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    1. Favorite vegan recipes?

      I've somewhat recently become vegan and am looking for more recipes to cook. I love pretty much all kinds of food, especially kinds I haven't tried before. If anybody has any great recipes that...

      I've somewhat recently become vegan and am looking for more recipes to cook. I love pretty much all kinds of food, especially kinds I haven't tried before. If anybody has any great recipes that are vegan, I would love to share.

      9 votes
    2. What new media delineations or paradigms should replace the old ones?

      Movies, TV shows, and newspapers are just a few examples of the traditional media designations that dominated the 20th century. However, the digital revolution (and the internet in particular) has...

      Movies, TV shows, and newspapers are just a few examples of the traditional media designations that dominated the 20th century. However, the digital revolution (and the internet in particular) has rendered them mostly meaningless now because the analog boundaries that separated them are no longer relevant.

      Given the present-day proliferation of platform-agnostic content, what new designations or delineations do you think the world will (or should) adopt in the next century once traditional media is dead?

      5 votes
    3. Suggestion: subscribe to topics/threads

      I've found that it's difficult to keep track of threads I found interesting but are no longer highly active, especially without a search function. My suggested solution is the ability to subscribe...

      I've found that it's difficult to keep track of threads I found interesting but are no longer highly active, especially without a search function. My suggested solution is the ability to subscribe to updates on a topic/thread (whatever you want to call it) and enable easy access to checking up on the thread for updates without having to receive a direct reply to my comment on the topic. If this already exists and I'm just blind, let me know!

      11 votes
    4. Groups page could be clearer on which groups one is subscribed to

      At the moment the groups page shows a full list of groups with a button beside each: either Subscribe or Subscribed. It's not very clear, at a glance, which ones are subscribed as there is no...

      At the moment the groups page shows a full list of groups with a button beside each: either Subscribe or Subscribed. It's not very clear, at a glance, which ones are subscribed as there is no colour difference and the terms differ only by the last letter. I personally think it would be better if it showed 'unsubscribe' for the ones you're already subscribed to, and even better if this were in green.

      6 votes
    5. So what's up with the Toto - Africa craze? Are we in another 80's music revival?

      My personal theory is that this is similar to the phenomenon of "Don't Stop Believin'" having a surge in popularity in the late 2000's. I know that was commonly attributed to the song's use in the...

      My personal theory is that this is similar to the phenomenon of "Don't Stop Believin'" having a surge in popularity in the late 2000's. I know that was commonly attributed to the song's use in the finale of The Sopranos, is there a similar usage of "Africa" that triggered its sudden prevalence in popular culture? What did I miss?

      (Not a complaint, it's reminded me of how great 80's music is and I'm listening to an 80's station right now).

      10 votes
    6. Best Android Alternative to iOS Continuity

      The one good thing, imo, that iOS does is its continuity and handoff with other devices. What are the best ways you've found to emulate this on your devices? Like if I'm actively working on a...

      The one good thing, imo, that iOS does is its continuity and handoff with other devices. What are the best ways you've found to emulate this on your devices? Like if I'm actively working on a document or on web pages how can I seamlessly continue using them on my tablet/phone without having to re-open all the tabs or docs again?

      Has anyone found a better way?

      At the moment I get around this a couple ways:
      -Google drive is my primary basic filesystem on all my main computer (desktop/documents/downloads/pictures/videos folders)
      -Google Photos on all devices
      -PulseSMS for the texting
      -Google Chrome which offers a somewhat fix to webbrowsing

      But the actual feature of my devices popping up and letting me "carry on" with what I was doing exactly where I was doing it with the click of the button isn't there. Also, the Google Chrome "continuity" is simply the ability to let me go see recent tabs open on my devices and click to reopen them. If anyone knows a way to sync tabs across all my devices (desktop/laptop/phone/tablet) and make them open/close altogether that would be great.

      6 votes
    7. Alternatives to older games that were amazing to play

      Some games were just magical to play and yet have never really had something come out which rivaled them or even recreated that experience to some extent. Which games would you say provide that...

      Some games were just magical to play and yet have never really had something come out which rivaled them or even recreated that experience to some extent. Which games would you say provide that for the following, if any?

      • Black & White / Populous (Good God games are hard to find, and Godus was just disappointing)
      • Xwing vs. Tie Fighter (Nothing so satisfying as capital ship destruction!)
      • Master of Orion 2 (All around fun dynamics)
      • Star Control 2 - (Tons of Humor, interesting back stories)

      What do you wish had a modern day equivalent, and does it?

