This thread is posted weekly - please try to post relevant content in here, such as news, updates, opinion articles, etc. Especially significant updates may warrant a separate topic, but most should be posted here.

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

This thread is posted daily - please try to post relevant content in here, such as news, updates, opinion articles, etc. Especially significant updates may warrant a separate topic, but most should be posted here.

This thread is posted weekly, and is intended as a place for more-casual discussion of the coronavirus and questions/updates that may not warrant their own dedicated topics. Tell us about what the situation is like where you live!

This thread is posted daily - please try to post relevant content in here, such as news, updates, opinion articles, etc. Especially significant updates may warrant a separate topic, but most should be posted here.

This thread is posted daily - please try to post relevant content in here, such as news, updates, opinion articles, etc. Especially significant updates may warrant a separate topic, but most should be posted here.

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

This thread is posted daily - please try to post relevant content in here, such as news, updates, opinion articles, etc. Especially significant updates may warrant a separate topic, but most should be posted here.

This thread is posted daily - please try to post relevant content in here, such as news, updates, opinion articles, etc. Especially significant updates may warrant a separate topic, but most should be posted here.

https://twitter.com/TychoBolt/status/1182541355337289728?s=20

Found this on twitter, user TychoBolt compiled this list. There's a lot of information on many topics, as well as a ton of links to tools that aid in level design, narrative and more.

He also compiled this 122-paged guide on level design; full of tips and tricks for designing levels. I've looked through it for a bit and found quite a lot of interesting information, so I'd reckon this is a valuable asset to anyone developing/designing games.
https://twitter.com/TychoBolt/status/1272578494543904771?s=20

PDF available here: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1fAlf2MwEFTwePwzbP3try1H0aYa9kpVBHPBkyIq-caY/preview?pru=AAABcufoPRw*FOD948Ah7NzrIiGTixO_PQ

This thread is posted daily - please try to post relevant content in here, such as news, updates, opinion articles, etc. Especially significant updates may warrant a separate topic, but most should be posted here.

This thread is posted daily - please try to post relevant content in here, such as news, updates, opinion articles, etc. Especially significant updates may warrant a separate topic, but most should be posted here.

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

This thread is posted weekly, and is intended as a place for more-casual discussion of the coronavirus and questions/updates that may not warrant their own dedicated topics. Tell us about what the situation is like where you live!

This thread is posted daily - please try to post relevant content in here, such as news, updates, opinion articles, etc. Especially significant updates may warrant a separate topic, but most should be posted here.

This question isn't about people so much as it is about anything else. It's hard to explain outright, so I'll use an example:

A few months ago I read Emily St. John Mandel's Station Eleven. I just finished with Ling Ma's Severance. The two books are completely unrelated but feel very, very close to one another. There are a lot of topical similarities: both portray a global pandemic, a lead female character, and narrative shifts between pre- and post-societal collapse, etc. However, more than that, both feel very tonally similar. I couldn't read Severance without constantly thinking of and comparing it to Station Eleven, and I think I liked both books better together than I did either of them on their own. Even though they're clearly different and written by different people, they very much feel like they come from the same family -- like they're unrelated siblings.

I'm curious as to what other examples people can come up with, in whatever category you consider: media, historical events, languages, etc. Anything goes as long as they have a familial resemblance.

This thread is posted daily - please try to post relevant content in here, such as news, updates, opinion articles, etc. Especially significant updates may warrant a separate topic, but most should be posted here.

This thread is posted daily - please try to post relevant content in here, such as news, updates, opinion articles, etc. Especially significant updates may warrant a separate topic, but most should be posted here.

Back in the day I was a hardcore Google Reader (RIP) user, and following that I continued to use https://feedly.com/ for many years, but eventually I found myself falling behind on all my feeds and stopped checking it.

Recently, I signed for Inoreader and I've started reading more blogs again. It also has the nice feature of letting you subscribe to email newsletters too, which is quite nice since I find them annoying to deal with in my email inbox but convenient in the feed reader.

