There has been a bit of talk here recently about people who don't use the internet, why and how they don't. It's a common assumption that it's truly impossible to live without the internet, and to some that may be the case. I don't think this should be a roadblock to those who wish to try to withdraw at their own discretion. So what are some analog services or products you use? Maybe it's something that's not broken so why fix it? Maybe in your opinion something is better the old way as compared to the new internet version? I'll start it off with these:

• I still read paper books. I know this is super common, but I've met several people who consume their literature in exclusively electronic formats. I just can't concentrate when reading eBooks or listening to audio books. I also like the feel and smell of books, reminds me of hanging out in the library as a kid.
• I really try to not use mapping applications while driving. I think the ubiquity of GPS and mapping applications makes it really easy to not focus on where you are. It takes your eyes off of the road and there are privacy implications as well. I tend to look up directions ahead of time and write some notes down or print it out (cheat). I started doing this after an incident where I called 911, but couldn't tell the operator where I was despite the fact that I drove that route every day.
• I still write letters. I think letter writing offers element of intimacy, and helps foster good relationships. There's no "lol" or "k." in letter writing (except for one letter a friend sent as a joke), it lends to careful and purposeful composition as clarification is not always a text or phone call away. You can also get creative with your letter delivery. I've picked up more than one letter from bulletin boards at national parks (yes, if you ask they'll probably do that), I once had a friend send me a wax sealed letter via registered mail to a hotel which got quite a face out of the receptionist, and I once had a several letter exchange where the letter contents were encrypted with a basic ciphertext.

I've been looking lately for something new to read/watch/listen to/play and I've been chasing a particular feeling that some of my favorite works have given me in the past.

It's something that's hard to describe succinctly, so it's not exactly easy to just google search for something, and usually just telling people I like x thing gets me y recommendation which is maybe a similar style or genre but doesn't really elicit the particular feeling that I'm after.

I figure other folks might have a similar problem, so I thought it might be fun to have a thread for requests for works that make you feel a certain way, regardless of genre or medium.

I'll start mine in the comments and other folks feel free to ask for requests as top-level comments as well!

Back when I was a kid, I had a radioshack 200-in-1 science fair electronics kit this one

I loved that thing, and it sparked an interest in tech that ultimately led me to a CS degree.

Id like to buy something similar for my much younger sister, but nowdays everything I can find is arduino or raspi based. Id love to get something like that eventually, but I think it might be better to get a kit that more focuses on individual components first... Does anyone know of one sold these days?

Alternatively, if anyone has one of these and would be willing to scan the book, Id love to build one of these as a breadboard-based system.

Has anyone watched the second season yet? I quite liked it, although it's been getting a lot more meta than Season 1, which made it feel a lot more "Rick & Morty"ish.

(Tag spoilers accordingly please!)

I've been turning the question over in my mind since I read this article the other day. A company that delivers milk and basic groceries is moving to online-only billing and account management - the article quotes various people who are "disgusted" that the company are cutting off their "elderly or vulnerable customers". It's one relatively niche example that raises a much broader question, and the idea of people still living without some form of internet access genuinely caught me by surprise.

The UK has 94.6% internet penetration, relatively low costs (£10/month or less) for basic access, and a variety of subsidised schemes available for people to get basic hardware. That said, there are always gaps for people to fall through, and that last 5% still represents over three million people. At what point does it become reasonable to assume everybody is, or has the opportunity to be, online?

About ten years ago, Sony promised they'd change how we play games. With the launch of the Playstation Vita, they showed us a world in which one could start playing a game at home on your big powerful console, and then you could take it with you in the form of cross-play, where your saves synced via the cloud and you could play the Vita version right where you dropped off. And of course, for games that didn't have a Vita version, there was always the option of streaming your games.

Of course, we know how well that worked out. There were maybe 5 games where you could buy both versions of the game at once, and the majority of the games that supported cross-play required you to buy the same game twice. Streaming is still what everyone's pushing today, but in many places (coughAmericacough) there isn't a good enough connection to stream games with a good experience - especially if it's got twitchy gameplay.

Time has passed and many companies have began to offer a service model for games - subscribe to a program, and you get free access to games. And many of these services have some sort of cross-play component to them, where you get access to multiple platforms, or even with streaming versions, but they all have their downsides.

But it turns out that one company offers a gaming service that actually does offer each of their games in native versions across computers, consoles, and phones, has cross-play support, and doesn't have any of the downsides of streaming, and it's from a company that most people don't associate with gaming - especially when it comes to computer games. I'm speaking, of course, about Apple Arcade.

Sure, it all only works on Apple hardware, and the console part is a bit of a stretch (who actually owns an Apple TV?), but it works remarkably well. And unlike a number of other systems I have tried, it works seamlessly - you can save your game on your mac, launch your game on your iPhone, and instantly be playing your game. And the higher-end games with nice 3D graphics actually do look remarkably better on the big screen.

Of course, the selection of games is much different than any other games service, but I find myself surprised at how many games I legitimately want to play. Sure, there are a lot of 'iPhone' style casual games - right now they just released a bunch of previously released iPhone games cleaned up and stripped of monetization schemes - but I view that as a positive thing - sometimes you just want something simple to pass time with that doesn't need to take space in your brain. But at the same time there are also bigger and more aspiring titles available. There's a new action game from PLATINUMGAMES with an Okami-like artstyle, a brand new RPG from Mistwalker built on top of dioramas, and complex adventure games like Beyond a Steel Sky.

Apple arcade, is, however, missing one notable meta-genre from it's library - Triple-A games. And honestly, I kind of love it for that. The majority of the games companies represented are independent, and that means that many of them are going to be able to offer me new types of gameplay or narratives that you won't get from the big guys. What other service is going to offer experiences like Assemble With Care? And from an ethical point of view, I'd rather reward independent creators who are pushing out these high-quality pieces of work than giant companies who are famous for exploiting their workers.

While Apple Arcade obviously won't be a good choice for everyone since it's limited to Apple hardware, and if you're already in Apple's ecosystem, you probably already know about it (they're surprisingly aggressive at marketing their free trial - which is actually what got me to write this in the first place). I had originally written them off as all casual games, but with the last big release of games it's got some pretty fantastic releases. It's worth trying if you've only got an iPhone, but it's more than worth it if you've got a recent Mac or Apple TV.

Inspired by (or if you prefer, ripping off) @spit-evil-olive-tips ' moving thread.

I'm a US expat with Hungarian citizenship, moving with two native Hungarian friends (plus a dog and 2 cats), to The Hague. We have an apartment there, all 3 animals are chipped and vaccinated (and we 3 are not...). My cousin will be driving us there in about a month.

We already have an appointment, a couple days after the move, to register our BRPs and BSNs at the local govt office. Sooner would be better, but it must be done in person, and right now, I don't relish the idea of a 2nd trip across the EU just to get registered a bit faster.

I'm primarily looking for tips on smoothly integrating into Dutch society ... utilities, banking, health care, whatever else I'm forgetting to worry about. But I'm open to any tips regarding any aspect of moving between countries in the EU, in the middle of a poorly-managed global pandemic.

Side-note for the entrepreneurs: In the US, you can rent a car, truck or trailer anywhere, drive it to anywhere else ... and leave it there. I appreciate the added complexities of an int'l version of that service, but if anyone can be the first to resolve those challenges in the EU ... $$$. Or rather, €€€.

ETA: Any advice posted to @spit-evil-olive-tips thread need not be repeated here.

The recent rise in hate crimes against Asian Americans has been an emotional topic for me. The thing that makes me sad is, it seems the most I can do to de-escalate a violent situation I see on the news without putting myself in clear danger is to basically distract the aggressor from afar and comfort the victim afterwards.

