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    1. Chief Rabbi publishes first LGBT guide for orthodox schools

      News article from the BBC: Chief Rabbi publishes first LGBT guide for orthodox schools An adapted summary in the Jewish Chronicle: the Chief Rabbi's groundbreaking message to Orthodox schools on...

      News article from the BBC: Chief Rabbi publishes first LGBT guide for orthodox schools

      An adapted summary in the Jewish Chronicle: the Chief Rabbi's groundbreaking message to Orthodox schools on LGBT+ pupils

      Background: Ephraim Mirvis is the Chief Rabbi of the United Hebrew Congregations of the Commonwealth. This guide therefore applies to all Jewish Orthodox schools in the Commonwealth (the United Kingdom, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, India, and so on).

      11 votes
    2. Do technologies like Snap and Flatpak have a future?

      I just gave up on installing Gimp via flatpack because it required a 2GB download. I run i3 on top of Xfce. I have lots of Gtk libraries already. Storage is cheap and my internet has no limits,...

      I just gave up on installing Gimp via flatpack because it required a 2GB download. I run i3 on top of Xfce. I have lots of Gtk libraries already. Storage is cheap and my internet has no limits, but this seems very inefficient to me. What if I had to install all my software that way?

      27 votes
    3. Secure, open-source alternative to Google Keep

      I was looking to maybe cut down on my Googleness and replacing Keep seemed like a good start. I need something that has a simple interface and most (if not all) of the same features as Keep. Any...

      I was looking to maybe cut down on my Googleness and replacing Keep seemed like a good start. I need something that has a simple interface and most (if not all) of the same features as Keep. Any suggestions? Also I'm on Android btw.

      42 votes
    4. la donna è mobile.

      i had a dream, i saw my body as i stood watching outside of it an open door i had a guest, a little blondie baphomet she crept quiet up to my bed laid her hands upon my chest through groggy eyes i...

      i had a dream,
      i saw my body
      as i stood watching
      outside of it
      an open door
      i had a guest,
      a little blondie
      baphomet
      she crept quiet
      up to my bed
      laid her hands
      upon my chest
      through groggy eyes
      i saw an angel.
      took her hand,
      she made me promises.

      i sold my soul
      and said lets glo
      she passed a blunt
      said i dont know
      she insists
      i took a hit
      i felt a burning
      at my lips
      i let a cough
      the fuck is this?
      opened my eyes
      it was a kiss
      a little smirk
      she bit my lip
      she drew a knife
      she slit my wrist

      she cut her own
      said it's a pact
      now we're enslaved
      the bond intact
      the blood'll flow
      beyond the cracks
      and trickle down
      and leave a path
      and when we're old
      we can look back
      say what a life
      and have a laugh
      i'll be your wife,
      the better half
      you'll die, i'll write
      your epitaph

      i had a dream,
      i saw her body
      bleeding through a
      wedding dress
      she smiled still
      her face was pale
      she fed me love,
      i starved depressed
      an angel or
      a siren who would
      sing to me in
      soft caress
      i never thought
      she'd be my death,
      my little blondie
      baphomet

      bishop.

      6 votes
    5. the emo rap deep dive - chapter three: dirty sprite

      howdy pardner! welcome back to my emo rap deep-dive series! for those just joining us, i'd encourage you to go back and check out chapter one: sprite. and chapter two: dirt. first. so why am i...

      howdy pardner!

      welcome back to my emo rap deep-dive series! for those just joining us, i'd encourage you to go back and check out chapter one: sprite. and chapter two: dirt. first.

      so why am i even writing this to begin with? if i'm being honest, it's not all entirely educationally-motivated. i've been really wanting a way to share my favorite genre of music with people (maybe it's a subconscious testing of the waters before i begin to record my own music?) and collect their thoughts. but every time i went to share a link in ~music, i'd deliberate over and over, "what should i share?" it's been so hard for me to pick one single song that's all-encompassing and anthemic (is that even a word? i keep using that word) of the genre as a whole.

      so instead of spamming ~music, or having to cherry pick a small number of tracks, i thought i'd use this as an opportunity to provide a little historical background and, hopefully, maybe, inspire a new appreciation in a subgenre that very often gets overlooked, or thought of as basic / whiney / overproduced.

      that said - hopefully you've all been following along, and i'll stop stalling! let's dive right into chapter three of our emo-rap deep dive - dirty sprite. or, how did we go from OutKast to Lil Pump?


      let me open with a question. what do the following have in common?

