacking to the left in an increasingly polarized country is about to elect a criminal prosecutor as its nominee.
[...] Kamala Harris isn’t just not leftwing enough to be the Democratic party’s nominee, she’s also not bold enough to win a presidential election and bring about the change we desperately need

First up: that “spoiler” tag isn’t there for fun. This essay is going to focus on a climactic moment in ‘Toy Story 4’. If you haven’t seen it and don’t want to know what happens, close this topic NOW.

I saw ‘Toy Story 4’ last night. I’ve been catching myself up on the previous movies over the past few weeks (I’d never seen any of them before), so they’re reasonably fresh in my mind. I surprised myself by enjoying the movies a bit more than I expected to. I had assumed they were very much children’s movies, but I found them engaging and enjoyable even as a middle-aged adult.

So I was all caught up, and went out last night to see the latest instalment in the franchise with a friend who’s a massive fan of all things Disney.

I liked it. It was yet another “toys having adventures in the big wide world” story line. That seems to be the main story line of all the Toy Story movies: the toys get lost or misplaced, or have to go rescue a toy who is lost or misplaced, so they end up having adventures outside of their home.

But there’s usually an emotional heart to each movie. And that emotional heart often comes from the character of Woody, whose goal has always been to make sure that the toys are doing what toys are supposed to do: bringing joy to children. As we often get told, mostly by Woody, being a child’s plaything is the most noble thing a toy can do. To that end, Woody seems willing to do almost anything. The toys have mounted ridiculous rescue missions, they’ve manipulated humans (it wasn’t Andy’s idea to give his toys to Bonnie), and they’ve made personal sacrifices. Even in this movie, Woody was willing to give up his voice box so that he could get brand-new toy Forky back to Bonnie who had made him, and to give Gabby the chance to belong to a kid.

Then…

Woody met Bo Peep in this movie, and found her living an independent life as a lost toy. We know they’ve had romantic feelings towards each other, but she was given away by Andy’s little sister some years back. Then she got given away again, to an antique store. Now she turns up living near a caravan park, and she’s noone’s toy except her own.

Normally, Woody would have moved heaven and earth to reunite Bo with her previous kid, or to find her a new one. But she doesn’t want one. She’s an independent toy now, and that suits her fine.

So they have their adventures. And, at the end of those adventures, Woody and his fellow toys are returning to Bonnie, while Bo is returning to her independent life. And Woody has a moment of indecision. Does he return to Bonnie, or does he go with Bo?

But, there’s not really that much tension because we know how this is going to end. Woody has told us so many times that being a child’s plaything is the most noble thing a toy can do. Of course he’s going back to Bonnie.

And then he chooses to go with Bo.

I sobbed.

Let me give some context for my reaction to this moment. I do respond emotionally to movies and television. I laugh loudly when something is funny, and I cry openly when something is sad. I jolt back in my seat in response to scary moments, and I’ve been known to cover my eyes during exceptionally gory scenes. I’m not ashamed to feel things in response to events on the screen, nor to express those feelings. That’s normal for me. However, I felt a very strong emotional reaction to this moment in the movie – much stronger than most. I wanted to burst out in loud unmanly sobs because of how upset I was. I wanted to shout at the screen. I felt a real and physical reaction in my gut: it was literally a gut-wrenching moment for me (and that almost never happens!). This was the strongest emotional reaction I’ve had to any moment in movies or television for years. It was strong enough to prompt me to write about it!

I know I was supposed to feel happy that Woody and Bo had found each other, and they loved each other, and this was the start of their romantic “happy ever after”. But that’s not why I cried. I cried because Woody turned his back on nobility and chose selfishness.

Woody had been the conscience and the heart of the whole franchise, reconciling toys to their place in life, and helping toys to achieve their goal in life. Even in this movie, he had turned Forky around from wanting to be trash to wanting to help Bonnie. Woody showed toys their noble goal in life, and did everything he could to help them achieve it.

And then he turned his back on everything he’d said and believed up till now.

Sure, Bonnie wasn’t playing with him as much as Andy did. Sure, he wasn’t top dog in Bonnie’s playroom (that place belonged to Dolly, who’d been there much longer than Woody and his fellows). But Woody was always selfless. Woody was always looking out for the children’s best interests. Woody was always putting the children’s needs ahead of his own. He had previously told his fellow toys that even being stored in the attic was a good thing because it meant their child (now a college man) still cared about them to some degree. So, even if Bonnie wasn’t playing with him all the time, he would still want to stay around to be there for her – or even to be there for the other toys she did play with.

Wouldn’t he?

Or was it all a lie? Was it all about his own selfish desire to be important and, then, when that importance was taken away, he decided to walk out?