What makes the matter more complicated is, if you look at the demographics of those who tend to commit these violent crimes against Asian people, they're often other minorities. It's so easy to fall into a trap of undermining the progress we've made in racial/social equality the moment we acknowledge that Asians are being targeted. For similar reasons, I view that our political system is entirely ill-equipped to handle this matter in a sustainable matter.

But I'd still like to turn this into something positive. Because I live comfortably as an engineer in the Bay Area, I was thinking I can donate to charities and organizations that are effective at bringing an end to this violence every time I see news about an Asian American getting targeted on social media. I plan on doing my own research as well, but I hope you can also give some suggestions.

Note: I'm posting this a day earlier than planned, just in case anyone forgot it was coming up and needed a bit more advance notice.

EDIT: I am just now realizing the unfortunate coincidence of posting this thread when I did. This is NOT an April Fools’ joke, I promise!

What is a "Screenless Day"?

Tildes "Screenless Day" is a simple event aimed at encouraging people to take a temporary step away from toxic or consuming aspects of technology and spend their time and energies elsewhere.

When is it?

It takes place over the weekend starting on the first Friday of each month. Participants will choose that Friday, Saturday, or Sunday to take as their screenless day -- whichever works best for their schedule.

Some people might not be able to participate in that window, and that's fine too. They can choose to shift their day earlier or later as needed. It is also completely fine (and encouraged!) to take personal screenless days separate from the event if you like. This thread will be posted the first weekend of each month, but it is open for comments the entire month.

Does it have to be truly "screenless"?

"Screenless" is an ideal, not a mandate. The spirit of the day is to deliberately step away from toxic or consuming aspects of technology, and what that means is different for each person. Thus, it is up to each participant to determine what "screenless" means to them. Some might only choose to not use social media for a day; some might choose to eliminate all "screens" but still use their ereader; some may maintain some screen use but only for necessity (e.g. work; classes; GPS; etc.). Some might get rid of screens entirely, or go fully "unplugged" for the day.

How do I participate?

You do not have to do anything formal at all to participate -- simply take your screenless day in whatever way is best for you! That said, I think it's more enjoyable and valuable to make this a shared experience, so the structured way to participate, for anyone interested, is as follows:

STEP ONE: Before you take your day, post a top-level comment in this thread detailing your plan for your screenless day.

Consider the following questions:

• Why do you want to take a screenless day?
• How are you personally defining "screenless"?
• What do you plan to do with your time?
• What do you hope to get out of it?

To have your plan stand out from normal conversation, please use the # markdown to title your post "[yourusername's] Screenless Day Plan"

STEP TWO: Take your screenless day.

• In the spirit of the event, you should probably not be reading or posting to this topic at all that day. To each their own, however. :)

STEP THREE: After it is over, return to the thread to reflect on your screenless day.

Post a response to your original comment in which you tell us all about your day.

• What did you do?
• How did it feel?
• Was it difficult? Easy?
• Did anything surprise you?
• Were there any unexpected challenges/breakthroughs?
• If you plan to do it again, what would you change? What would you keep the same?

To have your follow-up stand out from normal conversation, please use the # markdown to title your post "[yourusername's] Screenless Day Reflection"

Can I chat in this thread if I'm not participating?

Yes! The more, the merrier! Discussion from anyone, participant or non-participant alike, is welcome. Though, do understand that it might take a bit longer than normal for some people to respond. :)

Give an honest review of something that you've been using (or possibly stopped using) that's at least a year old, so we get an idea of what it's like for long-term use, rather than fresh. Anything is fair game: webhosting companies, kitchen gadgets, facial cleansers, etc.

My fiance is an artist who was laid off because he worked for a major employer in the entertainment industry that required him to be in contact with people.

So he's been unemployed for a long time now, but he has been trying to find work, but there isn't really anything available that uses his particular skills. So we invested in a digital art workstation (basically just bought a monitor with a digitizer built in to use a pen with) so that he could work on becoming an independant artist. But he's so bad at marketing and he spends so much time worrying about fine details that it takes him over a week to finish a single piece, so he hasn't had any success.

So if you combine this with a broken tooth that he hasn't been able to get taken care of because of a lapse in his dental insurance, he's not been in a good place.

I just bought a Mac and was looking for mac-native graphics programs (I sometimes work on marketing, so I need to do photo editing from time to time. Also I used to do photography as a hobby and want to get back into it), when I came across Serif's Affinity Designer Workbook. And I thought to myself that getting my fiance a training course in graphic design would allow him to shift gears into a segment where there is more work. It'll also give him a bit of a kick in the pants to get him moving and feeling better about himself.

I'm sure everyone knows there are millions of online training courses available right now, so I'm hoping someone might have any recommendations. I have some money saved up, so I don't mind paying a little bit extra if it'll result in better results. I'd prefer if it were a class that didn't rely on Adobe Illustrator if possible, but I know that it's the 'standard' and he'll probably have better luck if he has experience in it.

I've been thinking a bit lately of starting to look for another place of work. Nothing is really bad at my current employer, but I've been there since 2017 and my feet are starting to itch a bit. In addition, I'm not really to engaged in my work at the moment since I feel the domain is fairly boring and the tech is rather mundane. This might be a reflection of my sentiment of IT industry in general, i.e. lots of toys but mainly they are just different flavours of the same thing (especially when it comes to building XYZ web app).

Formerly my approach to finding a new job has been to look for companies that are looking for people with skills in technologies I am interested in learning. However, since I'm a bit dissilousioned with tech I think I need to switch my approach and look more for a mission driven organisation I can get behind!

What are your thoughts on organsations that do some kind of important work? If you were to pick a top 3 organisations where you would work which ones would you pick?

Note they don't have to be tech focused. I'm generally curious about different organisations I should look into and also to hear your thoughts on the matter!

My husband and I recently started listening to Tones and I who has a song called Johnny Run Away. It’s a short story about a boy who has feelings for another boy and is told by his dad to “run away” not because the father is homophobic but because he’s trying to protect his son from getting bullied:

His daddy walked by with a sigh
Said, "Johnny, sit by my side
I'm gonna give you the best advice
You've ever heard in your life
See that boy named Jimmy, yeah, he's a cutie
But no, no, Johnny, no, no, no
Johnny run away”

I like the song partially for its musicality (so catchy!) but also its narrative is genuinely touching to me. My father-in-law once told me he knew his son (my husband) was gay early on. He said that never changed how much he loved his son, but he was always worried about how much harder life would be for him because of that. I think a lot of parents support their LGBT kids but also live with the very real fear of knowing that the rest of the world won’t necessarily do the same, and I think this song captures that perspective.

Anyway, I would love to hear about other songs that feature LGBT stories and perspectives, especially if they’re personally resonant for you or someone you know.

The following are ramblings from my garden. I would love to here the ramblings from other people's gardens.

It's spring where I am, and I absolutely love spring! The last full moon (the one in February) I call the Angry Goose Moon, because it's around that time that my male goose turns into a monster, and I need to pull out my shield (a garbage bin lid) to move around the yard while warding off his attacks. His change in demeanor signifies the onset of spring for me.

Some people divide spring into early spring and late spring, but I live in a cool, wet environment that has a very long spring which is why I prefer thinking about the garden in terms of the moon cycle. The beginning of spring is Angry Goose Moon. During this phase, the hummingbirds start visiting, waiting for our native red flowering currant (Ribes sanguineum) to bloom. Everyday it gets closer and closer (I expect it to be in full bloom any day now). My hated Burkwood Osmanthus (Osmanthus × burkwoodii) begins rapidly trying to turn into a tree, and I'm reminded that I still haven't figured out what to plant in its place as I trim it back down a manageable level. And OMG the freaking cranesbill geranium (Geranium sanguineum) has once again gotten into everything, but I loathe to get rid of it all because the bees love it so much. This year I am being way more ruthless than years pass and have filled several bins of it for the yard waste collectors.