      polish composer and piano virtuoso frederic chopin
      controversial american rapper lil pump
      american actor and i guess also musician? corey feldman

      you guessed it!

      opiates.

      all of the present characters used opiates in their lifes, typically throughout the better parts of their creative years. chopin was using medicinal opiates in order to aide with his tuberculosis. feldman fell into and has since (i believe) fought his way out of a heroin addiction. lil pump sips promethazine by the bottle just to party (hyperbole. don't drink prometh by the bottle) which is a prescription medication often used as a sedative or used to prevent coughs or nausea. often sold as a mixture of promethazine and codeine, itself being an opiate. if you've seen a rap music video in the past two to three years, you may have seen this bottle somewhere throughout.

      where do all of these drugs come from?

      the answer to that question actually holds a lot of relevance to the history of emo rap itself, but to answer it, we first have to go all the way back to the 90s.

      off we go!


      believe it or not, drugs as a matter of discussion weren't always ever-present in the rap game. from the late 70s to the early 80s, only about 10% of all rap songs mentioned drug use, whereas in the early 90s, we see that number jump waaaay the fuck up to 45%, to eventually hit 69% by 1997 [source]. this is all taking place around the same time that we saw the decline of major urban neighborhoods due to the effects of white flight, decreasing the amount of tax dollars flowing throughout these areas, and leading to a decrease in public services that would include decreased effectiveness of, say, fire brigades or police squads.

      with poorer households now making up a majority of these neighborhoods, the illegal drug trade quickly grew in popularity as a way to make money on the business end, and a way to escape the day-to-day on the client end. a plethora of burned, broken into, or otherwise abandoned houses became a seemingly limitless amount of places to go about the production of drugs - most notably, crack cocaine. these houses came to be known colloquially as trap houses, and the music inspired by this phenomenon, trap music.

      this sound grew it's roots in the early 90s thanks to the early projects out of the south like UGK (title: Cocaine in the Back of the Ride), Three 6 Mafia (title: We Got Da Dope), and The Showboys (title: Drag Rap). coincidentally, the showboys are actually a group out of new york, though gained the height of their popularity touring around southern states.

      as we head into the mid-nineties/early-naughts, we see the emergence of a few acts that really take this sound and run with it. setting the roots for the coming commercial explosion of the trap sound, we see examples like OutKast's "Southernplayalisticadillacmuzik", Lil Jon's "Who You Wit". we're gonna see lil jon's name pop up a few times as we go through this.

      taking the reigns from these majorly influential projects, we next see T.I. come to the stage for his second album "Trap Muzik" in 2003. much to the surprise of the industry (his debut album did not go over all too well), Trap Muzik debuted at number 4 on the Billboard 200, sold over 100k copies in it's first week, and was later in 2012 called one of the classic albums of the last decade by Complex. the album features many early hits from T.I. like "Be Easy", "24's", and even some tracks with producer credits from Kanye West like "Doin' My Job". still sticking to their guns, pioneering the trap sound, we continue to see records from Lil Jon and Three 6 Mafia taking to the radio such as, respectively, "Get Low" and "Stay Fly"

      paving the way towards the 2010s, we begin to see the rise of artists like Gucci Mane and his debut album "Trap House" (aptly titled eh?) hitting the Billboard 200 with tracks like "Icy", Young Jeezy with internationally-charting tracks like "Soul Survivor", and most notably in modern trap, producer-powerhouse Zaytoven with work on tracks like "Papers" x Usher.


      so we skip forward 5-7 years and things look...different.

      instead of having chart-toppers like "Smack That" x Akon, "Hey There Delilah" x Plain White T's, or "Umbrella" x Rihanna

      we see a lot of love for things like "First of the Year (Equinox) x Skrillex, "Sail" x AWOLNATION, and most importantly by far, "Versace" x Migos which was quickly popularized by Drake's remix. the rest of 2013 serves as the absolute corner stone of modern trap music seeing the success of songs like "Swimming Pools (Drank)" x Kendrick Lamar, "Started From The Bottom" x Drake, and of course, the absolute trap anthem, "Love Sosa" x Chief Keef.

      in that avalanche of tracks, we get the recipe that will come to make up the bulk of today's trap music:

      1. edm-inspired instrumentals
      2. triplet meter rhyme
      3. heavy 808s and crystal clear hi-hats.

      over the next few years, we steadily start to see these three ingredients come together to produce some absolute bangers leading up to the trap zeitgeist.

