Intergrid is an online outliner and note-taking app. It's inspired by – and in many ways replicates – Indigrid, except it's on the Web. It's free to use, and it's readily available right from the main page.

Why Intergrid?

The main goal of Intergrid is to help you focus on the notes.

There are no settings. You can't pick the font. Theming is not an option. There's only content, and what you want to do with it.

Plus, it looks cool.

Is it feature-complete?

Hell no. It's been in development for three months – which is to say, not very long. It still has ways to go.

Which is why I'm keeping the initial release rather quiet: Tildes and a handful of friends are the only people to know about it so far.

Are there bugs?

Afraid so. There are some I know about, and there are probably some I couldn't even reach.

Why release it, then?

Because it works already. You can add, edit, and save your notes in-browser. As long as you have cookies enabled, it will serve you. (Intergrid doesn't use cookies, and has no tracking to speak of, but the permission for localStorage – the technology used to store and gather data about your notes – is adjacent, as far as browsers are concerned.)

It would be of particular use to people on systems other than Windows. While the current version is focused on desktops, future versions may gain mobile support – all the more likely because, outside from a handful of hardcoded interactions and design considerations, there's nothing preventing mobile users from enjoying the app.

There's also the pragmatic reason: something Jeff Atwood called "Always Be Shipping", all the way back in 2007. You can't get feedback on an app that has no public version. Your programming expertise and design sense will only get you so far. Getting it out there – and going forward with the feedback – is a generous part of the process.

Where are you planning to take it?

The first step would be the fix the bugs. There will be a list of known ones in the comments.

Once those are fixed (or can be postponed without repercussions to being able to use the app), there are features I'm going to implement within the next couple of months. Most of them, at least initially, are going to be put in to keep up with Indigrid's feature set.

• Views: open, move, and close columns, each hosting a different view on the notes, allowing you to gain perspective or edit multiple ideas simulatenously

• Bookmarks: store views as separate named bookmarks, allowing you to traverse different mental spaces within the notes

• Action History and Undo/Redo: record changes to the notes and time-travel between its different states, because sometimes, you want to be able to "go there" and not be weighted down by rock-solid commitment

• Offline Use: work with your notes even when the Internet is down

(Even though the code for columns is already in the development branch, I was unable to come up with a respectable way of handling it before New Year, which is when I promised to release the app.)

In the long term, I'd like to make sure you could access your notes from any browser on any device. This plan also includes the ability to create and share read-only or editable partial copies of your notes – for example, as presentation or a basis for an online discussion. After finishing with shaping up the current, local-only version, this is where want to take the development. I reckon it would take me somewhere between 6 and 12 months to finish the codebase for this.

Anything else I should know?

Do keep in mind that this is an early release. There may be bugs – perhaps even the kind that will rid you of your notes. If you're uncomfortable about using software this early in development, please don't: your sanity is dearer to me than getting users.

It will, however, get stable over time. If there's ever a breaking change on the horizon – the kind of change that will change an aspect of Intergrid radically – users will be notified about it at least two weeks ahead, so that at least they could backup their notes. I want to ensure the safety of mind for the users of Intergrid, so that they know their notes are in safe hands.

That said, make regular backups anyway. The nodes are encoded/decoded as indented plain text, which means they can be transferred to and from a simple textfile with copy/paste. Any single whitespace character – space, tab etc. – is considered one level of indentation, so it doesn't matter how you indent your plain-text notes: they will be aligned as you'd expect. Intergrid and Indigrid both export tab-indented text.

Can I help?

From the coding and design perspective, I would appreciate open-source involvement. However, at this stage, even though there's a repository awaiting changes, I'm uncomfortable making it public just yet, because licensing is hard and I don't want to get into any sort of legal trouble without at least understanding what I'm dealing with.

Once this and other aspects of open-sourcing the code are dealt with, I'm going to post another update.

If you'd like to support the development financially, you could donate via PayPal.me. The first $5 or so will go to supporting the infrastructure: the monthly hosting payment and 1/12th of the yearly domain name price. (Even though the domain name has been paid for for the next two years, I'd like to be able to host the app reliably. The domain name is directly tied to the data saved – you can't access another website's saved data unless they're on the same main domain – which is why it's important to keep it.)

Check out Intergrid

Some of you have read the Typesetting Markdown blog series (https://dave.autonoma.ca/blog/). The plan was to finish the last two parts with Annotated Text (basically markup for Markdown) and Figure Drawing (MetaPost); however, people have asked for a post on Markdown to EPUB, others have asked for high-quality PDF theme templates using ConTeXt, and some have requested rendering Markdown into HTML.

Within the realm of Markdown, digital documentation, typesetting with ConTeXt, R, externalized interpolated strings, and bash scripting, what would interest you for the next post in the series?

(Please flip through the blog series to see the topics that have been covered.)

I have been noticing a disturbing trend in psychedelic groups lately, in which powerful mind-altering substance are being used for emotional and sexual manipulation -- especially among young and vulnerable demographics. In order to combat the collective trauma resulting from these practices, I am attempting to spread harm reduction information far and wide as it pertains to the subject.

This is one of my more recent articles. It is licensed under CC BY-SA 4.0, in case anyone would like to build off of it. If anyone has constructive criticism or experience, any feedback would be immensely appreciated. Thank you :)

Psychedelics facilitate increased intimacy

There is a tenuous association between psychedelics and cliquey, tribal, or cult-like group behavior. This should be taken seriously, especially in large group whose members bond through regular psychedelic sessions. Psychedelics have a number of potential effects that can make individuals more suggestible, and may occasion rapidly-escalating intimacy:

• facilitate deep feelings of connection to others
• induce dissociation, depersonalization and ego loss
• increase suggestibility, making it easier to impress new beliefs or ideas upon the user
• re-expose the user to potentially traumatic memories
• evoke emotional re-association and object transference, including trust and sexual interest that may not otherwise be present
• invoke religious or metaphysical experiences, that instill a sense of meaning and personal significance
• create a sense of paranoia or suspicion, in part as a result of being involved in a potentially illicit activities
• evoke symptoms of mental illness in vulnerable users, making one reliant on external social and economic support

Not all of these effects guarantee problems, but rather indicate how psychedelics can open users up to remarkably strong bonding. The ability of hallucinogens to connect individuals into family-like organizations is notable, as psychedelic have been foundational to many rituals, communities, and cults through history. In part due to these effects, many psychedelic groups exhibit some degree of organizational eccentricity, marked intimacy, or social drama.

Identifying safe group dynamics

If you need help identifying whether or not an organization exercises exploitative practices, consult the following guidelines on cult behavior and gaslighting. Troublesome psychedelic groups are usually large in size and have organized leadership structure, exhibiting the following qualities (as adapted from the Cult Education Institute’s webpage):

• possessing an egotistical leader of social or creative influence, who may have a record of abusing power or individuals
• a rigidly directed ideology, and excluding or punishing members who do not conform to it
• provoking members who are under the influence of psychedelics, or attempting to selfishly influence the psychedelic integration process of another member
• maintaining a culture of misinformation or fear or threats, in which members are easily excluded or blacklisted
• illicit dealings and in-group abuse that is concealed by a culture of secrecy, including: promoting or selling increasingly risky drugs, sexual or romantic grooming, or the use of psychedelics as “tools of seduction”

Perhaps the best takeaway from the association between psychedelics and cult activity is this: psychedelics have the ability to destabilize and rearrange one’s sense of self, which makes them more susceptible to peer pressure and the influence of others. For users who already are mentally liable or require a secure mindset and setting, it is essential to make sure that they feel in control of their drug use, and have the personal autonomy to ensure their trips are safe and serve personal growth.

The Cult Education Institute’s signs of a safe group/leader are also adapted below:

• can be asked questions without judgement
• discloses ample information such as structural organization/finances
• may have disgruntled former followers, but will not vilify, excommunicate, or forbid others from associating with them
• will not have a record of overwhelmingly negative articles and statements about them
• encourages family communication, community interaction, and existing friendships
• encourages critical thinking, individual autonomy, self-esteem, and personal growth
• leaders admit failings and mistakes, accepts criticism, and follow through on implementing constructive changes
• operates democratically and encourages accountability and oversight
• leader is not be the only source of knowledge excluding everyone else; group values dialogues and the free exchange of ideas
• members and leaders recognize clear emotional, physical, and emotional boundaries when dealing with others

Gaslighting & manipulation tactics

Many of the tactics that both individuals and groups use to manipulate people are examples of gaslighting, or attempts at convincing members that they are somehow mentally compromised in order to control them. This is often done by withholding information from them, invalidating the victim’s experiences, verbal abuse (including jokes), social isolation, trivializing the victim’s worth, and otherwise undermining their thought process. When combined with the suggestion-enhancing properties of psychedelic drugs, these kinds of behavior can be traumatizing to individual victims, while remaining relatively undetected or overlooked by onlookers.

In order to help identify gaslighting by a group, consider if you relate to its effects, as described by Robin Stern in her book The Gaslight Effect:

• constantly second-guessing yourself, feeling confused, or as if something is wrong
• asking yourself “Am I too sensitive?” throughout the day
• frequently apologizing to people who hold power over you, feeling as if you can’t do anything right, or running over things you may have done wrong
• frequently wondering if you are “good enough”
• frequently withholding information from your friends or family so you don’t have to explain the group or make excuses for it
• you lie to group members, to avoid being put down or gaslighted
• paranoia about bringing up innocent conversation topics
• speaking to group leaders through another member, so you don’t have be worry about the leaders becoming upset with you
• making excuses for group members’ behavior to your friends and family
• friends or family try to protect you from the group
• becoming furious with people you used to get along with

If you suspect you have been involved in a psychedelic cult or gaslighted, you may be experiencing regular instability, dissociation, or feelings of uncertainty. Although it can be difficult at first, finding a new group that demonstrates a high degree of member safety and accountability may help rebuild one’s sense of safety and trust. If you shared psychedelic experiences with group members while being taken advantage of, it may be beneficial to seek out a professional psychedelic integration therapist to help emotionally contextualize these memories. Victims may also benefit from adjunct trauma therapies, such as Dialectical Behavioral Therapy (DBT) and Radically-Open DBT, somatic bodywork and movement therapies, therapeutic massage, and other complementary therapy practices.

Sources

Douglas, James. (2017). Inside the bizarre 1960s cult, The Family: LSD, yoga and UFOs. The Guardian. Retrieved from https://www.theguardian.com/film/2017/feb/13/the-family-great-white-brotherhood-australia-melbourne-cult-anne-hamilton-byrne

Evans, P. (1996). The verbally abusive relationship: how to recognize it and how to respond. Expanded 2nd ed. Holbrook, Mass.: Adams Media Corporation.

Mayorga, O. and Smith, P. (2019, May 19). Forgiving psychedelic abusers should never be at the expense of their victims. Psymposia. Retrieved from https://www.psymposia.com/magazine/forgiving-psychedelic-abusers/.

