Every year, I donate a modest sum to combat climate change. Since my employer matches my donations up to a certain amount, I try to maximize their contribution.

This year, most of my donations have gone to the following two orgs:

• Information Technology and Innovation Foundation - a highly regarded US think tank focusing on clean energy research and advising policymakers
• Eden Reforestation Projects - apparently $7 donated here offsets a year worth of personal carbon emissions

Are there any projects/causes/orgs you are very keen on donating to? Are there any that we should look out for?

Edit: Please feel free to list technical projects, Kickstarters, Patreons, etc.

Apple Music: https://music.apple.com/us/album/post-human-survival-horror/1535067172
Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/album/0e1WaSNDZnoPixaxDNdWo4
YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V3Pp4IGPebg&list=PLxA687tYuMWjFSs5uzLYbGrdHRm0srHQ0

Metalcore Bring Me the Horizon is back, baby. Awoouu (wolf Howl)

Back in 2013, Bring Me the Horizon was arguably the biggest band in metalcore. Their release that year, Sempiternal, propelled them to international stardom and mainstream success. After this, guitarist Jona Weinhofen left the band and instead of adding another guitarist, the group added a keyboardist instead. The change up in sound was very noticeable, while the band found incredible commercial success and curried the favor of some pop critics, many rock and roll fans felt a little left out in the cold by a typical change in sound by a heavy band following commercial success.

After a pair of albums and an EP in their more electronic, pop centered sound, Bring Me the Horizon have returned to that signature Sempiternal sound with POST HUMAN: SURVIVAL HORROR. The crushing guitars come roaring back on this release and Oli Sykes, one of the best unclean vocalists in the game, finally returns to his growls and guttural pit calls. While there's still a lot of electronica in here, this seems to augment the sound, like in Sempiternal, rather than guide it. The only problem with this release is that it's too short. But luckily, SURVIVAL HORROR is just the first of a planned four EP set, with the other three coming over the course of 2021.

The EP also features a lot of great, well, features. Standouts include BABYMETAL on Kingslayer bringing a late era Poppy vibe to the disk and Amy Lee's haunting appearance on the album closer.

For fans of Bad Omens, Architects and Crossfaith.

Stop me if you've heard this one before:

• You get an idea for something you'd like to learn more about. (Maybe you have a question, maybe you want to explore a new hobby, or maybe you want to make a more informed decision.)
• You type something into a search engine.
• You click a result, only to realize that what you're reading is poorly written. It seems rushed, surface-level, and ill-informed. "This doesn't answer my question at all!" you think to yourself.
• You go back, and try another one, and another one, only to give up and put the idea back in your head.

I don't think these webpages are written to be useful in the first place. They seem to be written to attract attention to the website for other reasons (ad revenue, affiliate links, to draw attention to a product or service). Regardless of why it's happening, though, I want to find a better way to search.

The sort of content I'm looking for is written by someone who really cares about the topic. I want to learn from dorks and nerds and passionate people. Once I stumbled across this blog about extra virgin olive oil. The website isn't pretty, and it goes way more in depth than I'll ever need, but I trust the author, and there are some really interesting nuggets of insight on these pages. (e.g. "Another myth debunked: Heating EVOO makes it ‘toxic’")

Do you have any tips or tricks to more reliably find these sorts of sources (whether online or in-person)?

What have you been listening to this week? You don't need to do a 6000 word review if you don't want to, but please write something! If you've just picked up some music, please update on that as well, we'd love to see your hauls :)

Feel free to give recs or discuss anything about each others' listening habits.

You can make a chart if you use last.fm:

http://www.tapmusic.net/lastfm/

Remember that linking directly to your image will update with your future listening, make sure to reupload to somewhere like imgur if you'd like it to remain what you have at the time of posting.

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!

It's Covid days and I am sure all of us who play Pen and Paper RPG's (watup, nerds) have found the experience incredibly lacking.
The way we communicate via Discord etc, has to be incredibly different from IRL conversations. Its frustrating when the core element of RPG's is the conversations, the chat, the small talk, the adlib and the silly jokes.
The way we talk IRL is so different because we can discern the different sources, we can listen more or less to different people, we can interrupt and add things. Conversations via Discord is more like listening to a speech, and then replying. IRL gaming and the conversations that crop up are more like actual human chatting - taking a joke, building on it, having it taken from you etc etc. (the way me and my friend talk is so natural, we know each other well enough to be able to discern the relevant from the irrelevant - the bits we can tag on to, and the bits we need to leave alone)

What I was thinking was to see HOW we talk in gaming, and how that could be mimicked SOMEWHAT in Discord etc.

My idea was to create a set of icons/low quality videos arranged around a table placement, that you can then focus on. Like a mouse controlled object that indicates what part of the table you focus on and how much. Just like a human would by turning her head this way or that to focus on one person talking in a group, or leaning in towards that source to indicate how much she listens to that unique source. By having a physical placement you can focus on an edge of "the table" and then lean in towards one source - and lean out to listen to all.

All other listeners can see your focus, the way you turn towards a source and be able to change their communication to fit.

So imaging having your "icon"/video at the bottom, the table sorted in a half circle shape above and your "focus" in the middle. If you pull it to its "lagrange point" (a snapping midpoint so its easy to find) you are listening to all. By dragging it towards one end you are focusing more on that person and the people around it, as a circle. You can see others focus, by coloured lines focusing more or less on an end or another.

My idea is to abuse the already available 3D audio effects existing and use that to put your focus towards one end or another, muting and muffling audio as your focus move across the table to be able to somewhat mimic the way we as human listen.

The social order of an RPG session, with the DM being the natural focus at times means that that focus can happen naturally either through focus, or simply silence. With it you can find the focus of others as an indicator of whether you are committing a faux pas or not, just like in real life when people pointedly may look directly towards another source.

I use Reddit more than I should. I flip to the 'Popular' page to see current events. I am curious if I am looking at skewed results based on the subreddits and posts that I visit, or if I am truly looking at a good sample of Reddit's popular posts?

I keep reading about people getting "covid insomnia". You could say, it's keeping me up at night.

Really though, it's been getting pretty regular for me. I take xanax once in a while but keeping it to an absolute minimum (no more than 0.25mg, once a week or so).

I tried the Sleep With Me podcast mentioned by @noblepath. It sort of helped. I kind of like the experience of it, the mindlessness, but I didn't continue past the second night.

It did give me the idea to just run a youtube video of rain sounds on my tv though, a lot better than what I used to do (leave netflix on some rewatches I know by heart). This is the one I'm currently enjoying: https://youtu.be/_x3hVRSIe2g

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.

What have you been doing lately for your own fitness? Try out any new programs or exercises? Have any questions for others about your training? Want to vent about poor behavior in the gym? Started a new diet or have a new recipe you want to share? Anything else health and wellness related?

Inspired by this post on lobste.rs, I thought it'd be fun for us all to post our homepages and talk about them. I'm posting this in ~creative because I think of a homepage as a creative endeavor, but feel free to move this to ~design or ~tech or wherever, mods.

Just post your homepage as a top-level comment, and we'll workshop in replies!