Or was it as basic as choosing pleasure over service?

How could you do that, Woody? How could you turn your back on everything noble and good, and choose your own selfish desires instead?

Woody, you broke my heart.

good morning, tildes--this is not a test. we are 482 days and dropping away from possibly the biggest election day in recent american history. no opinion pieces or longform this week; this week was pretty quiet, as was true of last week. a few polls also dropped, and they are included here.

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 15

News

Polling

• from Emerson (B+ on 538): National poll

Biden: 30%
Sanders: 15%
Warren: 15%
Harris: 15%
Buttigieg: 5%
All others below 5%.

• from Morning Consult (B- on 538): National poll

Biden: 31%
Sanders: 19%
Harris: 14%
Warren: 13%
Buttigieg: 6%
All others below 5%

General Stuff

• from CBS News: 2020 Democratic presidential candidates reveal second quarter fundraising efforts. we begin this week with the fundraising news, as the second quarter ended at the end of last month. candidates are not obligated to report their numbers until july 15, but many candidates (particularly those with good numbers) like to report early. the current leaderboard, as of this morning:

Buttigieg: 24.8 million
Sanders: 24 million (18 million fundraised, 6 million transferred)
Biden: 21.5 million
Warren: 19.1 million
Harris: 12 million
Bennet: 3.5 million (2.8 million fundraised, 700k transferred)
Bullock: 2 million
Hickenlooper: 1 million
Swalwell (dropped out): 850k

• from the Atlantic: The Most Critical Argument Democrats Will Have in 2020. healthcare is again going to loom pretty heavily over this race, consistently being one of the top issues for americans. the healthcare debate is part of what led to the democratic wave in the 2018 elections and, if republicans don't get better messaging in short order, is probably going to be one of the many things which leads to trump losing re-election in 2020. of course, what the democratic plan for healthcare looks like to the eventual nominee isn't set in stone either; most of the frontrunners define their plan as some form of medicare for all and would get rid of private insurance, most of the perennial 1%ers want something less "socialisty". given that the party is to the left of where it used to be and that biden is the only person really standing on the status quo who has a chance at winning at this point, i'd bet on M4A winning out ultimately.
• from the Atlantic: The Long-Shot Candidacy Conundrum. one of the candidates in this piece has already dropped out (swalwell), but the weird slate of swalwell, seth moulton, and tim ryan as candidates in the presidential race is still interesting because they really have few if any compelling reasons to be running and most people have no idea why they're running at all. ryan perhaps has the best case: ohio, likely to lose a congressional district in 2020, will possibly redistrict him out and leave him having to run in a less friendly district; there are no such excuses for swalwell (now dropped out and committed to his house seat) or moulton (in a safe seat but almost certainly limited in his ability to climb the political rungs by his anti-pelosi posturing). nonetheless, running is almost certain to land them all more political capital or better positions than the ones they currently have, which makes the presidency pretty alluring even if they come nowhere near it.

Elizabeth Warren

• from the Guardian: 105 town halls and 35,000 selfies: how Warren has shaken up the 2020 race. warren's strategy which early on in the race seemed to be leading her down a road to inevitable failure has turned around quite significantly in the past few months, as this article by the guardian explores. in practice, this piece on warren's strategy is also a candidate profile, talking mostly about warren's policy focus and her eventual aims to save capitalism from itself.
• from POLITICO: Elizabeth Warren shuns conventional wisdom for a new kind of campaign. warren's campaign is also crafting a new path by eschewing the standard model of campaigns where you just hire a shit ton of consultants who advise you on everything. warren's campaign has no consultants, no in-house pollster, plans to do its ad-making in-house, and has an extensive payroll of staffers, all of which is funded by the idea that her fundraising will continue as it has this quarter (19.1 million). this model has no guarantees of working, since it is entirely underpinned by warren continuing to raise absurd amounts of money, but if it manages to stay afloat, it could be quite formidable and serve as a future model for campaigns.
• from CBS News: Elizabeth Warren proposes executive orders to address race and gender pay gap. warren has some policy that she intends to push through with executive orders on the race pay gap and the gender pay gap. per CBS: "...companies and contractors with historically poor records on diversity and equality [would be] den[ied] contracts with the federal government." also a part of this plan:

To address the underrepresentation of women of color in leadership in the federal workforce, Warren says she would issue an order to recruit from historically black colleges and other minority-serving institutions; establish paid fellowships for federal jobs for minority and low-income applicants, including formerly incarcerated people; and require federal agencies to incorporate diversity into their strategic plans and mentorship efforts.

