Lay it on the line in our March club posting! This time, let's submit short stories, chapters, essays.

@eve suggests that the optional theme be "liminality/liminal spaces. It could be about them, the creation of one, a dissection, the destruction of one, or just take place there. Anything and everything liminal."

Liminal is a sort of between. The definition is: relating to a transitional or initial stage of a process. occupying a position at, or on both sides of, a boundary or threshold.

You can also look into liminal spaces. These can be real places (like a train station that's simply a point people transfer to other trains to) or even the emotional betweens; coming to realizations or on a precipice of something. Like, summer vacation could be a liminal space even!

If you're not into borders and transitional spaces, or if you've been incubating a polemic all pandemic long, you are still encouraged to share your writing! You may draw inspiration from any theme (fictional or real).

Just follow these easy guidelines:

1. Produce a short story, essay, or chapter of a longer work. Your submission should not exceed 7,000 words. Let's aim for pieces 350-3500 words.

2. Watch for the March 14 submissions thread to appear... on March 14! Reply to it with a link to your work, which may be housed anywhere you like, including on Tildes. Prioritize venues that are not known to be aggressively anti-privacy (e.g., Google Docs). You may provide questions for readers in hidden expandable text, if you like.

3. You must provide feedback on 3 submissions if you are posting a submission. Only one needs to be a substantial critique. Our first outing was a trial run, and the offerings were extremely short. I anticipate proportionally longer responses to come easily this time. If you see a post without feedback, consider giving it preference in the order of your responses. No one likes to be left hanging.

Feel free to post questions in this topic. We had a stimulating and moderately edgy trial run. I'm excited for the longer prose to come!

This is a wild, ongoing story that is playing out in a rather bizarrely.

First off, here is Frogware's open letter on the situation from August 25, 2020.

Basically, Frogwares signed an agreement with Nacon (formerly Big Ben Interactive) to license and publish their game in return for funding, but Frogwares still owned the IP. Frogwares claims that Big Ben was consistently late with payments and did not honour milestones for further funding. They took on an EGS exclusivity agreement to help get funding. At some point during the development, Nacom bought another studio and then demanded that Frogwares give their source code to this new company, which Frogwares refused to do.

The released the game in June 2019 but then were told by Nacom that the milestones that were previously agreed to were cancelled, therefore Frogwares would see no profit from the game. Frogware filed a lawsuit and finally got access to some sales data but found it wanting in many regards. They also found that copyright notices on the game were incorrect with the result of misallocating the IP ownership. Their logo was removed from the PS4 and X1 versions of the game and they discovered that Nacon was presenting themselves as the IP owners for the game, and had bought domains for Frogwares' other Sherlock Holmes titles (most of which was published by Focus Home Interactive, with some published by Atlus in North America or self-published by Frogwares).

Frogwares believes they had what they needed to terminate the contract with Nacon, despite some complications with the French legal system due to the COVID pandemic, and so they pulled their games from various storefronts alongside this letter.

In January 2021, that French legal complication played out against them when the Paris Court of Appeals determined that Frogwares acted unlawfully and decided that Nacon would be able to put the game back on the market.

Today, The Sinking City was put back on Steam with Frogwares listed as the developer, but Frogwares says they did not make this version. It seems to be an older version, missing much the DLC and features like achievements and cloud saves.

Frogwares' own version of the game is being sold only on Gamesplanet, Origin, and the Xbox 1 Series, PlayStation 5, and Nintendo Switch.

Today, Belgium announced no changes in current protection measures.

After a fairly successful handling of the first wave (all things considered, especially the fact it was actually unprecedented at the time), Belgium's handling of the pandemic has been getting progressively worse. All countries have suffered their fair share of incompetence during this crisis, but today, we'll talk about Belgium (and a bit about the EU), because I live there.

Context and restrictions

Belgium works a little bit like a miniature version of the USA: Three regions (Flanders, Wallonia and Brussels) which function somewhat independently as states, with a federal government overseeing all three. Flanders is primarily flemish (dutch-speaking), Wallonia is primarily french, and Brussels is a mix but mainly french.

Excellent article detailing restrictions: https://www.politico.eu/article/belgium-coronavirus-lockdown-rules-restrictions-overview/ -- Some highlights below.