Usually this is also when I start seeds, but I'll be leaving for six weeks, so the seed catalogues will be collecting dust this year. Instead I'm checking out my propagation efforts from last year. I need to move a beautiful hydrangea (Hydrangea macrophylla) that gets way to big for the area it's in, but I've been afraid to move it case it dies, so last year I took 30 cuttings, which all rooted. It looks like 29 of those made it through the winter. I have no need for 29 more hydrangeas, but I now know I can move the mother plant, and if it dies, I'll have something to replace it with. In the mean time I'll plant the new ones in bigger pots to give away next year when they are more established.

Last fall I divided up some of the lemongrass (Cymbopogon citratus) I planted last year, plopped them into 10 pots, and brought them indoors to winter over. It looks like five of them made it. It won't be late enough for me to get them in the ground before I leave, but I will put them into bigger pots and get them under artificial light. Hopefully they will still be alive when I get back.

I'm not much of a rose fan, but outside my back window is a shrub rose (Rosa glauca) that has beautiful red tinged foliage and purple stems. It only flowers for a short time, and the flowers aren't anything to write home about, but they are followed by nice plump rose hips that I harvest for tea. It is absolutely in the wrong spot with its large growth and overly thorny stems. Last year I took a lot of cuttings of it and some natives roses that inhabit the same area, and it looks like most of them made it. Once they are large enough (another year or two) I'll plant them in a spot where their flesh ripping thorns won't be bothersome, remove all the large specimens, and replant the area with berries (I'm thinking about a mix of blueberry and honeyberry (Lonicera caerulea). Another potting up project before I go.

I enjoy plant medicine and started quite a few medicinal plants from seed last year. I started a bit late so nothing got in the ground, but it looks like most of them were able to winter over in the potting shed, but not all of them. I sowed 30 seeds of skullcap (Scutellaria baicalensis) of which only 6 germinated. I was going to move those six into the house to winter over, but I ended up with a spider mite problem in the house from having earlier brought in my toothache plants (Acmella oleraceae) and didn't want them to get infected. Unfortunately none of the skullcap survived. The toothache plants in the house didn't survive either, and I wish I had extracted their medicinal properties before their death, they were certainly large enough. But this paragraph started like it was going to be about wins. The biggest win, the one I'm most excited about, is that all of my mountain meadow arnica (Arnica chamissonis) made it! Their first leaves of spring are pushing through the soil, and their roots are pushing out of the holes of their pots. I don't believe there is a better plant for muscular aches and pains than arnica, and I am looking forward to harvesting it to make salves. I did seed way too many than my garden can hold, so as soon as I determine whether or not they they also are infested with spider mites, I will offer them up for other people to add to their gardens. I'm also excited that all the elecampane (Inula helenium) made it through the winter, though once again I seeded way too many. The added bonus is this plant can tend to be weedy in my locale, so I will only plant a couple down in the weedy medicinal area to let them compete with each other.

Side talk about garden pests. Besides slugs, which if I allow the ducks to move through the garden, don't damage too much of my garden, my gardens are fairly pest resistant. I spent a lot of time last year moving through it with a magnifier taking pictures and videos of the smaller insects that live among the plants. It's a whole other world living just out of reach of my normal vision! Of particular interest to me were a few of my phlox plants (Phlox paniculata) that had deformed leaves. On closer inspection I saw what I assume is spider mites. A few weeks later, taking video again, I saw what I assume are predatory spider mites, and a few weeks after that the phlox started growing correctly. There are so many predators out there doing "gods" work, and if any of you gardeners are ever bored, I suggest rabbit holing into garden predators.

I'm rambling, where was I?
Oh yeah.
I also use this time to severely prune stuff back that missed my list the year prior. In my culinary herb garden there is a bay tree (whether it's Laurus nobilis or Umbellularia californica I do not know). It's a monster that should not be planted where it is. I know I could hack it it back almost to the ground and it would come back, except that its branches cover my bathroom window in a way that gives me privacy from the cabin on the other side of the creek, while letting light in. It's this constant battle between keeping it small enough that wildlife can't use to get to the roof, yet large enough to afford me bathroom privacy. I just hacked a bunch of it off and I suspect I'll be doing the same again in the fall.

This place has a lot of problems, and I have to remain vigilant in celebrating the successes and not getting lost in lists of things to do. But there's a lot of beauty in our property, and I do enjoy experiencing it. Angry Goose Moon is the time of year when I am filled with the most hope for the future.

Today I was lucky enough to get the Thrustmaster T.16000M FCS Flight Pack that includes a joystick, throttle, and rudders. I also have a Valve Index set up to use for VR flight games. My main use for this setup is to use alongside Flight Simulators to practice maneuvers and other things flight-related while I am taking IRL classes to get my pilot's license. But I want to broaden my scope a bit and try out other games that would suit it (VR or non-VR).

Any thoughts on what to try and play? I have Star Wars Squadrons that I plan to boot up already.

I know chat about cryptocurrency hasn't been extremely popular here in the past, but I am curious if there is enough interest now to make a group for it. I am looking for a place to discuss it from an enthusiast's perspective because Reddit is just getting a little too crazy for me.

On March 17th, it was reported that the version of Nier: Automata on the XGP, the BECOME AS GODS edition, was a different and much improved version of the one found on Steam, the Game of the YorHa edition. This was particularly big news since the first port of Nier: Automata has been infamously buggy and broken for many, and it has never received an update since launch despite its widespread and massive success.

This version of the game not only fixes the resolution and FPS issues, but it also adds things like HDR and ultrawide support. This new port was developed by QLOC and have apparently included these improvements at Platinum Games' request. There have been longstanding rumours about disagreements between Square-Enix and Platinum about who is responsible for updating the game, thus its lack of updates (even though all other PC titles by SE and Platinum have received updates), and the original release continues to be completely unplayable for many even with the FAR mod.

Yesterday, March 18th, a Resident Evil and Evil Within YouTuber reported that the XGP version of Evil Within was effectively a new version of the game with significant additions and changes:

• first person mode + FOV option
• Infinite ammo mode
• Icons for lantern/sneaking in first person view
• Low/Medium options for Camera Bob
• The stamina has been adjusted, you can now run for 5 seconds at default stamina(was originally 3 seconds)
• All DLC Included
• Separate Achievement List from Xbox
• The game also feels less janky and smooth

First person mode has been a highly requested feature for the game, as it was added with the sequel (The Evil Within 2) and has been an often requested and modded feature to the original game.

Hello Tildes,

I've been doing bokashi composting for pretty much all my vegetable and fruit scraps since last year. Lately, I've been wanting to level up my game and recycle meat scraps and chicken/fish bones as well. That's how I came across these "foodcycler" devices. They basically chop up and dry food scraps in a sealed container. I assume it works much like how industrial composting machines work, except it's scaled way down. At around 300-400 dollars, they're certainly not cheap, and probably generate a lot of greenhouse gasses during the manufacturing process. What's more is, every time you run a cycle, it has to run for 4-8 hours, though the manufacturer says the device is "energy conscious."

I'm trying to assess whether I'll do more harm than good by buying one of these things to convert more of my food scraps. My ultimate goal is to try many different ways to recycle food waste and try to get my friends to try it out as well. Some of them have already shown interest in bokashi composting, but none has actually tried it out (too much work).

