This question popped up between my friends and I when we were discussing the possibilities of lab grown meat. When discussing lab grown meat, one of the arguments for it is that it is far more ethical to consume as it didn't originate from a living, conscious being. But if you replace the meat being grown in a lab to human meat rather than fish or beef, is it still less ethical? Or is it something that will be seen as incredibly taboo to the point where it should be outlawed?

I would be curious to read your thoughts and points of view on this!

For me, it's going to be a hard no that it shouldn't it be done. But to be honest, I feel like my feelings regarding it come from an emotional perspective rather than a logical one.

Edit: Let's throw in lab grown human organs as well. Say these are the organs that aren't suitable for transplant, but are perfectly edible.

Her eyes are fixed on the cooker.

— Look.

Points at the egg.

— What?

— Can’t you see?

— Has it gone bad?

She takes a deep breath.

— I noticed the way you broke the shell, but I needed to confirm. Can you see how the yolk is soft yet whole, with a small cut in the lower portion slowly leaking a yellow thread at a regular pace?

— Yes...

— Don’t you get it?

— No.

— When the yolk leaks like that, it can only mean two things.

She hesitates.

— You’re either going to murder me...

— What you’re talking about?

— Or you’ll get a Ph.D. in Physics in 2035.

— You’re kidding, right?

— Nope.

— You saw all that? On a fucking egg?

— I knew you wouldn’t understand...

— You were right.

A second goes by. He cleans his throat, kinda embarrassed.

— Honey?

— Yeah, babe.

— I’m terrible at physics.

He holds a knife with a confused expression on his face.

Hello everyone, it's 00:16 my time and I'm finally fucking done making all the data pretty for you after about 4 hours of coding to parse all those juicy CSV files cause guess what, the excel files that JotForms gave me WHERE FUCKING GḀ͒ͬ̓ͦͅRͤ͊̔́B̴̼̫̟͍̅̆A̩̽ͮ̂̏͡G̸̭̜̑͑̃Ȇ͈͙͈̠̖̋́̌ͭ͂ͧ^{help me}

Anyway :) Let's give y'all a brief rundown of the current Tilde demographics, and some highlights, CAUSE NOW I HAVE ALL YOUR DATA AND THUS INFINITE POWER TO MAKE JOKES^{did I mention I've been doing for half the day and I'm really hungry? AND TIRED?} Honestly you owe me this moment of insanity considering I'M RUNNING ON GREEN LEAF JUICE AND HOW MUCH DATA I WADED THROUGH AHHHH-.

Also, most of these will be pictures because honestly I can't be asked to not pretty paste these figures into markdown tables or I'll legitimate go insane. Anyway, this post has plenty of sass, don't take this shit too seriously please, gracias.

The 2019 Census

Anyway.

This year we got 249 responses in total, which really annoys me cause 250 is way prettier to look at at. However, one was completely empty and the other two are... Fishy. More on that later.

Personal details

Age

When it comes to age, Tildes is heavily skewed towards people in their 20s to 30s, 45% of the responses came from people between 20 and 30. Overall, late 20s to and early 30s dominate the demographics. (before anyone screams at me about the proper use of graphs, don't worry I also took Statistics at uni, but the histogram in Excel refused to work and honestly go make your own census) There is also some statistical noise, which I'm not sure how it happened. Most likely someone typed too quickly.

Our youngest user is 11! And either very intelligent, cause they also speak 9 languages, or a fraud. If you're not a fraud, I apologize and wish you luck on your future path in life, which will surely be extremely successful, if you really speak that many languages at such an age.^{Hint, this was one of the fishy responses}

Our oldest user is 70! I really don't know what to say, cause that's a pretty high number for an internet user. How was uhh... The cold war?^{Holy fuck I should stop I need to eat}

Geographical... Stuff

Overall, the Tildes demographic hasn't changed much. US and Canada still lead by quite a lot, but we have acquired quite the little diverse userbase.

All I can do is salute my fellow other Austrian user. Can you say Oachkatzalschwoaf though? THAT'S THE SIGN OF A REAL AUSTRIAN.^{NONE OF THIS STARTING WORLD WARS SHIT}

Language

Predictably, a large number of people does not speak a second language besides English, however, due to geographical diversity, a large number of languages is represented, most of them from Europe, which is Tildes' second largest userbase.

Gender & Sexuality

Tildes is heavily male-dominated, probably due to its IT-focused population and the fact that most of us came from Reddit.

Of the 248 responses, 17 people hit marked that they were trans, pretty much all of them MTF (which is apparently the majority of trans people, Wikipedia tells me.) 3 preferred not to say and everyone else is cis.

Now, let's get to the sexy stuff. And by that I mean the point where the numbers rub together in fantastic ways.

The majority of Tildes is really fucking straight, though we have some fun sexualities represented, my personal favourite Still figuring that out. You do you mate, you'll get there eventually. Also, whoever wrote down O-Sexual also wrote X-Treme Wiccan as their religion, and at this point in I'm too afraid to google what any of that is. Clearly, we need more straight people, after all, we're in the 20s.^{Before anyone yells at me, THIS WAS A FUCKING JOKE} For now I've defined that person as Fish numero dos.

Religion

So, here's a doozy. To that one person (probably part of the 9% of <20 year olds), WHO DECIDED TO WRITE THE WONDERFUL ANSWER atheism and angosticism are not religions, can you PLEASE read the question properly next time. FUCK.^{Honestly that is such a 14 y/o thing to write, by the Ǵ͙͔͔̻͖̜́ͅO̶̱̘͡D͓̞͉̲͓̥S̢̲͙̙̟̯̙͓̱͟}

Anyway, religion is probably the thing with the most diverse answers, honestly. There are words in there I have never read in my life before. Like what is Apatheist.1? Is there some sort of ranking? Does it work with natural numbers only? Is there a Apatheist.3,51? It can't be a typo, people take religions way too seriously for that.

Politics

I averaged out the scores of everyone who answered the political questions and got the following answers (remember, these are based on the 8values quiz):

Economy - 7,02
Diplomacy - 6,9
State - 3,8
Society - 7,48

Only economy is really surprising here, though I'd also have expected diplomacy to be a little lower as well. Maybe the leftist skew ia bit of an illusion?

Work, education and really everything else these sections were a terrible idea

When it comes to education, Tildes is pretty university focused. Almost half people replying have a bachelor's, a good bunch are working or have aquired their master's. Also one (maybe soon-to-be) MD and a few PhDs. The Craftsmen and tradeship people barely balance us out, we need some more COMMON FOLK IN HERE.

IT people, rejoice! WE STILL REIGN SUPREME^{Everyone else will remember that} All jokes aside, shoutout to the stay-at-home dad, proud of ya'. And to the disabled person, I hope life goes as well as it can for you. That goes for the longterm-unemployed person as well. Someday, you'll manage mate, someday.

And to the person who said their job is a waste of time in exchange of money... Mate, you need someone to talk? I'm here. We're all here.

Surprise section about technical shit and Tildes

OS usage is as expected, due to Tildes' heavy skew into IT and the fact that Apple doesn't nearly dominate as much in other countries as in the US, it's to be expected.

Due to said IT dominance Linux has almost caught up with the leader, Windows. Though my personal favourite is Anything cool that comes into existence, like can we make a Linux fork that is called literally that? You'd be the perfect match.

When it comes to Tildes specifically, y'all need to chill out. Most people who answered the census visit Tildes multiple times a day, like the content here doesn't even move that quickly? WHAT ARE YOU ALL DOING? IS THERE SOME SECRET CULT I SHOULD KNOW ABOUT?_{If it's a LSD cult I'm totes in lads.}

As expected, most people who answered the survey have an account, and most likely due to the heavy IT skew most people are visiting from their PC. But I have also seen some people requesting a mobile app in the free form questions, so maybe that would go up if a native app were to be created.