• A 10PM curfew is in place since October 2020 in Brussels and Wallonia; Midnight for Flanders.
• Bars, cafes, restaurants are closed to non-takeout business since October 2020. All alcohol sales prohibited after 8pm.
• Museums, swimming pools, hairdressers, are currently open.
• Remote work is mandatory.
• Belgium is currently forbidding non-essential travel outside of the country, much to the EU's dismay.
• There is a complicated social bubble system which tells you how many people you are allowed to see every week.

The "long lockdown"

Like most other western countries, Belgium experienced its first wave between March and May. We strictly locked down in March, reopened in June. The lockdown was successful at reducing the number of cases for all summer. A new lockdown happened in October but this time, driven by the fear of being "too strict", Belgium instead adapted a long checklist of a variety of measures, evolving more or less weekly, so that some things can be allowed. Most importantly, Belgium did not close schools at all.

The effects of this by comparison can be marveled at here: https://twitter.com/NikoSpeybroeck/status/1365257345941520385/photo/1

In essence: Belgium plateau'd high. So for October, November, December, January, February and now March, the country has been suffering nearly all the casualties of a normal lockdown… instead of a 10 week, slightly stricter lockdown (like countries such as South Korea are able to achieve), we're getting what looks to be a 24+ week, slightly less strict, highly-damaging lockdown.

The importance of consistency

The #1 complaint from everyone I've talked to about the rules are their inconsistencies. Because when you impose rules that affect people negatively, their first reaction will be: "Why are you forbidding X, which affects me, but allowing Y, which is worse and doesn't?"

You all know I'm a skater. For me it's the swimming pools: I'm at a loss why safe ice rinks are closed, but swimming pools are open. Something something chlorine. But there are plenty of examples that affect the general population; the one I hear most often as a comparison point is: "Why are we allowing people to be packed like sardines in the metro and in buses?" (And yes, people really are packed up in there at peak hours, I'm sure it's one of the primary transmission vectors)

Or: "Why are you forcing me to work remotely, when you are keeping the schools open? " -- Most countries did notice how much of a transmission vector schools and campuses are, especially with teenagers not exactly being incentivized to take precautions. Belgium, throughout the whole soft lockdown, has kept schools open for nearly the entire time they were going to be on a normal year.

Inconsistencies drive people to distrust the rules, and those making the rules. They make the rules feel arbitrary, which makes them feel irrelevant as a whole. It gets people thinking: "If this is not logical, then the explanation is that they don't know what they're talking about, and I can't trust what they say about COVID".

The importance of simplicity

What are the current measures? (official government website)

Now, I think info-coronavirus.be is one of the better-organized and well-marketed successes of Belgium's handling of the pandemic. Unfortunately it also nicely showcases how complex the rules are when there are sections such as "Can dog groomers remain open?" and "Can hunting continue?".

Belgium's social bubble system is easily the most complicated part of it and the people I know who do follow the rules, don't actually necessarily understand them and end up accidentally either being too strict, or breaking the rules. I can't tell you what it is myself without looking it up, as the rules around it change regularly; what I know is that you're more-or-less allowed to see 4 people per week. There is a "cuddle-contact" rule that dictates how many people you're allowed to be intimately close with each week. The rules are different based on your age, based on whether you live alone, based on whether you tend to people in certain groups…

Over winter, the rules got utterly ridiculous and I've written about this before, with a checklist of exceptions, ifs-and-buts for Christmas and New Years, dictating different rules for whether you're outside, inside, how many people can go to the toilet in your home, etc.

I cannot stress how much this has negatively impacted the population. It is neither learned nor widely followed, but as an ever-present high-impact rule in people's day to day life, is a constant reminder of how arbitrary the measures are.

Simpler rules, whether they're stricter or looser, will be followed more widely and will be overall perceived less negatively.

The importance of a risk-impact balance

For every single additional rule created, people's patience is tested. Of course, stricter rules are a tougher test to go through, but the more rules, the more you test their patience as well.
So there is a careful balance to strike: When introducing a rule, it has to actually be useful. You want to maximize how much you are reducing hospitalizations, with as few rules as possible. Getting to zero is not the goal, getting to a manageable number is.

