What are you reading currently? Fiction or non-fiction or poetry, any genre, any language! Tell us what you're reading, and talk about it a bit. Previous topics Previous topics are listed in the wiki.
This thread is posted daily, and is intended as a place for more-casual discussion of the coronavirus and questions/updates that may not warrant their own dedicated topics. Tell us about what the situation is like where you live!
This may seem like I'm rambling but, please bare with me, I think I have some point(s) to make.
I've been trying to locate a common ancestor image to the album cover of Gnarls Barkley's single Crazy and the banner of an interesting talk titled Imagination and it's resistance to chance. I think the resemblance is sufficient to suggest one an ancestor exists and it's not just a crazy coincidence. Can anyone help identify it?
The same academic conference linked above hosts a fascinating introduction to Intensionality, Invariance, and Univalence. It captures some of the most exciting mathematics going on at the moment. Presumably I should be posting this in ~science tagged as mathematics. Is there some limit at which particular tags become popular enough to warrant their own subtilde? Are there queries users can run to determine tag counts? These questions were prompted by the slight irritating thought of classifying mathematics under science.
People could respond to many different parts of this thread since I've written so much. However, the points are slightly related, at least in how I present them. If I were to split them up into separate posts, not only would it add to the noise, each point would lose whatever relation they had. So, I wonder if, much like r/IAMA, could there be a better format for conversations where many users are speaking to a particular individual? An expert or celebrity perhaps. Trying to track all the replies of the main user was always a hassle in those IAMA threads.
If there's interest in such an extension to tildes, I'd like to offer my help in implementing it. That's my main point really and why I posted here.
This thread is posted daily, and is intended as a place for more-casual discussion of the coronavirus and questions/updates that may not warrant their own dedicated topics. Tell us about what the situation is like where you live!
This thread is posted daily, and is intended as a place for more-casual discussion of the coronavirus and questions/updates that may not warrant their own dedicated topics. Tell us about what the situation is like where you live!
As part of a weekly series, these topics are a place for users to casually discuss the things they did — or didn't do — during their weekend. Did you make any plans? Take a trip? Do nothing at all? Tell us about it!
This thread is posted daily, and is intended as a place for more-casual discussion of the coronavirus and questions/updates that may not warrant their own dedicated topics. Tell us about what the situation is like where you live!
This thread is posted daily, and is intended as a place for more-casual discussion of the coronavirus and questions/updates that may not warrant their own dedicated topics. Tell us about what the situation is like where you live!
This thread is posted daily, and is intended as a place for more-casual discussion of the coronavirus and questions/updates that may not warrant their own dedicated topics. Tell us about what the situation is like where you live!
As part of a weekly series, these topics are a place for users to casually discuss the things they did — or didn't do — during their week. Did you accomplish any goals? Suffer a failure? Do nothing at all? Tell us about it!
This thread is posted daily, and is intended as a place for more-casual discussion of the coronavirus and questions/updates that may not warrant their own dedicated topics. Tell us about what the situation is like where you live!
This topic is part of a series. It is meant to be a place for users to discuss creative projects they have been working on.
Projects can be personal, professional, physical, digital, or even just ideas.
If you have any creative projects that you have been working on or want to eventually work on, this is a place for discussing those.
A list of all previous topics in this series can be found here.
This thread is posted daily, and is intended as a place for more-casual discussion of the coronavirus and questions/updates that may not warrant their own dedicated topics. Tell us about what the situation is like where you live!
This thread is posted daily, and is intended as a place for more-casual discussion of the coronavirus and questions/updates that may not warrant their own dedicated topics. Tell us about what the situation is like where you live!
Understandably, my interest has piqued on this topic cluster (as I'm sure it has for many others), and I should have more time than usual to read in the coming weeks. I also am spending far too long jumping around aimlessly to assorted news articles and would like to tame that nervous energy into a more focused approach on longer writings.