I'm wondering what blogs and newsletters folks on Tildes subscribe to.

Here are a few of my favorites:

Blogs:

• bellingcat: Independent investigative journalism often based on online "open source intelligence." e.g. The Boogaloo Movement is Not What You Think
• BLDGBLOG: Geoff Manaugh's blog about everything related to the space we inhabit, both built and natural. e.g. Underground Cathedrals of Radiation and Zones of Irreversible Strain
• Flowing Data: Nathan Yau's blog about data visualization. e.g. Racial Divide
• Idle Words: The blog of Maciej Cegłowski, creator of the Pinboard bookmarking service. Covers tech and lots of unrelated topics. e.g. Superintelligence: The Idea that Eats Smart People

Newsletters:

• BIG by Matt Stoller: A newsletter about economics and in particular the economics of monopolies and disruptive startups. e.g. The Slow Death of Hollywood
• Data is Plural: A weekly newsletter of fun/weird datasets.
• Normcore Tech: Vicki Boykis' newsletter about tech and tech-related things. e.g. The Reign of Big Recsys
• Uses This: Brief interviews with all sorts of creators about what tools they use to do what they do.

This is just a slice. I can share my entire list if people are interested. But I'm curious about what feeds others enjoy, on anything from film and furniture to "movie-set" urbanism. What are you reading?

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

This thread is posted daily - please try to post relevant content in here, such as news, updates, opinion articles, etc. Especially significant updates may warrant a separate topic, but most should be posted here.

The Bundle

itch.io's Bundle for Racial Justice and Equality is a collection of indie media content offered up as a fundraiser for the NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund and Community Bail Fund. The minimum purchase is $5 which gains you access to 1637 items from 1304 different creators. The bundle has raised over $5 million dollars so far and is a genuinely incredible show of support and solidarity from the gaming community for the Black Lives Matter movement.

Here is the previous Tildes topic about it, here is a subreddit for it, and here is a community spreadsheet cataloging its contents.

The Content

The bundle is primarily video games, but it also has tabletop games, game assets, books, music, and tools. It is an intimidatingly large amount of content, and much attention has been called to some of the collection's highlights and standout titles: 1 2 3 4 (if you find other lists, let me know and I'll link them here).

I'm thinking it would be neat for us on Tildes to explore and highlight some of its less well-known content. The people who have made their creations available in this bundle have done so generously and in support of a great cause, so this is a way that we can show some appreciation for them by bringing some attention to their work. It is also possible to re-purchase games that you already own on itch.io and add tips to that purchase, so you can also monetarily support any devs you choose should you feel inclined to do so.

The Event

Using whatever selection methods or criteria you like, dive into an item/multiple items from the bundle and then report back here about it. There is a handy website that lets you filter the whole set of items, and it also has a very useful "pick a game" button that selects a game at random from the batch.

However you choose something, let us know what you've chosen, what it was, what your experience was like with it, and whether or not you recommend it. Format your entries however you like but please Bold the Titles of Items so people can scan the thread more easily!

Feel free to submit multiple entries to the topic as you explore the bundle. I'm thinking that with a few of us doing this over a couple of days, we can cover a lot of ground and surface some interesting and easily overlooked content.

Our Selections

I'll keep a table of the highly recommended things we surface here. To select something to be included here, mention in your writeup that it qualifies for "Tildes' Choice" status, and I'll add it to the list!

This topic is part of a series. It is meant to be a place for users to discuss creative projects they have been working on.

Projects can be personal, professional, physical, digital, or even just ideas.

If you have any creative projects that you have been working on or want to eventually work on, this is a place for discussing those.

A list of all previous topics in this series can be found here.

This thread is posted daily - please try to post relevant content in here, such as news, updates, opinion articles, etc. Especially significant updates may warrant a separate topic, but most should be posted here.