With some exceptions, people don't have an understanding of the impact most rules on the final numbers. So it's rare that people take into account how useful the rules are when evaluating whether they should respect them. More to the point, a good amount of people will take an "all or nothing" approach, where the moment they stop respecting some rules, they'll stop respecting most or even all of them.

So it is critical to limit the rules to those that have the highest impact in the final numbers, and enforce those; rather than have far looser enforcement of a lot of rules that may, on paper, be more effective.

People aren't machines and will not function perfectly. I have yet to hear experts and politicians take the simplest questions into account:

• Will this rule be respected?
• Will people who stop respecting this rule cause them to stop respecting other rules?
• Will people distrust vaccines as a result of distrusting rules?
• How does this affect the numbers when taking the above into account?

Something to keep in mind when taking arbitrary decisions such as forbidding outdoors lake skating when, after a winter of sports being inaccessible, lakes finally freeze in Belgium.

Vaccinations

Yes, vaccines, let's talk about them.
Now it's no secret that the EU has really botched vaccine supplies. And yet, Belgium is proudly and loudly "slightly ahead of the initial vaccination timetable".
You'd think this is good news, but what it means is that Belgium's vaccination timetable is horribly pessimistic. Distributing vaccines is the one thing getting us out of this mess, and it's being prioritized like a 4am car alarm. One example, which was eventually backtracked on, is how COVID nurses and caregivers were going to be in the second phase of vaccinations, only given the shot after all care homes had been vaccinated. Which means that in that awful timetable, they'd start receiving their shots… next week, as of the time I'm writing this.

The US quickly figured out that Pharmacies need to be involved. Now, here's a fun fact you can throw out at parties: Belgium has the most pharmacies per capita in the world, sitting at around ~5000 pharmacies in total for 11.5M people.

Guess which country has yet to even talk about involving pharmacies in the distribution of the vaccines?

I talked about this with my MD this week. He was on the floor. He keeps telling government officials: "Give me a box of 20 vaccines per day, I'll have them distributed to patients and I can follow prioritization strategies". They refuse.

There are 73% non-respondants to vaccine invitations in Brussels. The Heysel vaccination center alone is wasting 750 vaccination slots per day, instead of taking a page from what airlines learned and overbooking to keep all slots as close to full as possible.

This disorganized mess is costing millions of euros every day. It's lengthening a stressful period which will have lasting effects on the population. It causes distrust of governments, distrust of systems, distrust of scientists. The butterfly effect of fucking this up is unfathomable.

Masks

And now we get to the latest fuckup. Masks. One of the most effective, highest-impact, easiest-to-comply-with measures.

Belgian government says to stop wearing the free cloth masks they distributed ‘as a precaution’

Last summer, Belgium distributed free reusable cloth masks to the population. And yesterday, they warned that nanoparticles of silver are present in the mask and can be breathed in, warning to stop wearing them as a precaution measure.

I have no word for the amount of distrust this causes. Not just in Belgium but worldwide. Criminal incompetence.

And again, we are not talking about that. We're not talking about the fact that anti-maskers now have these huge talking points and are easily able to convince a fed-up population that COVID is harmless, wearing masks is a bad idea, vaccines are evil, and we should all just say "fuck it".

In the midst of such an enraging news, the Belgian government has decided that things are fine as-is, and measures should not be relaxed.

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.

I don't think I saw a feature like this in the gitLab, apologies if it's already in the works or been suggested.

The gist of it would be to have an @/help ping so if someone needs an edit to a title or tags or something, they can use that and it'd flag the topic or somehow show those who have the permissions that this thread needs attention. This might be helpful for users (like moi) who might not know the people who CAN do this already off the top of their head, beyond Deimos.

Let me know your thoughts or if this could be a useful feature for anyone else.

Hello loves!

A wonderful individual reached out to me recently and proposed the idea of creating more of a community within Tildes, rather than being a smaller part of the Tildes community as a whole. As it is right now, Tildes feels like a single place with a single voice that's the average of its members, and we'd like to change that. We've started a discord server for queer individuals on Tildes. This server is meant to define itself as its own thing. ~lgbt is a place to organize posts on a topic, not a community, so we'd like to fill that hole.