The freeform questions

Well, in all honesty, not much has changed. Most people like the dedicated community, site design, in-depth discussions (though that was sometimes a point on both sides), etc. and dislike the heavy domination of IT topics and US/Europe news & politics. Also, multiple people simply said @Deimos when asked what they like most about Tildes. Get a room, y'all. Though it's well deserved, I think we can all agree on that.

Complete list of positive feedback: https://pastebin.com/KYCYLWP1

Complete list of negative feedback: https://pastebin.com/Eng6jjay

Complete list of ideas for change: https://pastebin.com/eery3mCt

Why am I posting these? Cause in all honesty, freeform feedback like this is hard to analyze and summarize, so I'd rather just post it all so everyone can form their opinion. Also, I'm tired.

Special mentions

Someone was nice enough to add the mention in parantheses that I should add them to the bisexual list instead if no one else marked pansexual. Well lucky you, exactly one other person marked it! You two can go find yourselves a room with lots of sexy pans in it now and have some fun.^{This is how it works, right?} Or just, slide into each other's DMs or something and talk about your love for pans. ( ͡° ͜ʖ ͡°)

I also appreciate the one person who entered their religion in the languages section on accident. That's fact now, you speak Raised Catholic, now spiritual/atheist now, no shh, no talking back, that's your language now.

To that one person that said that Tildes is too serious, this one's for you.

And cheers to Deimos, without whom I couldn't be so silly on this overly serious but fantastic platform.

Anyway, Grzmot out, I need sleep. I'll come back in 8 hours or so to regret the shit I just wrote down at 2 AM. Please don't ban me.

Hive mind: What advice would you give to someone who has to give a presentation to a non-technical person, and it's important that the listener actually understand the details?

How do you go about it? Specific tips appreciated. Pretend it's for a friend you care about.

(This is for an article. Ideally we could refer to you by reference for context and credibility, eg "an IT security pro at a midwest insurance company" or "aerospace engineer" so please give some kind of identification to use).

I'm thinking about getting a new printer. My needs are basically to print out textual documents 2-3 times per month from macOS. I don't need to print photos. I will not buy an inkjet because of the outrageous price of the ink. I would like to have fax support (my spouse sees a lot of doctors and they still use fax machines a lot, and we're not comfortable sending personal medical info via a fax service on the web), and it would be nice if we could also scan documents. So I'm thinking a multi-function device.

We currently have a Brother 7840W MFC with print, fax, copy, and scan. It's over 10 years old (maybe 15?) and I dislike it. It's been slowly losing functionality over the past 5+ years. The WiFi went out, but I was able to connect it via wired ethernet to a computer and share it from there. The drivers insist that there's a paper jam, but there isn't and it prints just fine (but sounds like some of the internal mechanical components are going to die any day now.) The UI of the printer is awful. I recall having to use the phone pad to enter my WiFi password, and it was like texting on a Motorola StarTAC. (Like if you want the letter "C" press the number "2" three times, etc.) The drivers and related software don't work like normal macOS software. (Disclosure: I also once wrote a scanner driver for Brother and it was horrible, but they shipped it, so I'm not real comfortable putting their software on my computer. But that was 25 years ago, so maybe they're better now?)

I've heard horrible things about the drivers and software of most other major printer makers - HP, Epson, Lexmark, etc. I'm guessing what I'm looking for doesn't exist, but I just want a multi-function device in as small a package as is reasonable, and with a UI on the device and software that doesn't suck and that won't die on me in < 5 years. Does such a thing exist?

Asked in the spirit of the new decade.

I am 14, so mostly growing up and realizing that the world is probably going to enter a recession when I reach adulthood which will suck for reaching financial independence.

Going through puberty, even if it's just the beginning of it and seeing one of my cats die from kidney failure and hearing that my grandma died from cancer, which is very sad :(

Some days ago I came back home to visit my parents during these holidays.

Yesterday evening, while we were watching a movie, nature called and I had to go to the bathroom. Because I'm a lazy bozo and it is closer to the living room, I did what no man should ever do - I used my parents' bathroom.

Stumbling in the dark in this unfamiliar place I had no right being in, I clumsily bumped on the towel rack (an old 80s coat hanger looking thing) and to my horror, managed to snap one of its plastic arms off.

Because it's a relic of its time, and perhaps because the bathroom is a sacred personal space which should never be altered if not for strictly necessary reasons, mom and pops were upset.

I felt like shit, an outcast whose madness lead an entire family to despair and misfortune while trying to save himself literally a handful of pitiful steps.

But a shining beacon of hope came from a fading memory, one which sounded utterly absurd, yet in times of desperation still came out as somehow plausible.

"Just use baking soda and Loctite forehead"; this had been uttered from a German friend of mine while he had been admiring the broken mess that is my duct taped ps4 controller some time ago. Was it a joke? Was it a serious suggestion? German humor is often lost in translation...

Still, I had to give it a go. I had to try something. And this morning an attempt was made.

I'm still feeling ecstatic. Never have I hever felt this good about a DIY tryout. I can confirm that baking soda is an incredible catalyst for super glue; the result while somewhat sloppy-looking is rock solid.

Pops couldn't believe his eyes when he saw his good ol' towel rack hanger thing stoically standing where it always did, in its rightful place, with no defects at all.

Thank you baking soda and super glue, you saved Christmas.

To all of you whose plastics need some fixing, remember this combo and give it a go - it will save you as well.

Any other similar hacks that you might want to share are very much appreciated.

TL;DR
Baking soda and regular superglue are incredible for fixing plastics.

Edit: forgot to put tags in post. Apologies.

Here's a little setup I'm going to try out with my reading habits this year. I figured I'd share the idea, in case anyone else is interested in running it (or something similar) for themselves.

Rules

• I must complete one book for each letter of the English alphabet (26 total).
• A book fulfills a letter by having the title or any part of the author's name start with that letter.
• I do not have to go in alphabetical order.
• I CAN rearrange entries at will.

Example

I realize that's hard to visualize, so here's how the first few letters might look once completed (these books are placeholders):

A: Jeff VanderMeer - Annihilation
B: Tina Fey - Bossypants
C: Arthur C. Clarke - Rendezvous with Rama
D: Dava Sobel - Longitude

Explanations/Clarifications

Let's say the first book I read is Kurt Vonnegut's Slaughterhouse-Five. I could have that count for K (Kurt), V (Vonnegut), or S (Slaughterhouse).

I'm choosing to ignore articles in titles. The Martian would thus count for M (Martian) rather than T (The).

If an author has a single name (e.g. Voltaire), I can only use that one letter (V). If an author commonly uses more than first and last names (e.g. Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, Hunter S. Thompson), I can use any parts (C N or A, and H S or T, respectively).

If the book title is/begins with a number or symbol, I can count it under the letter that corresponds to the name/pronunciation of the number or symbol (e.g. 1984 would be N (Nineteen) while 1Q84 would be O (One)).

As the process goes on and more letters get filled, my choices will get narrower. I am allowed to swap around books in order to accommodate new choices, but only within the parameters of the rules above. So if I initially had Kurt Vonnegut's Slaughterhouse-Five down for S but then I decide to read Stanley Schmidt's The Sins of the Fathers, I can move Slaughterhouse-Five to V for Vonnegut since Sins can only work for S.

Purpose

I came up with this for a couple of reasons:

• It's a semi-fun way to jazz up my regular reading habits.
• It gives me a goal to work towards.
• It will help me narrow down choices from my immense backlog and interest list, especially when I have only a few spots left to fill.
• It's free-form enough that I don't feel boxed-in, but it's restrictive enough that it'll likely force me to read some stuff I wouldn't usually choose.
• 26 books for 26 letters is coincidentally perfect for an average of one book every two weeks, which feels like the right pace for me.

Process Note

I'm only going to count books I read with my eyes rather than books I listen to. This isn't because I have anything against audiobooks (I love them!) but because I've actually gotten TOO dependent on them and am not sitting down to read books like I used to. I'm hoping this can restart my reading habit. I put this here rather than in the rules because I don't want to restrict anyone else should they choose to do this exercise.

