When it comes to disaster relief, I often hear the refrain that it is best to donate cash, and donating boxes of things often hurts more than it helps. Is this universally true, or are there situations where donation boxes are actually helpful?

Search results on the subject ("disaster relief donation box vs cash"), all saying that boxes of stuff hurt more than help, due to the logistical costs of shipping, sorting, and storage:

• https://www.cidi.org/how-disaster-relief-works/monetary-contributions-work-bestwhy-cash-is-best/
• https://www.cbsnews.com/news/best-intentions-when-disaster-relief-brings-anything-but-relief/
• https://nonprofitquarterly.org/2017/10/27/thing-bad-disaster-donation/

Background:
I was deciding what to do since we use Atlassian’s Stride and it will be sunsetted. For us, the options are Teams or Slack. I’m going to give Teams a try since we already pay for it. Someone I know also happens to be a PM there. I texted him “wow, Teams iOS has a 4.7 rating in the App Store!” He said, yes, it’s probably our best client. It made me realize that this is very often the case. The iOS client is often the best client for many services.

Questions:
Do you all find this to be true as well?

If so, why do you think this is? iOS itself? iOS app guidelines? iOS devs are more product minded? Android device fragmentation?

Any and all thoughts appreciated.

note: I am mobile OS agnostic, I use them all (both) regularly.

I'm doubling down here folks :) My prior post was called-out for being click-baity and rightfully so. The title was especially poor. I'll try to do better moving forward.

I'm starting a discussion here because my hope is that we can talk about the ideas within the article, rather than the article itself.

Here was the original post for those interested: https://tildes.net/~humanities/3y1/mark_cuban_says_the_ability_to_think_creatively_will_be_critical_in_10_years_and_elon_musk_agrees

I posted the article because at it's core are several interesting observations/propositions from two billionaires, Mark Cuban and Elon Musk, that presumably know a lot about business, and in Musk's case, a lot about STEM, and have a history of making winning bets on the future.

The article supposes that:

• Many (most?) STEM jobs will become automated
• This will happen very quickly; more quickly than we anticipate
• Creative skills will soon become more highly valued than STEM skills

There was a time when parents told their kids to "become a lawyer or a doctor" but after enough time we end up with too many people going into the same profession and there is more competition for those jobs as the market becomes flooded. I know anecdotally that's happened for lawyers (not sure about doctors).

I can see this happening with STEM as well.

Should parents encourage kids to pursue STEM but pair this with equal study in the humanities? Is STEM the next target of automation? Will creative skills be more highly valued? Will engineers find themselves in the bread line?

I started writing this a couple days ago and it's turning into a bit of a novel with no plot, so I thought I'll break it up a bit. Warning, there will be spoilers. I'm not caught up - only watched the three seasons available on Netflix, so if you're in the same boat, you're safe.

Diversity in shows is not something I actively look for, but will generally notice if done really poorly or really well, the former more than the latter. Gotham as a whole swings in both directions.

There's lots of different ways for a show to be diverse, I'm going to focus on women, race and sexuality in this post. Disability is going to be its own topic (when I get around to writing it).

Women

I'll start with the easiest check - yes there are women in this show, and they appear in frequency and numbers that more or less make sense for where they are. For example, in the bull pen, it's mostly men with a handful of women around, at a party they're about equal numbers, and so on. For named characters, they are in a variety of roles, both traditionally female and not. A short list includes, Sarah Essen, Barbara Kean, Selina Kyle, Renee Montoya, Fish Mooney, Ivy Pepper, Leslie Thompkins, and Tabitha.

There are stereotypes and caricatures, but mostly they feel like dramatized comic archetypes more than sexist, though it can definitely be both. There's plenty to write on each character, which in of itself is a good sign.

Now let's look at a few specific cases that caught my eye:

Spirit of the goat victims
This is just a little peeve. They went out of their way to specify that the victims are Gotham's first born to the point that Alfred points out that Bruce is a first born. Generally in stories, when referring to first born children, it's usually sons, but here, all victims are women. I'm going to guess it's for visual reasons, since the whole sacrificing a virgin in white on an alter is a pretty common trope. Still, can't decide how I feel about this one.

Barbara Kean
Now we're finally getting to who I really want to talk about - Barbara Kean, specifically from season 1.

Comic book fans will recognize Barbara as Gordon's first wife and mother of the original Batgirl (also named Barbara). In the comics, she has a mental breakdown and leaves Jim and Gotham (their daughter refuses to leave and stays with Jim). She's the character that Gotham literally broke, and though she is not an unsympathetic character in the comics, her relationship with Jim is pretty glossed over for an emphasize on her lack of a relationship with her daughter. There is also an implied break in her and Jim's relationship where she supported him in his extremely stressful career as best she could, but he didn't support her when she needed him (and depending on the version, he actually cheats on her because he was so stressed...).

This little background is why I was super excited to see Gotham's take on Barbara. This is probably the first time we get more than a flashback or half mention of this character in any medium. And she's treated with a lot of respect. She's supportive and compassionate, but still very human. At the start of the series, she's on relatively equal ground with Jim, asking to share his life, believing him (and in him), and just generally being supportive.

As an audience, we see Jim take from this relationship, and never really give anything back, so we know it's doomed.

She's not a flawless character, and suffers from what a lot of supporting casts do, which is that they are defined by the main character. Her fall, her mental break, can still arguably be classified as a women-in-refrigerator trope. She becomes a different person, but is generally there to haunt Jim, or help him, as the plot requires.

Honestly, her flip to the dark side, will check of every bad sexist trope you can think of, including magician's assistant. So, she's easily one of the best and worst written characters of Gotham.