Here's the invite link: https://discord.gg/FmhWYVAhFs

One particular aspect of forming a community I think is important, perhaps even more so for a minority identity, is that Tildes can be frustrating and alienating at times, even when it doesn't intend to be. This space is meant to be somewhere you can go to vent when you run into any of the many trials and tribulations you may run across on this wonderful website. You know, the times where you want to bang your head against a wall because you're just not getting through to someone else or when you open a thread, read a few replies, shake your head and close it - disappointed in the tone or direction it has taken. After all, sometimes we don't want to be direct or confrontational to people who say hurtful things when often they're just mislead, uneducated, or misinformed.

Anyhow, I hope to see many of you wonderful folks in there and I'm looking forward to knowing you all a little bit better! 💜

Hi my lovelies,,

I've been having a hard time over the past few weeks because my life is pretty much a never-ending stream of problems and insecurities right now, most of which I cannot resolve for at least a few months. This has led me into a state of intense listlessness and unhappiness. I do not like being unhappy and have Officially Decided that I would like to be happy again. But I think I need some help getting there.

Moving beyond the basic "I'm terribly lonely in this very unpleasant pandemic" stuff, my main issue is that I actually am not alone at all, at least physically or socially, I am just alone emotionally/spiritually. I live with a bunch of other people my age and certianly have opportunities for interactions (quite a few). I get dinner with some of my very favorite people every week (on Wednesday!!!!) and am kept on at least a slightly consistent social/exercise schedule with some of my other very favorite people every day. My issue is that in most or possibly all of these settings, there is something preventing me from totally relaxing. I can only talk about my surface-level problems, like "oh haha I'm so busy with class ahah lol joke" and not "my deepest darkest insecurities are clawing their way into my brain more intensely every day and I Cannot Stop Them." Its like I keep my little shield up the whole time and don't allow myself to be vulnerable. I suspect there are a few factors going on here:

• I have several leadership positions, either formally or informally, and actually have a very difficult time not stumbling into them and accepting more responsibility in general. I think I have internalized the stoicism or steadfastness I try to exemplify in those positions, in my everyday life
• I often (usually?) look like I have my shit together, even when I very much do not. My default way of existing is just pretty relaxed and I think people assume that means I have no stress in my life (false lol)
• I like it when people think and say Good Things about me and not when they think and say Bad Things about me, and that includes their perceptions of me as someone who has their shit together all the time

sooo the leadership thing is unfortunate because it means that kind ofa lot of people look up to me as a beacon of stability and idealness. I know this because I have been told it several times by several different people, and it's sort of obvious when people emulate your mannerisms or call you at 2 am because they're drunk and lost and need help. There is exactly a 0% chance that I will do anything other than express my normal "everything is going good" attitude when I am running a meeting or giving a presentation or whatever because doing so would signify "everything isNOT good" and therefore "oh no help where is my beacon of stability beezselzak ahhhhhhh" (we cannot have a crisis at the same time because I must be there to attend to their crisis whenever it happens. Part of the job) And also it would upset my narcissistic tendency toward being perfect always.

Even when I'm with my friends, who I can be at least moderately normal around, I still find it very difficult to begin talking about anything that is rather Serious because it is much more pleasant to just talk about enjoyable things, and though I see these people on a regular basis, it is not ever for very much time, so I don't want to waste it. I would feel very awkward bringing up serious mental health problems at dinner. And also even though we're close friends there is still a little bit of an expectation to have your life under control? you know how it is. I have 2-3 people who are sort of individual confidants (about specific things), and there are occasions where we can have very insightful conversations. But it's hard because the covid makes getting together unrealistic and I find it very challenging to initiate Serious Conversations over the telephone. And even in person, I still think I have some barriers yet to break with them.