I plan to post updates on my "alphabet progress" in the scheduled "What are you reading these days?" threads.

Anyway, feel free to share your thoughts on this process. This is entirely theory-based at the moment, as I've never actually attempted it, so if there's anything I've failed to account for or any potential hiccups you see, let me know.

Also, if you're wanting to steal the idea, whether wholesale or in part, go for it! It is ripe for modding or tweaking. I'm considering doing a second, separate alphabet for myself that's limited only to graphic novels, for example. I also think it would be neat for people to do it in other alphabets, in languages other than English.

Furthermore, it's a generic enough setup that you could do it for more than just reading too. You could use the ruleset as written with music (using artist and album names) or movies (using titles and directors). Games are a bit tougher since you really only have the title to work with (since there's often not an identifiable "author"), but with some tweaks I think it could still happen.

I have just watched ‘Mary Poppins Returns’, after yesterday watching the original ‘Mary Poppins’ for the first time. I have not, to my knowledge, ever watched ‘Mary Poppins’ in full before now. I’ve caught snippets of it on weekend television, but I’ve never seen it from start to finish. Well, with our new Disney+ streaming subscription, I’ve finally seen ‘Mary Poppins’ for the first time yesterday, and followed it up by watching ‘Mary Poppins Returns’ today.

‘Mary Poppins Returns’ is a sequel in name only. It’s basically a remake of the original. It’s as if the director had a checklist of everything ‘Mary Poppins’ contained, and just checked them off in this sequel:

• Mary Poppins herself. Check.

• A dirty working-class friend with a heart of gold. Check.

• Children who didn’t know how to have fun. Check.

• A father who needed to rediscover his children and his own childish joy. Check.

• A woman who’s working for a progressive cause. Check.

• Bank seen as a negative institution. Check.

• Quirky relative of Mary Poppins who gives the children a different point of view. Check.

• Animated sequence. Check.

Actually, I’m surprised that there is an animated sequence in the sequel, given how much P.L. Travers reportedly hated the animation in the original. (Strangely, I’ve seen ‘Saving Mr Banks’ a couple of times, and even watched a documentary about Ms Travers somewhere along the way.) But I suppose she’s dead now, so her input is limited to just turning in her grave.

It even gets more detailed than that. Individual musical numbers have been mapped from one movie to another:

• Vaudeville-style song & dance number within the animated sequence, with the main characters performing alongside cartoon animals. Check.

• Big dance number featuring the aforementioned working-class friend and his colleagues. Check. The names even have a metaphorical resonance: “Step in Time” becomes “Trip a Little Light Fantastic”.

• Uplifting song at the end of the movie. Check. But instead of being about a child’s toy that flies in the sky (kite), let’s make it about a different child’s toy that flies in the sky (balloon).

It’s a shame that Julie Andrews can’t sing any more. It would have been lov-er-ly (ha!) to see her in the cameo role that Angela Lansbury had. Not that I have anything against Ms Lansbury: far from it! But Dick Van Dyke got a small role, and it would have been nice to see Ms Andrews pop up as well. A little on-screen moment between her and Emily Blunt would have been sweet.

There was one thing that the director left off his checklist, though: singable songs. While everyone knows “Supercalifragilisticexpialidocious” and can sing it at the drop of a hat, noone is going to be singing “A Cover is not the Book”, as fun as it was. “A Spoonful of Sugar” is fun and memorable, while “Can You Imagine That” is fun and forgettable.

This is not to derogate the performances. There were no weak links in this chain. Emily Blunt was spot-on as Mary Poppins. Lin-Manuel Miranda was technically great as Jack the lamplighter (and he certainly did a better Cockney accent than Dick Van Dyke – which admittedly isn’t hard). Miranda lacked a little heart, but is a great singer and dancer. The rest of the cast were also good. Not a sour note among them. They were just let down by a weak script and poor songs.

The new Mary Poppins movie is a watered-down copy of the original – and the original wasn’t the best movie in the world to start with! I love me a good musical. I have a whole shelf full of musicals on disc, along with assorted soundtracks. I can quite happily spend an afternoon with ‘The Wizard of Oz’ or ‘Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory’ or the family-friendly ‘My Fair Lady’. But ‘Mary Poppins’ was too bland for me. And its sequel/remake was even blander.

For any of you who have been in a book club before. Any lessons learned? Nice to haves? Things to avoid? This is going to be limited to a fairly small group (4-6 people), so I feel like I don't need to get too formal with anything. But at the same time, I know that a good structure goes a long way to a successful regular reading club.

We have pretty a varied reading pace between us. One of us can read a book a day. I'm more at the book (300~ pages) every week or two pace myself. I'm sure that others may read faster or slower than that still. So I figure a book a month is decent for keeping to a casual-but-intentional reading pace for most of us.

Part of this is intended to be a way to keep in touch with friends I don't get to talk to as often anymore, and part of it is just reading new books I wouldn't even think to read.

Intergrid is an online outliner and note-taking app. It's inspired by – and in many ways replicates – Indigrid, except it's on the Web. It's free to use, and it's readily available right from the main page.

Why Intergrid?

The main goal of Intergrid is to help you focus on the notes.

There are no settings. You can't pick the font. Theming is not an option. There's only content, and what you want to do with it.

Plus, it looks cool.

Is it feature-complete?

Hell no. It's been in development for three months – which is to say, not very long. It still has ways to go.

Which is why I'm keeping the initial release rather quiet: Tildes and a handful of friends are the only people to know about it so far.

Are there bugs?

Afraid so. There are some I know about, and there are probably some I couldn't even reach.

Why release it, then?

Because it works already. You can add, edit, and save your notes in-browser. As long as you have cookies enabled, it will serve you. (Intergrid doesn't use cookies, and has no tracking to speak of, but the permission for localStorage – the technology used to store and gather data about your notes – is adjacent, as far as browsers are concerned.)

It would be of particular use to people on systems other than Windows. While the current version is focused on desktops, future versions may gain mobile support – all the more likely because, outside from a handful of hardcoded interactions and design considerations, there's nothing preventing mobile users from enjoying the app.

There's also the pragmatic reason: something Jeff Atwood called "Always Be Shipping", all the way back in 2007. You can't get feedback on an app that has no public version. Your programming expertise and design sense will only get you so far. Getting it out there – and going forward with the feedback – is a generous part of the process.

Where are you planning to take it?

The first step would be the fix the bugs. There will be a list of known ones in the comments.

Once those are fixed (or can be postponed without repercussions to being able to use the app), there are features I'm going to implement within the next couple of months. Most of them, at least initially, are going to be put in to keep up with Indigrid's feature set.

• Views: open, move, and close columns, each hosting a different view on the notes, allowing you to gain perspective or edit multiple ideas simulatenously

• Bookmarks: store views as separate named bookmarks, allowing you to traverse different mental spaces within the notes

• Action History and Undo/Redo: record changes to the notes and time-travel between its different states, because sometimes, you want to be able to "go there" and not be weighted down by rock-solid commitment

• Offline Use: work with your notes even when the Internet is down

(Even though the code for columns is already in the development branch, I was unable to come up with a respectable way of handling it before New Year, which is when I promised to release the app.)

In the long term, I'd like to make sure you could access your notes from any browser on any device. This plan also includes the ability to create and share read-only or editable partial copies of your notes – for example, as presentation or a basis for an online discussion. After finishing with shaping up the current, local-only version, this is where want to take the development. I reckon it would take me somewhere between 6 and 12 months to finish the codebase for this.

Anything else I should know?

Do keep in mind that this is an early release. There may be bugs – perhaps even the kind that will rid you of your notes. If you're uncomfortable about using software this early in development, please don't: your sanity is dearer to me than getting users.

It will, however, get stable over time. If there's ever a breaking change on the horizon – the kind of change that will change an aspect of Intergrid radically – users will be notified about it at least two weeks ahead, so that at least they could backup their notes. I want to ensure the safety of mind for the users of Intergrid, so that they know their notes are in safe hands.