Neiswender, Mary. (1971). Manson Girl’s Acid Trips Detailed. CieldoDrive.com. Retrieved from http://www.cielodrive.com/archive/manson-girls-acid-trips-detailed/.

Ross, Rick. (2014). Warning signs. Cult Education Institute. Retrieved from https://www.culteducation.com/warningsigns.html.

Stern, R. (2007). The gaslight effect: how to spot and survive the hidden manipulations other people use to control your life. New York: Morgan Road Books.

Windolf, Jim. (2007). Sex, drugs, and soybeans. Vanity Fair. Retrieved from https://www.vanityfair.com/news/2007/05/thefarm200705.

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, ...)?

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?

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.

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

I am working on an app called Percent Done that is a combination of goal setting, time tracking and habit tracking.

I like setting time-based goals for myself every day, such as “write for an hour” or “work on Percent Done for four hours.”

I also like Seinfeld’s “don’t break the chain” method. For example, Apple Watch shows you how many days you have completed your exercise circle and tells you that you have been keeping at it for x days.

Percent Done is a marriage of these two concepts. It allows you to set goals and track the time you spend on them, as well as how many days in a row you have consistently completed them. For example, you can add a goal that says “write for an hour every day,” and Percent Done will notify you every day to write for an hour. You will be able to tap on this goal and Percent Done will start counting back from one hour. You will also be able to see how many days in a row you have written for an hour.

Here is a demo GIF.

You can also add one-time goals to Percent Done with or without time tracking, so it is a task management tool as well.

You can play with the design prototype here: Percent Done design prototype

I would really love to get your feedback on this. If you are interested in being a beta tester, feel free to reply to this topic or e-mail me at "hi at evrim dot io."

By the way, this is almost completely a self-promotion post. If it is against the rules, I'd be happy to remove this.

good morning, tildes--this is not a test. we are 496 days and dropping away from possibly the biggest election day in recent american history. we have one opinion piece this week and a number of [LONGFORM] pieces this week. our polling section continues this week as well.

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

News

Polling

• From Emerson (B+ on 538); margin of error +/- 4.5: National poll

Joe Biden continues to hold his announcement bounce, and has gained a point since May – now holding 34% of the vote, followed by Senator Bernie Sanders who moved up 2 points to 27%. Senator Elizabeth Warren has broken away from the rest of those running, into 3rd place – improving from 10% of the vote up to 14%. Senator Kamala Harris comes in fourth with 7%, Mayor Pete Buttigieg is in fifth with 6%, and Senator Cory Booker follows in sixth with 3% of the vote. All other candidates poll at 1%.

• From YouGov (B+ on 538): National poll [PDF Warning]

Biden 26%
Warren 14%
Sanders 13%
Buttigieg 9%
Harris 7%
O'Rourke 4%
Booker 2%
All others 1% or less

General Stuff

• from Vox: 2020 Democrats share plans to fight poverty at presidential forum. this week has been rich with townhalls and events, one of the first of which was the Poor People's Campaign forum, specifically dedicating itself to the issues of low-income Americans and poverty. a number of the perennial one-percenters showed up, as did frontrunners biden, sanders, warren, and harris; in general, the frontrunners took the opportunity to show off their plans where they had them for low-income america, and the one-percenters tried to make a case to voters.
• from FiveThirtyEight: Democratic Candidates Answer Yes-Or-No Questions About Criminal Justice Policy. FiveThirtyEight decided to ask some criminal justice questions of the candidates running, and the results are interesting. the chart summarizing responses to the questions is here. literally the only thing all the candidates who answered agree upon unconditionally is pell grants for prisoners, but everybody basically agrees upon death penalty abolition (ryan, the sole dissenter, wants an exception for terrorists but otherwise does not support it), abolishing cash bail (inslee is the one exception), and marijuana legalization (delaney and klobuchar are the exceptions). inversely, only sanders and gravel support granting prisoners the right to vote; gravel is also the only person who answered in the affirmative to all six questions.
• from NPR: 2020 Democrats Offer Up Affordable Housing Plans Amid Surging Prices. increasing concern with housing prices is driving democratic candidates to seek to tap into a voting base which spans a large part of the electorate. if it seems like not a coincidence that housing is playing a much larger role in this primary than it ever did in 2016, tha's because it is and it's being driven by voter sentiments. "When [Democratic pollster Geoff Garin] asked voters in 2016 if they thought housing affordability was a problem where they lived, 39% said it was a fairly serious or very serious problem. This year, that number is 60%."
• from Vox: [LONGFORM] We asked all the 2020 Democrats how they’d fix child care. Here’s what they said. Vox's second entry in this section sees them asking around about child care policy, which is something that a number of candidates have taken up this year in their campaign planks. their findings are:

universal childcare supporters: warren, sanders, harris, o'rourke, swalwell, klobuchar
tax credit supporters: gillibrand, buttigieg, bennet, moulton, williamson
universal preschool supporters: castro, yang, booker, ryan
other: biden (no stated policy); de blasio (NYC-type program?); hickenlooper ("subsidies on a sliding scale"); bullock ("universal access to voluntary, early childhood education")
did not respond: inslee, gabbard, delaney, messiam

• from POLITICO: The gloves come off in the Democratic primary. the previously amicable primary got mildly spicy this week because of a number of plotlines. last week we of course began the "biden sorta kinda praising segregationists" plotline, for which he drew significant criticism but doubled down inexplicably; earlier in the week we also had the "sanders criticizes warren as corporatist" plotline, which sanders later said was actually directed at a moderate thinktank called third way. now that the veneer of not criticizing other candidates has been worn off, we're probably bound to see some other beefs flair up as the primary goes on.
• from NPR: 8 Political Questions Ahead Of The 1st Democratic Debates. NPR offers up 8 questions for consideration given that tomorrow is the first debate of this long, grueling cycle:

1. Will Biden stand up to the scrutiny?
2. Is the debate an opportunity or danger zone for Bernie Sanders?
3. Does Warren make the most of commanding the stage?
4. Can Harris and Buttigieg stand out?
5. Do the pragmatists or progressives win out?
6. How much of a focus is Trump?
7. How will foreign policy factor in?
8. Who will stick in voters' minds?

Elizabeth Warren

• from POLITICO: Warren emerges as potential compromise nominee. warren has been the biggest beneficiary of the moderate/centrist wing of the democratic party realizing that its influence over the party is waning and that the increasing normal is going to be candidates in the vein of warren and sanders. warren is most likely getting the benefit here for obvious reasons: she self identifies as a capitalist, and sanders for the most part does not. of course, if you actually compare notes on their policies, they're mostly the same, so... not sure this gambit is going to work out?
• from POLITICO: How Sen. Elizabeth Warren would try to ban private prisons. policy wise, warren unveiled a plan this week to ban private prisons. this is pretty straightforward:

Warren would end federal contracts with the Bureau of Prisons and Immigrant and Customs Enforcement (ICE) for detention facilities and private prisons. Warren would try to extend this ban to states and localities as well. In addition, the plan calls for prohibiting contractors from collecting service fees for "essential services" such as phone calls, health care, and bank transfers."

• from the Guardian: Biden stumbles over abortion rights while Warren receives cheers. warren is not the sole focus of this piece, but she ones one of the best received at the planned parenthood forum this week of the candidates that attended (which was nearly all of them). of note:

“This is a democracy. In a democracy, the laws should reflect the values of the people. So I say it is time to go on offense with Roe v Wade. It’s not enough to say we’re going to rely on the courts. We need to pass a federal law to make Roe v Wade the rule of the land.”

Bernie Sanders

• from CNN: Elizabeth Warren's rise opens a new chapter in the progressive primary. although titled for warren, this piece is actually about bernie sanders and how warren's rise in the polls threatens to balkanize the progressive vote between the two of them. it als goes into some details about the controversy over the sanders tweet that was apparently aimed at warren but which sanders said was actually directed toward third way.
• from Vice: Bernie Sanders Wants to Wipe Out All Student Loan Debt. sanders's big coup this week was a plan to eliminate all student loan debt. Vice explains that: "Under the Sanders plan, there would be no eligibility standards — it would cancel 1.6 trillion in undergraduate and graduate debt for all 45 million people who hold it. Sanders would also make public universities, community colleges, and trade schools free." and as for how you pay for it, "Sanders intends to pay for the plan with taxes on Wall Street, namely a 0.5 percent tax on stock transactions and a 0.1 percent tax on bonds. The plan is projected to cost $2.2 trillion over 10 years."

Pete Buttigieg

• from CBS News: Officer-involved shooting remains Pete Buttigieg's biggest 2020 challenge yet. buttigieg has had a rough week dealing with what can really only be described as a complete clusterfuck of a situation. the set-up: "Prosecutors say the officer who killed Logan, Sgt. Ryan O'Neill, was responding to a report of a person breaking into cars when he encountered Logan in an apartment building parking lot. O'Neill told authorities that Logan had a knife, and when he refused the officer's orders to drop it, O'Neill opened fire, shooting Logan in the stomach. Another officer took Logan in a squad car to the hospital, where he later died." no body camera was activated.
• from CBS News: Pete Buttigieg faces South Bend protesters: "You want black people to vote for you — that's not going to happen". unsurprisingly this has not gone over well with some segments of the black community, for which this is a regular occurrence. buttigieg was first confronted with protests prior to the town hall this week which were somewhat tense because of his seeming failure to address the problems in south bend's police department.
• from the LA Times: Black residents of South Bend unload on Mayor Pete Buttigieg. this tension continued into the town hall, where buttigieg was at times roundly criticized by some members of the black population in a town hall that was kind of a train wreck. the town hall was a proxy for some of the broader gripes that members of south bend's black community but also for some of the problems various community members have with each other, and just in general things went badly. buttgieg for the most part was fine, but obviously shaken both in the town hall itself and afterwards when interviewed by CNN.
• from NBC News: Buttigieg learns the hazards of campaigning for president as a mayor. this all has of course gotten buttigieg off message at possibly the worst (or best, depending on how you see it) time on an issue that has not been especially good for him and could potentially jeopardize what little black support he does have.
• miscellany: south bend has basically had everything possible go wrong with it in the past week and change. there was the police shooting which has caused much controversy; there was also a mass shooting which killed one a few days later; most recently, there was also an EF2 tornado which impacted part of the city.

Cory Booker

• from TIME: [LONGFORM] Cory Booker's Moment is Yet to Come. this longform profile of cory booker by TIME goes into the significant efforts of the booker campaign so far to make a splash, and how despite those efforts and a fairly flawless campaign so far, booker has yet to see particularly good poll numbers, even in iowa where he has invested extensively.
• from Vox: Cory Booker has a plan to reform the criminal justice system — without Congress. booker also has some policy on establishing a clemency system unilaterally. "Booker’s plan calls for granting an early release to as many as 17,000 to 20,000 people in federal prison for drug offenses, and establishing a panel within the White House that would make recommendations for more clemency applications in the longer term."