• from Jacobin: Elizabeth Warren’s Next Step on Medicare for All. warren embraced medicare for all at the debates, which was not especially surprising; however, it remains to be seen how much warren makes talking about it a focus of her campaign. warren has been pretty silent on healthcare issues despite having polices on significantly more esoteric issues and her website still lacks a healthcare page as of now. jacobin makes the case here that warren would be smart, if she cares about medicare for all genuinely, to defend it at every opportunity and sell it to the american public, lest it be rendered unpassable in the future.

Kamala Harris

• from CBS News: Harris proposes 100 billion plan to increase minority homeownership. kamala harris has some new policy aimed at promoting minority house ownership. CBS reports that the plan "...calls for 100 billion Housing and Urban Development (HUD) grant to provide homeowners or homebuyers who rent or live in historically red-lining communities, where minority home and business owners were largely blocked from accessing capital for investment, up to a $25,000 down payment in assistance and closing costs." there are some other fairly esoteric qualifications involved here, but i won't quote those because they're mildly confusing and don't necessarily contribute to an understanding of the policy.
• from VICE: Iowa Is Getting Serious About Kamala Harris. unsurprisingly, harris's meteoric rise following the first set of debates continues. harris and biden both swung through iowa over the fourth of july and harris was immediately greeted to significantly more reception than she presumably would have gotten prior to the the debates. biden remains the slight frontrunner, of course, but despite harris prioritizing the more diverse early states of south carolina and nevada in her electoral strategy, she increasingly looks competitive in iowa.

Everybody Else

• from Jacobin: Bernie Is the Best Candidate on Palestine. jacobin makes the case for sanders being the best candidate on palestinian issues. this is relatively straightforward; sanders is probably the only candidate in the race currently who has consistently pushed for palestinian issues and really his only contemporary with a comparable record is warren, who used to be staunchly pro-israel before gradually moderating on the issue. sanders still has many rough spots around the edges when it comes to palestinians, namely the fact that he's anti-BDS (but against banning of the movement), but there are no perfect candidates.
• from Jacobin: We Don’t Need Pete Buttigieg’s National Service Program. jacobin is also unsparing in its criticism of buttigieg's national service program which is, admittedly, pretty silly in its justification. in the article's words:

But more to the point, the basic diagnosis behind Buttigieg’s proposal (and others like it) is simply incorrect. True enough, few would probably challenge the suggestion that America is a deeply fragmented and polarized society. Revealingly, though, Buttigieg thinks the causes are spiritual and cultural rather than material and political: people have different identities, backgrounds, income levels, religious beliefs, and party affiliations, with these differences being hardened by epistemological bubbles online; ergo, a divided country that might become more unified if people were brought together in common cause.

It’s a tidy narrative, and one that conveniently sidesteps America’s maldistribution of wealth, its general dearth of quality public programs and services, and the numerous ways these injustices and others contribute to a coarsening of its social fabric.

• from CBS News: Tulsi Gabbard says Kamala Harris hatched "political ploy" to "smear" Joe Biden on race. y'all remember tulsi? she's still around, and she's making headlines for the wrong reasons yet again. for some reason, she's decided to die on the hill of kamala harris smearing biden on race issues, saying harris was "leveling this accusation that Joe Biden is a racist — when he's clearly not — as a way to try to smear him." this is interesting: harris not only never said that biden was a racist, but in fact immediately prefaced her comments with "I do not believe you are a racist"; i suppose tulsi is trying to argue that harris was lying or something similar here. either way, it's a bizarre line of attack that doesn't really make a lot of sense, not least because gabbard has literally nothing to do with the whole situation.
• from CNN: 2020 Democrats Klobuchar and Inslee unveil education plans ahead of summit. jay inslee and amy klobuchar meanwhile unveiled some education plans. here are the highlights:

klobuchar:

• would end the Trump administration's push for a school choice tax credit
• proposes a federal-state partnership program under which states would tackle education funding equity and recommend how school services can better meet the needs of working parents

inslee:

• will end the diversion of federal funds to private charter schools
• would provide universal preschool, double funding for magnet schools and fully fund the federal Title I program for schools that serve low-income areas
• promises to help states fund pay increases for educators, providing student loan forgiveness for educators and protecting teacher pensions
• supports giving federal funds to districts that switch to zero-emission buses and investing in climate change education and STEM programs at K-12 schools and historically black colleges and universities

both:

• promise to fully fund the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act and to provide protections for the LGBTQ community
• want to ban the use of federal funds to arm teachers or for firearms training

