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    1. Impossible Escape - a puzzle

      ~misc Text 464 words
      This is a very hard puzzle. There is a solution that guarantees 100% chance of escape. You and your friend are incarcerated. Your jailer offers a challenge. If you complete the challenge you are...

      This is a very hard puzzle. There is a solution that guarantees 100% chance of escape.

      You and your friend are incarcerated. Your jailer offers a challenge. If you complete the challenge you are both free to go. Otherwise you are condemned to die. Here are the rules:

      -The jailer will take you into a private cell. In the cell will be a chessboard and a jar containing 64 coins.

      -The jailer will take the coins, one-by-one, and place a coin on each square on the board. He will place the coins randomly on the board. Some coins will be heads, and some tails (or maybe they will be all heads, or all tails; you have no idea. It's all at the jailer's whim. He may elect to look and choose to make a pattern himself, he may toss them placing them the way they land, he might look at them as he places them, he might not …). If you attempt to interfere with the placing of the coins, it is instant death for you. If you attempt to coerce, suggest, or persuade the jailer in any way, instant death. All you can do it watch.

      -Once all the coins have been laid out, the jailer will point to one of the squares on the board and say: “This one!” He is indicating the magic square. This square is the key to your freedom.

      -The jailer will then allow you to turn over one coin on the board. Just one. A single coin, but it can be any coin, you have full choice. If the coin you select is a head, it will flip to a tail. If it is a tail it will flip to a head. This is the only change you are allowed to make to the jailers initial layout.

      -You will then be lead out of the room. If you attempt to leave other messages behind, or clues for your friend … yes, you guessed it, instant death!

      -The jailer will then bring your friend into the room.

      -Your friend will look at the board (no touching allowed), then examine the board of coins and decide which location he thinks is the magic square.

      -He gets one chance only (no feedback). Based on the configuration of the coins he will point to one square and say: “This one!”

      -If he guesses correctly, you are both pardoned, and instantly set free. If he guesses incorrectly, you are both executed.

      -The jailer explains all these rules, to both you and your friend, beforehand and then gives you time to confer with each other to devise a strategy for which coin to flip.

      What is your strategy? How do you escape?

      Original source and answer: http://datagenetics.com/blog/december12014/index.html

      9 votes

    2. Is the United States on its way to losing its hegemonic status?

      ~society Ask
      On the heels of President Trump pulling out of talks with North Korea over nuclear disarmament in the Korean peninsula, the United States' pending withdrawal from the Paris agreement (coming soon!...

      On the heels of President Trump pulling out of talks with North Korea over nuclear disarmament in the Korean peninsula, the United States' pending withdrawal from the Paris agreement (coming soon! ... the day after the next presidential election), and the United States' unilateral withdrawal from the Iran nuclear agreement, combined with ongoing Russian and Iranian leadership in resolving the Syrian civil war and Chinese leadership in talks with North Korea, we seem to be heading toward an ambiguous point in international geopolitics.

      So this question is simple and nasty: Is the United States on its way to losing its status as the unquestioned dominant world power in the international order?

      If it is on its way off the top of the food chain, who will challenge it? Are we returning to a cold war-style era or are the lines shifting and different? If the United States is not on its way to losing its dominant status, how might it maintain its footing in a world that seems increasingly disillusioned with it?

      13 votes

    3. Speedpaint or speeddraw interest, anyone?

      ~creative Text 128 words
      I love drawing and painting. But sometimes I am attacked by inertia or my self confidence deserts me. Or sometimes I want to scribble without worrying about the end result. Thus, SPEEDPAINT. You...

      I love drawing and painting. But sometimes I am attacked by inertia or my self confidence deserts me. Or sometimes I want to scribble without worrying about the end result. Thus, SPEEDPAINT.

      You grab whatever materials are around and race to get as much done as possible. I use a one hour time limit. You can copy a reference or make it up from your head. Technique is helpful but not required. This is a digital speed paint from a photo. I think I did it in mspaint. This is construction paper and crayola crayon.

      If we occasionally had a thread for a speed art challenge, would anyone be interested? Not to compete against each other, but compete against yourself and show support for others willing to try.

      12 votes

    4. Thoughts on handling political content on Tildes

      ~tildes Ask
      (0) Background This is coming off a discussion in today's thread on forming new groups around whether or not to add a group for politics. I expressed there that, given my moderator experience on...