While I'm interested in non-fiction primarily, I'm also open to fiction suggestions. Also, anything that lands in the ballpark of what we're dealing right now with the novel coronavirus fits (though it certainly doesn't have to be specific to coronavirus, nor COVID-19).
After adding the ~health.coronavirus group the other day, I've just made a couple more updates to try and keep the site more usable as the flood of news and information keeps coming in.
First, I just added a bar in the header when you're on the home page that has links to two "specialized views" in it. One of these views will show only coronavirus topics, and the other one will filter out all the coronavirus topics. These should be helpful for both logged-in users as well as logged-out ones (who previously didn't have the option of unsubscribing from ~health.coronavirus to hide those topics more easily).
For the purposes of these views, a "coronavirus topic" is one that's either inside ~health.coronavirus or has the "coronaviruses.covid19" tag on it (in any group).
The way I did this was definitely pretty hacky and isn't intended to stay around over the long term, so please let me know if you notice any strange behavior with them.
Second, earlier today I set up a scheduled post in ~health.coronavirus for general chat, questions, minor updates, and so on. The first one is here, and that will continue posting every day for now. If the activity in it starts dropping I'll probably reduce the frequency, but I think it should be good as a general spot for discussion for now.
It's looking like we might be living in this situation for weeks or months, so I'm definitely open to making other changes that will help keep the site usable and enjoyable during it. Let me know if you have any feedback or suggestions, thanks!
This thread is posted daily, and is intended as a place for more-casual discussion of the coronavirus and questions/updates that may not warrant their own dedicated topics. Tell us about what the situation is like where you live!
As part of a weekly series, these topics are a place for users to casually discuss the things they did — or didn't do — during their weekend. Did you make any plans? Take a trip? Do nothing at all? Tell us about it!
Following an off-topic conversation starting here:
I thought it would be handy to establish that life still continues even in pandemic lockdown. One participant mentions a successful video date, and another wishes for sex.
The questions below may be personal and sensitive - please use your best judgement in answering or refraining to do so. Usual Tildes rules of courtesy apply.
If you're in a relationship, what are you doing to keep it alive and healthy?
If you're not partnered, what are you doing, if anything, to date or otherwise meet your needs while everything is closed down (if this is the case where you are)?
Does your idea of love or sex require physical contact?
If physical contact is required, what, if anything, are you doing to stay safe right now?
As part of a weekly series, these topics are a place for users to casually discuss the things they did — or didn't do — during their week. Did you accomplish any goals? Suffer a failure? Do nothing at all? Tell us about it!
What are you reading currently? Fiction or non-fiction or poetry, any genre, any language! Tell us what you're reading, and talk about it a bit. Previous topics Previous topics are listed in the wiki.
As suggested, I've created a new group now named ~health.coronavirus that we can use to try to keep the topics about the coronavirus somewhat more quarantined contained. I've subscribed everyone for now, but if you want to segregate the information more easily I'd suggest unsubscribing from it (which you can do from its sidebar or the groups list) and visiting it individually when you want to look at coronavirus news.
I know there are probably some quibbles about the name, but I decided to go with this one for a few reasons, including that it's by far the more commonly-known and used term overall, it's generally easier to type (especially on mobile), and some XKCD-style "the spider" logic.
One specific thing we need to discuss is how to decide when some topics should be in there vs. some of the other groups, especially since there are so many widespread effects. Like most moderation-ish subjects, we won't be able to draw a perfect line, but I think in general we should try to put more "general" updates/advice/discussion in the new group, while topics can go into other groups only when their impact is especially heavy on that group's subject.
For example, I think it makes sense for the announcement that NCAA games will be played without fans to stay in ~sports, because that's a very major announcement for a sports event. E3 being cancelled similarly makes sense to stay in ~games. Those are major, important announcements regardless of the cause being the coronavirus.