• from NBC News: Swalwell ends presidential campaign less than two weeks after first debate. eric swalwell, one percenter extraordinaire and man whose name is impossible to spell correctly on the first try, is hanging up his presidential campaign after lackluster polling and fundraising. swalwell's most recognizable moment for people will probably be his tagline "pass the torch"; unfortunately, it does seem that he's passed the torch himself to candidates who can actually gain traction with the american public. swalwell remains a house representative, and will be seeking reelection in 2020.
• from Vox: “I call her a modern-day prophet”: Marianne Williamson’s followers want you to give her a chance. marianne williamson remains the media's token "wacky candidate", for which she receives occasional media attention including this article focused on the people who support her. broadly, her main demographic is wine moms, but williamson also has a number of younger supporters to her campaign and message. williamson supporters are, unsurprisingly, not "williamson or bust" types: just as other candidates's supporters, they're more than happy to get behind other people and the eventual nominee, whether that's marianne or not. williamson's supporters will probably remain behind her for the duration of her campaign, though.

anyways, feel free to as always contribute other interesting articles you stumble across, or comment on some of the ones up there. see also: Why America is Ignoring Kirsten Gillibrand, Warren Rising: Massachusetts Progressive Announces $19 Million Fundraising Haul, Any Democrat Who Wants to Be President Should Reject War with Iran, Not Hide Behind Process Criticisms

Hello! After spending many development hours in my past years running on Virtualbox/Vagrant-style setups, I've decided to take the plunge into learning Docker, and after getting a few containers working, I'm now looking to figure out how to deploy this to production. I'm not a DevOps or infrastructure guy, my bread and butter is software, and although I've become significantly better at deploying & provisioning Linux VPS's, I'm still not entirely confident in my ability to deploy & manage such systems at scale and in production. But, I am now close to running my own business, so these requirements are suddenly going from "nice to have" to "critical".

As I mentioned, in the past when I've previously developed applications that have been pushed onto the web, I've tended to develop on my local machine, often with no specific configuration environment. If I did use an environment, it'd often be a Vagrant VM instance. From here, I'd push to GitHub, then from my VPS, pull down the changes, run any deployment scripts (recompile, restart nginx, etc), and I'm done.

I guess what I'm after with Docker is something that's more consistent between dev, testing, & prod, and is also more hands off in the deployment process. Yet, what I'm currently developing still does have differing configuration needs between dev and prod. For example, I'd like to use a hosted DB solution such as DigitalOcean Managed Databases in production, yet I'm totally fine using a Docker container for MySQL for local development. Is something like this possible? Does anyone have any recommendations around how to accomplish this, any do's and dont's, or any catches that are worth mentioning?

How about automating deployment from GitHub to production? I've never touched any CI/CD tools in my life, yet I know it's a hugely important part of the process when dealing with software in production, especially software that has clients dependent on it to function. Does anything specifically work well with Docker? Or GitHub? Ideally I want to be avoiding manual processes where I have to ssh in, and pull down the latest changes, half-remembering the commands I need to write to recompile and run the application again.

good morning, tildes--this is not a test. we are 488 days and dropping away from possibly the biggest election day in recent american history. this week was pretty slow because the debates sucked all the oxygen out of the room; as a consequence, there are no opinion pieces this week and relatively few stories in this edition.

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 • Week 9 • Week 10 • Week 11 • Week 12 • Week 13 • Week 14

News

Polling

• from CNN (National poll; MoE +/- 4.7 points): CNN Poll: Harris and Warren rise and Biden slides after first Democratic debates.

22% Biden
17% Harris
15% Warren
14% Sanders.
No one else in the 23-person field tested hits 5%.

• from Suffolk/USA Today (Iowa poll; MoE +/- 4.4 points): Poll: Kamala Harris surges in Iowa as Bernie Sanders suffers after debate.

Biden 24%
Harris 16%
Warren 13%
Sanders 9%
... The new standings are hardly set in stone. Twenty-one percent are undecided. Six of 10 who have decided say they might change their mind before the caucuses. One in four say their minds are firmly made up.

• from Quinnipiac (National poll; MoE +/- 5 points): July 2, 2019 - Harris Gets Big Debate Bounce While Biden Sinks Quinnipiac University National Poll Finds; Despite Drop, Biden Still Seen As Best Bet Against Trump.

Biden 22%
Harris 20%
Warren 14%
Sanders 13%
Buttigieg 4%
No other candidate tops 3 percent.

• from ABC News/Washington Post (National poll; MoE +/- 5.5 points): Harris scores in debate performance while electability keeps Biden in front.

Biden 29%
Sanders 23%
Warren 11%
Harris 11%
No other candidate tops 4 percent.

• from Reuters/IPSOS (National poll; MoE +/- 3 points): Biden's support from black voters cut in half after debate: Reuters/Ipsos poll

Biden 22%
Sanders 16%
Harris 10%
Warren 9%
No other candidate tops 3 percent.