Do you think commercial "foodcycler" devices do more harm than good? How should we go about evaluating this?

Edit: I've asked this question on many different places, and it looks like the general consensus is there's no strong need for something like this unless you live in apartments, in a city/town that does not collect food waste. Some believe recycling food waste via the more traditional methods (e.g. bokashi, vermicomposting) would yield better results because the foodcycler would dry up and kill a lot of the bacterial presence, though I believe the dried up scraps can be somewhat "revived" by mixing them in wet soil. Nobody seems to be able to definitively tell whether using the foodcycler would be a net positive or negative, because there's no way to verify its manufacturing process. I may do an experiment on how much power it draws if I get my hands on one in the future.

Hey everyone,

I launched my little project LinkLonk here on Tildes back in December and wanted to tell you how it has been going and get your feedback/suggestions.

New changes since the launch:

• The temporary accounts now automatically get deleted after 30 days of inactivity. I didn't have the deletion logic at the time of the launch, but had it implemented about 30 days after launch. Automatic account deletion is quite destructive - removes the account from the database (thank goodness for foreign keys and cascade deletes) and from Firebase Authentication. I'm happy that there were nobugs when I ran it the first time.
• In addition to submitting external links you can now create text posts. The posts are Markdown-formatted (similar to Tildes). One novel thing is that you can post "anonymously". The database has a record of who the author is so the author can delete/edit their post, it's just the name is not show next to the post.
• Comments - each item has a comment section. The comments are ranked based on how much you trust the people who upvoted each comment (as opposed to being pure popularity). This is the same ranking system that is used to rank the "For you" page, but now applied to comments.
  • Unlike Tildes, the comments have a downvote button. The downvote does not bury the comment for everyone else. Instead, it makes your trust in upvotes of people who upvoted that comment go lower. So the downvote button effects what you see, not what others see. It is much harder to abuse that button that way. For that reason I feel much more comfortable putting it there. However, there is a second order effect. If you downvote a comment that someone else already downvoted - then you will trust the downvotes of that person. When they downvote some other comment - then it will rank lower for you. In a sense they earn your trust to moderate content for you by identifying comments you don't want to see.

In terms of users, there have been 260 user records created (some from my shameless plug comments on HackerNews). Of those, ~45 rated something - excluding those that were temporary accounts and were deleted. And I think we have 2 regularly active users (excluding myself). In my mind I had 10 as the number of active users that I was hoping to get by the end of 2021. At this rate we may reach it.

I was pleasantly surprised that there have been no misbehaving users. I didn't need to remove any content even once. This lead me to constantly postpone the implementation of a content reporting system. I hope it stays this way for a long time.

The whole idea of a trust based recommendation system is based on having someone to trust. Right now it is the RSS feeds that are generating most of the content recommendations for the active users. But ideally it would be mostly users recommending content to users. I have two priorities for the near future:

• Make the "single-player" experience better so the active users find value already. As an example, I added full-text search through items you liked
• Find more users to improve the "multi-player" experience. One option is to submit a "Show HN:" post on HackerNews. But you can only do it once and I'm not sure I'm ready to use that shot yet.

What do you think I should do next on these two fronts?

If you would like to give LinkLonk a try register with code "tildes" at https://linklonk.com/register. Feel free to comment on this post: https://linklonk.com/item/6347369602224750592

What is an NFT and what makes them valuable?

I know I can just Google this, but Tilders are smart and will provide an accessible, nuanced and complete comment on the technology that I won't get elsewhere.

Besides the technology itself, I'm interested in knowing why it drew so much attention recently. What prompted NFT's sudden notoriety?

If I add, remove, or change a topic filter, and then press the "Save" button, I get no indication that anything happened. It does work, but it's odd that it doesn't tell you it tried. What if something caused it to fail? (Maybe that case is handled?) I think it should say something like "Changes saved at 3:11:42PM", or something along those lines so you know it actually updated.

I'm currently developing a minimal userscript manager who's main goal is to be fully auditable by any user in only ten minutes or so - my prototype uses less than 300 lines of javascript, and I'm trying to keep it that way.

To get the codebase this small, however, I have to be very picky with what features I implement - most notably, the code editor has to be very barebones. Are there any features that I'd be shooting myself in the foot by not including?

For example:

• syntax highlighting
• cloud sync
• regex url matching
• fullscreen editor (currently, it's just a browser popup - the intention is that you write code elsewhere and paste it in)

Any feedback is greatly appreciated!

It would be nice if there was an extra box that allows you to add info that is private to the people on tildes. For example I would like to share creds to a game account, but I only want people on tildes to get that info, not the public who aren't users and just visit.

So recently I've been kind of hating big parts of where I am in life, most of all where I live. I am still living with my family, and while they are all good people, our place isn't the biggest so there isn't too much privacy most of the day. So over the years I have basically started to quietly resent everyone in this house, which got exacerbated over the quarantine (and even much more when we were all stuck at home for 14 days when we got the corona and were in isolation).

I've been thinking that basically the only way to make sure I don't go fully insane is to finally move out. Also, I don't really want to admit it to myself, but I am not very independent, and I feel like I really need to change that. This year I will be finishing my Bachelor's degree, so that seems like the perfect time I would like to aim for. The problem is that after I am done with the degree I want to continue by doing a Masters in the same place. The obvious easy solution is to just rent some place with roommates I'd have to find, which is probably what I'll try to do.

But I have also been engaging in a lot of fantasizing - escapist thoughts involving doing my Masters in a different country. I was already thinking about this a bit before starting my Bachelor's degree, but I ultimately decided not to, which might have been a good call as I was definitely even more of a baby back then. But now, as I have another opportunity I have again been thinking about this a lot.

I am from the EU, so I could study in any other EU country for free. Mostly I've been thinking about Finland, or other Scandinavian countries (maybe kind of cliche?). It would definitely be really hard though, and I am not sure am I strong enough to do this. As I said I am kind of a not very independent wuss, so I am kind of scared if I could survive by myself in a different country with basically no one I could fall back on. Finding a place to live would also probably be quite hard and I would very likely need to find a part time job there, because even though I spent almost 2 years saving up money at a part time job, the countries I am looking at are more expensive than mine so my savings wouldn't most likely be enough. Hopefully there would be some student dormitories available that would be quite cheap? I don't really care too much about how prestigious my university is, but it could also be nice that I could choose a better rated one somewhere.

I hope I wouldn't lose my current best friends. I probably have some very overblown expectations about this though. I always dream how I would meet some new cool friends, maybe even find a relationship. I am quite an anxious person, especially socially anxious which I'd also hope I would have to overcome a bit. But I probably wouldn't magically become more extroverted, and less anxious. I might even just be unable to make any friends there, but I'd hope that I would be kind of forced to make some and get out of my shell so to speak. Suddenly having to do everything by myself, while having a job, in a foreign country might be too much though.

Also another random thing that I would like about this is I would kind of like to change my name at the same time and I am fantasizing that it would work out nicely. I don't dislike my name too much, but I feel like I would like a different one much more, and that it would kind of help me become myself more or something? I don't really want to change my name legally, I am more thinking that I would just start telling people that my name is <name I like more>, so it would kind of be more like a nickname. Yeah, writing that out I should probably try telling some friends to just start calling me by the name, even though I feel like they would just be like why and cringe a bit.

I know I am probably fantasizing about studying abroad too much, and that it wouldn't be that great, studying abroad most likely wouldn't help me find a relationship or anything, but I'd think it would definitely force me to become more independent. I feel like I am once again coming up on quite a big decision in my life and I am still not really sure how to proceed. Did anyone here study abroad, for the whole degree, or even as an exchange student - Erasmus or similar stuff? Any other thoughts would be appreciated too. Thank you for reading, I hope my writing isn't too much of a messy stream of thoughts.