Deciding when something goes in ~news vs. ~health.coronavirus will be more difficult, but I'm sure we can probably do a reasonable job of it by trying to base it on only putting the very most significant events in ~news. It's not incredibly important to have everything categorized perfectly and most people probably subscribe/check both groups anyway, so we'll just do the best we can.
I'm going to start trying to move a lot of the existing topics into there, and I'm sure some others will too. This might be kinda chaotic for a bit.
I think it would also be great to start trying to put together some good resources on the ~health.coronavirus wiki. If some people are willing to start taking that on (and feel free to post a topic in there to ask for help/suggestions), it would be much appreciated. And if you don't have wiki permissions but would like to be a part of that, message me about it or leave a comment here asking, and I can give you the ability to create/edit pages.
Anything other feedback or discussion about it to start with? Should we set up any regularly scheduled posts in there or anything?
I'm sure it comes as no surprise to anyone familiar with what I generally submit to tildes that videos, history and history.military are my favorite topic tags... but some of the other slightly more obscure ones I also enjoy (all music related) are live, soul.blue_eyed, singer_songwriter, and cover_songs.
What about you all? What are your favorite topic tags on tildes?
p.s. If you provide the associated https://tildes.net/?tag=topic_tag links to the ones you mention so that we can all peruse them, that would be greatly appreciated. :)
As part of a weekly series, these topics are a place for users to casually discuss the things they did — or didn't do — during their weekend. Did you make any plans? Take a trip? Do nothing at all? Tell us about it!
I've been jailbreaking for years now, and one of the things that have always puzzled me was how the jailbreak community determines whether or not a tweak has malicious code since they aren't always open-sourced. With the latest releases of checkra1n, and unc0ver, I've gotten back into jailbreaking since I wanted to jailbreak my 12.9" iPad Pro. From my understanding, the jailbreak itself (usually) is open-sourced, so it can generally be "vetted" that way. I typically stay away from using too many tweaks and try to stick with those from the "more well-known" developers, but I'm curious how others decide which developers/tweaks to trust and use? Do you strictly base it on "bug-reports" and a developer's reputation? What other factors come into play? There are tweaks like "Compatimark" that helps with compatibility information (but that's not really what I'm talking about).
Edit: First time posting a topic here, so hopefully it isn't breaking any rules.
As part of a weekly series, these topics are a place for users to casually discuss the things they did — or didn't do — during their week. Did you accomplish any goals? Suffer a failure? Do nothing at all? Tell us about it!
This topic is part of a series. It is meant to be a place for users to discuss creative projects they have been working on.
Projects can be personal, professional, physical, digital, or even just ideas.
If you have any creative projects that you have been working on or want to eventually work on, this is a place for discussing those.
A list of all previous topics in this series can be found here.
I just deployed a major update to the site's permissions system, which involved rewriting a lot of the related code. This is pretty much all internal details, and there should be no noticeable changes, but it's definitely possible that I missed something. So if you notice anything unusual that seems like it might be permissions-related (such as a button missing or a functionality not working), please let me know.
None of it's really being used yet, but the rewritten system allows for multiple new capabilities that we'll need as the site grows, like granting permissions to users only inside specific groups (instead of site-wide) and denying permissions in specific groups (like "able to tag topics in all groups except ~music").
On that note, most permissions are still granted manually, and I haven't given them to many people lately. If you're interested in helping with some of the site's organizational work and think you have a good understanding of how things are currently organized, please send me a message and ask, and I can give you some permissions to help out.
These are the permissions that are currently available (and there are at least a few users that have access to each of these):
Thanks!
And as usual, I've topped everyone back up to 10 invites, accessible on the invite page.
As part of a weekly series, these topics are a place for users to casually discuss the things they did — or didn't do — during their weekend. Did you make any plans? Take a trip? Do nothing at all? Tell us about it!
As part of a weekly series, these topics are a place for users to casually discuss the things they did — or didn't do — during their week. Did you accomplish any goals? Suffer a failure? Do nothing at all? Tell us about it!