Leslie Thompkins
She is everything I wanted Le to be...until she's in a relationship with Jim. She starts off being a strong, competent doctor. She stands up for her patients and what she believes in, and is unafraid of sticking around when things get tough. Then she starts dating Jim, and does crazy things like demand PDA at work that is unprofessional and more importantly, that Jim is uncomfortable with. Nobody should ever kiss someone if they feel uncomfortable. Demanding it doesn't make you confident, it makes you creepy!

From there she ranges from damsel to pregnant to evil. There are too many incidents to really cover, but, I do want to talk about the gas-lighting, which is a particularly poor choice of plot in my opinion.

There's an entire arch where she, as the medical examiner, discovers evidence that a murder occurred, but is asked to believe it's suicide. She points out the inconsistently and basically points out that Jim is lying, which he was. She takes this from co-worker to co-worker, and literally every guy tells her she's just seeing things because she's grieving the death of husband. This is never addressed for what it is. The resolution comes when she turns herself to her "darkest desire", which is to wear lots of dark eyeliner and f*** Jim.

This, compared to her comic character, who let Batgirl (Brown) die to prove a point to Batman. She's not a strictly good character in the comics, but she's definitely a strong character. So yeah...she's probably the worst written woman in Gotham, and is unfortunately the main female protagonist.

Race

Sure, the good competent guys are mostly white, and I'm always up for seeing more Asians, but the casting in general feels fine to me. No one feels out of place or token. I would say there's more stereotyping based on class than on race. So we have "hats" like Russian gangster, Italian mob, posh 1%-ers, and circus freaks.

Not to say there aren't awkward parts, like Alfred's British(?) accent.

Sexuality

Identity
As far as I can tell, there's no real representation here at all.

Orientation
There's three women, one man:

• Renee is gay
• Barbara is bi
• Tabitha is bi
• Penguin is gay

They're a bit shallow, but probably because these women aren't as core as other characters. Renee and Barbara's relationship feels a bit more authentic than Barbara and Tabitha's. Maybe because Renee really is gay and an alcoholic in the comic, so the writers had more to draw from. Maybe because Barbara and Tabitha's relationship seems more for plot, or worst for easter-egging (not-Harley and not-Catwoman running the Sirens, with mini-Ivy popping in).

Penguin being gay is actually really cute, in a creepy way. He spends a good deal of the show wanting a "friend" and finds one in Ed. Though there is an extreme selfishness to his love, it's still a pretty good subplot.

Final thoughts

So these are my quick thought on diversity in Gotham. What are your thoughts? Anything else stand out from the series (or comics) for you?

Edit to add: I forgot about Penguin being gay.

So recently, No Man's Sky has put out probably their biggest update yet. Prominently featuring Multiplayer, Cargo Freighters, and many QoL changes, Hello Games is determined not to drop their baby just yet. Has anyone been having more fun since the update? Less fun? Did anyone pick it up because of the update? How are your guys' adventures going?

Anything you guys have been having great fun/difficulty with lately? Any riffs/songs you're making? I've been trying to improve on Bass guitar and I learned that RHCP's Torture Me has a really fun bass line. That whole 1-2-2-1 structure is challenging but satisfying as hell to pull off

I suggest we require decluttering clickbaity titles. The rule can be: if the title leaves you asking "Which X?", include that X in the title; if it asks you "Why X", change it to "X Because Y". It can be a spoiler, but I'd rather have an idea of the content than the suspense, which with this sort of articles is almost never really gratifying. What do you think?

Even if you're only lightly aware of superhero movie tropes and the criticisms of the genre in general, you will have a lot of gags to laugh at.

I know a lot of people my age (20s-30s) will be reluctant to see the movie if they were fans of the original Teen Titans show and haven't watched Teen Titans Go! (which I think is fair). But those are the people who will enjoy it the most.

It is a kids' movie, no doubt about it. But I'd put it in the vein of the Lego Movie, which still had a lot to offer if you're an adult.

In honor of starving artists everywhere, the topic for this thread is "scant".

• Feel free to open it up to interpretation as literal or loose as you'd like
• Whatever medium works best for you! Even though I labelled the thread as "visual", it would be great to see work from any writers or musicians if any would like to participate as well.
• Entry should be your own work
• Multiple entries are great if you feel inclined

@userexec won the last round of the Visual Weekly Activity. I don't want to steal the glory, but I also got ants in my pants. So this is an unofficial thread and hopefully userexec will chime in with a new official thread when they have time.

Edit: moved the user tag down so the main topic is more visible.

Since RuneScape (both RS3 and Old School) currently has a free month for those of us using Twitch Prime, is anyone here playing? I find that despite it being one of the best games I've ever played, I tend to drift away from OSRS after some time because it's so enveloped in that YouTuber meme culture that gives me a headache. So, to any players here, are you hanging out in a friendly clan chat or Discord server to escape that? Would we want to start our own?

Or, more generally, how do you deal with the toxic nature of the game's community?

You're home alone and watching TV. Yawning, you tilt your head to loosen up the knots in your neck and out of the corner of your eye see a dark, fast, blur. When you focus on that spot, you can't see anything, so you turn back and continue watching. It happens again during a blink, but as you turn your head you almost catch it. Another round of this and you are positive you aren't going crazy, so you blink but turn your head as you open your eyes.

Shout-out to Mozzribo for the idea. I hope this is inspiring enough to the writers out there! If anyone is interested in doing a prompt next week just say so in the comments. Thanks everyone!

{
  "author": "@json (Jason)",
  "message": "Hello, people of Tildes. This does seem like an excellent platform for discussion. I hope you enjoy my kinda bad joke."
}

@Jason was taken, so I had to drop the a and become a data format. I have used json as a username in many other places before, when available.

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