Edit: Thanks to everyone for your responses, you are all so nice, uplifting and motivating <3. I will definitely be seriously researching much more about studying abroad, and while I can't guarantee I'll go forward with this plan, I'll try working towards it for now. I still have almost 2 months to decide, and if I decide to go ahead with it, it would still be at least a year away. But I promise to you guys, that I will at least move out of my parents house for my sanity, one way or another.

I sometimes feel like music videos get the short stick and aren't appreciated as the unique and fascinating art form that they've become. I think a lot of us got into them back in the heyday of MTV/VH1 but they've gone far beyond that in the internet age. I'd like to invite everyone to share some of their favorites in this thread - new or old, popular or obscure, anything goes, and share as many as you like.

Inspired by a similar thread @kfwyre posted a while ago.

I've been given an Android phone for a work contract and I don't want to carry two devices, so I will likely migrate from my Blackberry Z10 soon. The BB10 OS (not to be confused with BBOS, which ran the Bolds, etc. of BB's heyday) was intuitive, useful, and wayyyyy better than most people who never used it would have expected, only being doomed by the app gap. I'd have considered buying another Blackberry this year if I hadn't been given this other phone. I have long been wary of Android due to both privacy concerns and UI/UX gripes. Having tooled around for a couple days already, I'm struck by how many simple things I apparently can't do out of the box, and the fact that there are so. many. ads. Even in the apps! I know I will root and de-Google the device as much as I can once I get a hang of the OS.

So, I'm mainly looking for app recommendations, but general advice is appreciated as well. My use case is very functional - email, scheduling, messaging, browsing, navigation, weather, and calls. Preference given to FOSS and/or ad-free apps, but I'll pay up if it's really worth it. So far I've uninstalled a bunch of bloatware, installed Firefox, found SwiftKey to be the only half-decent replacement for Blackberry's terrific keyboard software, and the best free no-ad weather app looks to be a Norwegian one called Yr.

There's been quite a bit of discussion lately about people don't want to see, but not that much about what sort of content we do want to see. What would you like to see more of?

For the official stance, I'll repost the instructions that most of us are probably skipping over by now.

Tildes prioritizes high-quality content and discussion
Please post topics that are interesting, informative, or have the potential to start a good discussion.
Please avoid posting topics that are primarily for entertainment or that don't have discussion value.

This seems vague, and we probably have different ideas of what's high-quality and what counts as good discussion?

I'm also wondering if we should be here more for the links or for the discussion. When I arrived, I was just happy to find a quiet place where I could post links to articles that I found elsewhere and were particularly interesting to me. (But I think I had gotten into a rut for a while after getting obsessed with the pandemic and politics.) Maybe we should try posting more links?

This is a wild, ongoing story that is playing out in a rather bizarrely.

First off, here is Frogware's open letter on the situation from August 25, 2020.

Basically, Frogwares signed an agreement with Nacon (formerly Big Ben Interactive) to license and publish their game in return for funding, but Frogwares still owned the IP. Frogwares claims that Big Ben was consistently late with payments and did not honour milestones for further funding. They took on an EGS exclusivity agreement to help get funding. At some point during the development, Nacom bought another studio and then demanded that Frogwares give their source code to this new company, which Frogwares refused to do.

The released the game in June 2019 but then were told by Nacom that the milestones that were previously agreed to were cancelled, therefore Frogwares would see no profit from the game. Frogware filed a lawsuit and finally got access to some sales data but found it wanting in many regards. They also found that copyright notices on the game were incorrect with the result of misallocating the IP ownership. Their logo was removed from the PS4 and X1 versions of the game and they discovered that Nacon was presenting themselves as the IP owners for the game, and had bought domains for Frogwares' other Sherlock Holmes titles (most of which was published by Focus Home Interactive, with some published by Atlus in North America or self-published by Frogwares).

Frogwares believes they had what they needed to terminate the contract with Nacon, despite some complications with the French legal system due to the COVID pandemic, and so they pulled their games from various storefronts alongside this letter.

In January 2021, that French legal complication played out against them when the Paris Court of Appeals determined that Frogwares acted unlawfully and decided that Nacon would be able to put the game back on the market.

Today, The Sinking City was put back on Steam with Frogwares listed as the developer, but Frogwares says they did not make this version. It seems to be an older version, missing much the DLC and features like achievements and cloud saves.

Frogwares' own version of the game is being sold only on Gamesplanet, Origin, and the Xbox 1 Series, PlayStation 5, and Nintendo Switch.

Today, Belgium announced no changes in current protection measures.

After a fairly successful handling of the first wave (all things considered, especially the fact it was actually unprecedented at the time), Belgium's handling of the pandemic has been getting progressively worse. All countries have suffered their fair share of incompetence during this crisis, but today, we'll talk about Belgium (and a bit about the EU), because I live there.

Context and restrictions

Belgium works a little bit like a miniature version of the USA: Three regions (Flanders, Wallonia and Brussels) which function somewhat independently as states, with a federal government overseeing all three. Flanders is primarily flemish (dutch-speaking), Wallonia is primarily french, and Brussels is a mix but mainly french.

Excellent article detailing restrictions: https://www.politico.eu/article/belgium-coronavirus-lockdown-rules-restrictions-overview/ -- Some highlights below.

• A 10PM curfew is in place since October 2020 in Brussels and Wallonia; Midnight for Flanders.
• Bars, cafes, restaurants are closed to non-takeout business since October 2020. All alcohol sales prohibited after 8pm.
• Museums, swimming pools, hairdressers, are currently open.
• Remote work is mandatory.
• Belgium is currently forbidding non-essential travel outside of the country, much to the EU's dismay.
• There is a complicated social bubble system which tells you how many people you are allowed to see every week.

The "long lockdown"

Like most other western countries, Belgium experienced its first wave between March and May. We strictly locked down in March, reopened in June. The lockdown was successful at reducing the number of cases for all summer. A new lockdown happened in October but this time, driven by the fear of being "too strict", Belgium instead adapted a long checklist of a variety of measures, evolving more or less weekly, so that some things can be allowed. Most importantly, Belgium did not close schools at all.

The effects of this by comparison can be marveled at here: https://twitter.com/NikoSpeybroeck/status/1365257345941520385/photo/1

In essence: Belgium plateau'd high. So for October, November, December, January, February and now March, the country has been suffering nearly all the casualties of a normal lockdown… instead of a 10 week, slightly stricter lockdown (like countries such as South Korea are able to achieve), we're getting what looks to be a 24+ week, slightly less strict, highly-damaging lockdown.

The importance of consistency

The #1 complaint from everyone I've talked to about the rules are their inconsistencies. Because when you impose rules that affect people negatively, their first reaction will be: "Why are you forbidding X, which affects me, but allowing Y, which is worse and doesn't?"

You all know I'm a skater. For me it's the swimming pools: I'm at a loss why safe ice rinks are closed, but swimming pools are open. Something something chlorine. But there are plenty of examples that affect the general population; the one I hear most often as a comparison point is: "Why are we allowing people to be packed like sardines in the metro and in buses?" (And yes, people really are packed up in there at peak hours, I'm sure it's one of the primary transmission vectors)

Or: "Why are you forcing me to work remotely, when you are keeping the schools open? " -- Most countries did notice how much of a transmission vector schools and campuses are, especially with teenagers not exactly being incentivized to take precautions. Belgium, throughout the whole soft lockdown, has kept schools open for nearly the entire time they were going to be on a normal year.