What are you reading currently? Fiction or non-fiction or poetry, any genre, any language! Tell us what you're reading, and talk about it a bit. Previous topics Previous topics are listed in the wiki.
I know this has been posted before, but I was going through old posts about blogging and at least half the blogs linked in the comments were offline now, so I thought I'd bring this topic back to light.
Do you run your own personal blog, and if so, could you share some details?
Is it self-hosted, or do you rent server space?
Do you use Wordpress or another blog platform like that, publish through other means like a flat-file CMS, or did you build it from scratch?
What topics do you write about?
How consistently do you post; or alternatively, why don't you post as often as you would like to?
Do you keep analytics, or do you write regardless of how many clicks you get?
Is your site monetized with ads or otherwise?
How popular is your blog on average?
How do you keep up with other writers' posts?
I'm bringing this up because it seems like most places around the web centered on blogging are more in it for the money rather than for the content. Places like /r/blogging and the like are all talk about how to maximize views, earn revenue, and find your niche. I'd love to see some discussion more geared towards the content and construction of individual blogs, as opposed to people trying the next "get rich quick" scheme on their lists of passive income opportunities.
Personally, I have multiple blogs for the sole purpose of giving me a platform to voice my opinions or share things that interest me without being constrained to a centralized platform like Twitter or Medium. I'd love to hear what you have all made and/or shared online, as well as the process behind making it happen.
As part of a weekly series, these topics are a place for users to casually discuss the things they did — or didn't do — during their weekend. Did you make any plans? Take a trip? Do nothing at all? Tell us about it!
My husband and I have cut back on meat consumption significantly in recent months, and I'm tossing around the idea of trying to do a full vegetarian diet for the month of March as a trial run for potentially going vegetarian full-time.
I've searched around and there's a lot of conflicting information out there on the topic of vegetarianism, as well as the reality that a significant amount of nutritional information online is sketchy at best. I know we have lots of vegetarian/vegan users here, and I'm wondering if there's any significant need-to-know health concerns or things that need to be addressed. Do I need to supplement any particular nutrients? Do I need to measure my protein intake? Any other must-know information or do's/don't's I should be aware of?
As part of a weekly series, these topics are a place for users to casually discuss the things they did — or didn't do — during their week. Did you accomplish any goals? Suffer a failure? Do nothing at all? Tell us about it!
This topic is part of a series. It is meant to be a place for users to discuss creative projects they have been working on.
Projects can be personal, professional, physical, digital, or even just ideas.
If you have any creative projects that you have been working on or want to eventually work on, this is a place for discussing those.
A list of all previous topics in this series can be found here.
This is something I tried before with a Discord group for studying Python, but it was a catastrophic failure. Lots of people showed interest, almost no one showed up at the designated time. Besides, even the one person hardly interacted.
After that, I started creating an online book/tutorial for beginners (well, anyone that is more of a beginner than me :P), but it was hard to stay motivated by myself — the whole reason for the study group was precisely to avoid that.
The topic is not defined yet (I'm thinking logic...), but I'm inclined to try it again. Streaming video and/or audio is a possibility, but not a requirement. I'd rather avoid it if possible.
Any suggestions on how to make this work?
As part of a weekly series, these topics are a place for users to casually discuss the things they did — or didn't do — during their weekend. Did you make any plans? Take a trip? Do nothing at all? Tell us about it!
This question has come up a few times now in the "Unofficial Tildes Chat" Discord server meta/curation channels, but I wanted to open up the discussion to ~tildes at large so we can perhaps finally get a more definitive judgement on it. So here goes:
What are people's thoughts on using the above topic tags in cases where a Tildes user posts something that they themselves have created, have hosted on their own site (or another), and/or could potentially profit from (monetarily or otherwise)?
Should only one of the tags be standardized on, or is there enough of a distinction between some of them for their use to be situational?
Should such tags be required?
Can anyone think of any better tags for such situations than the ones listed?