That said, make regular backups anyway. The nodes are encoded/decoded as indented plain text, which means they can be transferred to and from a simple textfile with copy/paste. Any single whitespace character – space, tab etc. – is considered one level of indentation, so it doesn't matter how you indent your plain-text notes: they will be aligned as you'd expect. Intergrid and Indigrid both export tab-indented text.

Can I help?

From the coding and design perspective, I would appreciate open-source involvement. However, at this stage, even though there's a repository awaiting changes, I'm uncomfortable making it public just yet, because licensing is hard and I don't want to get into any sort of legal trouble without at least understanding what I'm dealing with.

Once this and other aspects of open-sourcing the code are dealt with, I'm going to post another update.

If you'd like to support the development financially, you could donate via PayPal.me. The first $5 or so will go to supporting the infrastructure: the monthly hosting payment and 1/12th of the yearly domain name price. (Even though the domain name has been paid for for the next two years, I'd like to be able to host the app reliably. The domain name is directly tied to the data saved – you can't access another website's saved data unless they're on the same main domain – which is why it's important to keep it.)

Check out Intergrid

(You could replace FPTP with STV to keep the districts that elect representatives in the house intact.)

I'll start.

The Democratic party breaks up into the neoliberal and progressive parties.

The neoliberal party is where centrist candidates like Joe Biden and Michael Bloomberg go.

The progressive party is where progressive candidates like Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren go.

The Republican party might lose a large part of their electorate to the libertarians, since many Republicans are more concerned about letting business prevail and don't really want cultural conservatism.

Andrew yang maybe also leaves the Democrats and founds his own party, the party for online reform.

The greens also become significantly more popular but they may have too much in common with the progressives.

The Senate could be changed to include as many seats as the house for proper representation.

I realize this is a little early and that I've been doing a lot on Tildes lately, but I'm really into this idea and I know a lot of people will soon be busy with holiday plans (if they aren't already). As such, I figured it was better to go ahead and propose this now rather than wait:

What are challenge lists?

In reading circles, it's common for sites to put out yearly "challenge checklists". They are lists of different criteria with stuff like "Read a book published in the year you were born" or "Read a book with the name of a country in the title", and the idea is that you try to complete the list over the course of the year. Here are some examples from 2019:

• Book Riot
• Popsugar
• Omaha Public Library

The Idea

I think it would be neat if Tildes came up with a gaming version of one of these challenge lists for 2020. Why?

• It's fun
• It's great for diving into your backlog (if you have one)
• It gives you incentive to play games you might otherwise overlook
• It's fulfilling to work towards a goal
• I haven't seen a gaming version of this idea before, so we could (maybe) be trailblazers!
• But mostly it's fun

The Process

I was originally considering coming up with my own individual list for myself, but I think it would be neat if we did a community version instead. As such,

• If you are interested in participating in a 2020 gaming challenge list, let me know in this thread.
• If you have ideas for criteria for the challenge list, also let me know in this thread.
• If you have any other thoughts on this setup, let me know.

This is a brainstorming thread, so feel free to submit any and all ideas you have. Throw everything at the wall. We'll see what sticks afterwards.

To be clear, the challenges are more about playing certain games than they are about completing specific tasks within games. So "play a game in which you can pet a dog" works, while "pet the dog in Zork II" does not.

After we finish brainstorming, I will compile all submitted criteria into a poll and we can vote on the ones we most like. Then, after voting, the top [number TBD] entries from the poll will become our challenge list for 2020.

This story was basically the last straw, but the bigger frustration is that I ordered a NAS on Black Friday that STILL hasn't shipped. I have zero trust in this company to actually deliver me what they claim to be anymore, and their listings are crap.

So instead of just spending my time whining (like the Ars comment section seems to be), I'd like to brainstorm alternative places to buy stuff. The main problem is breaking the Amazon habit, especially as it dominates all Google results for whatever you're looking for.

Nothing will ever be as much of a "one stop shop" as the A->Z store, naturally. But I think I'll just set myself up some bookmarks and go to one based on what I'm looking for. Also, while I get that there is no ethical consumption under capitalism, there is definitely a sliding scale of better and worse so that should weigh into things.

So let's go by category. I'm just listing out places where I've started to look for things instead. Please feel free to make suggestions. Whatever people recommend, I'll edit back into this list. If you include any general comments about what you like or what they could do better on any of your recommendations or any of mine let me know.

Groceries (Dry goods and sundries)

• Target.com
• Jet.com
• WalMart.com
• CostCo
• Chewy.com: For dog/pet supplies

Groceries (Fresh/perishable and specialty foods)

• Peapod (is this still a thing? Has anyone used it?)

Electronics

• BestBuy.com
• WalMart.com
• Target.com
• Drop.com: Unfortunately, it's whatever happens to be a deal at the time. So good to check in on and get alerts if there is something you're waiting for but not reliable.
• TechnaBob: Same as Drop
• NewEgg: Obviously
• Monoprice: For cables and other staples.

Clothes (basics like socks, t-shirts, underwear, etc.)

Clothes (designer)

• Gilt.com is basically for overstock and weird fashion items. Sometimes there are good finds there though, particularly good deals on designer versions of basics.

Random stuff (specifically random "flea market" type sites)

• Meh.com
• Etsy (for handicrafts and consignment/antiques, although this is also starting to get lousy with shitty knockoffs)
• eBay (can be pretty dodgy, once again crappy knockoff scammers ruin everything)
• CraigsList (if you're okay with used)

Other (specialty sites for very specific things)

• Drop: For stuff in drop communities. Currently they have a very active one for mechanical keyboards along with audiophile gear, writing/stationary, EDC, and random tech.
• The Clymb: A deal site for camping clothes and outdoor gear
• REI.com: More outdoors gear

My mother died last month and I've been thinking of leaving my father's house ever since then. I initially thought I'd be okay with doing that, regardless of whether or not my father would object, but he talked with me last night saying he'd be okay if I left and now I'm FREAKING OUT.

Background: I'm 23 and living in Houston, Texas. I have an older brother who lives in Dallas who offered to take me in, but it wouldn't be very permanent as he plans on leaving the country for a trip next year and will be gone for some time. I also have a friend from high school who offered me a room, but she lives in Seattle and was fired from her job. No one else who is close to me is able to offer me a place to stay.

My concerns: I dropped out of college. I was planning on going back but then my mother died and that plan was put on hold, so I don't have any marketable skills (I've only ever worked in retail). I also don't have a job lined up anywhere else. I've never had to take on so many bills at one time and therefore I don't know much about budgeting.

I'd like to leave, but where I am it's secure and comfy. Maybe it's finally time I pushed myself out of my comfort zone and start taking control of my own life, but I don't want to risk my safety and finances on a crazy idea.

I welcome any and all advice, and thanks for reading.

edit: changed a word

You've been asked to submit a proposal for a space exploration mission of your own desire, to the New Frontiers spaceflight program. These missions have a cost cap of approximately $700 million to $1 billion, and have famously produced the following spacecraft:

• New Horizons, a flyby probe to Pluto.
• Juno, a polar orbiter of Jupiter.
• OSIRIS-REx, a sample return mission to a rocky asteroid.
• Dragonfly, a drone lander to Saturn's moon Titan.

These are medium-sized missions in both scope, and cost. You can't build the Mars 2020 Rover, or the James Webb Space Telescope. What do you send, and where? Things to consider:

Technology Readiness Level

Administrators are less likely to choose your mission if you choose to integrate risky or untested flight hardware, or novel concepts into the mission design. You're more likely to get selected with more conventional hardware.

Power Source

Your best bet is probably solar panels, maybe something commercial off the shelf like NG's Ultraflex panels? The downside is that these are only effective up to about Jupiter's orbit, and generate power according to the inverse square law. How much do these cost and weigh? How much energy do you generate?