Inconsistencies drive people to distrust the rules, and those making the rules. They make the rules feel arbitrary, which makes them feel irrelevant as a whole. It gets people thinking: "If this is not logical, then the explanation is that they don't know what they're talking about, and I can't trust what they say about COVID".

The importance of simplicity

What are the current measures? (official government website)

Now, I think info-coronavirus.be is one of the better-organized and well-marketed successes of Belgium's handling of the pandemic. Unfortunately it also nicely showcases how complex the rules are when there are sections such as "Can dog groomers remain open?" and "Can hunting continue?".

Belgium's social bubble system is easily the most complicated part of it and the people I know who do follow the rules, don't actually necessarily understand them and end up accidentally either being too strict, or breaking the rules. I can't tell you what it is myself without looking it up, as the rules around it change regularly; what I know is that you're more-or-less allowed to see 4 people per week. There is a "cuddle-contact" rule that dictates how many people you're allowed to be intimately close with each week. The rules are different based on your age, based on whether you live alone, based on whether you tend to people in certain groups…

Over winter, the rules got utterly ridiculous and I've written about this before, with a checklist of exceptions, ifs-and-buts for Christmas and New Years, dictating different rules for whether you're outside, inside, how many people can go to the toilet in your home, etc.

I cannot stress how much this has negatively impacted the population. It is neither learned nor widely followed, but as an ever-present high-impact rule in people's day to day life, is a constant reminder of how arbitrary the measures are.

Simpler rules, whether they're stricter or looser, will be followed more widely and will be overall perceived less negatively.

The importance of a risk-impact balance

For every single additional rule created, people's patience is tested. Of course, stricter rules are a tougher test to go through, but the more rules, the more you test their patience as well.
So there is a careful balance to strike: When introducing a rule, it has to actually be useful. You want to maximize how much you are reducing hospitalizations, with as few rules as possible. Getting to zero is not the goal, getting to a manageable number is.

With some exceptions, people don't have an understanding of the impact most rules on the final numbers. So it's rare that people take into account how useful the rules are when evaluating whether they should respect them. More to the point, a good amount of people will take an "all or nothing" approach, where the moment they stop respecting some rules, they'll stop respecting most or even all of them.

So it is critical to limit the rules to those that have the highest impact in the final numbers, and enforce those; rather than have far looser enforcement of a lot of rules that may, on paper, be more effective.

People aren't machines and will not function perfectly. I have yet to hear experts and politicians take the simplest questions into account:

• Will this rule be respected?
• Will people who stop respecting this rule cause them to stop respecting other rules?
• Will people distrust vaccines as a result of distrusting rules?
• How does this affect the numbers when taking the above into account?

Something to keep in mind when taking arbitrary decisions such as forbidding outdoors lake skating when, after a winter of sports being inaccessible, lakes finally freeze in Belgium.

Vaccinations

Yes, vaccines, let's talk about them.
Now it's no secret that the EU has really botched vaccine supplies. And yet, Belgium is proudly and loudly "slightly ahead of the initial vaccination timetable".
You'd think this is good news, but what it means is that Belgium's vaccination timetable is horribly pessimistic. Distributing vaccines is the one thing getting us out of this mess, and it's being prioritized like a 4am car alarm. One example, which was eventually backtracked on, is how COVID nurses and caregivers were going to be in the second phase of vaccinations, only given the shot after all care homes had been vaccinated. Which means that in that awful timetable, they'd start receiving their shots… next week, as of the time I'm writing this.

The US quickly figured out that Pharmacies need to be involved. Now, here's a fun fact you can throw out at parties: Belgium has the most pharmacies per capita in the world, sitting at around ~5000 pharmacies in total for 11.5M people.

Guess which country has yet to even talk about involving pharmacies in the distribution of the vaccines?

I talked about this with my MD this week. He was on the floor. He keeps telling government officials: "Give me a box of 20 vaccines per day, I'll have them distributed to patients and I can follow prioritization strategies". They refuse.

There are 73% non-respondants to vaccine invitations in Brussels. The Heysel vaccination center alone is wasting 750 vaccination slots per day, instead of taking a page from what airlines learned and overbooking to keep all slots as close to full as possible.

This disorganized mess is costing millions of euros every day. It's lengthening a stressful period which will have lasting effects on the population. It causes distrust of governments, distrust of systems, distrust of scientists. The butterfly effect of fucking this up is unfathomable.

Masks

And now we get to the latest fuckup. Masks. One of the most effective, highest-impact, easiest-to-comply-with measures.

Belgian government says to stop wearing the free cloth masks they distributed ‘as a precaution’

Last summer, Belgium distributed free reusable cloth masks to the population. And yesterday, they warned that nanoparticles of silver are present in the mask and can be breathed in, warning to stop wearing them as a precaution measure.

I have no word for the amount of distrust this causes. Not just in Belgium but worldwide. Criminal incompetence.

And again, we are not talking about that. We're not talking about the fact that anti-maskers now have these huge talking points and are easily able to convince a fed-up population that COVID is harmless, wearing masks is a bad idea, vaccines are evil, and we should all just say "fuck it".

In the midst of such an enraging news, the Belgian government has decided that things are fine as-is, and measures should not be relaxed.

Anything goes -- all answers are fair game, no matter how big or small! All that matters is that something amazing isn't getting its due.

Also, it probably goes without saying, but let us know why (you think) it's amazing and why (you think) people take it for granted.

Hello loves!

A wonderful individual reached out to me recently and proposed the idea of creating more of a community within Tildes, rather than being a smaller part of the Tildes community as a whole. As it is right now, Tildes feels like a single place with a single voice that's the average of its members, and we'd like to change that. We've started a discord server for queer individuals on Tildes. This server is meant to define itself as its own thing. ~lgbt is a place to organize posts on a topic, not a community, so we'd like to fill that hole.

Here's the invite link: https://discord.gg/FmhWYVAhFs

One particular aspect of forming a community I think is important, perhaps even more so for a minority identity, is that Tildes can be frustrating and alienating at times, even when it doesn't intend to be. This space is meant to be somewhere you can go to vent when you run into any of the many trials and tribulations you may run across on this wonderful website. You know, the times where you want to bang your head against a wall because you're just not getting through to someone else or when you open a thread, read a few replies, shake your head and close it - disappointed in the tone or direction it has taken. After all, sometimes we don't want to be direct or confrontational to people who say hurtful things when often they're just mislead, uneducated, or misinformed.

Anyhow, I hope to see many of you wonderful folks in there and I'm looking forward to knowing you all a little bit better! 💜

I'm mostly just curious what types of in-depth projects you all get up to. The weekly "what are you working on threads" are always full of cool things, so I am curious what people's self-rated most difficult or complex projects have been.

Hi my lovelies,,

I've been having a hard time over the past few weeks because my life is pretty much a never-ending stream of problems and insecurities right now, most of which I cannot resolve for at least a few months. This has led me into a state of intense listlessness and unhappiness. I do not like being unhappy and have Officially Decided that I would like to be happy again. But I think I need some help getting there.