Beto O'Rourke

• from Buzzfeed News: These Donors Helped Give Beto O'Rourke A Historic Start. They're Disappointed With What Happened Next. beto's slip in the polls has not exactly inspired his voterbase. he's not dropping support like flies here as the article makes clear, but at least a vocal portion of his donor base is less than impressed and some of them are seeking to go elsewhere with their money, which is generally not good, especially given that beto is actually polling better than most candidates in the race currently even with his rather bad numbers. it's possible that if this continues, he'll end up in a feedback loop which drags down his candidacy. we'll have to see.
• from USA Today: Beto O’Rourke: From Juneteenth to today, Americans are still on the march for justice. nonetheless, beto is still on the beat, and this week he had an op-ed in USA Today promoting his new voting rights act, which would "crack down on draconian voter ID laws; prevent politically motivated state officials from purging the voter roles to game the system; expand vote-by-mail and early voting; and declare the first Tuesday of every November a national holiday, so no one has to choose between going to work and participating in their democracy."

Andrew Yang

• from NBC News: Some Asian Americans are excited about Andrew Yang. Others? Not so much. andrew yang is an interestingly polarizing character in the asian-american community. while he is getting some of his best funding from them, he also is struggling with winning over many asian americans, which makes his path quite difficult since he doesn't really poll well with any other groups to make up for that.
• from The Baffler: Andrew Yang’s War on Normal People. this article from The Baffler runs through the fairly comprehensive list of criticisms against yang, and especially his proposal for UBI. namely it argues that yang is taking a silicon valley approach to a problem that is decidedly not a silicon valley solvable problem. it also argues that yang, while he has the right rhetoric on paper, his execution both historically and currently falls well flat.

Everyone Else

• from NBC News: Biden doubles down on segregationist comments, says critics like Cory Booker 'should apologize' to him . as mentioned in the last thread, biden's big controversy this week was touting his ability to be bipartisan with segregationists, then doubling down on it and insisting that cory booker apologize for raking him over it. this has gone unresolved as far as i know; booker and biden talked about it at some point during the week but i'm not sure that they actually made up over it. booker refused to apologize to biden in the immediate aftermath of the remark here and really does not have a reason to apologize in the first place.
• from CBS News: Kamala Harris: Concerns about my prosecutorial record are "overblown". kamala harris is finally getting enough heat for her prosecutorial career that she's decided to address it, apparently. harris has previously received large amounts of criticism from the progressive wing of the democratic party but especially leftists for some of her decisions as a prosecutor. harris has expressed regret for some of the policies that she helped enact and uphold, but in general she is fairly unrepentant about her record, as seen here.
• from NBC News: Julián Castro wants to transform housing assistance for poor, give renters tax credits. julian castro has some housing policy: "[Castro] wants to transform the housing assistance program, known as Section 8, into a fully funded entitlement program — a reference to federal safety net programs such as Social Security. In addition, Castro called for a refundable tax credit for low- and middle-income renters if their rent exceeds 30 percent of their income."
• from POLITICO: Michael Bennet pushes sweeping plan to remake political system. michael bennet has some political reforms he'd like to pass, which include "a constitutional amendment to overturn Citizens United, a lifetime ban on members of Congress becoming lobbyists, a prohibition on political gerrymandering and a push for ranked choice voting. Bennet is also supporting a laundry list of long-desired Democratic reforms, including automatic voter registration, D.C. statehood and greater transparency around super PAC fundraising and spending." most of this is fairly stock for democrats, but some of it is not.
• from CBS News: Joe Sestak, former congressman and 3-star admiral, joins 2020 presidential race. another rando, joe sestak, decided to cast his lot in. sestak was a representative of pennsylvania's house delegation for a number of years before trying and failing to run for senate twice. he is democrat number 25 to enter the race.

Opinions

• from the Guardian: The secret to Elizabeth Warren's surge? Ideas. our sole opinion piece this week comes from the Guardian, and argues that the rise of elizabeth warren in the polls is driven by her unrelenting torrent of policies and willingness to treat voters as if they can understand that policy instead of watering it down.

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

good morning, tildes--this is not a test. we are 503 days and dropping away from possibly the biggest election day in recent american history. no opinion pieces this week, but we do have a number of [LONGFORM] pieces this week. our polling section is large this week, and donald makes his first entry onto the TWIEN scene with his formal reelection campaign's kickoff today.

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

Week 1 • Week 2 • Week 3 • Week 4 • Week 5 • Week 6 • Week 7 • Week 8 • Week 9 • Week 10 • Week 11 • Week 12

News

Polling

• from Fox News (A+ on 538): Fox News National Poll 6/16:

Biden 49 - 39 Trump
Sanders 49 - 40 Trump
Harris 42 - 41 Trump
Warren 43 - 41 Trump
Buttigieg 41 - 40 Trump

• from Ipsos/Daily Beast (N/A on 538): Ipsos/Daily Beast National Poll 6/17 [PDF warning]:

Biden 46 - 35 Trump
Sanders 47 - 35 Trump
Harris 41 - 35 Trump
Warren 42 - 36 Trump
Klobuchar 34 - 36 Trump
Buttigieg 34 - 36 Trump

• from Quinnipiac: 6/18 Florida Presidential Poll:

Biden 50 - Trump 41
Sanders 48 - Trump 42
Warren 47 - Trump 43
Harris 45 - Trump 44
O’Rourke 45 - Trump 44
Buttigieg 44 - Trump 43

• from NBC News: Trump campaign cutting ties with pollsters after internal numbers leaked:

In Wisconsin, Pennsylvania, Florida and Michigan [...] Trump trails Biden by double-digits. In three of those states — Wisconsin, Pennsylvania and Florida — Biden’s leads sit outside the poll’s margin of error.
Trump is also behind the former vice president in Iowa by 7 points, in North Carolina by 8 points, in Virginia by 17 points, in Ohio by 1 point, in Georgia by 6 points, in Minnesota by 14 points, and in Maine by 15 points.
In Texas, where a Democratic presidential nominee hasn’t won since President Jimmy Carter in 1976, Trump leads by just 2 points.

• from the Texas Tribune: Trump’s reelection support is 50-50 in Texas, Biden and O’Rourke lead the Democrats, UT/TT Poll says:

Half of the registered voters in Texas would vote to reelect President Donald Trump, but half of them would not, according to the latest University of Texas/Texas Tribune Poll.
Few of those voters were wishy-washy about it: 39% said they would “definitely” vote to reelect Trump; 43% said they would “definitely not” vote for him. The remaining 18% said they would “probably” (11%) or “probably not” (7%) vote to give Trump a second term.

General Stuff

• from Buzzfeed News: [LONGFORM] People In Flint Are Still In Crisis. They Want Presidential Candidates To See Them As More Than A Rallying Cry. the people of flint, long used to being a stopover location for prospective presidential candidates, are seeking to be something a little more this year as the city continues to try and recover from its massive infrastructural problems. flint has been a national issue since 2016; some of you may remember that both clinton and sanders debated there during that cycle, and donald trump also stopped over. so far this cycle though, only one candidate has stopped in the city--julian castro, who incidentally has a plan to eliminate lead poisoning. we're still quite early in the cycle, of course, so this is likely to change, but the question is worth asking whether or not it'll be anything extensive.
• from Alternet: ‘Storm of a century’: Why voter turnout in 2020 might be nothing like we’ve ever seen. we're still quite a ways out but there is already extensive speculation that based on the 2018 midterms and the continued, extremely polarizing presidency of donald that 2020 could be the highest turnout election since 2008 (61%), or perhaps even 1960 (63%). this would most likely require about 156 million ballots to be cast, compared to the 139 million cast in 2016.
• from POLITICO: Dems take red state detours to prove 2020 electability. a fair amount has already been said of the trend of democratic candidates going to places that they don't ordinarily go to in presidential cycles, which is the crux of this article. democratic candidates are taking the opportunity to go places that have never seen presidential candidates before, and while it's not going to win deep red states obviously, it suggests that maybe the democratic party is finally readopting something resembling the 50 state strategy.
• from Vox: A new poll shows how sexism and electability collide in 2020. one of the things that could genuinely be holding back the female candidates in this race is sexism--but not voter sexism, interestingly. for you see, the problem confronting female candidates this year is not necessarily voter opinions on whether a woman can be president per se, but voter's perceptions of other voters' opinions on the subject: "Only 33 percent of voters surveyed believed their neighbors would be comfortable with a woman in the Oval Office, despite 74 percent saying they themselves would be comfortable with a woman president." this, vox argues here, basically leads to the electability argument kinda fucking women over.
• from Vox: Young voters of color are supporting Joe Biden and Bernie Sanders. But many want a different candidate. emphasizing how early we are in this, it's worth noting that many candidates are being buoyed in part by name recognition currently, particularly biden and sanders. they of course have solid bases, but a lot of people are defaulting to people they know since it's early, and in the next few months those people might start shopping around for other candidates.
• from Vox: Why the Democratic Party doesn’t want a presidential debate about climate change. the longest lasting of the controversies surrounding the democratic debate series continues. the ostensible reason for this: "Perez said that even without a climate change-specific debate, it will be an issue that’s impossible to ignore. “I have the utmost confidence that, based on our conversations with networks, climate change will be discussed early and often during our party’s primary debates,” he wrote."

Donald Trump

• from the Guardian: Can lightning strike twice? Trump set to launch 2020 campaign. donald trump formally launches his reelection campaign today in orlando, florida. focuses of his campaign are all but guaranteed to be economy, national security, and immigration; how well he sticks to these given his inability to tout them effectively in 2018 remains to be seen, of course. socialism also seems like it's shaping up to be a part of donald's reelection message, and he may be preparing to relitigate the 2017 healthcare fight as well.

Joe Biden

• from NBC News: Biden's 'Back to the Future' dilemma. joe biden has an interesting issue: the crux of his appeal is based in the past, but so are most of the criticisms of him. the source of most of the things that make people like him are obviously rooted in the obama administration and his extensive legislative and senate career, but his past also leaves him open to attack because it leaves a lot to be desired. NBC offers some observations: "Biden is finding out that William Faulkner's observation applies to presidential politics: The past is never dead; it's not even past. To win, he may have to figure out how to get past his past."
• from VICE: Biden Has an Aggressive Plan to Force China to Go Green. policy-wise, biden's climate plan has some interesting international features. per VICE, "It promises that as president, “Biden will rally a united front of nations to hold China accountable to high environmental standards in its Belt and Road Initiative infrastructure projects so that China can’t outsource pollution to other countries.”" this is not really a feature in any other candidate's plans, it is worth noting.
• from CNN: Biden slams critics of working with GOP: 'Why don't you all go home then, man?'. biden is trying to play up the bipartisanship argument, probably against better judgment. while other candidates have stumped on the idea of nuking the filibuster in the senate and using executive orders to pass their policies instead of trying to ram things through the senate at all, biden takes a consensus line: "The fact of the matter is, if we can't get a consensus, nothing happens except the abuse of power by the executive. Zero." in the event that biden somehow cannot make this work, he intends to "[...]go out and beat these folks if they don't agree with you, by making your case -- and that's what presidents are supposed to do: Persuade the public."