If you go further out into the solar system than that, you'll need a Radioisotope Thermoelectric Generator (RTG). There aren't many of those around, in fact, after Mars 2020 has taken its RTG, there's two left. What makes your mission deserving of an RTG? Is there enough power in the MMRTG to power your mission?

Propulsion

Does your mission need in-flight propulsion? Either for orbit insertion, landing, or maybe a long coast with Ion thrusters like Dawn? If the latter, you can get some pretty good Xenon-powered thrusters, like NEXT, which gives you 236mN of force from 7kW of input power (this rules out an RTG as your power source).

Don't need long-term burn capability? Maybe a COTS bipropellant engine like LEROS is your thing. Watch your weight though, bipropellants aren't efficient! Often more than half the mass of large spacecraft can be dedicated to just propulsion alone.

Instruments

Go crazy. What are you looking to research? Do you need a long range camera, a wide angle camera, something outside of the visible spectrum, a spectrometer, ground-penetrating radar? Do you have a mass-budget in mind?

Launch Vehicle

Every dollar you save on your launch vehicle, you get to add to your mission profile. Your best bet in terms of performance and cost is probably Falcon 9, which retails for $62-90 million, depending on the amount of assurance for success you need. Of course, if you can find a cheaper launch vehicle, feel free to pick it if it fits into your mission weight.

Objectives

What scientific questions do you want to answer? What are you interested in exploring the most?

So I bought this laptop mainly for web browsing, document editing, note taking and programming with perhaps light gaming although that's not something I've tried yet. So, really just for school work.

Specifications

Laptop Model : Acer Aspire 3 A315-42
Laptop screen : 1080p IPS (with matte finish?)
CPU : R5 3500U
RAM : 8GB DDR4 (6GB available because of iGPU)
Storage : 256GB SSD NVMe
Wireless : Qualcomm Atheros QCA9377
Wired : Realtek Semiconductor Co., Ltd. RTL8111/8168/8411 (According to lspci)
2x USB 2.0, 1x USB 3.0, 1x HDMI port, Audio jack, 1x RJ45 Ethernet port
Battery : 36.7Wh

Linux compatibility

Everything worked out of the box, gotta modify TLP to not kill the touchpad and webcam. The touchpad seems to have a mind of its own when it comes to being detected, It seems to be a kernel bug, unsure what I'll do about it concretely but rebooting a couple of times makes it work. Nothing to install thanks to AMD's open source mesa drivers. Might need a kernel higher than 5.3 because of general Ryzen 3000 issues but I've not tried, it was already higher than that.

Operating system tested

Basically never touched Windows, directly installed Fedora 31 Silverblue.

My Silverblue configuration is :

● ostree://fedora:fedora/31/x86_64/silverblue
                   Version: 31.20191213.0 (2019-12-13T00:42:11Z)
                BaseCommit: a5829371191d0a3e26d3cced9f075525d2ea73679bd255865fcf320bd2dca22a
              GPGSignature: Valid signature by 7D22D5867F2A4236474BF7B850CB390B3C3359C4
       RemovedBasePackages: gnome-terminal-nautilus gnome-terminal 3.34.2-1.fc31
           LayeredPackages: camorama cheese eog fedora-workstation-repositories gedit gnome-calendar gnome-font-viewer gnome-tweaks hw-probe libratbag-ratbagd lm_sensors nano neofetch
                            powertop radeontop sysprof systemd-swap tilix tlp

Kernel : 5.3.15
Gnome : 3.34.1

Body and Looks

The screen back has metal, I believe it feels quite sturdy. The rest is reasonable feeling plastic. The material used just loves to imprint grease / fingers which kinda sucks - the keys being the exception thankfully. There was also stickers on the inside which well, are somewhat standard but I thought they were pretty obnoxious so I removed them.

Typing experience

It's nothing amazing but it's good enough. I'm not really knowledgeable on keyboards so that's as much as I can say on it, really.

Performance

Everything feels quite snappy but I don't game at all on this machine so I'm not pushing it too much other than while I'm compiling or doing other things. The temperature does go up to 75°C and the fans get a little loud but it's not that bad. It's mostly the bottom getting hot so it's not something you notice too much while typing. It also cold boots quite fast, in about 10-20seconds I want to say but I've not benchmarked that. It's my first computer with an SSD so there's that.

Battery life

I get about 5hours with tlp installed doing web browsing, some programming occasionally, listening to music on the speakers and chatting. Personally I was kind of expecting more from this considering it's an APU but it seems to be what other people are getting on similar setups so It'll do.

Conclusion

Overall, I'm pretty happy with this laptop considering how I bought it for 575$ on sale. I made this review mostly because I wasn't finding much information about this laptop on Linux and well, I don't know, I guess I felt like it. If you have any questions, ask up!

Please note, I am no writer of any kind. For some inexplicable reason I just had the desire to give it a go today. I hope someone out there finds some enjoyment in it.

After David left I decided I'd better make good on my promise and find a new place to live. The woman from the council said there might be a temporary property available. That someone had recently died at the retirement village outside of Holyhead.

When I finished at school on Friday, I went to David's and gathered up what I thought was mine. As it turns out, almost everything was his. It wasn't long after we'd met that I moved in. It was gradual though. Bits and pieces brought over from mom's in bin bags tucked under the bus seats they save for people and their buggies. As the months rolled on there was less and less at mom's. I'd still visit on a Sunday for lunch but that was about it.

I had this porcelain clock on the mantle at David's, two corgis sat either side of the clock face. David hated it. He had a thing for minimalist art and would order fake prints online. He liked Robert Ryman a lot. He thought my clock threw everything off. He'd often tell me how important it was to appreciate art but what he liked left me cold. I wrapped the clock in newspaper and tossed it into my backpack. I took a last look at the living room. It was something new now.

When I got to the village it was raining. Cold droplets cascading down my jacket. I alternated hands, dropping each bin bag to the ground to rub the speckles from my glasses. In front of the bus stop there was a pathway that led to the complex, flanked on either side by imitation grass astro turf. Beyond that, two identical adjacent blocks. Rows stacked on top of one another like lego bricks.

The woman at the council told me it was flat 2b, "the last flat on the ground floor". I searched for the receipt I'd scribbled the details on to check if I'd remembered it right. I hauled my bags over my shoulder and ran underneath the closest awning. I stared up at the sign fixed to the brick. 1a. I can wait here until the rain dies down, I thought.

From across the yard a woman was sitting in a wheel chair, a mask attached to her face. An enormous tube jutting out from her mouth connected to a canister strapped to the side of her chair. She stared in my direction and didn't move. She's sitting next to 2b, she might be my neighbour, I thought. As the rain died down I walked over towards her. As I approached, I wasn't sure if she was going to take the mask off or not. What's wrong with her, I thought? "Hi, I'm Kate". I extended my hand and wondered if she could move her arms. She didn't reach back. "Mad weather isn't it?". She continued to stare. "I'm only staying for a month or so, I need my own place for a minute and it's all I could get you know? Not that I'm not grateful or anything". She continued to stare. "Ok, well, it was nice meeting you". I took out my key, opened the door and stood alone in the hallway.

David and I usually ate together on Saturday mornings. He'd wake up later than I did and wander about the place yawning. He'd often glorify his exhaustion to me. Some invisible accomplishment he'd been gaining interest on since leaving uni.

There wasn't a kettle in the new kitchen, but there was an electric hob. I poured water over the tea bag, into my cup and peered through the net curtains. The rain had settled and I could see the opposite house and the whole complex in the daylight now, some strange vortex, wholly enclosed. A village of it's own making.