Moving beyond the basic "I'm terribly lonely in this very unpleasant pandemic" stuff, my main issue is that I actually am not alone at all, at least physically or socially, I am just alone emotionally/spiritually. I live with a bunch of other people my age and certianly have opportunities for interactions (quite a few). I get dinner with some of my very favorite people every week (on Wednesday!!!!) and am kept on at least a slightly consistent social/exercise schedule with some of my other very favorite people every day. My issue is that in most or possibly all of these settings, there is something preventing me from totally relaxing. I can only talk about my surface-level problems, like "oh haha I'm so busy with class ahah lol joke" and not "my deepest darkest insecurities are clawing their way into my brain more intensely every day and I Cannot Stop Them." Its like I keep my little shield up the whole time and don't allow myself to be vulnerable. I suspect there are a few factors going on here:

• I have several leadership positions, either formally or informally, and actually have a very difficult time not stumbling into them and accepting more responsibility in general. I think I have internalized the stoicism or steadfastness I try to exemplify in those positions, in my everyday life
• I often (usually?) look like I have my shit together, even when I very much do not. My default way of existing is just pretty relaxed and I think people assume that means I have no stress in my life (false lol)
• I like it when people think and say Good Things about me and not when they think and say Bad Things about me, and that includes their perceptions of me as someone who has their shit together all the time

sooo the leadership thing is unfortunate because it means that kind ofa lot of people look up to me as a beacon of stability and idealness. I know this because I have been told it several times by several different people, and it's sort of obvious when people emulate your mannerisms or call you at 2 am because they're drunk and lost and need help. There is exactly a 0% chance that I will do anything other than express my normal "everything is going good" attitude when I am running a meeting or giving a presentation or whatever because doing so would signify "everything isNOT good" and therefore "oh no help where is my beacon of stability beezselzak ahhhhhhh" (we cannot have a crisis at the same time because I must be there to attend to their crisis whenever it happens. Part of the job) And also it would upset my narcissistic tendency toward being perfect always.

Even when I'm with my friends, who I can be at least moderately normal around, I still find it very difficult to begin talking about anything that is rather Serious because it is much more pleasant to just talk about enjoyable things, and though I see these people on a regular basis, it is not ever for very much time, so I don't want to waste it. I would feel very awkward bringing up serious mental health problems at dinner. And also even though we're close friends there is still a little bit of an expectation to have your life under control? you know how it is. I have 2-3 people who are sort of individual confidants (about specific things), and there are occasions where we can have very insightful conversations. But it's hard because the covid makes getting together unrealistic and I find it very challenging to initiate Serious Conversations over the telephone. And even in person, I still think I have some barriers yet to break with them.

The end result here is that I am kinda just walkin around every day with a lot of issues and nowhere to exactly put them, and everyone thinks it's all sunshine and roses and I really feed into that perception because it makes me feel good short-term (even though it makes me feel worse long-term). I have a therapist, but you know how that goes. It's not the same as talking to a peer, which is really where I'm stuck. So this is my question to the wise and learned gentlefolk of Tildes:

How do I shed this annoying habit of trying to be perfect even when it's really not necessary and really not helpful? I know that there's a problem, I just can't give up my leadership positions (at least for now) and am having a hard time giving up my narcissism.

and yes yes I do therapy and journaling and the mindful meditation and whatever, I am not interested in generic self-help advice. I'm more curious about your rituals, or forms of understanding that are personal to your struggles in regard to being vulnerable with friends, your SO, and people who look up to you. I'd like to learn more about how any of this might resonate with you, and then how you have dealt/would deal with it yourself. Because I am Young And Naive I think I lack most of the experiential knowledge about like, "how to exist," and I want to be able to take your ideas into account. Things that matter, things that really just don't matter, ways to conceptualize the self versus the great vast universe of possibility and collective individuality to ultimately be less concerned with perfection and the like. etc. Also I ought to teach some of these people how to be better at being independent functional humans and that is a little tricky when I am not one myself.

xoxoxo
beezselzak

Last week I woke up to yet another PM from someone I've come to admire from afar on tildes. This was a user I'd seen many times on Tildes, bringing with them a unique and powerful voice. This person was a minority. They brought a voice to the table that was like a breath of fresh air - I'd frequently see them enter threads dominated by a single opinion and make everyone challenge their assumptions. They would enter and offer their shoes to anyone who'd like to try them on and get a glimpse into how the world might work for them, should they be brave enough to walk a mile or two.

This is not the first PM I've received from someone who decided this website had become too troublesome to continue participating and it's likely not the last I will see. While it is heartbreaking to see them go, it is equally heartbreaking to me that the reason they are going is often not because people are trying to push them away. By far and large, I see a majority of tildes users actively participating in discussions with good faith. By the results of the last census, increasing diversity was of importance to the majority of users and I do not think they were free-text typing that in without good cause.

This post is one that I've been contemplating in the back of my mind for a very long time now. It first really occurred to me nearly a year ago when a fairly well known person of minority status got banned for being too confrontational and aggressive to the kind of voice they didn't want to see on Tildes. I wasn't sure how to address it at the time, and I wasn't entirely certain it would be a problem, but the year since this post I've become hyper aware to its existence in a way I wasn't previously. In fact, I've had a bit of this conversation on more than one outlet on the internet already, because my recognition of this behavior has had me upset many times since. To this extent, I thank that user, because it truly did open my eyes to a behavior which I believe is self-sabotaging, but often genuine in nature.

I believe the simplest way to explain what is happening is through the law of large numbers. While not everyone responded to the 2020 Tildes Census (in fact I would imagine maybe 10% of us did), I'm going to use it as a model to touch on these issues. There were a total of 350 responses to the survey. Of this 86% were male, 67% were heterosexual, 75% were atheist or agnostic (50, 25 respectively), 52% were from the US, and 47% identified as white or Caucasian. I point all of this out to say that as a population we tend to trend towards a particular kind of individual. To be clear, this isn't necessarily bad - we are still quite a small website and we need to start somewhere with a base we know how to pull from.

But this does present a unique problem when it comes to interaction. Let's imagine for a second that 1 in 100 individuals has some sort of problematic behavior on Tildes that manages to find its way into discussion. This behavior might be that they have a strong intolerant opinion on a specific subject but manage to obscure it enough to get past the intolerance detecting capabilities of others. Or perhaps their views are not intolerant, but they simply possess a strong opinion on how something should be worded or an aversion to a particular kind of venting. Because I don't want to throw anyone under the bus I'm going to pull from an upsetting behavior I used to have in my childhood - I couldn't shut my mouth when people would bring up that women make '70 cents on the dollar'.

It's very hard for me to look back and definitively say it was one shaping experience that led me to behave like that. If I had to attribute this shameful behavior, I think there's a few major players. First off, I grew up in an upper middle class family who happened to be located in an area that was very homogeneous. I went to school with the children of tech millionaires, many of whom were white and quite privileged. I think there were a grand total of 4 people of color in my middle school. Things got a lot better once I had made it to high school (by numbers, whites were in the minority), but there's a subtle cultural indoctrination that happens through absorbing what you hear from parents and teachers at a young age. As a young child, I also latched on to early internet behavior. People who were pedantic about grammar, who could use logic effectively, and otherwise followed the rules that rich white people before them set up as the 'correct' way to do discuss were revered on the internet. I remember when being the grammar police was behavior that was actually celebrated. This kind of mindset lead me to read into the research on the matter (also primarily conducted by rich white folks, another bias I'm trying to undo in my life) and the modern research suggested that this figure was outdated and poorly controlled.

I was the 1 in 100 users with the problematic behavior. It took me awhile to learn that I wasn't helping anyone out by offering this information up (turns out there were a lot of people already doing the same work I was and people are smarter than I gave them credit for), but that only scratches at the surface of the real problem. The real problem is that I didn't have the lived experience of a woman entering spaces where this discussion was happening. I wasn't the woman who received less pay than their colleagues, who put in more hours, who spoke up but was talked over, whose ideas were restated by their male peers, or who clicked on an article link talking about pay inequality or women's rights and how far we still have to go and was met with hostile comments. I didn't know how soul-crushing it could be to be met with nearly the same resistance in every public sphere where this was being discussed. I didn't know how tiring it was to have to justify my existence and to explain my struggles to those who hadn't lived the same life as me. I didn't know how heart wrenching it would feel for someone I valued, trusted, and loved to express opinions like these years after I had built up a strong bond with them and for them to be entirely unaware of the damage they were causing.