      10 votes
    8. Studying law

      In three months I will probably start studying law. It's the second time starting university for me, since I left the university where I studied IT about 5 months ago because of depression and I...

      In three months I will probably start studying law. It's the second time starting university for me, since I left the university where I studied IT about 5 months ago because of depression and I guess I didn't really like programming that much.

      My question is: Say I finished the uni and got a law degree. What are the jobs I could do and what do I really have to do there? I have a slight idea from the movies, but I don't really know any people in person to ask this from.

      6 votes
    9. Am I just experiencing some strong selection bias, or are games holding our hands way too much lately?

      I got my hands on a copy of Rise of the Tomb Raider recently, and while playing I noticed that Lara would "helpfully" try to push me toward the correct solution to a puzzle, often while I was...

      I got my hands on a copy of Rise of the Tomb Raider recently, and while playing I noticed that Lara would "helpfully" try to push me toward the correct solution to a puzzle, often while I was simply looking around to make sure I wasn't leaving any loot behind. Worse still, it could be literally every 10-20 seconds or so that she would repeat the same hint. It got infuriating after a while, and I was horrified (okay, I'm exaggerating, but whatever) to find that there wasn't a setting available to get her to shut the hell up.

      I loved Tomb Raider games because you had to solve the puzzles yourself. Having the game hold your hand the entire way kind of defeats the point of that. It was really disappointing knowing that I couldn't play the game without either having a puzzle spoiled for me or having the obvious repeatedly pointed out to me. It was like having Navi from Ocarina of Time nagging me all over again, but worse, because at least I could ignore Navi and just deal with the occasional "Hey, listen!".

      This sort of hand-holding seems to be getting increasingly more common, at least in my experience. The form often differs--e.g. in Skyrim you have quest markers that not only guide you all the way to a dungeon, but all the way through it--but it's there. I feel like the worst of it is that gamers don't get to actually play the game autonomously or at their own pace, and that this sort of thing violates a basic principle of "show, don't tell".

      Am I just really unfortunate with the games I've been playing lately, or is this really as common as it seems? What examples of hand-holding have you run into that you found disappointing?

      16 votes
    10. Python web developers - what is your favorite framework?

      As some of you may know, Tildes is written in Pyramid. I've done some OSS work in Pyramid and Flask, but my paid web dev work the past few years has been mostly in Django. There are some newer...

      As some of you may know, Tildes is written in Pyramid. I've done some OSS work in Pyramid and Flask, but my paid web dev work the past few years has been mostly in Django. There are some newer frameworks out there like Sanic or Falcon, and some older ones like Zope, CherryPy and Turbogears, that I've played with but have no real experience in.

      Personally, I like Django for its "batteries included" and its big ecosystem, Flask for its minimalism and Pyramid for its elegant design. There's no single framework that fits all needs and all have their share of annoyances - Django can be quite difficult to swap out things like the default ORM or template system (though these have gotten better in recent versions), Flask has some architectural issues with request and other global variables, and Pyramid perhaps suffers from a relatively small ecosystem and lack of "one way to do it".

      What are your experiences and preferences?

      9 votes
    11. "Guy" should be a neutered term. Change my mind.

      In light of @Deimos mentioning that we have a lot of "favorite" topics going around, how about something a little meatier? I've seen it a few times already around threads that someone uses the...

      In light of @Deimos mentioning that we have a lot of "favorite" topics going around, how about something a little meatier?

      I've seen it a few times already around threads that someone uses the word "guy" to refer to a poster and the response is "I'm not a guy". I'm not trying to invalidate this stance, but rather make this argument in the same way I argued for a singular "they". Consider the following:

      • the plural form, "you guys" is already neutered. I can walk up to a group of women and ask "How're you guys doing?" and it doesn't draw any ire
      • we've similarly neutered "dude" in both the singular and plural, but it's especially casual and almost familiar
      • "gal" sounds like something out of the forties, "girl" is diminutive, and "person" is clinical / formal
      • we don't have another common, non-gendered, non-specific term that fits the "sounds right" criteria and fits in the environment like the one we have (wherein users are getting to know each other and don't know exactly how to address one another).

      I realize that this is probably masculine-normative and therefore problematic, but my main goal here is to stimulate discussion on a meatier topic (gender) without having it be an incredibly serious topic.