General News

• from the Trace: Where the 2020 Democratic Candidates Stand on Guns. we lead off today with a piece from the trace on where all the candidates stand on gun issues and gun things in general; these range from whether or not the candidate owns a gun to questions like "Do you have a plan for reducing community gun violence?" and "Should the Protection of Lawful Commerce in Arms Act be repealed?". this is probably about as comprehensive of a piece as you'll ever get on an issue with such a crowded primary.
• from Pacific Standard: The Democratic Primary Field Is Not as Wide Open as It Seems. not all candidates are equal either in potential or in public perception of viability; this is true with the public, but also with campaign staffers---this'll be touched on further down because it's already becoming a problem for some candidates. it somewhat goes without saying that, because presidential campaigns are infrequent, there is a very small pool of experienced presidential campaign staff, and those folks tend to be gobbled up by the bigger, more serious, better looking campaigns. what is less evident is that without experienced campaign staffers, as this article notes, it is extremely hard to seriously contest a primary. as such, by this metric, the number of "serious" candidates is generously less than half the current field, and mostly frontrunning campaigns.

Joe Biden

• from Buzzfeed News: Joe Biden’s Careful Debate Plan Got Blown Up. it goes without saying, i think, but biden did not come out of last week's debates the winner. aside from the nosedive in polling he's taken across the board (sometimes of up to ten points), biden's carefully-cultivated, extremely-cautious approach in all other things backfired spectacularly in the span of one night. biden's campaign so far has been--if not subtlely hostile to the media--generally avoidant of it where possible. he answers questions on his own terms for the most part and generally does his own things, irrespective of how it'll go over. and that works--or did, anyways--when he didn't have people gunning for him in front of a large portion of the primary's voting base. but now that he's wounded relatively badly in primary terms, i'm not sure the strategy he employed here is going to be practical. not defining yourself to the media and coasting off of obama nostalgia works until it doesn't, and right now, it's really not working.
• biden's fundraising numbers for this quarter: 21 million dollars. something to cheer about i suppose.

Bernie Sanders

• from CNN: Bernie Sanders 2020 is in big trouble. bernie's also not having the best time in the polls. although he mostly held his own in the snap polls immediately after the debates, the polls after that have bene less kind to him, broadly. he's still usually second, but increasingly commonly he is third or fourth, and there's an undeniable trend of warren and harris now playing catchup and winning out. to be clear, sanders is probably not at risk of becoming a basement dweller candidate like beto due to his significantly high floor--but his base alone absolutely cannot and will not win him the primary. he needs to expand who is going to vote for him--and on that count, he is seemingly failing so far.
• sanders's fundraising numbers for this quarter: 24 million; 18 million raised, 6 million transferred.

Pete Buttigieg

• from the Guardian: Pete Buttigieg returns to South Bend amid tension over police shooting. buttigieg was back in south bend over the weekend to once again deal with the aftermath of the shooting of eric logan. to my knowledge, buttigieg has cut down on or outright stopped campaigning for the time being to deal with this situation; it's not clear how long this situation will be lingering over him or when he does intend to get back into the full swing of campaigning. it's worth bearing in mind that he's also been slightly slipping in the polls recently; whether it's over the south bend situation or because his appeal is wearing thin on people or some other event is probably unattributable.
• from NBC News: Buttigieg raises nearly $25 million in second quarter. nonetheless, buttigieg has something to cheer about at minimum: he raised an impressive 25 million dollars this quarter, outpacing every other candidate that's announced their totals so far. now he just needs to put that money to good use.
• from POLITICO: Buttigieg introduces national service plan. buttigieg also has some new policy out this week related to national service, an issue which i am sure is very animating for people:

Buttigieg's plan would immediately increase the number of available national service positions to 250,000 opportunities, up from the current 75,000. It would emphasize recruiting students at high schools, community colleges, historically black colleges and universities, and vocational schools, as well as Americans between 16 and 24 who aren't working or in school.
The proposal also calls for establishing grant funding programs for "service ecosystems" focused on local and regional issues.
Service fellows would be considered for student debt forgiveness, hiring preference and vocational training. The plan also calls for developing new types of service corps like a Climate Corps, a Community Health Corps, or a Intergenerational Service Corps.

Cory Booker

• from Pacific Standard: Cory Booker's Immigration Plan Focuses on Day-One Changes. cory booker isn't looking to congress to be the final arbiter on his immigration plans, which is probably a good idea since it seems unlikely--but absolutely not impossible, mind you--that the democrats will wrestle control from the republicans in the senate in 2020 (note: they'd only need 50 votes if they win the presidency since the VP tiebreaks). booker's plan in the domestic sphere is mostly based on issuing executive orders; it also has ideas for what to do in foreign policy, which is a part of the issue which can't really be ignored (and, for the msot part, is not being ignored by democratic candidates so far).