To be clear, when I say understand I mean to have either experienced it directly enough to begin to actually place myself in the shoes of others or heard about it enough for their experience to truly sink in. It's one thing to acknowledge and know that this behavior exists, it's another to live it and see it first hand on a day where you're hanging on by a thread. To truly understand how mentally exhausting it can be to treated this way was something that escaped my comprehension because I could only live this experience through the words of others. I didn't really start to appreciate this until I got older, because I started recognizing how universal this experience truly was. I don't think I know a single female who doesn't have a story of sexual assault - the rate at which they respond with something in their lives is a stark reminder of how far we still have to come.

What I knew, but didn't truly understand is that if 1 in 100 users have problematic behavior and 1 in 100 users are transgender, we have an equal number of transgender individuals as we do users with problematic behavior. I want you to stop here and reread the last sentence and really absorb it before moving on. Ask yourself what problems might arise by these inequality existing.

In this hypothetical we have an even number of individuals who are going to participate in a thread about a transgender issue as we have transgender individuals. If even 1 of these transgender individuals decides they do not want to engage with this behavior, we're on a downwards slope to eventually having nearly no transgender representation as now they are outnumbered and their voice is more likely to be drowned out by the problematic individuals. As less and less people of the minority engage, because they are discouraged by the expressions of the problematic individuals, less people will wish to engage as the threads become increasingly more hostile.

The problem we have on tildes is that the only way I see for us to become more diverse is to ask for more from those who have, to protect those who do not. I'm calling on everyone to pay closer attention to the intended audience of a thread. We need to look at how discussions are happening throughout the entirety of a thread and do a better job being welcoming of the minority opinion. We need to elevate and celebrate the voices of the minorities in these threads so that they are equal in paradigm to the voices which counter theirs. If a thread's topic is about a minority class such as gays we need to ensure that gays get an equal voice - if one person is dominating replies to gays in the comments, we need to be good allies and help balance the scales.

We also need to stop and think about how these discussions usually play out on the rest of the internet. Do you ever see something like this on twitter and go "definitely not checking the comments"? We need to pay attention to this, and strive to ensure the same doesn't eventually apply to Tildes.

A common example of this that I've seen is present in threads directed at specific minorities. The early discussion in a fantastic thread titled What's hard about being a woman? exemplifies this issue - because there aren't enough women on Tildes, the thread was dominated by male voices. Only one of these individuals were particularly problematic, but there was a hesitation from women I knew to enter this thread because an environment dominated by the male voice is not welcoming. Some of the women who entered this thread were met with replies challenging some of what they said, rather than elevating their voices and celebrating their participation. A small minority of men were in this thread to learn, but weren't aware of how the way they engage with other men on the internet was not appropriate for this venue. They didn't stop to consider that a thread dominated by male voices was neither welcoming nor a good start. If they had merely waited for women to start populating the thread, and replied to them, or opened soft with commentary on what they had seen in women without providing too much analysis they may have made the thread more welcoming.

Another common example of this that I see happened in a thread I posted titled Stop telling women they have imposter syndrome. I actually had to stop myself from posting in this thread because I had an inkling that it was going to exemplify the behavior I wanted to address in a thread like this and I didn't want to disrupt what would naturally happen on Tildes absent my intervention. Nearly every reply in that thread criticizes the author for not mentioning that men can have impostor syndrome too. Imagine entering this thread as a woman - even if you emotionally connected with the author on some level, would you bother engaging when highly regarded comments focus on nitpicking the author for not being 'inclusive' enough? As far as I could tell, even the title doesn't call upon the reader to critically examine what imposter syndrome is and who is eligible to suffer from it. It's calling upon the reader to stop telling women that they have imposter syndrome (or to stop others when they make this statement), when the problem is a sexist environment. I've even received recognition from women on Tildes outside of this thread (through DMs and discussions on different platforms) who thank me for posting these threads, but their voice is often conspicuously absent from the thread itself. I do not want to speak on their behalf, but I can guess that a major reason for that is the environment we are creating here on Tildes is not welcoming enough for them to feel it is worth commenting.

The insidious part of this problem is that very often the people creating a hostile environment do not intend to do so. They truly wish to be inclusive. Or they see behavior like this and they don't understand why it's problematic - it doesn't cause a flag to go off in their brain which tells them that they should jump in and fight on behalf of the people they want to protect. But this behavior is slowly causing minority individuals to flee this website. I don't know and cannot know them all, but waking up to PMs about someone else leaving makes my heart sink. Entering threads about the intersectional minorities that I find myself and my loved ones a part of often makes me feel similarly upset, downtrodden, and makes me feel like I want to engage less and less with this platform.

I wish I had an answer. I wish I could wave a magic wand and make everything better. To give everyone omniscience, or at least a day's firsthand experience of someone radically different than them. Unfortunately, I do not. I think the best I can offer at this time is this post - a call on all of us to do better; a start of an ongoing discussion on how we can protect the minorities among us so that we can be bettered by their presence.

Following up on @kfwyre's post asking "What's Something That Hasn't Aged Well", I'm curious what's something that's improved with age?

I always hear the phrase "it gets better with age" in reference to wine, and sometimes it's true and sometimes it's not. Or at least, there's often a limit on how long it improves before it starts to decline again.

One odd thing that got better with age is the terrible Sandra Bullock movie "The Network." When it came out, almost none of the things in the movie were actually possible because not very many of us had much information about ourselves on computers that were actually accessible to the internet at large. Now everything about us is online whether we put it there or not.

Tell us about an album that means a lot to you, and, most importantly, why it means so much.

What makes it resonant? Why do you connect with it so strongly?

To be clear, it doesn’t have to be literally applicable to your life. It could be, for example, an album that you listened to at a certain point in your life and thus connect it with that. I’m asking this question more to get at the stories than the music itself. Tell me yours!

I purchased a license and activated DEV MODE on the Xbox Series S, with the purpose of running some SNES games I definitely own... But part of the procedure involves using the Games and Apps tab to set Retroarch as a game. Without that, it doesn't have access to all the system resources. The problem is that the tab disappeared and I don't know how to get it back. Anyone have the knowledge to fix this? I really don't want to reset my Xbox to factory just because of that... thanks

The title question is more of an umbrella one, and I want to state from the get go that I am asking these questions non-judgmentally. I want this to be a space where people can feel safe to respond honestly.

I’ll also qualify that I’m not asking these impartially, as part of my reason for making this thread stems from some identified frictions in my own life that I’ve been mulling over. I don’t want to prime anyone’s answers, however, so instead I’ll just lay out what I’m interested in hearing about:

• Do you feel that you need to hide your gaming from others?
• Are you honest with others about the amount of time you spend playing games, the types of games you play, or the importance you ascribe to them?
• Do you feel that people judge your gaming habits or status as a gamer negatively?
• Do you identify yourself as being a part of a broader gaming culture?

I find myself at a point in my life where I have the time, energy, and money to adopt a dog. Growing up I never had a dog - my parents only had cats. I don't totally know what I'm getting into so I'm looking for some advice.

I would like to have a moderately active dog, as I live a moderately active life. However, many donation sites list even just moderately active dogs as needing a yard. I live in a fairly spacious 1 bedroom apartment that's in a small complex (5 units) on the ground floor. Does this severely restrict the kind of dogs I should adopt? I know a hyper-active breed wouldn't be happy here. But should I consider myself limited to small, lower needs dogs?

Edit:

Probably important bit of information, I don't plan to get a puppy.