I was going to get screenshots to backup what I am talking about but apparently they aren't kicking around in the system forever so most of the evidence is gone but I often see mycketforvirrad editing the title of a post I make to exactly what it already was while they are editing tags as they see fit.

What's up with that?

I was going to post a question regarding the topic logs but looking through my old posts, I see that much less than I remember have any topic logs on them.

I can't tell if I am imagining that alot more of them used to have topic logs or Deimos coded it to be a temporary record of the changes that the mods here make?

and if so, why temporary?

I woke up around 23 this evening to some noise from the common room which I live right next to (large apartment building). No biggie, I thought, I have noise cancelling earbuds so I can listen to some music to drown it out. Well, right as it struck 24, it was like a bomb went off. The music was turned up beyond belief and they were yelling and screaming and stomping in the floor to the point that I could feel it in my own floor and my room was shaking a little bit. Absolutely nuts.

Having anxiety, I had to summon the courage for a while to prepare myself to go out and complain about it, and ask them to please keep it down, it's past midnight, people are sleeping, etc. etc.

When I opened my door to the hallway, two guys were standing there, also in pajamas. Obviously in those outfits they were not part of the party so I asked them if they were here to complain too, and they said yeah they live right above the common room and had their sleep ruined because of it. So I said that like, well if we are 3 people from 3 separate apartments, it will probably help a lot that the partiers took it seriously. They had already been in there to complain but they joined me anyways. Turns out the party is because of Iranian new year, and that's why it was a relatively measured party but went so crazy at midnight.

We ended up in the hallway chatting for a while about the noise and one of the guys had even called the police in the past when another party happened, and I said yeah I was thinking of doing the same tonight - it seems to have worked all fine though, so no need, because it's now about 2 o'clock and they are keeping it quiet-ish out there.

The one guy said he's American and only been here for 3 months, so he's not really sure about the customs about parties, nor really the house rules because somebody once knocked on his door to complain to him in the middle of the afternoon because he plays the violin in the symphony orchestra here. So I told him the house rules and whatnot, explaining that no, it's never okay to bother your neighbours like this, no matter the time of day. But the other guy and him share a wall, and he said he never hears him at all - so that's why he was confused about the rules I guess.

Anyway that other guy had to get up super early apparently and went back upstairs to go to bed, so we wished him good night and sleep well, but the American and I smalltalked a little bit more. Just like names, handshake, where are you from, what do you do for a living blah blah. He said that he had had such a long day, doing rehearsals for hours and then played a concert in the evening. So I thought well he really needs to sleep then, so I was about to just say goodnight to him as well, then jokingly said that maybe we'll meet again - as in, complain about noise together some day.

I think he didn't quite get the joke though, so he said that yeah sure, I should come watch him play sometime, they do concerts every week. Or I could come up for tea if I'd like.

So I think I was just asked out on a date???? I'm not really interested in that so if we do go ahead with meeting up again I should probably tell him that, but that I wouldn't mind making a friend. What a story that would be though:
"How did you two meet?"
"Oh we bonded over telling people to shut up."

So yeah, that was pretty strange lol, just a a funny encounter that I wanted to share - probably a bit of a long story. I am not very concise but thanks for reading!

So Assassins Creed Shadows released this week, and so far the discourse surrounding the game is really all over the place with lots of good and bad reviews across the spectrum. I was a big fan of the Assassins Creed games from 1-3, and then I skipped the PS4 console generation so I didnt play any of the more recent ones. But this new one is about ninjas, which is rad, so Ive been following news about the game.

One thing I noticed, which is the main thing I want to discuss, when seeing clips of the game online is the focus on sword combat, and more specifically open combat. I dont know if this is a thing that became more of a focus in earlier games like Valhala or if its more a response to the success of Ghost of Tsushima. Im wondering if anyone else has thoughts on how the role of combat has evolved as the series has advanced.

In my personal view, a ninja assassin game should have minimal focus on direct combat. The ideal way an assassination should go is something like this:

1. Do some early missions to gather intel or do prep work

2. Take on "the approach" to your target, which will involve a combination of parkouring over rooftops and stealth kills to remove guards. Your efforts in step 1 will make this easier or harder.

3. Get into position and wait for the right moment when the target moves into the right place

4. Spring your trap, whether that be pouncing on them with a dagger or setting off an explosive or whatever

5. Drop a smoke bomb, disappear into the shadows, maybe jump off a rooftop into a haystack for good measure

When pulled off correctly, it should be like you were never there. Aside from the dead guy. If you are getting into a direct head on confrontation as a ninja, you have fucked up at ninja. To this end, I feel that in a stealth assassination game open combat should be more of a penalty for when you screw up and get caught, not part of the core strategy.