As part of a weekly series, these topics are a place for users to casually discuss the things they did — or didn't do — during their week. Did you accomplish any goals? Suffer a failure? Do nothing at all? Tell us about it!
What are you reading currently? Fiction or non-fiction or poetry, any genre, any language! Tell us what you're reading, and talk about it a bit. Previous topics Previous topics are listed in the wiki.
I just noticed today that in ~music, the "topic-info-source" metadata isn't visible in listings; it shows the author name instead. Clicking through to the post it's clear that it's been scraped, it just doesn't get a site name or favicon.
eg: Youtube link on ~movies versus Youtube link on ~music
Is this intentional? It sorta makes it look like everything on ~music is a text post.
Gender and sexuality are complex, personal topics, and asking questions about them can often feel invasive or even offensive. Discussions about them can be tough to navigate, especially online, where people's guards are often up and hostility and harassment are common.
In order to help clear the air and provide a safe space for honest and genuine dialogue, we have assembled a cross-section of Tildes' LGBT community to whom you can ask questions. These volunteers have agreed to open up about their experiences, identities, and knowledge.
In this thread, you will be able to ask our panelists questions regarding anything you've ever wanted to know about being LGBT. Our goal is to provide you with meaningful answers, not judge you for your questions! For the purposes of this thread, LGBT refers to the umbrella term under which all minority gender and sexual identities fall.
@username mention in your comment.Here are the users who will be answering your questions:
@Algernon_Asimov
@CALICO
@Cleb
@emdash
@Gaywallet
@kfwyre
@patience_limited
@reifyresonance
@ShilohMizook
@Silbern
@tindall
@Whom
You can get more information on each in their bios below:
| Name | Identity | Preferred Pronouns | Bio |
|---|---|---|---|
| @Algernon_Asimov | Gay man | I'm "Algernon". I'm a middle-aged gay man living in Australia. I came of age during the 1980s, when "gay" meant "Got AIDS Yet?". | |
| @CALICO | Pan & Poly, Male-shaped, Agender, Non-transitioning Trans | None/No-preference | Late-20's, military brat, former military, current gov't contractor. Historically lived all over the US; in the past 18-months I've lived in three states and two non-US countries—currently Afghanistan. Out where it matters, closeted where it doesn't. Unmarried—probably forever—in a LT/LDR currently with just one person. Shameless hippie, hobbyist, & aspiring author. |
| @Cleb | Genderfluid (Agender & Femme, also fine with just Non-Binary) | They/Them, She/Her | Early 20s, American, white, closeted in real life. Grew up in very conservative & religious area, still live here. Can talk about growing up like that, my struggle with fluidity/internalized transphobia/gender as a whole, things relating to trans culture on the internet, and any of the other standard fare trans and gender-nonconforming person questions. |
| @emdash. If you wanted to find my real name and social media profiles, you probably could, but keep it to yourself and don't be a dick, okay? | Gay cis-male | He/him | Early 20s (wow there's a theme emerging) guy living in New Zealand. Software engineering degree, but I hate the industry, so working on my own business and studying to be a pilot instead (aka the backup plan). I also fly a paraglider for fun. I've always lived in New Zealand, but would love to live overseas. Have the Tinder/Taimi profile tuned to a fine fucking art (IMHO). Out to friends, family aren't informed since I'm not particularly close to them anyway. |
| @Gaywallet | pan, poly, enby (nonbinary) | they/them | Early 30s, lived in California my whole life. Currently have 5 partners and feeling quite polysaturated. Big into raving, psychedelics, and general hippy stuff but with a queer focus. Out to friends and family, but not fully flying my flag at work (work in progress to happen this year). |
| @kfwyre | gay cis male | he/him/they/them | Teacher. Happily married. Living in the US, and grew up in a very conservative Christian area. Came out in my 20s and dealt with severe depression and fallout with family. |
| @patience_limited | Queer; intersex non-binary | they/them/she/her | Mainly in the sidebar. US, 50's, raised near a university town, married. White(ish). |