Bernie Sanders

• from CBS News: Sanders defends democratic socialism, calling for "21st Century Bill of Rights". the capstone of sanders's past week was his speech on democratic socialism, where he doubled down on being a democratic socialist, framing it somewhat in the image of FDR and the new deal. sanders also called for a 21st century bill of rights though, as the article title notes. this bill of rights "would establish that every American, regardless of income, has a right to a job with a living wage, health care, education, affordable housing, a clean environment and a secure retirement." (see also In These Times: Bernie Sanders Has Laid Out the Stakes of the 2020 Election: Democratic Socialism or Barbarism; Truthout: Bernie Sanders Proposes New Economic Bill of Rights)
• from Left Voice: Sanders’ Speech Explains His Vision of Socialism—It Sounds a Lot like New Deal Liberalism. not everybody on the left is per se thrilled with sanders's speech, however. left voice criticizes sanders here for essentially jacking new deal liberalism and presenting it as democratic socialism instead of providing an actual alternative to the capitalist system we live in. this is not unfounded--sanders is basically doing that, honestly---but as a matter of practice it's something of a hollow criticism, as a genuinely anti-capitalist or socialist platform is almost certainly not viable at the national level currently.

Elizabeth Warren

• from Vox: Elizabeth Warren isn’t Hillary Clinton. this piece by Vox is one-part modification of an interview ezra klein did with elizabeth warren, one-part putting warren in a broader context as a candidate. warren, in klein's view, is not hillary because where hillary had many plans with many messages, warren has many plans which all reinforce a singular message. warren, weirdly enough, seems to also basically agree with sanders on most things? bu she also won't define herself as anything bernie does.
• from Reuters: Democrat Warren wants 7 billion fund to give grants to minority entrepreneurs. warren has a small plan to promote minority entrepreneurs by "creating a $7 billion fund to provide grants to help more minorities start their own business" which she would pay for with her ultra-millionaire tax (see also: Warren Medium post; Mother Jones: Elizabeth Warren Just Unveiled a Plan to Close the Racial Wealth Gap).
• from Mother Jones: Elizabeth Warren Has a Plan for Winning the White House, and Right Now It’s Working. despite an early fumbling over the extremely dumb native american story, warren has remained incredibly consistent to her election plan, which is paying off quite well for her so far. she has of course been rising in the polls and gaining significant media attention, and now seems likely to overtake sanders if sanders continues to stagnate in the polls.

Kamala Harris

• from Buzzfeed News: Kamala Harris Has A Network Of Black Sorority Sisters Mobilizing For Her In The South. one advantage kamala harris has going for her organization wise is sorority sisters. harris is a member of the Alpha Kappa Alpha sorority, the oldest (greek letter) sorority for black females in america, and as it happens that is a very convenient for campaign organizing. harris is fairly distant from the front runners in the south currently, polling only around 8% in south carolina (biden is polling at 40%!), so she'll probably take every volunteer she can get. harris's campaign in fact identifies the sorority connection as one of the keys to sucessful organization in the south as of now.
• from the Atlantic: Kamala Harris’s Mistake. harris is not without criticism this week, of course. some people are not very appreciative of her statement on the DoJ most likely having no choice but to prosecute donald in a post-trump presidency because it reeks too much of some sort of effort to create an illiberal democracy, or some similar criticism like that.

Pete Buttigieg

• from POLITICO: Pete Buttigieg raised staggering $7 million in April alone. despite stalling in the polls, pete buttigieg is still raising fairly large amounts of money (in part because of his continued appeal to some liberals, but also probably because he is apparently one of the favorite sons of many wall street types); it is worth bearing in mind though that we currently do not have anybody to compare this against besides biden, who has supposedly raised 19.8 million according to basic math. it's entirely possible that buttigieg is on the short end of the stick. we'll have to see.
• from CNN: Buttigieg cancels top-dollar California fundraisers to focus on officer-involved shooting in South Bend. buttigieg also had to cancel appearances at a number of events this week to handle an officer-involved shooting that took place in south bend this week. this move has mostly been praised, but i imagine will be under a decent amount of scrutiny given that buttigieg is running for president and will, if he wins, have to address things like this on a national level.

Everybody Else

• from POLITICO: Julián Castro in Fox News town hall: Let’s talk about me, not Hillary. julian castro was the latest candidate to have a fox news town hall, at which he rebuked the network's efforts to tie everybody to hillary clinton (and also rebuked efforts to talk about really any other candidate actually in the primary). castro also doubled down quite significantly on his plans for immigration and in his criticisms of donald trump, despite the conservative audience at home.
• from CNN: Amy Klobuchar joins Democrats calling for impeachment proceedings. amy klobuchar, the other other female candidate, became the latest democrat to call for impeachment proceedings that is running for president. this brings the total number of candidates in favor of impeachment proceedings up to about a dozen, according to CNN.
• from the Atlantic: This Isn’t Going According to Plan for Kirsten Gillibrand. kirsten gillibrand's mighty, shambaholic campaign continues to get press--but most likely not for the reasons she'd want. last week i had an article on how she's used to uphill battles, but in this case it seems like she picked off a battle that is entirely too much for her abilities as a skilled campaigner, because her polling remains incredibly bad. her one solace is she's made the first debate, but that's about it. that, i think, is really her last chance to start rising in the polls before she's going to be relegated to perennial 1%er status the rest of the way.
• from POLITICO: How Rep. Eric Swalwell would tackle gun violence in America. eric swalwell has a plant to tackle gun violence. it is quite straightforward, and "includes banning assault weapons, instituting a gun buyback program and requiring licenses for all gun owners." he also says he "would hold weapon manufacturers responsible by “lifting the shield of liability that protects” them" and wants insurance to be a part of gun licensing.
• from New York Magazine: [LONGFORM] Tulsi Gabbard Had a Very Strange Childhood, which may help explain why she’s out of place in today’s Democratic Party. And her long-shot 2020 candidacy. this piece by NYMag is an extensive profile of possibly the second most odd candidate running in the primary and perennial 1%er tulsi gabbard, the congresswoman for hawaii's second congressional district, noted "progressive" candidate, apparent hindu nationalist, and supposed assad apologist. gabbard is an interesting candidate mostly because of her own incredibly unique past, but also because of the incredibly odd people she brings together to form her 1% coalition that polls just behind yang but just ahead of williamson, usually (that coalition being progressive types, hindu nationalists, intellectual dark web dogwhistlers, and more).
• from CBS News: Marianne Williamson on bringing spirituality back into politics. marianne williamson, who is arguably the weirdest candidate of the cycle ahead of gabbard, takes a very interesting line of approach to the campaign, which i think i'll just quote directly: "The problem [with politics] is with an over-corporatized, over-secularized political conversation so disconnected from values, so disconnected from issues of moral and ethical responsibility, as to have broken itself off of the major river of American thought and American life. That's why so many people can't relate to it." interestingly, williamson also supports a 200-500 bllion dollar reparations package.
• from Vox: [LONGFORM] Andrew Yang is promising to revitalize America. His nonprofit tried, too, but couldn’t. andrew yang is running on a platform of revitalizing america among other things, but his record on the issue suggests he might have a hard time messaging on that. as Vox reports, yang intended to create 100,000 jobs through venture for america, but VFA has failed to create even 4,000 "jobs" so far. given that VFA is sorta kinda a model for yang's campaign, this does leave a number of questions up in the air.

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

I'm in too much of a left-wing echo chamber, to the point where anything conservative or right wing appears to be 'evil' or not necessarily purely right-wing. For example, conservatives generally promote family values and the family as the foundational unit of a society. But this too often gets grouped together with same/opposite sex marriage arguments. Another point is small government, but that often manifests in deregulation in areas where regulation is now necessary (e.g. environment).

So, what does it mean to be an ethical right-winger today and in the next decade?

Do you believe that some cultures/societies are more 'civilized' than others? What is your definition of 'civilized' / what does it mean to be 'civilized'?
~
If you've studied history and/or anthropology then surely you've heard many uses of the term "savages" to describe groups of people that were considered to be less 'civilized' than whomever was writing that piece.
I was also just reading a book that described in detail some of the really horrible war crimes committed by both sides in the Sri Lankan civil war including but not limited to: raging mobs burning people alive, murder and rape of civilians, use of child soldiers, suicide bombers, etc. Please note that in no way am I considering the people of Sri Lanka as 'uncivilized', just using an example of what seems to be 'uncivilized' behavior.

An initial thought that I had was "huh, I'm glad I don't currently live somewhere where I could be burned alive based on my ethnicity/religion/beliefs by a rage fueled mob of people", but then the history of the western world came to mind - some of those exact same thing happened less than 100 years ago to many non-white groups of people in America, including some things even worse (read: human slavery). From here came a flood of other thoughts poking holes in whatever my initial definition of 'civilized' was. Plenty of things in present-day United States could be considered uncivilized. Yet one could make an argument that a more 'civilized' civilization might be one that allows many personal freedoms.

So, I want to ask all of you what you think of the concept of being 'civilized'. Is it a colonialistic-type term used to promote a higher sense of placement in the world that should be abolished. Does it have any merit in its use? If so, what do you think makes a civilized group of people and does one exist?

Youtube has a giant lead in the online video streaming market and in spite of many controversies (demonetization, click bait being promoted to peoples' front pages, etc.) there doesn't seem to be any indication that this is going to change. What do you think about the future of this industry? Which (if any) providers have a chance to become viable competitors to YouTube?

My premise is that you genuinely want to help the company and the next person who moves into your old position. Maybe you got a promotion, or you found an even-better job. In any case, you want the old coworkers to succeed, and you want to make a smooth transition.

So there’s a few pieces to this:

• What do you do when you leave a job?

• What have other people done, when they left/moved on, that gave you the knowledge and skills you needed to excel?

• What did they NOT provide that you wish they had?

It’d be easy for me to focus on “what did you do” but none of us know how successful that was. So tell me, rather, about your experience as the person picking up the reins. What did that teach you about the process?

Anecdotes welcome! (And tell me how to refer to you in the article. Private is fine.)

I had this idea for a phone that would be a feature phone, but with a Google or an Alexa powered assistant so it could have most of the functionality of an newer phone, but not as many avenues to become lost within it. Probably wouldn't be that big of a market for it, but going off of that idea, what sort of changes would you like in phones to promote less mindless engagement sessions and allow users to better manage their own time. Is this more the responsibility of the end user to manage their own time, or can more be done at an OEM, GUI, or otherwise have these functionalities baked into the phone?

Oof Grandma... Get your head out of your ass woman.(This is in Jest, Grandma knows and thought it was funny. ya'll chill)* Where are you getting your news lately because I just sent you an article from our national news organization and you just told me you can't believe it... Why?