Looking back at the early games, this concept was applied in AC1. Getting into a fight with a Templar was pretty difficult and tedious. You didnt want to get stuck doing it, and if you did it was often better to just run. The times you were forced to fight head on it felt like you were trapped in a dire situation that was not to your advantage, so it was a good way to apply pressure to the player to make a scene seem tense.

In AC2 the combat was reworked and became significantly easier. I actually really like the way it was implemented. Technically you can get away with just hammering away at most weaker enemies until you break their guard, but the combat really shines when you fight defensively. If you focus in dodging and counter-kills, big fights become a thing of beauty. Ezio dodges and weaves effortlessly through the crowd, doing a slick spin slash every so often to slice a bad guys neck. Its all very stylistic and elegant and graceful in a way that makes Ezio look like a badass but is still very evocative of the idea of a master assassin.

And then AC3 is fine, I don't have a ton to say about that one.

Returning to Shadows, when I look at clips of people playing the game there is a lot of sword combat. The combat seems to often follow a pattern where the enemy will perform a fixed attack pattern with visual indications like a colored aura around their weapon, which the player must mitigate through precision by either dodge rolls or parrys, after which there will be a pause during which the player can whack at the enemy a few times and reduce their health bar. Repeat a couple times until they are killed. I think it is specifically the hacking away at an enemy like you are taking a machete to jungle foliage that I dont like about this. Whittling away at an enemy who just tanks it and soaks up damage feels decidedly un-assassiny to me.

Now, if open combat is intended to be a big part of the game then I can see why this is the case. You cant make every enemy a long drawn out chore like AC1 because if youre going to have to do this like a hundred times that will get old fast. And you cant do glorified quick time events like AC2 because itd be too quick and a major pillar of your gameplay will feel trivial. So I can see why this newer style of combat is being used, I just don't feel its a great fit for the genre.

What are your thoughts? Are you a fan of stealth-action games? Do you enjoy dodge-roll-centric combat? How would you want to see combat handled in an assassins creed type game?

Other than using the Atom One Dark theme instead of default theme, I also:

• View at 80% zoom (in desktop)
• Use the Tildes Formatting Toolbar userscript (not sure who wrote this or where the install link is but I'm sure someone in the comments can say)

And that's it for me! Which is relatively speaking almost no personal customization for me. (I also have a universal stylus sheet that removes ligatures on the entire internet but I don't think that does anything here)

What does everyone else do? What do you recommend?

Hey Tildoes, my partner and I have been navigating a broad, government level health challenge and I was hoping to pick the hivemind for help on navigating it.

As some of you may have seen in articles posted here, there was a massive fire at the lithium ion battery plant in Moss Landing a few months ago. It ended up spewing a slough of nasty chemicals into the air, which inevitably landed in the surround agricultural fields and waterways. My partner was in Australia when the fire occured, thank god, but was still freaking out about downstream effects. There have been studies from a 3rd party group from UC Davis and San Jose State - that found elevated levels of heavy metals - however those have been downplayed by local agencies claiming there are not major impacts and that distribution was surface level. With everything we know about state and federal agencies oversight, sometimes they are less than transparent about reporting toxic impact factors - like what happened in Hinkley and was popularized by the movie Erin Brockovich. However today the California Certified Organic Farmers put out their own update and press release. They summarized what has happened and seem to be endorsing the safety of the farms they have certified in the area.

So here is the rub: Federal, state, county, and local agencies have determined there is not significant contamination, the CCOF has agreed with these agencies, and my partner is still uncomfortable eating local produce. It feels a bit like we're back in covid times, and she is looking for cherry picked studies to justify strict behavioral and consumption restrictions within our household. We have always agreed to "shift our risk tolerance according to data" and now - with the Trump administration and a general distrust of our fed/state agencies - she's advocating we continue to avoid these foods until there is "definitive proof" that the food is safe.

I'm kind of at a loss of what do to. On one hand, it's a minor thing to change where we get our food. Food systems are complex and we can kind of get it from anywhere. On the other hand, I love my time at our farmers markets, experimenting with new foods, and supporting our local community. I also think the more obscure the process from farm to shelf, the more possibility for health/employee/environmental shenanigans by the producers. To me buying broadly "American" or "Mexican" kale doesn't mean we aren't going to have similar or worse impacts to our food.