      [EDIT]

      I want to clarify a few things, as this reads a lot more trolly than it did 6 hours ago.

      generalizing "guy" is a sexist idea because it attempts to make the masculine the generic (what I called "masculine-normativity" above). However, there isn't a term that adequately replaces "guy" but is neutered (@Algernon_Asimov brought up that "dude" fits, but is as more casual than "guy" than "person" is more formal). [Edit edit: I'm an idiot. They pointed out that "dude" as I had defined it earlier in my post would work just as well, but they did not agree that it has been neutered]

      Instead of bringing this up as purely a matter of diction, I set myself up as an antagonist to see what would happen. And for this I apologize.

      That said, I feel like there is some good discussion here and do not want to call making the thread a mistake. More that mistakes were made in the manner of its posting.

      42 votes
    12. Best single player experience - Offline / MMORPG games?

      I went through the topics and did not see a previous on on this, so I am curious what your current favorites are, from both a single player experience offline (no pvp or multiplayer mode) or...

      I went through the topics and did not see a previous on on this, so I am curious what your current favorites are, from both a single player experience offline (no pvp or multiplayer mode) or MMORPG wise?

      Bonus points for new MMORPGS and undervalued titles which are just fun and engaging to play. I have to have the ability to get up and walk away at a moments notice for work purposes, so pvp and requirements that I spend a lot of continuous time are hard to find in a fun game, even if I do not get called away like that for days at a time. I am into strategy more than FPS, but all are welcome!

      8 votes
    13. Daily Tildes discussion - quality concerns

      Yesterday we had quite a few topics posted in ~tildes related to "fluff" content and some similar topics. Today I want to talk about a few related things, and some changes that I'm planning to...

      Yesterday we had quite a few topics posted in ~tildes related to "fluff" content and some similar topics. Today I want to talk about a few related things, and some changes that I'm planning to make in the near future.

      Not a reddit replacement

      First, something I obviously haven't done a very good job of making clear (and needs to be added to the FAQ) is that Tildes really isn't intended to be a replacement for reddit. It's not my goal to have most people want to move here away from reddit. The goal is much closer to a complement—reddit is making a lot of choices to prioritize "quick entertainment" content, often at the expense of more in-depth content and discussions.

      Reddit wants to prioritize that kind of content because it works better for the business goals they have. "Fluff" content attracts the most users, and supports showing far more ads. You can show a lot of (in-line) ads to someone skimming down through hundreds of cat pictures, but you can't really show any to someone that spends an hour having an in-depth discussion inside a single post. So naturally they're going to prioritize quick content—it brings them more users, and directly makes them a lot more money.

      Tildes doesn't have the same incentives, so my goal is to be a better home for that in-depth content that's slowly getting pushed out. Reddit can keep the fluff. It's going to be better at it than Tildes ever will be anyway, due to displaying images and autoplaying gifs in-line, and many other design choices they're making to prioritize that type of content.

      Concerns about current quality, and some changes

      That being said, even though we're really not getting image posts or anything similar yet, we have been getting a lot of "what's your favorite?" type threads, which are especially prominent due to the default activity sort. For example, if I look at what a new user on Tildes would see right now, in the first 20 posts we have:

      • Favorite desktop environment for Arch?
      • Name the online accomplishment you are most proud of
      • What upcoming video games are you looking forward to?
      • What are some TV shows you find yourself constant rewatching?
      • Here's an idea. Comment something really unique (in a good or a bad way) and relatively unknown about a place you're living in or lived in.
      • Name a cool, mostly unknown feature of your OS of choice
      • What are the most influential books to you?
      • What's everyone's favorite movie?
      • So, what have you been working on?

      And a few more that are similar as well. None of these are bad topics at all (especially the ones in ~talk where that should be expected), but they're pretty much all just "casual discussion" and not really what I'd consider particularly high-quality content. I don't want to discourage these or start removing them or anything, but I do think we probably need some changes to make them less prominent (or at least easily avoidable if people don't want to see that type of topic right now).

      So here's my plans for the short term (all three should happen today, I think):

      1. Implement filtering for topic tags - I have a basic version of this almost done now, which will allow people to set up a (global) list of tags, where any posts with any of those tags will be filtered out of their view. There's a "show unfiltered" toggle as well that allows you to easily see everything.
      2. I'll start editing tags on other people's posts and/or giving other users the ability to do this. Primarily, all "what's your favorite?" type topics should have a common tag so that they can all be filtered easily. I'm thinking "ask" or "survey" or something similar, suggestions are welcome.
      3. Allow users to set their default sorting method for the home page and individual groups, and then probably change the default away from "activity".

      Let me know what you think of these plans, or if there's anything else you think we should consider doing.

      89 votes
    14. will we see a ~politics?

      the reason why reddit feels so fractured is because all sides of the political compass are so split. id like to see one single ~politics channel and see how it works out, if everyone can keep it...

      the reason why reddit feels so fractured is because all sides of the political compass are so split. id like to see one single ~politics channel and see how it works out, if everyone can keep it civil.