We live and love in the beautiful free country of Canada and despite any individual political leader, we can find comfort in the fact that we have many elected officials that listen to their constituents and ultimately intend to better the lives for our nation. Canada is a mighty developed country and she has designated important bodies to help protect us from the wolves that prey on the weak. We have the CBC a nationally funded non profit organization that has authorship and integrity to the journalists they hire and a long history of helping the truth and redacting and outright dismissing disinformation (now more commonly called fake news). In this article I've sent you, it has sources directly involved in the measles outbreak, including doctors who are licensed through a board that verifies their integrity and ethics and authority in medicine. Also sourced is the CDC; another body that was appointed by Canada herself to keep her citizens healthy and safe, these are not groups of scientists with a vested interest to lie to anyone as that would jeopardize the safety to our entire nature... Yet these highly educated and well funded scientists are refuting your hypothesis grandma.

I think in order to understand what is happening here we need to both step back and ground ourselves in a neutral territory towards a scholarly pursuit and work towards the advancement of our society. To do this we need to frame our perspective to that of a scholar to which I think you and I both agree we are proud to call ourselves anyway. Me, a university student and you an independent researcher: truth be told, as a student of an organization like Ryerson, I have access to a wider breadth of knowledge in our online resources and databases of peer reviewed articles that I can search through with ease, but our goal will be the same and can be achieved only if you think critically with everything you read - you seem well versed in this regard so kudos let's proceed.

As a critical thinker and scholar we are nothing without our authority which is provided through our knowledge-base in factual information. I don't need to be an expert in biology, medicine, or even journalism to be able to have confidence in reading the news article I sent you; but as a scholar I have the ability to verify the authority to the people making the claims in the article. Every person involved in a professionally investigated article are sourced and cited and provide proof to their authority. It's why the CBC discloses their journalists and is also why they'll happily fire them if they fuck up - their integrity is on the line - same with every scientist working for the CDC. Canada does not have a vested interest in the perpetuation of fake news and disinformation, this isn't fucking Russia! (or the U.S. for that matter - Fox news is GOP run television FYI).

This is critical thinking and needs to be understood before you assume authority to the Facebook posts you read. Think of the platform you are getting your news from - Facebook: an American company with a vested interest in advertising to its users. They are NOT a news agency and have zero regulation in verifying the authority of authorship. Anyone can write any shit they like, and the more clicks they get, the more money Facebook makes. In-fact they will happily sell any message you like so long as you're willing to pay for it. I can post just about anything under the guise of "free speech" so long as it does not contain "hate speech" (technically a crime in Canada) and then pay Facebook a couple hundreds of dollars to get that post higher up on my friend's walls. It's how their platform works and regardless of whether a post has been promoted by Facebook themselves or not they are in the business of clicks. In this age of terrorism and fear mongering, the posts, articles, links, and videos that induce the most controversy and fear will gain the most clicks - this is human nature! Facebook doesn't care, they got their money as they are now one of the largest messaging services in the world, second only to WeChat which is a government controlled chinese messaging app linked to their social credit system meant to repress their citizens... hmm...

As Canadian philosopher Marshall McLuhan famously said in his thesis Understanding Media, “For any medium has the power of imposing its own assumption on the unwary… But the greatest aid to this end is simply in knowing that the spell can occur immediately upon contact, as in the first bars of a melody.” unfortunately the advent of social media has only perpetuated the scaling of the media, the importance of the messages, and the shallow knowledge-base of its users to apply the unwary en masse.

To quote a larger bit of McLuhan to drive this point home:

“The American stake in literacy as a technology or uniformity applied to every level of education, government, industry, and social life is totally threatened by the electric technology. The threat of Stalin or Hitler was external. The electric technology is within the gates, and we are numb, deaf, blind, and mute about its encounter with the Gutenberg technology, on and through which the American way of life was formed. It is, however, no time to suggest strategies when the threat has not even been acknowledged to exist. I am in the position of Louis Pasteur telling doctors that their greatest enemy was quite invisible, and quite unrecognized by them.” (McLuhan was a man before his time., this was written in 1954) “For the “content” of a medium is like the juicy piece of meat carried by the burglar to distract the watchdog of the mind. The effect of the medium is made strong and intense just because it is given another medium as “content.” The content of a movie is a novel or a play or an opera.
The effect of the movie form is not related to its program content. The “content” of writing or print is speech, but the reader is almost entirely unaware either of print or of speech.”

Do not kid yourself, social media is no different than any other media. The content of the message is NOT the message. Who is posting the dribble and fake news and WHY? understand the author and their authority and you will begin to think critically again. You wouldn't pick up a history book without knowing who authored it would you? Facts are facts, and fake-news is disinformation by another name.

Now to return to our CBC article about measles and your claim that there is a connection to the MMR vaccine which has the potential to cause autism (despite how fucking stupid this shit is, I'll entertain your hypothesis for a moment).

1. Where are your critical sources and statistics to prove any semblance to propose such an outlandish hypothesis? Because I can't seem to find any real ones in my databases here and every time I've asked you for your proof you've failed to provide any.

2. If the vaccine were to cause autism you accept that there is a chance this vaccine may put a child at harms risk. The reality is you are saying you'd rather risk your child potentially getting a deadly disease and potentially becoming maimed and permanently injured through contact with the disease and worse contaminating others and spreading the harmful pathogens to others just out of fear of potentially could get autism... again, supported without any fact or evidence? Janet's post from Antivax-moms facebook group is non an authority of fact and no medical body has rightfully confirmed a case of autism to the MMR vaccine... so where is our proof again? Big-vaccine is out to give autism to our children?

3. By not immunizing your children you are immorally upholding your child's life over that of your nations and against those you interact with on a day to day basis. You are no longer in a small town - we are a massive country with very loose borders so we can invite friends and family to visit. But when we don't protect our basecamp, the wolves will get in. That goes for fake news just as much as it goes for measles. We already have guards on duty to protect our children, our sick, our immune deficient elders and infants from harmful diseases. These treatments work and you and I are the proof in the pudding. Where is this form of tribalism coming from where you would rather "protect" from autism but not measles, mumps, and rubella? These are the wolves we must fight, and we can't let our guard down just because a post of Facebook has a few thousand clicks.

We are in the age of disinformation and globalization, whether we like it or not there are a select few who are controlling the messages we perpetuate online. Unfortunately it's the confusion and lack of authority to the messages that has guided us towards a harmful future that is now killing children all over the world.
https://medium.com/the-method/anti-vaccination-is-killing-children-in-europe-658415c54a04

stop spreading misinformation and think critically. You are better than that... you are a scholar!

I love you, and I hope you take this to heart.

EDIT*
Seeing that the post was more appropriately moved to ~talk I'm hoping I can start a bit more of a dialogue that has unraveled from talking with the rest of my family. I told my internal family about my conversation with Grandma which we've all had by now, we bring fact, she still isn't sure there isn't a bigger picture that she isn't seeing. She's been fed too many stories to really believe the true ones. How are we meant to respond to this? My dad kinda pissed me off, he said it's like pushing on rope and said it wasn't even worth the effort - especially since someone like my Grandmother doesn't intend to have anymore children and all her family members are well ingrained in the Ontario health system... despite his position, we get issues where families are believing information and causing significant harm to our society... what do?

My bad argument style aside, has anyone else felt like they've been pushing on rope lately?

First of all, I want to apologise for the delay of this weekly post. Yesterday I did not have the time to write it, because with the inclusion of the Nations League it would have taken me time I did not have.
With that being said, here are last week national and international results:

UEFA Nations League - Matchweek 5-6

The four group winners of League A qualify for the Nations League Finals in June 2019:
Netherlands, Switzerland, Portugal, England

The following teams are promoted to a higher league:
B->A Ukraine, Sweden, Bosnia & Erzegovina, DenmarK
C->B Scotland, Finland, Norway, Serbia
D->C Georgia, Belarus, Kosovo, FYR Macedonia

The following teams are relegated to a lower league:
A->B Germany, Iceland, Poland, Croatia
B->C Slovakia, Turkey, Northern Ireland, Ireland
C->D Estonia, Slovenia, Cyprus, Lithuania

English Premier League - Matchweek 13

LaLiga - Matchweek 13

Serie A - Matchweek 13

Bundesliga - Matchweek 12

Ligue 1 - Matchweek 14

Hi there. It seems that minimalist and zero waste movements have picked up some steam recently in many first world countries as a reaction to the consumerist, greed-based lifestyles promoted and upon realisation of our impact on the world. As an aspiring zero waste minimalist and general conversationalist, I am interested in your opinions, so I'll bombard you with some questions.

Do any of you lead a minimalist or zero waste life, or are you aspiring to or making the transition right now?

What is your opinion of the movements?

Are you opposed to the lifestyles?

Why are you/do you want to be minimalist or create zero waste?

What is minimalism to you?

Are you a minimalist in some or all parts of your life?

What challenges did you run into when making the changes, and how did you overcome them?

Is there anything you recommend to those who are still just aspiring?

Does minimalism imply frugality?

Do you have anything else to add?

I admittedly didn't reread the docs, but a search for "self" showed no results.

EDIT
a search for "self-promotion", and not "self promotion", pointed me to this previous thread:
https://tildes.net/~tildes.official/3i5/daily_tildes_discussion_approaches_to_self_promotion

OC from me when I was a college student. Also a good excuse to watch some cartoons and call it study ;-P Mods - feel free to move this if this isn't the appropriate sub. Thanks!

Who Has the Power? He-Man and the Masters of Marketing

Once upon a time the sole purpose of children’s television was to educate. But this changed in the 1980s when the Federal Communications Commission refused to enforce a ban on children’s programming tied to commercial products. Mattel took advantage of this to market a line of toys with their show He-Man and the Masters of the Universe. This was the crown jewel of the toy-based children’s programming in the 1980s and made Mattel over a billion dollars in revenue from toys and accessories. The program sparked controversy over marketing and violence in children’s programming.

The F.C.C. and Deregulation
In 1969 the F.C.C. found that the ABC children’s show Hot Wheels to be nothing more than an episode-length commercial for the Mattel product. The commission banned product-based programs saying that they are not designed to entertain or inform the public (New York Times, February 3, 1986). This regulation was enforced throughout most of the 1970s, but the F.C.C.’s position on children’s programming changed drastically during the 1980s to become market-driven. By 1986 this change was explicit when F.C.C. Chairman Mark Fowler told the New York Times that “‘The public’s interest determines the public interest.’”
Fowler had replaced Charles D. Ferris as chairman when President Reagan took office. Ferris had been a proponent for government-mandated children’s programming aimed at specific age groups (New York Times, July 25, 1982). Ferris said in the article:

We are well aware that it is not in the economic interest of the broadcasters to aim this kind of programming at an audience amounting to 16 to 18 percent of the population- age 12 and younger- but if the obligation falls evenly on all, then no one is particularly disadvantage.