This thread is posted daily - please try to post relevant content in here, such as news, updates, opinion articles, etc. Especially significant updates may warrant a separate topic, but most should be posted here.

This thread is posted daily - please try to post relevant content in here, such as news, updates, opinion articles, etc. Especially significant updates may warrant a separate topic, but most should be posted here.

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

This thread is posted weekly, and is intended as a place for more-casual discussion of the coronavirus and questions/updates that may not warrant their own dedicated topics. Tell us about what the situation is like where you live!

This thread is posted daily - please try to post relevant content in here, such as news, updates, opinion articles, etc. Especially significant updates may warrant a separate topic, but most should be posted here.

This thread is posted daily - please try to post relevant content in here, such as news, updates, opinion articles, etc. Especially significant updates may warrant a separate topic, but most should be posted here.

This thread is posted daily - please try to post relevant content in here, such as news, updates, opinion articles, etc. Especially significant updates may warrant a separate topic, but most should be posted here.

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

This thread is posted daily - please try to post relevant content in here, such as news, updates, opinion articles, etc. Especially significant updates may warrant a separate topic, but most should be posted here.

This thread is posted daily - please try to post relevant content in here, such as news, updates, opinion articles, etc. Especially significant updates may warrant a separate topic, but most should be posted here.

This thread is posted daily - please try to post relevant content in here, such as news, updates, opinion articles, etc. Especially significant updates may warrant a separate topic, but most should be posted here.

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

This thread is posted weekly, and is intended as a place for more-casual discussion of the coronavirus and questions/updates that may not warrant their own dedicated topics. Tell us about what the situation is like where you live!

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

I’m sorry if this isn’t the correct avenue or if I have missed a previous post about this but I was wondering how new topics could be requested. I think a DIY topic would be great, as a woodworker I think something more specific to woodworking would be great but with the current size of the user base a more broad topic might be better suited.

This topic is part of a series. It is meant to be a place for users to discuss creative projects they have been working on.

Projects can be personal, professional, physical, digital, or even just ideas.

If you have any creative projects that you have been working on or want to eventually work on, this is a place for discussing those.

A list of all previous topics in this series can be found here.

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

This thread is posted weekly, and is intended as a place for more-casual discussion of the coronavirus and questions/updates that may not warrant their own dedicated topics. Tell us about what the situation is like where you live!

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

Disclaimer I was going to post this on ~tildes but thought we could have a more casual conversation about it here.

So how can tildes stop corruption from happening on its platform, it’s no secret that other similar websites have become corrupted the best example of this is Reddit they do what advertisers want them to do or who ever is giving them money, only a couple of days ago I saw this video about a guy who was running a cult on there recruiting vulnerable people and they did nothing because he was buying thousands of awards a day.

Tildes doesn’t have advertising and is a non profit with no investors so those are 2 big places it can’t get corrupted from. One place I could see problems is donations I would be interested in if all donations are Anonymous I should probably have looked into them before writing this but maybe someone else knows the answer, if they aren’t what is stopping big donators getting special treatment?

My main reason for this topic is the video mentioned above but I also thought it would make an interesting discussion on here.

Here's a fresh new thread for book recommendations! The last thread from a year ago got bumped and saw some new top-level activity but few votes or responses on the new requests. I think it's probably not visible in a lot of people's feeds due to its age, and I was planning on rebooting it anyway, so here's a fresh topic we can use for new recommendations that will be visible to all.

Top level comments should fill in the blank with some sort of descriptor identifying a kind of book you would like suggestions for.

Replies can then recommend books to that individual.

Examples of what top level posts might be are below. Get as generic, specific, abstract, or out there as you want!

• Recommend me a book that will make me cry.
• Recommend me a book with a great twist.
• Recommend me a book that deals with loss.
• Recommend me a book about the fall of the Roman Empire.
• Recommend me a book with a main character in her 80s.
• Recommend me a book to help me learn PHP.