The end result here is that I am kinda just walkin around every day with a lot of issues and nowhere to exactly put them, and everyone thinks it's all sunshine and roses and I really feed into that perception because it makes me feel good short-term (even though it makes me feel worse long-term). I have a therapist, but you know how that goes. It's not the same as talking to a peer, which is really where I'm stuck. So this is my question to the wise and learned gentlefolk of Tildes:

How do I shed this annoying habit of trying to be perfect even when it's really not necessary and really not helpful? I know that there's a problem, I just can't give up my leadership positions (at least for now) and am having a hard time giving up my narcissism.

and yes yes I do therapy and journaling and the mindful meditation and whatever, I am not interested in generic self-help advice. I'm more curious about your rituals, or forms of understanding that are personal to your struggles in regard to being vulnerable with friends, your SO, and people who look up to you. I'd like to learn more about how any of this might resonate with you, and then how you have dealt/would deal with it yourself. Because I am Young And Naive I think I lack most of the experiential knowledge about like, "how to exist," and I want to be able to take your ideas into account. Things that matter, things that really just don't matter, ways to conceptualize the self versus the great vast universe of possibility and collective individuality to ultimately be less concerned with perfection and the like. etc. Also I ought to teach some of these people how to be better at being independent functional humans and that is a little tricky when I am not one myself.

xoxoxo
beezselzak

Last week I woke up to yet another PM from someone I've come to admire from afar on tildes. This was a user I'd seen many times on Tildes, bringing with them a unique and powerful voice. This person was a minority. They brought a voice to the table that was like a breath of fresh air - I'd frequently see them enter threads dominated by a single opinion and make everyone challenge their assumptions. They would enter and offer their shoes to anyone who'd like to try them on and get a glimpse into how the world might work for them, should they be brave enough to walk a mile or two.

This is not the first PM I've received from someone who decided this website had become too troublesome to continue participating and it's likely not the last I will see. While it is heartbreaking to see them go, it is equally heartbreaking to me that the reason they are going is often not because people are trying to push them away. By far and large, I see a majority of tildes users actively participating in discussions with good faith. By the results of the last census, increasing diversity was of importance to the majority of users and I do not think they were free-text typing that in without good cause.

This post is one that I've been contemplating in the back of my mind for a very long time now. It first really occurred to me nearly a year ago when a fairly well known person of minority status got banned for being too confrontational and aggressive to the kind of voice they didn't want to see on Tildes. I wasn't sure how to address it at the time, and I wasn't entirely certain it would be a problem, but the year since this post I've become hyper aware to its existence in a way I wasn't previously. In fact, I've had a bit of this conversation on more than one outlet on the internet already, because my recognition of this behavior has had me upset many times since. To this extent, I thank that user, because it truly did open my eyes to a behavior which I believe is self-sabotaging, but often genuine in nature.

I believe the simplest way to explain what is happening is through the law of large numbers. While not everyone responded to the 2020 Tildes Census (in fact I would imagine maybe 10% of us did), I'm going to use it as a model to touch on these issues. There were a total of 350 responses to the survey. Of this 86% were male, 67% were heterosexual, 75% were atheist or agnostic (50, 25 respectively), 52% were from the US, and 47% identified as white or Caucasian. I point all of this out to say that as a population we tend to trend towards a particular kind of individual. To be clear, this isn't necessarily bad - we are still quite a small website and we need to start somewhere with a base we know how to pull from.

But this does present a unique problem when it comes to interaction. Let's imagine for a second that 1 in 100 individuals has some sort of problematic behavior on Tildes that manages to find its way into discussion. This behavior might be that they have a strong intolerant opinion on a specific subject but manage to obscure it enough to get past the intolerance detecting capabilities of others. Or perhaps their views are not intolerant, but they simply possess a strong opinion on how something should be worded or an aversion to a particular kind of venting. Because I don't want to throw anyone under the bus I'm going to pull from an upsetting behavior I used to have in my childhood - I couldn't shut my mouth when people would bring up that women make '70 cents on the dollar'.

It's very hard for me to look back and definitively say it was one shaping experience that led me to behave like that. If I had to attribute this shameful behavior, I think there's a few major players. First off, I grew up in an upper middle class family who happened to be located in an area that was very homogeneous. I went to school with the children of tech millionaires, many of whom were white and quite privileged. I think there were a grand total of 4 people of color in my middle school. Things got a lot better once I had made it to high school (by numbers, whites were in the minority), but there's a subtle cultural indoctrination that happens through absorbing what you hear from parents and teachers at a young age. As a young child, I also latched on to early internet behavior. People who were pedantic about grammar, who could use logic effectively, and otherwise followed the rules that rich white people before them set up as the 'correct' way to do discuss were revered on the internet. I remember when being the grammar police was behavior that was actually celebrated. This kind of mindset lead me to read into the research on the matter (also primarily conducted by rich white folks, another bias I'm trying to undo in my life) and the modern research suggested that this figure was outdated and poorly controlled.