      in 2014:
      "Fight Night" x Migos
      "Black Widow" x Iggy Azalea
      the ever-memed "Lifestyle" x Young Thug

      in 2015:
      the year of Fetty Wap with tracks like "Trap Queen", "679" on the Billboard 100
      "No Type" x Rae Sremmurd
      "Flex" x Rich Homie Quan

      in 2016:
      "Panda" x Desiigner
      "Broccoli" x DRAM
      Drake jumping back in with "Jumpman"
      "Down in the DM" x Yo Gotti


      and then, finally, we arrive at 2017 - the year that caused the internet's busiest music nerd anthony "melon" fantano to pose the question "have we reached peak trap?". up until recently, the term "trap music" was actually not all too commonly associated with rap music - instead referring most commonly to a subset of edm with (still) heavy 808s, thicc bass drops, and dirty breakdowns. however, with the musical zeitgeist quickly moving to seat rap at the throne over rock music, and with the internet popularizing songs like "Ultimate" x Denzel Curry, "Flicka Da Wrist" x Chedda Da Connect, and "U Guessed it" x OG Maco, the term has now been absolutely overtaken as many rap fans find themselves infatuated with the sound. this causes the scene to absolutely explode throughout 2017 with songs like:

      "Humble" x Kendrick Lamar
      "Bad and Boujee" x Migos
      "Bodak Yellow" x Cardi B
      "Look At Me!" x XXXTentacion
      and of course
      "Gucci Gang" x Lil Pump

      this year sees the debuts of several artists that are still dropping bangers today, like the previously listed Cardi B, Lil Pump, XXXTentacion (rest in peace), A Boogie wit Da Hoodie, and (again) of course, 6ix9ine.

      analogous to the rise of screamed lyrics, heavy instrumentals, and prettyboy-frontmen of mid-late 2000s rock bands, we see the rise of trap music today.


      now, the final question to be answered.

      how do we get from rap songs with hedonistic lyrics, heavy 808s, and loud-personality frontmen, to a subsect of the genre that nearly predominantly speaks of subjects like death, addiction, loss, and suicide?

      i'll see ya soon for the fourth and final installment of the emo-rap deep dive - chapter four: xanax sprinkles.

      12 votes
    6. What have you been watching/reading this week?

      Day and a half late edition. Anyway, what have you been watching/reading this week? Feel free to talk about something you saw that was cool, something that was bad, ask for recommendations, or...

      Day and a half late edition.

      Anyway, what have you been watching/reading this week?

      Feel free to talk about something you saw that was cool, something that was bad, ask for recommendations, or anything else you can think of.

      If you want to, feel free to find the thing you're talking about and link to its Anilist, MAL, or any other anime/manga database you use!

      16 votes
    7. Does anyone else feel like people are unreasonably impatient?

      Everyday I am more surprised how impatient people are, and how ridiculous the behavior that stems from it is. The street in front of my house is a four-lane street. There is a stop sign 30 ft at...

      Everyday I am more surprised how impatient people are, and how ridiculous the behavior that stems from it is.

      The street in front of my house is a four-lane street. There is a stop sign 30 ft at the end of the block. Just about every morning I will back out and there will be a car that will get into the next lane and then overtake me just so they can slam on their brakes because there's a line of cars at the four-way stop 30 feet ahead. I just don't understand that behavior. Drivers in general seem so impatient and I don't know why they are always in a hurry. We have major accidents here daily.

      I've been trying to get a package delivered since last Friday. The post office has been making it real hard to get due to issues on their end. This morning I got a voicemail to go pick it up at the station around the corner.

      I'm in line and this woman asked if anyone is there just to pick up. So I say yes I am and I walk up and I give the guy my information. This woman behind me reaches around right next to my face and says can you get this for me? Like it isn't my turn.

      They can't find my package because I was told wrong and they didn't actually have it it was out for delivery. This woman has been waiting about 60 seconds and you can hear her sighing and then she leaps to the register next to me as soon as a woman walks up asking for her package.

      This woman was making a big deal about having to wait not even 2 minutes for her package.

      I just don't understand why people are so impatient. I mean I was frustrated as could be about my package because they kept flip-flopping on me but I wasn't acting put out like it was the worst thing in the world.

      Is it entitlement? What is it? People get mad when they have to wait in line behind one person at the grocery store who has already been rung up and is just paying at that point. I mean why are they actually getting upset over this stuff.

      And they never learn. I'll be checked out and leaving by the time they are being rung up because they spent 5 minutes looking for a short line. I don't get it.