Kamala Harris

• from Buzzfeed News: Kamala Harris Just Showed How She'd Debate Trump. kamala harris unsurprisingly came out of the debate nights with a great deal of press, of which this buzzfeed article looking to a hypothetical future with her and trump sharing a debate stage might be the most prototypical. harris, the pretty much undisputed winner of the second debate, is in an interesting position now due to her meteoric rise in the polls. previously she'd been running close-but-not-quite-in with the main frontrunning group of biden, sanders, and warren. now, in the immediate term, she's almost always second or third in the polls. will this bring additional scrutiny to her record? probably. she was already getting a bit of it from online leftists and parts of the media, and suddenly being a frontrunner from a single debate performance is almost certain to have that effect. those lines of attack haven't hurt harris yet, though, and it's arguable that her prosecutorial career is what allows her to have the sorts of successes you see when you put her on a debate stage to begin with. call it a double edged sword.

John Hickenlooper

• from POLITICO: Hickenlooper campaign in shambles. remember the bit from earlier about how there's only so much talent to go around and how campaign staff can make or break a campaign? well, the hickenlooper campaign, that bastion of perennial once-percenter, anti-socialist and moderate rhetoric, is not a particularly great campaign to be on, it turns out. hickenlooper's campaign is losing five people and will probably run out of money pretty shortly if nothing changes. he has almost no chance of making future debates, either. if i had to guess, he'll be one of the first people to drop out:

The campaign also only raised just over $1 million in the second quarter — about what he raised in the first 48 hours of his candidacy — and will likely run out of money completely in about a month.
At least five staffers have left or are leaving Hickenlooper’s struggling operation, including his campaign manager, communications director, digital director and finance director. Hickenlooper named a new campaign manager on Monday night.
...
Hickenlooper met the polling requirement to qualify for last week’s debate and the upcoming debate in July. But his prospects for making the fall debates — candidates must have 130,000 donors and hit 2 percent in four qualifying polls — were dicier. The latest CNN poll released Monday shows Hickenlooper with just 1 percent support.

I don't want to ask this question in "default" groups as peeps that monitor this group will likely know the answer, and I support not making "Tildes a site about discussing Tildes" :)
_{inline-edit: for context this was originally posted in ~test.}

I am probably one of the most heavily mobile-first users here, but when on desktop, I really want ctrl-enter to work everywhere. Is there some way to make sure all "save" buttons use ctrl/cmd-enter across the entire site? Can this be done via a class or something?

If not, I can go through the whole site and find places where it does not work.. first example is in the new awesome edit tags ui.

I don't have nearly as much time to game as I used to, and as such, I tend to prioritize games that are quick to finish over those that want my attention for a long time. Thus, I'm curious to know: what are the best short games you've played?

I'm going to arbitrarily set "short" at a threshhold of 3 hours or less.

Furthermore, I'm referring to games that have a defined start and end, rather than potentially infinite play sessions. That means a game like The Binding of Isaac wouldn't count despite the average play session being much less than 3 hours, but a game like Gone Home would.

If you're not sure about a game's length, check HowLongToBeat for crowdsourced runtime data.

Here's a table of recommendations mentioned in the thread, and their approximate time to complete from HowLongToBeat (using the "Main Story" category).

I'm not sure how many people here are into board games, but I figured I'd make a post about it. I'm going to be at dice tower con this week. I'm hoping to get a game of Blood on the Clocktower going. If you see a guy trying to gather people for a game of botc, that'll be me. Come say hi.

Hi there, I've started a new public server on Discord for music discussion, recommendations, etc. I've seen a number of these go down in flames or completely lose the appeal for their core audience, so I've borrowed some principles from Tildes, adapted for the somewhat different but related issues this kind of Discord server typically runs into. I thought this may be of interest to some users here, so you're all welcome as long as you play by our rules!

If you'd like to see our rules and goals first, check the paste here. They'll be pretty familiar to anyone here, though they are subject to change depending on our needs. This should go without saying, but to be clear, this server is not officially connected to Tildes, nor is it exclusive to Tildes users. There just might be some overlap in ideas :)

Here's our permanent invite link if you'd like to join: https://discord.gg/kC4sSQq

oops, had a space in url last time.
So still not a valid link as topic link

But does make a weird un-clickable link in md.

While the link does not go anywhere, could a malicious link do anything bad sec-wise?

fyi, the link is to: data:text/html,<h1>Hello%2C%20World!<%2Fh1>

Years and Years is a British political near-future soft SF programme. Being British it's one short series - 6 episodes, 1 hour per episode. Mainstream broadcast SF isn't going to push all the boundaries, but this has some neat ideas. The political stuff feels realistic enough to work.