For 27 years Captain Kangaroo served this function for CBS, but in July 1982 it went off the air leading New York Times reporter Holsendolph to ask “how could the situation reach a point where no children’s fair is regularly scheduled on weekdays on the commercial networks?” Like Ferris, Holsendolph did not realize that the door was being opened for commercialism. But Bob Keeshan, aka Captain Kangaroo, had an idea of what was coming, “‘Frankly, I think the needs of our nation’s children are just too important to be left to the networks and their profit motives, or to Mark Fowler’s market concept.’” With Fowler’s F.C.C. backing off from enforcing bans and also calling for deregulation of the industry, the market was ripe for the picking and the toy-maker Mattel was ready and waiting.

Marketing to Children
Before the popular show He-Man and the Masters of the Universe ever existed, the toys were designed and sold starting in 1982. He-Man was not the creation of a lone artist at Mattel but rather the product of marketing research. According to a People Weekly article by Carl Arrington, the research began as a response to the highly profitable Kenner Star Wars action figures. Mattel conducted 17 studies on everything from boys’ play habits to the preferred hair color of the hero (blond). Mattel examined such classic works as Joseph Campbell’s Hero with a Thousand Faces to develop archetypes for the characters. The characters were given a fantastic flair because the research indicated a preference for high-fantasy and made it easy to capitalize off of the success of the Star Wars toy line.

The first toys came with mini-comic books that explained some of the background behind the characters. Originally, He-Man was a wandering barbarian similar to Arnold Schwarzenegger’s character in Conan the Barbarian but this changed as the toy-line evolved. The toys were priced around $5 apiece and the accessories ranged between $20 and $40. Mattel eventually made 70 characters and urged kids to collect them all.

He-Man and the Masters of the Universe first aired in September 1983. Prior to that almost all children’s shows were on the networks (ABC, NBC and CBS), but with the number of independent TV stations tripling since 1972, a new market had opened up. He-Man took advantage of this by airing on 166 independent networks. The toy companies shared the cost of the programs with the producers. The producers then made a deal with a syndicator, who traded air time with the station managers for the use of the show. The syndicator then sold some of the air time to advertisers and funneled the cash back to the producer. Many independent TV stations also received a cut of the toy profits for airing a show, a practice the F.C.C. condoned (New York Times, February 3, 1986).

Many critics called the show “a program-length advertisement” for the toys. The Boston-based Action for Children’s Television, who lamented the end of Captain Kangaroo and advocated a government mandate to ensure children’s programming earlier in the decade, was infuriated that the F.C.C. had allowed the market to determine children’s programming. They said that programs based on toys constituted a commercial. Peggy Charren, the group’s president, said “‘What makes matters worse is that most of the products are being advertised on children’s television as well, making it hard to distinguish between product and programming.’” The president of the National Association of Broadcasters, Edward O. Fritts, said that the complaints were “‘an outrageously shortsighted and overly idealistic approach,’” and he added that the industry had made incredible progress in children’s programming (New York Times, October 12, 1983). Dr. William H. Dietz, chairman of the American Academy of Pediatrics’ task force on children and television, also opposed the programs. “‘They sell a product while claiming to be entertainment. And kids don’t know the difference. It is unfair and deceptive advertising. It is unethical to do that, in my opinion,’” said Dietz (New York Times, February 3, 1986).

The Success of the Show and the Toys
The show became the No. 1 children’s program in America and was aired five days a week, something that had never before happened with a children’s program. Besides the 166 U.S. stations that aired the show, 37 foreign countries were invaded by He-Man. It quickly became a favorite of boys age 4 to 8, but around 30 percent of the viewers were female, according to the show’s executive producer Lou Scheimer (New York Times, December 18, 1984). He-Man had 9 million viewers after only 15 months on the air, wrote Patricia Blake in a 1985 Time Magazine article.

The show was a cultural phenomenon and parents everywhere were berated with demands for the toys from their children. Paula Higgins recalled how her son wanted the toys so badly that she took him to five toy stores in search of the He-Man action figure. She noted in her New York Times column that “He-Man and company have an advantage over their Star Wars counterparts, [because] they are on a cartoon five afternoons a week, every week.” Although she approved of the cartoon she did not like the marketing. She wrote “I also know I do not like what is happening, but this is all new territory for us. Our son has never got caught up in this kind of advertising hype before” (New York Times, April 29, 1984).

In 1984, Mattel had sold $500 million in toys and another $500 million in other merchandise, such as He-Man toothbrushes, underwear, lunchboxes and bed sheets. That year the toys were so popular that Mattel had to hire freight airliners rather than ships to get the toys over from Hong Kong, Japan, Taiwan, Malaysia, and Mexico to meet demand (New York Times, December 18, 1984). This was just the beginning of a wave of toy-based cartoons such as G.I. Joe: A Real American Hero, the Transformers and the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles.

Violence and Morals
The 1980s was also a decade of concern about violence on television and most particularly violence in children’s programming. The National Coalition on Television Violence found that the new Walt Disney cable network was showing cartoons that contain violence unsuitable for children. They stated that 19.3 violent acts were shown in Disney cartoons each hour (New York Times, April 23, 1984). Disney’s cartoons paled in comparison to the violence in the military themed shows. Children’s shows like Rambo and G.I. Joe were at the center of the violence debate, but He-Man was not exempt. The He-Man show sparked debate among concerned parents who feared its extreme popularity spread violent play. At a viewing of He-Man at the Christ Church Day Care, Peggy Marble, a mother, said that she was concerned the show promoted violence and “unusually aggressive play” (New York Times, December 12, 1985).

Filmation, the studio that produced He-Man, hired Stanford University Communications Professor Donald Roberts as an educational consultant to ensure that the popular show kept the violence to a minimum. Roberts said that none of the characters get killed or seriously hurt, in a Time Magazine article by Patricia Blake. Furthermore, Roberts said that He-Man deplores violence and thus the battle scenes are “‘really anti-battle scenes.’” To combat the charges of violence that were occurring within the industry, the He-Man program also incorporated a moral message at the end of every show, much like another popular show of the time, G.I. Joe: A Real American Hero. Filmation President and He-Man Producer Lou Scheimer defended the show by saying that they have done episodes addressing drugs, child molestation and gun control (New York Times, December 12, 1985).

A 1982 National Institute of Mental Health study found that violence on TV was directly related to children’s violent behavior off-screen. Dr. Jerome L. Singer, professor of psychology at Yale University, said “‘It is true that some shows, like He-Man, have a kind of moral. But our observations of young children have been that they don’t get it. What we have noticed is that the play with toys like He-Man tends to be rather aggressive’” (New York Times, December 12, 1985).

Conclusion
The debate over toy-based programming continued longer than the popularity of Mattel’s He-Man, whose sales dropped $250 million in 1986 as kids lost interest. In 1990, Congress passed the Children’s Television Act that limited commercials to 12 minutes of every hour of programming. However, the F.C.C. declined to define shows based on toys as commercials. Instead, they ruled that a program is only a commercial if an advertisement for the related toys is run during the breaks. This provoked the ire of Peggy Charren, president of the Action for Children’s Television, who said “‘The problem is not with the four or five minutes of advertising time. The problem is the 26 minutes that the ad agency, the program producer and the toy company have prepared’” (New York Times, November 9, 1990).

He-Man’s catchphrase that he booms out at the beginning of every episode is “By the power of Grayskull, I have the Power.” And he does, or at least Mattel does along with the rest of the toy industry. By uttering the magic phrase, He-Man transforms himself from wimpy Prince Adam, his alter-ego, into a muscle-bound barbarian with flawless super powers. In much the same way, toy companies like Mattel transformed themselves from mere manufacturers of play-things to marketing giants with muscles that bulged five days a week.

Coverage of F.C.C. deregulation was prevalent but its impact on children’s programming received less coverage than other aspects such as the Fairness Doctrine. Controversy of toy-based children’s programming focused on violence and the extreme popularity of the toys and the shows. F.C.C. regulations were usually only mentioned as a backdrop for these stories.

While the debate over market-driven children’s programming began over 20 years ago it remains a concern in today’s society. Prepubescent cries of “buy me this toy” can be heard in any toy store in the country, no doubt inspired by a TV show that has followed the He-Man marketing strategy. Today, parents and doctors are more worried about the marketing of high-fat and high-sugar foods during children’s programs. The Institute of Medicine recommends legislation banning ads for such bad food during children’s shows. At a time when 31 percent of children are obese this message is one of “urgency,” according to J. Michael McGinnis, chairman of the IOM committee. ‘The prevailing pattern of food and beverage marketing to children in America represents, at best, a missed opportunity, and, at worst, a direct threat to the health of the next generation,” according the IOM report (USA Today, December 7, 2005).

Designing, coding, moderating, promoting and doing all the business admin on Tildes must be fairly thankless. But without all this effort we'd not be able to enjoy discussions with each other & share all this interesting content. I don't feel that much appreciation is really shown on here (except maybe miss-voting on all Deimos' comments).

But it is a little awkward, spurious thanks all over the place would just be noise. I thought I'd make a topic especially for people to say thanks in. I'm really enjoying Tildes content and discussion. Plus I'm a big believer in the goals of Tildes as laid out in the docs.

So I'd like to say a big thank you to Deimos and other useful contributors! Thanks for making the site we have to use today and dreaming of the hopefully better possible site we'll see in the future.

I'm also hoping to start a discussion on what enthusiastic Tildes users can do to most usefully help make Tildes good now and better in the future.

A list of stuff we can do:

• Obviously posting lots of good content and interesting discussions. Voting honestly and using comment labels judiciously.

• You can donate and currently we can see Tildes Patreon is at $375 a month. Deimos posted some more figures recently.

• We all regularly get invite codes and bringing in more people who can get excited (and maybe also help) is obviously good.

• The issue tracker and bug reports are all public so you can make suggestions, vote or comment on existing ones and perhaps more usefully see if you can work out how to reproduce reported bugs.

• As of a bit over two months ago Tildes is open source. This means you can track down bugs from the issue tracker or even contribute code for new features.

RFC:

So are other people liking Tildes? What is it you like? Are you excited enough to want to help out?

Also is there anything useful users can do I've missed? In these already mentioned areas what's actually most useful to do? Are some things of negative use? Could Deimos change his process to make more use of community help? Is there anything Deimos could delegate that people would be willing to volunteer on? Gitlab Walmart greeter would be cool but is anyone willing to do it?

Original here: https://old.reddit.com/r/europe/comments/8sizc8/danish_mep_jens_rohde_in_facebook_post_yesterday/

I posted this on reddit a couple of months ago as I felt (and still feel) like it's rather shocking how someone so ignorant can have any kind of power over something that they clearly know nothing about. Here's what Danish MEP Jens Rohde had to say about the public response to the directive in a Facebook post of his from ~2 months ago:

Always pleasant when the web communists hack and spam my PC in parliament. 50,000 e-mails just yesterday containing largely identical messages - in difference languages though.

This time because I tomorrow vote in favor of artist copyright is valid on the internet as well as everywhere else.