I put on my old slippers, took my cup and stepped out onto the concrete walkway. The woman from yesterday wasn't around now. I thought about knocking but decided against it. Either she couldn't talk or has seen so many people come and go, she doesn't go in for platitudes anymore. Pacing, I caught a glimpse of her kitchen. Pink lino on the floor, almost nothing out on the worktops. It looked unoccupied. I moved back to my half of the walkway and perched on the step to finish my tea. I should get started sorting what I have before Sunday rolls around, I thought. As I got up, I heard my neighbour careen around the corner, up over the astro turf and onto the walkway. She stopped before her door, I nodded and smiled. This time she nodded back in my direction. She then raised her hand and jostled the toggle on the arm rest. Her chair moved closer towards me. She raised her eyes to meet mine and looked back at my hands. She did this a second time. "I'm sorry, I don't understand". She repeated this a third time. I mumbled something and she reached out and opened up my right hand. She surveyed my palm, in all of its detail, looked back up at me and nodded again. "Sorry, can I help with something?". She shook her head, reversed and rolled up the ramp back into her flat.

On Sunday morning I started sorting through the rest of the papers I threw into my bag at David's. Bank statements, a few receipts, junk mail. In amongst them I found a cinema ticket I'd kept from when we started dating. He asked me to go to see the first Terminator, "on the original reel", he said. I didn't much want to go and don't like violent films but thought it'd be a good excuse to get to know one another. We got pretty swept away with each other after that.

I sorted through the rest hoping I'd find something else, but there was nothing. I stacked the ordered papers on the ground and went outside for a break. There wasn't anybody out, like the day before. After some time my neighbour's door opened. I stood up and checked to see if she needed any help. I found her raising her eyes to her forehead, motioning backwards. "Do you need some help?", she shook her head and motioned backwards with her eyes for a second time. She reversed the chair and gestured for me to come in. I stepped inside. She manoeuvred her wheelchair into the kitchen and positioned herself next to the dining room table. There was a chair opposite to her, so I sat too. "Is everything ok?", I asked. She nodded. "I hope you don't mind me asking, are you able to speak?". She stared at me and shook her head. After a few seconds passed she pointed to a badge on her cardigan. On a yellow background, in all black caps it read, "JANE". "I'm Kate, nice to meet you Jane". This time she extended her arm and we shook hands. "How long have you been here Jane?". She nodded 5 times. "Ah ok, and how do you like it? Do you have family that visit?". She shook her head. "Do you mind me asking, what's wrong with you? Shit sorry, umm, not like that, I mean, umm, are you sick?". She paused for a moment and nodded. She then reached into the pocket of her cardigan and pulled out a deck of cards.

I don't know anything about Tarot, other than what you see on T.V but I'm not a superstitious like that. She laid the cards on the table in front of me, either nodding or shaking her head as she passed each of them one by one. The last card in the row showed a stone tower. She looked down, paused, raised her head, but this time, looked right past me. Dust cascaded through the shards of light piercing through the window. Jane starred into it for what felt like a whole minute. Watching the particles dance before her I asked, "Are you ok Jane?", she shook her head. "Is there something I can do?", she shook her ahead again. "I had better be going Jane, I meet my mom on a Sunday for lunch, please let me know if there's anything I can help with, OK? As I said yesterday, I won't be staying too long, but while I'm here, feel free to knock on". She nodded her head. I let myself out and left, the cards still strewn about the table.

I didn't see Jane much after that afternoon and things went on as normal. David called and we hashed things out over the phone but we'd petered out long before that. The council explained I couldn't stay on at the village for another month so I moved back with mom. After a few weeks passed, one evening after work, I opened up my laptop and searched online for "Jane Tarot". Tons of results came up but only one from Holyhead. A local newspaper article with a headline that read, "LOCAL LADY FORESAW DIAGNOSIS". "I knew what was going to happen to me, the fibrosis I mean. The cards speak and I accept, I give myself up to that". I closed my laptop and looked outside into mom's garden. I thought about the tower card and how people do all sorts of things to justify their own lives, to deal with their own grief and make sense of things.

Mom plants Floribunda's every year and they're starting to bloom now. My phone rings. I offer to cover a shift for a new temp at work. I put on my jacket, walk outside and think about Jane.

The Game Awards start tonight at 5:30 PM Pacific time (Dec 13, 02:30 UTC). There are a lot of announcements, sales, and events going on associated with it though, so I thought I'd try to collect a bunch of it here, and then we can discuss and post the actual winners in here later as well.

Sales

• Steam
• Humble Store
• Epic Store
• Nintendo eShop
• Xbox Store
• PlayStation Store
• Final Fantasy XIV

Announcements/Releases

• Sayonara Wild Hearts released on PC (20% off)

Events

• "The Game Festival" - 13 first-look demos of indie games available on Steam for 48 hours (announcement post)

Edit after the show: Article on CNET that lists all the winners of awards, as well as having embedded copies of most of the trailers/announcements/etc. that were shown

I've been trying to learn CSS. I went through the relevant sections of Colt Steele's Web Bootcamp. It is mostly focused on Bootstrap, which disappointed me a bit. So I went through MDN to learn Flexbox and CSS Grid, which seemed like a better alternative. The fundamentals are easy enough, but when I try to make a layout everything gets mixed in my head (even though I have the documentation open at all times). The impression I get is that modern CSS is not one thing, but a bunch of little things that resemble each other in a confusing way. It's hard to infer stuff and there are gotchas everywhere. I know this is not a programming language, but it is at least programming-related. Learning CSS feels more like learning English than a technology: you must accept that it's not a cohesive system, but rather the culmination of a long historical process full of random developments.

I tried getting back to Bootstrap, but then I have to override a bunch of stuff I don't even know is there.

I'm having a lot of trouble trying to put something very simple together. I just wanna leave that behind and go back to my beloved Python.

I did not want this to be a rant, but it is now a rant. So be it :P

This post has now a soundtrack.

The 2010s are coming to a close soon, and I'm curious to know what your gaming highlights are from the past decade.

To be clear: these are your personal standouts so don't feel beholden to popularity, critical opinion, review scores, or anything else like that. If a game was great for you and you deem it worthy of mentioning, then by all means go for it. I'm not interested in a list of the "most important" games of the decade but individual lists from individual people.

Please let us know why you loved the games that you're choosing, and what makes them worth mentioning as your personal picks for "Games of the Decade." Furthermore, choose as many or as few as you like. I'm also not even going to limit this to games released in the 2010s, as I know that many games released before then have gotten new life in this decade through patches, mods, randomizers, online communities, etc.

Basically, there are no rules for this list other than "tell me what games you loved these past ten years, and why."

I was wondering if anybody had any tips for muscling through a game. I've got a few games I want to play or go back to, such as Stardew Valley (I completed it before the 1.3 update, wanna play 1.4), and Factorio (I bought in a fit of passion, haven't gotten an hour in). There are others, but these are the two I find myself going "I'm going to play this!" and I just never get to, and it's not for time.

I like the concepts of these games, and I've got something like 135 hours on Stardew Valley, but seem to get bored after I've restarted it (I lost some key items and bugs caused me to never get them back, plus the mine completion bug fixed in 1.3). I started Slime Rancher after playing through it in early access, but can't seem to get back into it after it went gold a couple years ago.

I realize I'm sort of asking for a way to force myself to play games, but has anybody done this? I'm thinking for a given game I can set smaller goals to strive for, and work on doing that, but was wondering if anybody has any ideas.

Timasomo has officially ended. Congrats to all participants!

The Community Showcase is coming up on Saturday, December 7th.

Next Steps

0. If you want to be featured in the showcase, please PM me as soon as possible with a quick "I'm in!" just so I can get a headcount to plan around.

1. All participants have until December 6th to put the finishing touches on their work (or just plain finish up, as I already broke the rules so it's only fair that everyone else gets the same opportunity!)

2. For those who will be in the showcase, please PM me again by December 6th with the following information:

• The title of your work
• A link to whatever it is you would like to display for the showcase¹
• A short (a few sentences) artist statement introducing your work

For the showcase, I will randomly split up participants' work between three threads, posting one thread each day on the 7th, 8th, and 9th. I will post the title, link, and artist statement in the topic itself. Featured creators are strongly encouraged to post a top-level comment in their showcase thread in which you go more in-depth about your work, talk about your creative process and final product, and solicit feedback if desired.