| @reifyresonance | transfemme, queer, poly | she/they | 19, living in the southern US. Studied in China for a year and did a field research project on marginalized queer identities in Shanghai nightlife (talked to people in gay bars), so if anyone wants to hear my (white, American) thoughts on that, I'm game :). I also got to help start an LGBT organization at my school there! Spent the last six months or so doing computer programming, and was part of the workplace LGBT affinity group. (Also, general transgender questions.) |
| @ShilohMizook (Shiloh) | Bisexual, lean mostly towards guys. Cis male. | He, Him. | 17, I go to a Catholic school in Florida, but the people there are pretty accepting, so I'm out to everyone. My parents try to avoid the subject. I've never actually met another non-straight guy in real life, which has kind of frustrated me, but it's okay. |
| @Silbern | Gay male | He/him | I'm an early 20's white guy with Asperger's Syndrome studying Computer Science. I come from a military family, so I've traveled a lot and lived in many places that were across the spectrum in gay friendliness. I currently live in Hawaii, which might be relevant both for my answers as well as possible time zone limitations. |
| @tindall | bisexual transgender female | she/her | Software engineer just getting out of college and into my first long-term full-time gig, at a company making cancer screening software. Grew up all over the place (East Coast, then Texas, then California) and I'm now in the Midwest. I care a lot about making the world a gentler and more supportive place for everyone, and I try to apply my skills to do that. |
| @Whom (...and Scarlett) | Trans lesbian | She | Early 20s, raised in the rural US (Wisconsin) studying English Education. Oh, and white. That's the important bits for context. I'm very familiar with current youth trans culture on the internet (which is so pervasive within the community that it's necessary for understanding what it's like being young and trans), so I'm well-equipped to answer questions relating to that or, of course, the trans experience as I see it. I might also be a decent resource to ask about how mental illness (particularly depression, severe anxiety, and light dissociation) fits into the whole picture. |
Over the last week, a number of updates have been made by people other than me contributing code to Tildes through its open-source repository. I wanted to make a post to highlight some of these changes and let everyone know about them, since there are some great updates and fixes in here:
@deing made it possible to create links that will pre-fill the subject and message for private messages. For example: https://tildes.net/user/Deimos/new_message?subject=Test+Message&message=Please+don't+actually+send+this+to+me
@blitz saw me make an offhand comment about a rare bug when someone submits a link to an IP address, and got a development environment set up and fixed it right away.
@Bauke has been on a tear, fixing a lot of long-outstanding issues and adding features. So far:
There are multiple more merge requests still waiting for me to review, and I'll probably be making some other posts soon once some of those get merged in as well. Thanks, the contributions are greatly appreciated! If anyone else is interested in looking into contributing, the CONTRIBUTING file in the repo is probably the best place to start.
And as usual, I've topped everyone back up to 10 invites, accessible on the invite page.
As part of a weekly series, these topics are a place for users to casually discuss the things they did — or didn't do — during their weekend. Did you make any plans? Take a trip? Do nothing at all? Tell us about it!
I personally find it uselful in certain cases, like getting an overview of areas where we have many solutions to a problem, like who should the Democratic nominee be or how should we make money.
Romantic relationships in gaming are often heavily debated, with lots of criticism and lots of support for the myriad experiences out there. I don't have a single specific question related to the topic, only some guiding ones. Feel free to answer any/all of these, or simply give your thoughts on the topic:
As part of a weekly series, these topics are a place for users to casually discuss the things they did — or didn't do — during their week. Did you accomplish any goals? Suffer a failure? Do nothing at all? Tell us about it!
This topic is part of a series. It is meant to be a place for users to discuss creative projects they have been working on.
Projects can be personal, professional, physical, digital, or even just ideas.
If you have any creative projects that you have been working on or want to eventually work on, this is a place for discussing those.
A list of all previous topics in this series can be found here.