This is not about mass surveillance.

This is not about limiting freedom of speech unless you steal others' content for commercial use.

This is also not about the so-called link tax in article 11. Bloggers can calmly continue working.

This is simply about active commercial platforms which must pay to use people's content for commercial purposes. All passive platforms, marketplaces, wikis, clouds, closed networks are exempt from this proposition that I've helped create and vote for tomorrow.

Creators can themselves ask that their content is monitored, or they can upload it unprotected. That's their choice.

Technology has NOT been considered in the proposal. That will come later.

And let me repeat for the hundredth time: spam as well as hacking is especially counterproductive to me, if you want to promote your cause.

By the way, I will never subscribe to the communist pirate opinion that FREE internet is the same as internet for FREE - no matter how much you attack my PC.

welcome back, class!

i'm actually kinda having fun with this project lmao. dive into the comments and let me know what you lot are thinking! this is the second installation in, what i believe will be, a four part series. enjoy!

in the last chapter, we learned a little about how rap in the 90's began to get a bit more introspective, self-reflective, and focus on some generally harsher, more grating topics. while all eras definitely have their hype music (see: "Nuthin' But a G Thang" x Dr. Dre and Snoop Dogg or "Slob on my Knob" x Three 6 Mafia, we slowly began to see songs like "Slippin'" x DMX or "Rock Bottom" x Eminem which slowly began the trend of rappers using their music to really peel back the curtains of their lives, using their music as an escape into catharsis from their daily struggles.

however, emo rap does seem to have something else happening inside of it. it's not just simply sad or emotionally-charged rap music, that's been around for quite a long time! what's that extra layer that gives us the gritty, rough, and often-whiney nature to modern emo rap? for that, we turn to the name of the genre itself.

not only did the 90's prove as a time of great growth and evolution in rap, but it saw the expolsion of a new genre of rock music as well. with roots set in the 80's, emo rock first gained major commercial popularity with bands like Green Day and The Offspring quickly moving albums to the tops of the charts with songs like, respectively, "She" and "Self Esteem". as the genre fell face-first into the zeitgeist, we quickly saw a rise of early emo rock groups like Lifetime, Jimmy Eat World, and one of the most influential early emo groups - Texas is the Reason. throughout the decade, the prophecy foretold by the Rolling Stones in their track "Paint it Black" quickly began to unfold. teenagers were wearing black, goth kids slowly started to emerge from the depths of the underworld, and hot topic was finally starting to make money. the foundations and roots of emo have been set, ready and waiting to lead us into the 21st century.

the year is 2000, and pretty much everything is fucking awesome. we see the launch of the indestructible classic Nokia 3310. we get video games like Tony Hawk's Pro Skater 2, The Legend of Zelda: Majora's Mask, and of course, Pokemon Gold and Silver. the billboard charts are full names that make us go "oh yeah!" like Destiny's Child, Aaliyah, Erykah Badu, Montell Jordan, 3 Doors Down, Backstreet Boys, Creed, Madonna, and the list goes on and on and on.

the 2000s saw an absolute unit of a revival of the newly restructured emo genre, quickly launching off massively influential tracks like "All the Small Things" x Blink 182, and we even see the creation of the first emo-centric record labels across the late-nineties and early naughts. this means that a lot of the emo bands of the time had not only better representation and access to the innerworkings of the industry, but better access to resources which would help them promote and distribute themselves as well - this is what allowed a lot of bands to leap and bound right into the hot topic t-shirt wall.

one of the bigger labels we came to see was Vagrant records, moving to quickly sign groups like The Get Up Kids, Hot Rod Circuit, Dashboard Confessional, and Saves the Day. with the internet in their toolbox, some major corporate sponsorships funding the whole gig, and a huge amount of confidence in the future of emo, Vagrant set out on what's considered to be one of the most influential projects in the (still) early days of emo when they launched a nationwide tour with every band in their label in tow.

shortly thereafter, Jimmy Eat World launches the biggest single of their career "The Middle", Dashboard Confessional break heavy into the mainstream, and Madison Square Garden goes absolutely wild for Saves The Day, Blink-182, Green Day, and Weezer.

emo is starting to get big, and people are starting to realize that there's money to be made here.

this brings us now to the mid-ish 2000s. everyone's on myspace, everyone's got a motorola razr, everyone's getting into skating or bmx, and every chick with jetblack black hair or fishnets is going absolutely fucking crazy over Brendon Urie from Panic! At The Disco. this is the part where the big money steps in and major record labels start signing a lot of emo bands left and right. this massive cash injection into the industry saw the rise of a lot of bands which would go on to not only define the industry, but to define the middle school and high school lives of a great number of their listeners. as the emo singularity entered the phase of it's big bang, we saw the rise of a number of stars like Taking Back Sunday, Simple Plan, My Chemical Romance, Fall Out Boy, and many many many deep breath many others.

fueled by industry investments, teen angst, and a desire to be different, this led to an explosive rise in popularity for the genre, with many songs quickly moving to RIAA gold/platinum status and Billboard chart success like "Misery Business" x Paramore, "Miss Murder" x AFI, or "Check Yes Juliet" x We The Kings. this massive influx of success inspired some of the best parties, most genuine moments, and most cringiest photographs of our many young lives. very frequently this music was used as an escape for those who felt that their problems were going otherwise unrecognized or misunderstood, who felt that they were sad or alone, who hated the seeming lack of control that they had in their own lives - constantly living under the legislature of parents, school systems, or cops that always seemed to hate us edgy confrontational teenagers.

however, like Sam Smith would come to say, "too much of a good thing won't be good for long." what happens when a star shines too bright? what happens after a supernova?

things go dark.

it's now that we begin to enter the part of this whole movement that we've all repressed - and it starts with bracelets.

sigh.

it's 2010-ish.

vuvuzelas are hilarious, "TiK ToK" x Ke$ha is topping charts, and highschools everywhere are full of Silly Bandz and sex bracelets. we've reached a point of absolute pop culture saturation with the emo vogue. while songs of the previous era like "Welcome to the Black Parade" (linked earlier) or "Dirty Little Secret" x The All-American Rejects still hold an anthemic position in the musical zeitgeist, by and large, emo simply was no longer enough. the all-black motif was drab and dark. the music didn't cut deep enough, the lyrics didn't hit hard enough, the vocals weren't powerful enough. we needed something stronger, something more powerful.

this desire for harder hitting music led to an underground rise of hardcore bands like La Dispute and Pianos Become the Teeth. these bands were very much hitting in the right direction, blending the angst and yearning of modern emo music with the strength of metal instrumentals and vocals hit home with a good number of people still looking to hold onto the last bastions of the emo movement.

and, as we've seen before, as this demographic loves to live fast and hard, the remodeled emo genre quickly skyrocketed into popularity with bands like Asking Alexandria, Bring Me The Horizon, and A Day to Remember rushing to the forefront of the movement. the rough, gritty nature of the instrumentals paired with the phenomenally screamed vocals seemed to add several more layers of separation between what we were listening to, and the "traditional" music we had been brought up listening to. this was new, this was edgy, but more importantly, this was ours. this was music that we knew the lyrics to, music that we could sing along with because we'd teach ourselves how to scream-sing when we had the house to ourselves, and music that, most importantly, we were pretty damn sure our parents weren't going to get into. they started using myspace, we left for facebook - abandoning the customized purple, black, and sparkly profile pages of yore.

however, there was something missing here. this was music we could connect to, sure. we were glad to have the songs we did to relate with! even still, we got greedy. connecting to it wasn't enough. we needed music we could fuck to. we needed eyecandy. we needed music that was brutal, strong, and beyond comprehension. we got gluttonous.

now we begin to enter the scene age. flashy colors and attitudes replace the black nature of the previous era. ostentatiously hardocre and brutal instrumentals (or alternatively, very pop-y, electronically inspired instrumentals) back vocals sang by artists who's image was crafted under nature and umbrella of being unconventionally attractive to this new audience. this led to projects such as "You Aint No Family" x iwrestledabearonce, "Sex Ed Rocks!" x SMOSH & ISETMYFRIENDSONFIRE, and (oh god,) "Bree Bree" x Brokencyde.

i know my language here is pretty overtly negative, not to make it seem like i hate every band from this era. i actaully like iwrestledabearonce, and a lot of these bands hold a great amount of nostalgia in my life. tracks like "Knives and Pens" x Black Veil Brides were anthemic of this late-stage emo-rock era, checking a good number of the boxes above, and drawing attention to the struggles of people of this era. for example, it can be said that the way emo-rap heavily goes about drawing attention to drug use/abuse is very analogous to the way that a lot of this late-stage emo rock draws attention to self-expression and self-harm.

this era was loud while it was here, and saw the popularity of a lot of projects like the following before it quickly died out around 2014/2015:

We Butter The Bread With Butter

"Wake Up" x Suicide Silence

Pierce The Veil

Sleeping With Sirens

and, often, scene music held no semblance of it's metal roots at all! you may remember hits of the era like "DON'T TRUST ME" x 3OH3!, "Shake It!" x Metro Station, "Good Girls Go Bad" x Cobra Starship, or "Sexting" x Blood on the Dance Floor.

palette cleanser: "Dirty Diana" x Michael Jackson (The Weeknd Cover)

so here we've arrived. the year is 2014, and the billboard is topped with pharrell, meghan trainor's debut single, "Shake It Off" x Taylor Swift, and the debut tracks from the likes of Lorde and Sam Smith.

...and some guy named Young Thug?

Wait, who's this Bobby Shmurda guy?

2 Chainz?

YG?

something's a-changing... where's the industry headed?

find out next time on the emo rap deep dive - chapter three: dirty sprite.

Just got invited here and looking at the content of the front page, Tildes is basically a "poor-man's version" of reddit right now. That's OK: it's a new community and I imagine a big part of users are coming here from reddit so they're doing what they're used to doing on social networks, that's only fair.

However, more than that, looking at the groups, they are set up pretty much similarly to reddit's default subs - if not on a 1:1 basis, at least in the general tone: pretty casual, daily life topics, big focus on entertainment media, etc. Maybe again this is, by design catering to the people who are bound to be incoming from reddit, so they can immediately relate to a similar user experience. Good.

So I think it's fair to say that it's proven that Tildes can be "like reddit". It kinda looks like reddit, it kinda feels like reddit. That part of the deal is covered. Now, what can makes us different? I doubt anyone here has no ambition besides being a soft-fork of reddit.

What topics make you tick? What sort of online discussion makes you go "that's the good stuff"? What subjects are you truly passionate about? I'd like to know what the community here is all about, whether the current ~groups represent their interests and passions or not and, hopefully we could come up with some less generic ideas for new ~groups out of the discussion.

EDIT I realize Tildes has a specific policy of "lesser active groups are better than a billion inactive groups" but at this point in time a good selection of groups would really help define the identity and content, not to mention promote quality discussion that actually aligns with people's interests. Hopefully seeing common trends in the replies would allow us to identify a few potential new groups, perhaps.