Discussion: The END

• How does it feel to be "done"?
• Does what you ended up with match your intentions at the beginning, or did you have to course correct?
• What's next for you, creatively speaking?
• What did you learn along the way?

1: This can be a link to a website, pictures, blog post, download -- whatever it is that best captures your creative work. It does not need to be the complete work itself, so if you'd rather share only portions or an excerpt, that's fine.

If your work is entirely text, I can include it right in the topic itself on Tildes. Anything else will have to be linked to, since Tildes can't host images or downloads. If in doubt about how best to present your work, let me know in the PM and we can figure it out!

So today I decided to ditch instant messaging / texting / whatever in favor of longform emails, phone calls (which I'm terrible at), and proper physical letters.

I want to focus on the physical letters part because that's a skill I'd like to train, but I only have a couple people who it looks like will go through with that. Most will either let me float away (understandably!) or will contact me in the more convenient ways I'm allowing myself to engage in. So after playing Kind Words, I'm thinking that writing to strangers could be a fun exercise! This could be a couple people meeting here and writing letters, or it could be a whole thing, depending on interest. Casual letters are beautiful things, let's try to make some :)

If you want to participate, please post at least the following:

Age group:
Topics of interest:
Country / Region (please don't post your address, that can be done through PMs):

Original page is unencrypted so I'm posting the article here.

Timasomo FAQ

Thread #5: Reflection for Week Four of Four

Timeline for the Close of Timasomo:

• Timasomo officially ends at the beginning of Monday Sunday (lol), December 1st, wherever you are.
• I will post a closing thread at that time with next steps for all participants.
• You have until Thursday, December 5th to put the finishing touches on your creative works to ready them for the showcase.
• The showcase will begin Friday, December 6th.

Give a Progress Update

This is the final stretch! What do things look like for you as we close in on the finish?

Remaining Work

What still needs to be done? Are you going to be able to easily finish in time, or will you have to cram things in at the last minute?

Wrap-Up and Polishing

How do you plan to spend the few days of wrap-up time? What edits do you need to make or polish do you need to add, if any?

Discussion Topic of the Week: Ideas for Other Events

Timasomo was my first experiment in doing a Tildes-based "event." I plan to post a thread at the end of it specifically diving into whether we want to do another Timasomo down the road, and, if so, what changes could be made to the processes and setup, but for now I'm curious as to what other ideas are out there: what other Tildes-based events would be people be interested in?

They don't have to follow the same format as this, and they don't have to be entire months. The format and function are totally open. Would you want to do a Tildes game jam? A poetry contest? A donation drive? Pen pals?

Share your ideas here for what community-based "events" you would like to see here on Tildes.

Let's go FINISH SOMETHING.

EDIT: Latest update

This is something so rudimentary that I'm a little embarrassed to ask, but I've also tried looking around online to no avail. One of the hard parts about being a Linux newbie is that the amount of support material out there seems to differ based on distro, DE, and also time, so posts from even a year or two ago can be outdated or inapplicable.

Here's my situation: I'm a newbie Linux user running Pop!_OS 19.10 with the GNOME desktop environment. Occasionally, games I'm playing will hard crash and lock up my system completely, leaving a still image of the game frozen on the screen indefinitely. The system stays there, completely unresponsive to seemingly any inputs. It doesn't happen often, but when it does it's almost always when I'm running a Windows game through Steam's Proton layer. I suspect it also might have something to do with graphics drivers, as I'll at times notice an uptick in frequency after certain updates, though that might just be me finding a suspicious pattern where none exists.

Anyway, what I don't know how to do is gracefully exit or recover from these crashes. No keyboard shortcut seems to work, and I end up having to hold the power button on my computer until it abruptly shuts off. This seems to be the "worse case scenario" for handling it, so if there is a better way I should go about this, I'd love to know about it.

EDIT: I really want to thank everyone for their help so far. My initial question has been answered, and for posterity's sake I'd like to post the solution here, to anyone who is searching around for this same issue and ends up in this thread:

• Use CTRL+ALT+F3/F4/F5/F6 keys to access a terminal, where you can try to kill any offending processes and reboot if needed.
• If that fails, use ALT+SYSRQ+R-E-I-S-U-B.

With that out of the way, I've added more information about the crashes specifically to the thread, primarily here, and some people are helping me out with diagnosing the issue. This thread is now less about the proper way to deal with the crash than it is about trying to identify the cause of the crash and prevent it in the first place.

Howdy, I think this might appeal to some of you, sorry if it comes off a bit spammy. I've started a Discord server mostly for discussion of books (Other things too...our rule is if it's text-based or if it's printed on a page, it's allowed. We welcome interactive fiction, comics, poetry, theory, visual novels, etc.) that is aiming to keep discussion at least somewhat serious and a respectful atmosphere similar to what Tildes aims for. Eventually we'll do wider recruitment (posters in universities, probably), but for now we're trying to get a decent server culture going with people we can trust to not shit all over everything. If this sounds appealing, we'd love to have you :)

Paste with rules, should look familiar.

Permanent link for those who would like to join: https://discord.gg/yr4pA96

I feel like with our weekly recurring topics, comments are getting posted all over the place. For example, if you want to read about what people think of a particular game, it's going to be spread out among a lot of different topics.

It seems like it might be nicer if in the games group, there were one topic for each game? Similarly for movies or books, or creative projects. This is how we did things on the Well, though there was also a "movies that didn't get their own topic" topic. But it seems like that was a limitation of a system that didn't deal well with having lots of topics in a group.

To support this well, we'd need to make coming back to long-running topics more pleasant to read somehow. With a linear conversation the software can start you off wherever you left off. I'm not sure what's best for threaded conversation?

In short, maybe there should be a way to do things more like forum software and less like Hacker News or Reddit? Or should we just try it out without changing the software?

From the transcript:

By 1988, for the first time, more fast-food orders were taken at a drive-through window than at the restaurant. And this was a problem for the wimpy french fry because by the time you got home from the drive-through, the fries were no good.

[...]

So back then - almost 20, 25 years ago - Lamb Weston invented a coating called Stealth, which was their secret coating that you couldn't see and you couldn't tell was on the french fry, but it lasted - it was crispier longer, up to 12 to 15 minutes.

[...]

But this potato company has a new problem now - delivery. And a 12- to 15-minute lasting Stealth french fry isn't going to cut it because delivery takes longer than a drive-through. The average delivery wait time in a busy city is 20 to 30 minutes because drivers pick up multiple orders and make multiple stops.

[...]

They're starting to pitch these fries to fast food chains now. So they're not in stores yet, but Deb says they could be in a couple months. You won't know it's a crispy on delivery fry just like you don't know when you're eating a stealth fry. You'll just know you had a better french fry delivery experience.

More

This is another British comedy that I think people will enjoy. The title is weird: Peter Kay is the stand up comedian, but he's playing a character in this sitcom. IMDB calls it "Car Share", but BBC calls it "Peter Kay's Car Share". It's British, so weirdly small number of episodes: only 12 (and this includes all the specials).

The setup sounds like it's going to be unbearably claustrophobic, a series long bottle episode. A supermarket sets up a car sharing scheme, and we watch John and Kayleigh share a car as they drive to work everyday. But this creates intimacy and we get to learn about the characters. It's heartfelt and lovely. It's well acted, and I think it's very funny.

https://www.imdb.com/title/tt4635922/

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peter_Kay%27s_Car_Share

https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p02n62v4

I've seen some debate on here about 'cancel culture', and there is a pretty good example of it happening on Twitter more-or-less now (or I guess it's probably old news in internet-time).