I'm trying to find a reasonable middle ground or a bellwether indicator we can use as a go/no-go, but every time I think we've agreed on one it feels like the goal posts have been moved. Do any of you have similar issues or possible navigated differences in risk tolerance during Covid well? If so, how did you do so? I know this is a bit of a random thread, but I'd love to hear what you think!

What have you been listening to this week? You don't need to do a 6000 word review if you don't want to, but please write something! If you've just picked up some music, please update on that as well, we'd love to see your hauls :)

Feel free to give recs or discuss anything about each others' listening habits.

You can make a chart if you use last.fm:

http://www.tapmusic.net/lastfm/

Remember that linking directly to your image will update with your future listening, make sure to reupload to somewhere like imgur if you'd like it to remain what you have at the time of posting.

As part of a weekly series, these topics are a place for users to casually discuss the things they did — or didn't do — during their week. Did you accomplish any goals? Suffer a failure? Do nothing at all? Tell us about it!

Tildes is a very serious site, where we discuss very serious matters like sourcehut, steam.spring sale and communications workers of america. Tags culled from the highest voted topics from the last seven days, if anyone was keeping track.

But one of my favourite tags happens to be offbeat! Taking its original inspiration from Sir Nils Olav III, this thread is looking for any far-fetched offbeat stories lurking in the newspapers. It may not deserve its own post, but it deserves a wider audience!

Post something from your notes app that you think might be a good conversation starter.

Including but not limited to:

• An idea you jotted down to remember for later
• A meaningful quote that resonated with you
• A reminder
• A to-do list
• Those books you’ve been wanting to read
• A message you saved
• Those questions for your doctor
• That creative writing you were working on
• etc.

You can post the quote just on its own, or you can post it and add some context/questions to it as well. Anything you think might spark some good discussion or thought in others.

I am Brazilian and I have used software to assist me in writing both English and Portuguese since I the 1990s. That was a great boost to my learning process, as I could see the corrections made to my writing and incorporate them in my writing. I also enjoy concoting sentences that feel correct and proper.

However, writing this way has disavantages.

First, when I write correct English, readers will assume that I am a native English speakers, generally American. This comes with a lot of baggage and expectations for the interpretion of sophisticated context which I lack. When I fail to conform to those expectations I am met with hostility. At that point it is useless to disclose my nationality, since the bad vibes are already set.

Second, formal and properly written paragraphs give the impression that I think too highly of myself, that I wish to give more weight to my ideas than they really have (someone was aggressive to me because I used the word "ontological" once...). Much of the world prefers the informal mode of communication which I personally find unpleasant. But bad interactions are way more unpleasant. So perhaps I shoud change the way I write to be intentionally informal and a little improper. That way everyone will understand that I am not a native English speaker and also that I do not believe that my ideas are inherently superior to everyone else's. Also, a little bit of error prevents people from thinking I am an AI.

I did not proofread this post and I feel ashamed. Maybe it is for the best.

What have you been doing lately for your own fitness? Try out any new programs or exercises? Have any questions for others about your training? Want to vent about poor behavior in the gym? Started a new diet or have a new recipe you want to share? Anything else health and wellness related?

Looking for books that target (1) teen person and (2) parents which go over with a fine tooth comb how to navigate basic social skills.

I'm looking for something with as explicit instructions as possible, such as "when someone gives you something, catch their attention, make eye contact, and speak in a loud enough voice to say thank you".

I need something with troubleshooting involved such as, what if they're not looking at me, what if the environment is loud, what if I have my mouth full, what if I've already said it and they didn't hear. I need the instructions to cover things like "what if I'm supposed to follow two conflicting rules".

Basically explaining human customs and manners to bodiless angels who do not learn from observation and whose minds are pure intellect wholly sufficient unto itself, and who need to expend energy and effort to interact with mortals on our plane and operate on our dimensions.

Basics like, how to pass through a doorway when someone is holding the door for you, how to move out of the way when someone is coming towards you on a narrow sidewalk, how to pull over a shopping cart so it doesn't block other shoppers, don't throw/toss things at people when they ask for you to pass an object. These statements have been repeatedly shared with them any number of times to no avail: they're not looking at the world in the same way at all. They're not situationally aware, they're not interested in the world.

I grew up in a world that just screams at people until they behave out of fear and forced compliance. I'm trying to find a different way. Thank you kindly for any recommendations or suggestions.