      31 votes
    8. What do you think of Medium’s “clapping” system?

      I’m not recommending this for Tildes or anything, I just wanted to know your thoughts on it. For those who are unfamiliar with it, on Medium, you can “applaud” articles and comments. To do this,...

      I’m not recommending this for Tildes or anything, I just wanted to know your thoughts on it.

      For those who are unfamiliar with it, on Medium, you can “applaud” articles and comments. To do this, you hold down the clap button, and depending on how long you hold it down, the more applause you give (up to a limit of 50). The best example would probably be if you go on any Medium article and try it yourself.

      I’ve never really seen any discussion on it, so I was interested in hearing your thoughts.

      I think the idea of essentially having to convert time holding down a button to a number of likes is interesting.

      The problems that come to mind are that you could easily automate it, and that it could suffer the “5 star” rating system problem, where the majority of people will either dislike something enough to rate it 1 star, love it enough to rate it 5 stars, or not care enough to rate it at all (or in this case, give it 50 claps or nothing).

      18 votes
    9. Total noob looking for (hopefully) simple greasemonkey script

      I have knowledge of the basic concepts of programming in general and html and some very basic knowledge of javascript, but this specific task is proving a little beyond me. I'm actually using...

      I have knowledge of the basic concepts of programming in general and html and some very basic knowledge of javascript, but this specific task is proving a little beyond me. I'm actually using tampermonkey, in case that matters.

      www.bricklink.com is a site to buy Lego from private sellers. By default, when looking at a shop's listing of items, it shows 25 per page. I would like to automatically switch to 100 per page every time.

      Here's a randomly selected store page (no affiliation) at the default 25 per page:

      https://store.bricklink.com/TheBricky#/shop?o={"itemType":"P","catID":"18","showHomeItems":0}

      Now, same page set to display 100 per page. Note how "pgSize" is added to the url but doesn't appear by default:

      https://store.bricklink.com/TheBricky#/shop?o={"pgSize":100,"itemType":"P","catID":"18","showHomeItems":0}

      What I would like is for pgSize to be set to 100 only IF

      "shop" appears in the url

      AND

      "pgSize" does not appear in the url OR "pgSize" does appear in the url but does not equal 100.

      Since Bricklink remembers pgSize per shop page per session, once pgSize is set to 100 for a particular shop greasemonkey doesn't need to do anything. Intercepting the url before the page loads would be nice but unnecessary since loading is fast and I'm not worried about bandwidth.

      I tried making this but wasn't sure how to input what I'm trying to test for in the url. Of course now that I've thought about it some more it seems the task is more probably difficult than I thought it would be at first. Any help would be appreciated.

      EDIT: This comment below seems to be working, although the way Bricklink makes their urls feels funky at times.

      10 votes
    10. Naomi Osaka, 20, wins her first Grand Slam title, also the first Japanese woman to do so

      Osaka defeated Serena Williams in two sets, but her victory over her idol is marred by controversy. Williams was flagged with conduct violations due to alleged coaching signals, which Williams...

      Osaka defeated Serena Williams in two sets, but her victory over her idol is marred by controversy. Williams was flagged with conduct violations due to alleged coaching signals, which Williams vehemently denied and was voicing her displeasure with Ramos, the chair umpire. A warning was followed by a point penalty, followed by...a game penalty. Which is indescribably huge in a match on this big a stage.

      It's unfortunate for Osaka, she played incredibly and deserved the win. Williams had to console her during the award ceremony as the crowd booed in protest of the interesting official decisions. I can't imagine a "worse" way to win your first Championship.

      I've never seen anything like this in the sport. It was really jarring honestly. Hopefully both competitors move on and things are sorted out.

      24 votes
    11. Usability Suggestion: Mobile sidebar closing.

      Edit: As @Bauke pointed out, apparently this feature already exists via tapping outside of the sidebar. I never even thought to try that. I'm not sure if this is in the gitlab issues or not, but a...

      Edit: As @Bauke pointed out, apparently this feature already exists via tapping outside of the sidebar. I never even thought to try that.


      I'm not sure if this is in the gitlab issues or not, but a cursory search suggested it's not. On mobile, if you tap the link to the most recent comment from the sidebar, you navigate directly to that comment just as on the desktop site, but the sidebar remains open and can't be closed without scrolling all the way back up to the top of the page. This is incredibly cumbersome and inconvenient.

      Ideally there would either be a method of closing the sidebar from anywhere, or for the sidebar to close on clicking the link. I would imagine that the latter would be simplest.

      8 votes