Emma Thompson is always impressive and she does excellent work here as a populist, fascist, politician. Jessica Hynes plays Edith with suitable intensity.

Here are a bunch of links:

https://www.imdb.com/title/tt8694364/?ref_=fn_al_tt_1

[spoilers] https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/review/years-and-years-1220415

[spoilers] https://variety.com/2019/tv/reviews/years-and-years-review-emma-thompson-hbo-1203243714/

[spoilers] https://www.theguardian.com/tv-and-radio/2019/may/14/years-and-years-review-a-glorious-near-future-drama-from-russell-t-davies

Hey folks, we had our 3rd meet for the current campaign last night all went really well. Last time our Rogue upset everyone he met, stole everything that wasn't and was nailed down, including the nails. Then managed to get killed by an NPC that we were helping, it was amazing.

Now I wanted to get a little more creative with my character and since level 3 for Paladin is the oath level I went with Vengeance and wrote an Oath. I posted it in my last thread but will post again if anyone is interested.

Now I also wanted to have a go at making a dice bag, the first one is reversible but was too long so I made a few smaller ones. Then had the thought of making each of the guys a small bag with their names on them, each has a name longer than my leg so that failed before it started. I ended up with the initial of their first names, the Rogue wouldn't give up the name or initial so I did something different for his. The guys all loved the gifts especially the Rogue (now a Monk) these are the bags I made next thing I try will be a multi compartment job. All was done by hand because I couldn't get the sewing machine to work ...

Preface

It's not uncommon for a written piece of code to be both brief and functionality correct, yet difficult to reason about. This is especially true of recursive algorithms, which can require some amount of simulating the algorithm mentally (or on a whiteboard) on smaller problems to try to understand the underlying logic. The more you have to perform these manual simulations, the more difficult it becomes to track what exactly is going on at any stage of computation. It's also not uncommon that these algorithms can be made easier to reason about with relatively small changes, particularly in the way you conceptualize the solution to the problem. Our goal will be to take a brief tour into what these changes might look like and why they are effective at reducing our mental overhead.

Background

We will consider the case of the subset sum problem, which is essentially a special case of the knapsack problem where you have a finite number of each item and each item's value is equal to its weight. In short, the problem is summarized as one of the following:

• Given a set of numbers, is there a subset whose sum is exactly equal to some target value?

• Given a set of numbers, what is the subset whose sum is the closest to some target value without exceeding it?

For example, given the set of numbers {1, 3, 3, 5} and a target value of 9, the answer for both of those questions is {1, 3, 5} because the sum of those numbers is 9. For a target value of 10, however, the first question has no solution because no combination of numbers in the set {1, 3, 3, 5} produces a total of 10, but the second question produces a solution of {1, 3, 5} because 9 is the closest value to 10 that those numbers can produce without going over.

A Greedy Example

We'll stick to the much simpler case of finding an exact match to our target value so we don't have to track what the highest value found so far is. To make things even simpler, we'll consider the case where all numbers are positive, non-zero integers. This problem can be solved with some naive recursion--simply try all combinations until either a solution is found or all combinations have been exhausted. While more efficient solutions exist, naive recursion is the easiest to conceptualize.

An initial assessment of the problem seems simple enough. Our solution is defined as the set of array elements whose total is equal to our target value. To achieve this, we loop through each of the elements in the array, try combinations with all of the remaining elements, and keep track of what the current total is so we can compare it to our target. If we find an exact match, we return an array containing the matching elements, otherwise we return nothing. This gives us something like the following:

function subsetSum($target_sum, $values, $total = 0) {
    // Base case: a total exceeding our target sum is a failure.
    if($total > $target_sum) {
        return null;
    }

    // Base case: a total matching our target sum means we've found a match.
    if($total == $target_sum) {
        return array();
    }

    foreach($values as $index=>$value) {
        // Recursive case: try combining the current array element with the remaining elements.
        $result = subsetSum($target_sum, array_slice($values, $index + 1), $total + $value);

        if(!is_null($result)) {
            return array_merge(array($value), $result);
        }
    }

    return null;
}

Your Scope is Leaking

This solution works. It's functionally correct and will produce a valid result every single time. From a purely functional perspective, nothing is wrong with it at all; however, it's not easy to follow what's going on despite how short the code is. If we look closely, we can tell that there are a few major problems:

• It's not obvious at first glance whether or not the programmer is expected to provide the third argument. While a default value is provided, it's not clear if this value is only a default that should be overridden or if the value should be left untouched. This ambiguity means relying on documentation to explain the intention of the third argument, which may still be ignored by an inattentive developer.