Here is Amanda Palmer's Original thread:
https://twitter.com/amandapalmer/status/1197525096937771010

Here is the perspective of the "the guardian's music editor" (not actually the music editor, but she is the woman Amanda Palmer's tweets allude too as the music editor):
https://twitter.com/laurasnapes/status/1197572693081698310

(the actual music editor also weighed in https://twitter.com/ben_bt/status/1197568113535070208)

It's pretty clear that there is an internet pile-on going down. Here is just a few of many examples:
https://twitter.com/JEHANCOURF/status/1197645652605448193
https://twitter.com/BrandyLJensen/status/1197660203937914880

Palmer's husband Neil Gaiman isn't escaping scrutiny either:
https://twitter.com/harrrithon/status/1197594514564820992
https://twitter.com/ThosMcStakin/status/1197662487593635840

Some unrelated anti-Palmer stories cropping up:
https://twitter.com/bombastic_luv/status/1197765401691742208
https://twitter.com/TamikaVST/status/1197672824040828928
https://twitter.com/TamikaVST/status/1197674952591327237

So my question is: is this the cancel culture everyone is worried about? Is twitter going 'too far'? Or is Amanda Palmer getting what she deserved?

I'm honestly on the fence. Give me your thoughts.

Timasomo FAQ

Thread #3: Reflection for Week Three of Four

Only one week left! This is your chance to wrap things up or, if you're like me, make up for lost time!

Give a Progress Update

How's it been going? Tell us where you're currently at!

Breakdowns and Breakthroughs?

With any creative process, there'll always be unexpected flashes of brilliance or unexpected fizzles for what seemed like good ideas. Have you encountered anything that didn't go like you wanted it to, or something that up and surprised you out of nowhere?

What's Coming Up This Week?

What is this final week going to look like for you?

Discussion Topic of the Week: Meta Housekeeping

This week's discussion focus is more functional than the others, as there are two main areas I want to get everyone's thoughts on:

Finish Timeline

Officially, creative work for Timasomo should end at the end of the day on November 30th, but I want to give some time for people to put finishing touches on their work and get it ready to share. How much time do we need? Should I just keep the weekly rhythm going and make the even officially end on that next Friday, the 6th? I'm open to any and all ideas here, some of which might be influenced by what we decide on the item below:

Showcase Logistics

I'd also like to hear people's thoughts on how we can best show off our work. I have a few ideas:

• One topic, where each participant posts a top-level comment with their work.
• One topic, where I post participant-submitted blurbs for each work in the topic itself.
• Individual topics for each work (posted either by the participant or me)

I like the idea of having all the works "under one roof" in a single topic, but I also like the idea of having each work being its own topic. I even think it could be neat to coordinate a "showcase schedule" where, say, only one work gets posted per day until we go through everyone's contributions. This would space out discussions rather than flooding ~creative with everything all at once, but I don't want people at the end of the line to feel cheated from their moment in the spotlight if people get sick of seeing a new Timasomo post each and every day.

Nothing's decided yet, but let me know your thoughts!

As before: best of luck to ALL participants! Let's go MAKE SOMETHING.

Hey, friends. I'd like to take a few minutes of your time to talk and converse. Please, feel free to join in. I'm not trying to make any points or whatnot, but I need to get this out of my head.

It doesn't take a rocket surgeon to see that there is a lot going on these days. I know that there's always a lot going on, but it just seems to be on my mind a lot more than it used to. I'm unsure if it's because things out there actually are heating up, if the current news cycle is finally paying some attention, if I'm just more interested/aware as I get older, or if it's some combination of these. Regardless, it just seems like there's so much to think about.

To begin, there's the domestic stuff. We have an inevitable recession coming our way sooner than later (recessions being a feature of our application of Capitalism, after all), and, of course, the mess in the other Washington. I'm doing my best to keep up with the impeachment, while not letting it really "get to me". As I get older, I find that I care more and more about the wellbeing of my country, and the utter shame that is this current administration makes me genuinely concerned for the health of our nation and the people in it. I cannot help but think to myself that I am watching the arguably most significant political crisis since Watergate unfolding before me - live, in real-time. It's wild, as you know that you live through history in the making, but you never really think that you're going to live through something of this caliber.

While I'm hopeful that our own brush with populism will turn out OK (our 3 branch government is remarkably robust), I still worry about us and the other countries that are dealing with it now too. We have Bolsonaro and Duerte, Brexit and Trump. We have the mess in Bolivia, and frankly I still don't exactly have my head wrapped fully around what the hell is actually going on there. We have the trickery of Putin and his loyal cronies. Even populism aside, we have the unrest and violence in Lebanon, Syria, Chile and Iran. And of course, let's not forget our friends in Hong Kong.

I look at the HK situation and feel extra helpless. I was 7 when Tiananmen Square happened, and I kinda remember it. I certainly remember tank man on the news, but that was about it. I see what's going on in Hong Kong and I cannot get past the feeling that they're literally fighting a losing battle for their lives. I can't imagine how they'll survive this without getting steamrolled, unless a foreign power steps in. You know that'll alter the course of the 21st century. I mean, hell. Even if things turn out rosy, this is still probably one of the most significant events of this century. And here I am, watching it in real-time again.

This isn't even touching on the literal concentration camps that China is running for the Uighur Muslims. Shit, even my own country is running camps for children right now. How TF does this even happen? By the time half of us even find out, these camps have already been up and running for a good while. What can you even do?

Then there is a the ever-looming specter that haunts us and feels inescapable: global warming. I don't think I need to elaborate on this one, just a quick peek at the fires and floods, droughts and melting glaciers says it all. Again, we're along for this ride in an enormous mechanism that individually we are wholly powerless against. I sincerely hope that we do manage to engineer our way out of the worst of climate change, but I am honestly not hopeful that we will limit our emissions enough to keep us under the 4° warming that we're seemingly on the trajectory for. I sure won't be alive in 2100, but my youngest nibblings just might - or at least their kids will be. What kind of world are we leaving for them?

How will these things affect and feed off each other? Will we look at the period between WWII and the early 21st century as one of unusual peace and prosperity?

This stuff keeps me up at night, and sometimes it feels like doing your best is just a vain exercise in futility. I know it's not, in that everyone doing their best would make huge changes, and that no matter what happens, I can go to my grave in good conscience knowing that I did what I could. Still, some days it all feels like too much, you know?

Anyway, thank you for listening to me, and letting me talk. There's a few people in my life that share the same concerns, but it's hard to find anyone to talk to about the breadth of all this shit that there is to worry about.

So, anonymous strangers on the internet, how are you feeling about the world situation these days?

I'm doing really well in all my classes. On assignments that were given at the beginning of the quarter with due dates as part of finals, I have diligently worked on them every week. I even let go of being a perfectionist by time constraining tasks and being okay with whatever I had produced. And yet I am now stuck. Immobile.

I didn't go to school today. I think it's because I have a presentation tomorrow. I've had the presentation completed more or less for a couple of weeks. I've timed it, and can say all the words, and get all the things out to an empty living room. But as soon as someone else is in the room, I stumble and forget everything, even with my flashcards in front of me. I can't even read the text as in my eyes can not focus.

So today I was just going to practice more. But I didn't. I skipped classes, got shitfaced, passed out at some point, and woke up with no interest in anything.

I'm pretty sure I will go to school tomorrow, but there's a part of me that thinks it's just to much to ask of me to be in front of people and I don't want to look dumb, I don't want to ummm and forget and be boring. And then I missed classes and I will be a liar about why, and I hate liars. And I don't want to go, and I didn't practice today when I should have and I got drunk instead, and I don't have much patience for drunks. I AM NOT LIKING MYSELF AT THE MOMENT, and what happens if I don't go tomorrow? I could fade away from everywhere and no one would ever know, but me. And that bites because I would never let me live it down.

If you have any words of wisdom, I would love to hear from you, even if I don't respond because I'll be embarrassed that I hit send on this.

Edit: Wisdom isn't necessarily what I am looking for (though if you have it, I want it). I also want to know if you ever felt similar and what did you do.

Streaming live here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tVdpOCxRwj4

Announcements/videos:

• Path of Exile 2 - a new seven-act storyline that will be available alongside the original Path of Exile 1 campaign (not a separate game). A 14-minute gameplay preview is available. Not planned to even go into beta until "at least very late 2020".
• Conquerors of the Atlas - 3.9.0 expansion
• Metamorph League
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