So I just posted a comment in a month-old topic and it shot to the top of the Activity tab. I'm still new here and forgot that that would happen.

Is there any stance for or against necroposting on Tildes? I looked around for a search feature but didn't find one, so apologies if this has been discussed before.

If it hasn't been discussed before, what do you think? My gut instinct is that it's bad, but only because I've been conditioned to think that way from long ago when forums reigned before social media. Are there any downsides? And if necroposting is allowed, will it indirectly promote a kind of "NO DUPLICATE THREADS!" culture?

Forgive me if this has been posted before, I am still pretty new here.

Coming here having the option to "Gild" was something I kinda just assumed would be a thing.

Obviously it wouldn't need to be call "Gold" or "Gilding", those are just terms from some other site that I know all of us will understand.

I have always liked the idea of users buying made up medals for topics and comments they felt the need to reward. It gives the users a sense of accomplishment/reward and gets the devs little micro donations.

Currently the most valuable material in existence is antimatter, so maybe a little "AM" medal?

EDIT: Something I also meant to mention, but forgot, was the badge system on DeviantART.

dA has always had these little pixel llama badges that I thought were really cool. The basic concept was/is that you can gift someone a little llama if you think they or their art is cool or for any reason you want. These llamas stack on your profile. People can additionally gift gear for existing llamas and the site occasionally gives out rare llamas (and other badges) for milestones, events or promotions.

I think a hybrid of reddit's gilding system and a badge system (like dA's) could be really cool.

This is a complex issue and one that's hard to address succinctly. It gets into the larger matter of media and its role and interaction with society, which is profound. This includes political and social elements going far beyond consumerism and consumption, though those are part of the dynamic.

For a short answer: advertising is not the only problem, but is a large component of a set of conflicts concerning information and media. It both directly and indirectly promotes disinformation and misinformation, opens avenues to propaganda and manipulation, and fails to promote and support high-quality content. It also has very real costs: globally advertising is a $600 billion/year industry, largely paid out of consumer spending among the world's 1 billion or so wealthy inhabitants of Europe, North America, and Japan. This works out to about $600/year per person in direct expense. On top of the indirect and negative-externality factors. Internet advertising is roughly $100 billion, or $100/yr. per person if you live in the US, Canada, EU, UK, Japan, Australia, or New Zealand. The "free" Internet is not free.

And the system itself is directly implicated in a tremendous amount of the breakdown of media, politics, and society over the past several years. Jonathan Albright, ex-Googler, now a scholar of media at the Tow Center (and its research director), Columbia University in New York, "Who Hacked the Election? Ad Tech did. Through “Fake News,” Identity Resolution and Hyper-Personalization", and editor of d1g (estT) (on Medium).

[S]cores of highly sophisticated technology providers — mostly US-based companies that specialize in building advanced solutions for audience “identity resolution,” content tailoring and personalization, cross-platform targeting, and A/B message testing and optimization — are running the data show behind the worst of these “fake news” sites.

(Emphasis in original.)

A Media Reader

By way of a longer response, I'd suggest some reading, of which I've been doing a great deal. Among the starting points I'd suggest the following, in rough order. Further recommendations are very much welcomed.

Tim Wu

The Attention Merchants is a contemporary version of the media, attention, distraction, disinformation, manipulation, and power game that's discussed further in the following references. If you're looking for current state-of-the-art, start here. Ryan Holiday and Trust Me, I'm Lying is a 2012 expose of the online media system. For an older view, Vance Packard's 1950s classic (updated), The Hidden Persuaders gives perspective both on what methods are timeless, and what's changed. A 2007 New York Times essay on the book gives a good overview.

Hamilton Holt

Commercialism and Journalism (1909) is a brief, easy, and fact-filled account of the American publishing industry, especially of newspapers and magazines, at the dawn of the 20th century. Holt was himself a publisher, of The Independent, and delivered this book as a lecture at the University of California. It gives an account of the previous 50 years or so of development in publishing, including various technologies, but putting the greatest impact on advertising. I'm not aware that this is particularly well-noted, but I find it a wonderfully concise summary of many of the issues, and a view from near the start of the current system. Holt includes this quote from an unnamed New York journalist:

There is no such thing in America as an independent press. I am paid for keeping honest opinions out of the paper I am connected with. If I should allow honest opinions to be printed in one issue of my paper, before twenty-four hours my occupation, like Othello's, would be gone. The business of a New Yourk journalist is to distort the truth, to lie outright, to pervert, to vilify, to fawn at the foot of Mammon, and to sell his country and his race for his daily bread. We are the tools or vassals of the rich men behind the scenes. Our time, our talents, our lives, our possibilities, are all the property of other men. We are intellectual prostitutes.

(An HN commenter reveals that this was John Swinton.)

Jerry Mander

Four Arguments for the Elimination of Television. This is a 1970s classic that's held its value. Mander is an ad executive himself, though he took his talents to the Environmental movement, working closely with David Brower of the Sierra Club.

Adam Curtis

BBC documentarian, most especially The Century of the Self (part 1, part 2, part 3, and part 4), and Hypernormalisation. These documentaries, the first a four-part series, the second a self-contained 2h40m single session, focus on media and propaganda. The first especially on Edward Bernays, Sigmund Freud (Bernays' uncle), advertising, and propaganda. The second on Vladimir Putin.

Edward S. Herman and Noam Chomsky

Manufacturing Consent: The Political Economy of the Mass Media. The title itself comes from Walter Lippmann and his earlier work, Public Opinion, which is something of a guide to its manufacture, and the genesis of "modern" 20th century media. The notion of mass media as having a political economy is a critical element in answering your question. That is: media is inherently political and economic, and advertising and propaganda (or as it was rebranded, "public relations"), all the more so.

Robert W. McChesney

McChesney has been continuing the exploration of media from a political-economic perspective and has an extensive bibliography. His Communication Revolution in particular discusses his own path through the field, including extensive references.

Marshall McLuhan

Particularly The Gutenberg Galaxy and The Medium is the Message.

Elisabeth Eisenstein

Either her book The Printing Press as an Agent of Change or the earlier (and much shorter) article that pressaged it, "Some Conjectures about the Impact of Printing on Western Society and Thought: A Preliminary Report" (more interesting than its title, I promise). Eisenstein draws heavily on, and improves greatly on the rigour of, McLuhan.

Generally: Other 19th and 20th century media scholars and writers

H.L. Mencken, I.F. Stone, and perhaps Walter Lippmann and John Dewey. Mencken and Stone are particularly given to shorter essays (see especially The I.F. Stone Weekly Reader, The Best of I.F. Stone and his New York Review of Books articles) which can be readily digested. Mencken's "Bayard vs. Lionheart" whilst not specifically concerning advertising largely describes the crowd-psychology inherent in mediocre or pathological social-political outcomes, and is a short and brilliant read. Mencken has a long list of further writings.

Edward Bernays

Especially Propaganda and Public Relations. Bernays created the field of public relations, and largely drove the popular support of "democracy" (a WWI war bonds advertising slogan) in favour of the earlier "liberty". For Stone, I cannot recommend his Day at Night interview (~1974) highly enough. 30 minutes. Bernays' New York Times obituary makes interesting reading.

Charles-Marie Gustave Le Bon

The Crowd: A study of the popular mind. "[C]onsidered one of the seminal works of crowd psychology." Wikipedia article.

Charles Mackay

Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds (1841). "[O]ften cited as the best book ever written about market psychology." Wikipedia article.

I have yet to read all of these works, though they're on my list, and I've at least reviewed most of the works and authors and am familiar with major themes. Virtually all of these will lead to other sources -- books, articles, authors, fields of study -- by way of bibliographies (looking backward) and citations (looking forward). Among my favourite and most fruitful research techniques.

This is also really just a starting point, though I hope it's a good one. Media isn't my field, or rather, I'd thought that, working in technology, it wasn't, but I've come to realise that (1) "information technology" is in very large part "media technology", and (2) the interactions of media systems and society, politics, economics, even culture as a whole, are beyond deep, and highly underappreciated.

The role of mass media in the spread of early-20th century Fascism is a particularly sobering story. See "Radio and the Rise of The Nazis in Prewar Germany", and recognise that you could include cinema, magnetic audio tape recording, public address systems (it's hard to address three quarters of a million people without amplification). More recently, radio has been studied in conjunction with the 1994 Rwandan genocide. These remain extant issues.

Bootnote

Adapted from a StackExchange contribution.

[I'm tagging this as "adult", for purposes of open discussion, with apologies to anyone who may consider the topic inflammatory or sensationalistic.]

Based on discussion of loneliness elsewhere, I'm curious as to what adaptive measures people undertake to promote life satisfaction in the face of environmental/cultural/social stressors.

The word "drug" is used very loosely here, and basically refers to any strategy for purposefully altering neurochemistry - in addition to licit or illicit substance intake, it could be endorphin-boosting exercise, going out with friends, naps, particular reading genres, a good meal, games, direct brain stimulation, meditation, sexual activity, long walks in the country, or whatever.

I'm also taking for granted the proposition that intentionally seeking beneficial neurochemical states is a human activity that everyone participates in, whether they're aware of it or not, and desirable as long as it harms no one.

This is not an attempt to incite, advocate for, or excuse breaking any applicable laws, but a request for information on what people actually do and prefer. If you're concerned about potential legal implications of confessing to an illicit favorite, please discuss in terms of "a friend/someone I know, likes substance/activity x because y".

"Favorite" excludes strategies you've found harmful or destructive, but discussion and/or warning is worthwhile if you feel like it.

I'll start off by saying I have an acquaintance who finds psilocybin micro-dosing very effective at inducing positive emotional balance, mental focus and good sleep regulation.

In governance, sortition (also known as allotment or demarchy) is the selection of political officials as a random sample from a larger pool of candidates. The logic behind the sortition process originates from the idea that “power corrupts.” For that reason, when the time came to choose individuals to be assigned to empowering positions, the ancient Athenians resorted to choosing by lot. In ancient Athenian democracy, sortition was therefore the traditional and primary method for appointing political officials, and its use was regarded as a principal characteristic of true democracy.

Today, sortition is commonly used to select prospective jurors in common law-based legal systems and is sometimes used in forming citizen groups with political advisory power (citizens' juries or citizens' assemblies).

The mechanics would be something like this: users report a post/comment, when there's enough reports the systems randomly selects 3/5/7/... currently active users and ask them to determine if the reported post contravene to the rules. The decision is then automatically taken with a majority rule.

Why ?

1. It's the only system that scales (to my knowledge). More users mean more content to moderate, but since the users are also moderators the system works at any scale. Systems that don't scale lead to all kind of problems when the number of users become large.
2. It's very robust to manipulation. As moderators are chosen randomly it's very hard to coordinate or try to influence the decisions.
3. It promotes a participatory attitude and a sense of responsibility in the users. There's no "them against us" (the bad mods against the users).