      (0) Background

      This is coming off a discussion in today's thread on forming new groups around whether or not to add a group for politics. I expressed there that, given my moderator experience on /r/ChangeMyView and /r/NeutralPolitics, I opposed making such a group given how Tildes currently stands.

      (1) Political discussion is nearly always garbage.

      I don't think anyone needs reminding of this, but political discussion almost uniformly fails to achieve anything positive in almost any social media platform. Your uncle's facebook rants? Garbage. Political sniping on Twitter? Garbage. The endless repetitive point scoring and outrage fest on most political subreddits? Garbage.

      So, we have to ask, why is this content garbage?

      (2) People want to be heard, but nobody wants to hear.

      I do not think political discussion is garbage because of bad faith trolling. That certainly exists and does not help, but usually it's not hard to ID the trolls, and excepting egregious stuff like doxxing or threats, to ignore obvious bad faith absurdity.

      The much bigger issue is that what people want to do is to be heard and validated in their political views. This is not merely that they want to proselytize or to win converts, but that they're seeking validation and a sense of rightness or righteousness in their statements.

      This desire is toxic to a neutral forum, because invariably on any divisive issue, you will not merely be heard and validated, but will be challenged and denigrated. Indeed, often the challenges and denigrations themselves are the same performance in reverse. Members of each team trying to dunk on the other and earn validation for how hard they owned the other side.

      (3) To overcome this, a successful political forum must have a purpose other than mere commentary.

      On /r/ChangeMyView and /r/NeutralPolitics, we have been able to build forums which have large amounts of productive and non-hostile political discussion. The key to this is that neither forum allows for being heard, or general discussion, as its reason for being.

      On /r/ChangeMyView we limit posts to views people genuinely hold, and are open to changing (CMV rule B). This requires that OPs cannot come to troll or soapbox. It is by far the most frequently used rule of ours in terms of removing submissions, almost always on the soapboxing side.

      On /r/NeutralPolitics, we limit posts to neutrally framed questions about political subjects, which can be answered with facts. By doing this, we narrow the scope of discussion away from soliciting feelings (which is an invitation to people posting just to be heard) and towards bringing forth factual information, where people might learn something.

      I don't know what purpose a political forum on Tildes might have, but to succeed it must have a clear purpose, and that purpose must be one which excludes people posting merely to be heard.

      (4) In addition to a purpose beyond being heard, a political forum must have extreme civility rules.

      Both CMV and NP have extremely similar rules in this regard, and they are absolutely crucial to the success of the fora.

      In general, any comment or post which in any way denigrates another user should be removed. This is an extremely broad civility rule that is well past what most subreddits do. Calling another user a liar, or accusing them of bad faith posting is banned on both CMV and NP for example, even when such accusations are true.

      The prohibition on what even may be seen as justified rudeness is I think the key to a civility rule. It immediately removes from the moderation process any discretion around the substance of the politics, and makes it a neutral rule which can be applied evenly to all parties.

      It is also necessary because nothing productive ever happens after bad faith is accused. Almost uniformly, once someone is rude, if there is a response back to them, the response will be rude in kind, usually more severely. People love to try to get the last word in, and a clear, objective rule banning "they started it" spats is also an important component. CMV's wiki has a really good overview of how we enforce this rule there.

      (5) Conclusion/TL;DR

      I don't know exactly what political content should exist on Tildes. I do know that a general politics group will not work, and that rather a politics channel should be focused on a discrete purpose other than just discussion.

      I would almost certainly ban link posts from any politics group, since inherently they're going to act as just headlines for people to pontificate on, without guiding discussion towards a particular goal. I would also obviously enforce civility, and have much stricter moderation of it than I might on a non-politics forum.

      Edited for formatting

      27 votes

    5. Let's see how well Tildes handles a *real* submission...

      ~test Text 1928 words
      Welcome to the /r/ListenToThis Best Of 2017! Here there are no scores, no judgments, and no opinions - just obscure music shared by redditors, collected and arranged for you over the course of...

      Welcome to the /r/ListenToThis Best Of 2017!

      Here there are no scores, no judgments, and no opinions - just obscure music shared by redditors, collected and arranged for you over the course of several months by our dedicated mod team. This list is meant to complement other best of lists on the internet, many of which are linked in the sticky comment below for further discovery.