      32 votes
    15. Any interest in a mental health support thread?

      I've noticed a lot of people in introductory threads mentioning their mental health issues and a sizeable number of people who took the survey indicated they consider themselves mentally ill. I...

      I've noticed a lot of people in introductory threads mentioning their mental health issues and a sizeable number of people who took the survey indicated they consider themselves mentally ill. I myself have been dealing with depression for about 16 years.

      Without a search function it's hard to tell if this is a repost, but I figured I'd give it a go and see if anyone out there is in need of some support. If you need someone to talk to, consider this thread a support group and I will be here to lean on. :)

      16 votes
    16. Anyone here using a Juul?

      Seems like a slightly less douchey cigarette alternative. Anyone have any success changing their habits? Or is this just a newer dumber douche flute with silly flavors?

      5 votes
    17. Smart watch for Android post-Pebble

      Hi there everyone. I gave up on smart watches after Pebble sold out to fitbit and my OG Pebble started having screen issues (again). I never watched to spend hundreds on a smart watch or switch to...

      Hi there everyone. I gave up on smart watches after Pebble sold out to fitbit and my OG Pebble started having screen issues (again). I never watched to spend hundreds on a smart watch or switch to the iOS ecosystem to use an Apple watch.

      I was wondering if anyone here has had success with any other watches after having to give up their Pebble, something with a great battery life and good notification features without resorting to terrible china-watches.

      Hope you have a great day!

      11 votes
    18. What upcoming video games are you looking forward to?

      What video games that are coming out soon do you have your eye on? There's a co-op game for the Switch coming out next year called Rite of Ilk that I think would be fun. I don't have a Switch yet...

      What video games that are coming out soon do you have your eye on?

      There's a co-op game for the Switch coming out next year called Rite of Ilk that I think would be fun. I don't have a Switch yet but I'll probably be getting one in a couple months.

      Also, still waiting patiently for Miegakure like it was Godot.

      22 votes
    19. US special investigation and Russian electioneering

      One of the more looming stories over the American political climate these days that takes over pretty much everything else is the special investigation into the Trump campaign and potential...

      One of the more looming stories over the American political climate these days that takes over pretty much everything else is the special investigation into the Trump campaign and potential collusion with Russian attempts to influence the US presidential election of 2016. There is a lot of information in the public domain about this story, including most recently Mueller seeking a revision of Paul Manafort's home confinement release after alleging that Manafort attempted to contact potential witnesses to conceal evidence relating to the various charges he faces.

      You can find a decent overview of most of the publicly available information on the related wikipedia page.

      So let's try to wrangle with all that public information. Please list, vet, and weigh the evidence you think is most important when it comes to the Special Investigation of the Trump campaign. Does it look like collusion with Russian electioneering happened or is this story mostly about finding incidental crimes of sloppy political first timers? What role do you think Russia played or tried to play in the 2016 election based on this publicly available evidence? What evidence would you like to see before making a judgment?

      25 votes
    20. Future greenhouse ambitions

      I don't have the land to do it yet, but my dream is to build a year-round greenhouse in a back yard, so that I can have green all throughout the monochromatic bleakness of a New York winter. This...

      I don't have the land to do it yet, but my dream is to build a year-round greenhouse in a back yard, so that I can have green all throughout the monochromatic bleakness of a New York winter. This is pretty much a daydream at this point, but I'd like to get some feedback from folks in the know.

      The feature wish-list is as follows:

      • a dug-out trench, shaped like a V with a flat bottom. Thinking something like 12' (or go metric and make it 4m) wide in the middle, with sides at a 60° angle going to ground level (total depth of around 10' or 2.5m)
      • a double-paned glass or plexiglass roof, for insulation and lighting
      • heating elements in the outer layer of roof, for snow and ice removal
      • a space heater, to regulate temperature during the cold months
      • an aquaponics tank (probably using goldfish, but possibly tilapia)
      • aquaponics grow beds lining the angled sides
      • compost-activated biochar beds on the flat part

      The idea would be to run the aquaponic outflow to the top of the sloping sides, supporting herbs, leafy greens, and flowers. The runoff collects at the bottom of the slope, where it is returned to the fish tank. The flat surface would be used for root vegetables and bulbs like onions and garlic.

      I realize that this is a tad ambitious (and that I may just be throwing the biochar bit because I think its cool), but part of why I'm posting this is to get the benefit of collective experience. Any thoughts?

      4 votes