Thread reading tip: use the "collapse replies" button to see only top-level requests.

This is a follow up to the thread from a few days ago, and specifically my comment in that thread regarding the use of a "Escalation" label.

As many users identified in that topic, political discussion on Tildes has the potential to become very heated, very quickly, and often the standards of discussion on these topics is below what we expect elsewhere on Tildes. In that thread, many suggestions were offered in order to remedy the situation, including banning overt political content entirely, more liberal moderation by @Deimos, more liberal usage by the community of labels, addition of new labels, and more. All of these solutions have their advantages and disadvantages, but I want to talk about the one I believe would be the most effective and least disruptive to the site as is: addition of new labels.

Right now, there are two main tags that might be used on a comment that is seen as falling short of Tildes's standards: noise and malice. Users seem to have some variation in how they interpret how each tag should be used, but it seems like there is at least some agreement on the 'noise' tag being used for comments that are clearly low effort. Users seem to have more hesitation to use the 'Malice' tag, however. While it is sometimes clear when a comment is hostile or malicious, this is not always the case. Argumentative is not always hostile, and sometimes topics are naturally contentious. One takeaway from that thread (for me) is that labeling something as malice confers a judgement on intent, and users are not always comfortable doing this as it can be difficult to tell if someone truly meant to be malicious. But in political threads, the intent matters less than the effect a comment has in a discussion. Someone can not be acting maliciously, but still be clearly making the situation worse. This is the point of an 'Escalation' label.

An "Escalation" label should be applied to comments that have made the situation worse.

Furthermore, an "Escalation" label would not only affect the sorting of a comment or thread, but has the potential to halt the discussion if there is too much escalation in a short amount of time. Here is what I envision:

Define the heat of a comment (as in, "ohhh this conversation is getting heated") as follows:

H = k*n ∑ N_i / d_i

where k is a tuning constant, n is the number of escalation tags given to the comment in question, and the sum ranges over the comment's direct ancestors and descendants in the thread with N_i being the number of "Escalation" labels given to the other comment and d_i is the distance from the current comment to that other comment. Here is an example thread:

.
├── A
├── C0
│   └── C1 (N=1)
│      └── C2 (N=0)
│          └── C3 (N=2)
│               └── C4 (N=1)
└── B0
    └── B1

The heat of comment C3 would then be

H = k*2 (1/2 + 1) = 3k

Finally, define the heat H(T) of a thread T to be the sum of the heats of its comments. My proposal is that if the heat of a given thread surpasses some threshold value H_c, replies are locked in that thread only. This essentially shuts down extremely heated conversations before they get out of control and cause an entire topic to be locked.

The above definition can obviously be modified, but it has a few good properties that I think should be retained.

1. It takes into account the relative positions of comments. A thread that is 20 comments long that has a comment with 1 "Escalation" at the beginning, midpoint, and end is probably a better and more controlled situation than a thread with 3 "Escalation" labels in a row.
2. One extremely heated comment (n is large) that generates many okay or slightly heated replies (n~1) is oftentimes just as bad as many comments that each escalate a bit (a long chain of comments, each with n~1).
3. It considers a the whole thread as opposed to on a comment by comment basis. If there is only one person in a thread posting heated comments, even if the replies are measured and reasonable, there is a good chance that thread is not producing a worthwhile discussion. If that one problem user stays problematic too long, eventually the heat of the thread will surpass the threshold and the chain will be locked.

I am sure there are disadvantages that I am not thinking of right now, but I truly think a system like this could be beneficial if implemented and used by Tildes. Furthermore, if two people are genuinely interested in the discussion and want it to continue, it is in their interest to avoid posting comments that get generate a high heat score so that the thread doesn't become locked. If they are not interested and keep escalating anyway, that conversation probably shouldn't continue.

I am interested in your thoughts on this idea. However, I don't intend for this topic to become a repeat of many of the suggestions and comments in the thread linked at the beginning - I don't mean to reignite that discussion.