      Set #1 includes everything - the best of the best tracks and a corresponding all-inclusive album playlist.
      The other sets are the same content, broken up into genre groups so you can listen according to your tastes. There is a sampler (1 track per album) and a full-album (every track from every album) playlist for each group. We’ve also included a listing of the albums by set in this post as not everything is available on Spotify, Tidal, etc. We tried to prefer an artist’s Bandcamp or Soundcloud, but if nothing else was available, you may see Youtube, Spotify, and iTunes links. The final count this year is 226 artists out of more than a thousand submissions.

      What did we miss? Share your favorites in the comments… and happy listening..

      -- the /r/ListenToThis hipster facista

      Set 1 - The Full Smash

      Best Tracks on Spotify & All Albums on Spotify

      And, on the other services:

      Set 2 - Pop, Indie & Related

      Spotify Sampler & Spotify Albums

      Google Sampler & Google Albums

      Deezer Sampler & Deezer Albums

      Tidal Sampler & Tidal Albums

      Youtube Sampler & Youtube Albums

      Apple Music Sampler (thanks /u/suckitnewtabs)

      Set 3 - Progressive & Related

      Spotify Sampler & Spotify Albums

      Google Sampler & Google Albums

      Deezer Sampler & Deezer Albums

      Tidal Sampler & Tidal Albums

      Apple Music Sampler (thanks /u/BlueRoseImmortal)

      Youtube Sampler & Youtube Albums

      Set 4 - Hip-Hop, Trip-Hop & Instrumentals

      Spotify Sampler & Spotify Albums

      Google Sampler & Google Albums

      Deezer Sampler & Deezer Albums

      Tidal Sampler & Tidal Albums

      Apple Music Sampler (thanks /u/firewire_9000)

      Youtube Sampler & Youtube Albums

      Set 5 - Punk & Related

      Spotify Sampler & Spotify Albums

      Google Sampler & Google Albums

      Deezer Sampler & Deezer Albums

      Tidal Sampler & Tidal Albums

      Youtube Sampler & Youtube Albums

      Set 6 - Electronic & Related

      Spotify Sampler & Spotify Albums

      Google Sampler & Google Albums

      Deezer Sampler & Deezer Albums

      Tidal Sampler & Tidal Albums

      Apple Music Sampler (thanks /u/firewire_9000)

      Youtube Sampler & Youtube Albums

      Set 7 - Metal

      Spotify Sampler & Spotify Albums

      Google Sampler & Google Albums

      Deezer Sampler & Deezer Albums

      Tidal Sampler & Tidal Albums

      Youtube Sampler & Youtube Albums

      Apple Music Sampler (thanks /u/BlueRoseImmortal)

      Set 8 - Jazz, Soul, Funk & Related

      Spotify Sampler & Spotify Albums

      Google Sampler & Google Albums

      Deezer Sampler & Deezer Albums

      Tidal Sampler & Tidal Albums

      Apple Music Sampler (thanks /u/firewire_9000)

      Youtube Sampler & Youtube Albums

      Set 9 - Afrobeat, World & Classical

      Spotify Sampler & Spotify Albums

      Google Sampler & Google Albums

      Deezer Sampler & Deezer Albums

      Tidal Sampler & Tidal Albums

      Youtube Sampler & Youtube Albums

      Set 10 - Americana & Related

      Spotify Sampler & Spotify Albums

      Google Sampler & Google Albums

      Deezer Sampler & Deezer Albums

      Tidal Sampler & Tidal Albums

      Apple Music Sampler (thanks /u/firewire_9000)

      Youtube Sampler & Youtube Albums

      Disclaimer: The Spotify playlists are the masters. They were auto-replicated to all of the other services, and there will be some missing albums on those services. The Youtube playlists may also get a bit wonky. Unfortunately, we don’t have the resources needed to fix every hiccup or keep track of what’s missing on every service. Apple music doesn’t provide an easy import mechanism either, though if someone wants to create Apple lists, we’ll link them here. Also, Google Music and Youtube simply can’t handle the All Albums playlist, so they are omitted.

      Links to Other Best Of Lists

      Please share other noteworthy lists you've found online in the replies to this comment.

      4 votes