• The base case where a failure occurs, i.e. when the accumulated total exceeds the target sum, occurs one stack frame further into the recursion than when the total has been incremented. This forces us to consider not only the current iteration of recursion, but one additional iteration deeper in order to track the flow of execution. Ideally an iteration of recursion should be conceptually isolated from any other, limiting our mental scope to only the current iteration.

• We're propagating an accumulating total that starts from 0 and increments toward our target value, forcing us to to track two different values simultaneously. Ideally we would only track one value if possible. If we can manage that, then the ambiguity of the third argument will be eliminated along with the argument itself.

Overall, the amount of code that the programmer needs to look at and the amount of branching they need to follow manually is excessive. The function is only 22 lines long, including whitespace and comments, and yet the amount of effort it takes to ensure you're understanding the flow of execution correctly is pretty significant. This is a pretty good indicator that we probably did something wrong. Something so simple and short shouldn't take so much effort to understand.

Patching the Leak

Now that we've assessed the problems, we can see that our original solution isn't going to cut it. We have a couple of ways we could approach fixing our function: we can either attempt to translate the abstract problems into tangible solutions or we can modify the way we've conceptualized the solution. With that in mind, let's take a second crack at this problem by trying the latter.

We've tried taking a look at this problem from a top-down perspective: "given a target value, are there any elements that produce a sum exactly equal to it?" Clearly this perspective failed us. Instead, let's try flipping the equation: "given an array element, can it be summed with others to produce the target value?"

This fundamentally changes the way we can think about the problem. Previously we were hung up on the idea of keeping track of the current total sum of the elements we've encountered so far, but that approach is incompatible with the way we're thinking of this problem now. Rather than incrementing a total, we now find ourselves having to do something entirely different: if we want to know if a given array element is part of the solution, we need to first subtract the element from the problem and find out if the smaller problem has a solution. That is, to find if the element 3 is part of the solution for the target sum of 8, then we're really asking if 3 + solutionFor(5) is valid.

The new solution therefore involves looping over our array elements just as before, but this time we check if there is a solution for the target sum minus the current array element:

function subsetSum($target_sum, $values) {
    // Base case: the solution to the target sum of 0 is the empty set.
    if($target_sum === 0) {
        return array();
    }

    foreach($values as $index=>$value) {
        // Base case: any element larger than our target sum cannot be part of the solution.
        if($value > $target_sum) {
            continue;
        }

        // Recursive case: do the remaining elements create a solution for the sub-problem?
        $result = subsetSum($target_sum - $value, array_slice($values, $index + 1));

        if(!is_null($result)) {
            return array_merge(array($value), $result);
        }
    }

    return null;
}

A Brief Review

With the changes now in place, let's compare our two functions and, more importantly, compare our new function to the problems we assessed with the original. A few brief points:

• Both functions are the same exact length, being only 22 lines long with the same number of comments and an identical amount of whitespace.

• Both functions touch the same number of elements and produce the same output given the same input. Apart from a change in execution order of a base case, functionality is nearly identical.

• The new function no longer requires thinking about the scope of next iteration of recursion to determine whether or not an array element is included in the result set. The base case for exceeding the target sum now occurs prior to recursion, keeping the scope of the value comparison nearest where those values are defined.

• The new function no longer uses a third accumulator argument, reducing the number of values to be tracked and removing the issue of ambiguity with whether or not to include the third argument in top-level calls.

• The new function is now defined in terms of finding the solutions to increasingly smaller target sums, making it easier to determine functional correctness.

Considering all of the above, we can confidently state that the second function is easier to follow, easier to verify functional correctness for, and less confusing for anyone who needs to use it. Although the two functions are nearly identical, the second version is clearly and objectively better than the original. This is because despite both being functionally correct, the first function does a poor job at accurately defining the problem it's solving while the second function is clear and accurate in its definition.

Correct code isn't necessarily accurate code. Anyone can write code that works, but writing code that accurately defines a problem can mean the difference between understanding what you're looking at, and being completely bewildered at how, or even why, your code works in the first place.

Final Thoughts

Accurately defining a problem in code isn't easy. Sometimes you'll get it right, but more often than not you'll get it wrong on the first go, and it's only after you've had some distance from you original solution that you realize that you should've done things differently. Despite that, understanding the difference between functional correctness and accuracy gives you the opportunity to watch for obvious inaccuracies and keep them to a minimum.

In the end, even functionally correct, inaccurate code is worth more than no code at all. No amount of theory is a replacement for practical experience. The only way to get better is to mess up, assess why you messed up, and make things just a little bit better the next time around. Theory just makes that a little easier.