I was the 1 in 100 users with the problematic behavior. It took me awhile to learn that I wasn't helping anyone out by offering this information up (turns out there were a lot of people already doing the same work I was and people are smarter than I gave them credit for), but that only scratches at the surface of the real problem. The real problem is that I didn't have the lived experience of a woman entering spaces where this discussion was happening. I wasn't the woman who received less pay than their colleagues, who put in more hours, who spoke up but was talked over, whose ideas were restated by their male peers, or who clicked on an article link talking about pay inequality or women's rights and how far we still have to go and was met with hostile comments. I didn't know how soul-crushing it could be to be met with nearly the same resistance in every public sphere where this was being discussed. I didn't know how tiring it was to have to justify my existence and to explain my struggles to those who hadn't lived the same life as me. I didn't know how heart wrenching it would feel for someone I valued, trusted, and loved to express opinions like these years after I had built up a strong bond with them and for them to be entirely unaware of the damage they were causing.

To be clear, when I say understand I mean to have either experienced it directly enough to begin to actually place myself in the shoes of others or heard about it enough for their experience to truly sink in. It's one thing to acknowledge and know that this behavior exists, it's another to live it and see it first hand on a day where you're hanging on by a thread. To truly understand how mentally exhausting it can be to treated this way was something that escaped my comprehension because I could only live this experience through the words of others. I didn't really start to appreciate this until I got older, because I started recognizing how universal this experience truly was. I don't think I know a single female who doesn't have a story of sexual assault - the rate at which they respond with something in their lives is a stark reminder of how far we still have to come.

What I knew, but didn't truly understand is that if 1 in 100 users have problematic behavior and 1 in 100 users are transgender, we have an equal number of transgender individuals as we do users with problematic behavior. I want you to stop here and reread the last sentence and really absorb it before moving on. Ask yourself what problems might arise by these inequality existing.

In this hypothetical we have an even number of individuals who are going to participate in a thread about a transgender issue as we have transgender individuals. If even 1 of these transgender individuals decides they do not want to engage with this behavior, we're on a downwards slope to eventually having nearly no transgender representation as now they are outnumbered and their voice is more likely to be drowned out by the problematic individuals. As less and less people of the minority engage, because they are discouraged by the expressions of the problematic individuals, less people will wish to engage as the threads become increasingly more hostile.

The problem we have on tildes is that the only way I see for us to become more diverse is to ask for more from those who have, to protect those who do not. I'm calling on everyone to pay closer attention to the intended audience of a thread. We need to look at how discussions are happening throughout the entirety of a thread and do a better job being welcoming of the minority opinion. We need to elevate and celebrate the voices of the minorities in these threads so that they are equal in paradigm to the voices which counter theirs. If a thread's topic is about a minority class such as gays we need to ensure that gays get an equal voice - if one person is dominating replies to gays in the comments, we need to be good allies and help balance the scales.

We also need to stop and think about how these discussions usually play out on the rest of the internet. Do you ever see something like this on twitter and go "definitely not checking the comments"? We need to pay attention to this, and strive to ensure the same doesn't eventually apply to Tildes.

A common example of this that I've seen is present in threads directed at specific minorities. The early discussion in a fantastic thread titled What's hard about being a woman? exemplifies this issue - because there aren't enough women on Tildes, the thread was dominated by male voices. Only one of these individuals were particularly problematic, but there was a hesitation from women I knew to enter this thread because an environment dominated by the male voice is not welcoming. Some of the women who entered this thread were met with replies challenging some of what they said, rather than elevating their voices and celebrating their participation. A small minority of men were in this thread to learn, but weren't aware of how the way they engage with other men on the internet was not appropriate for this venue. They didn't stop to consider that a thread dominated by male voices was neither welcoming nor a good start. If they had merely waited for women to start populating the thread, and replied to them, or opened soft with commentary on what they had seen in women without providing too much analysis they may have made the thread more welcoming.

Another common example of this that I see happened in a thread I posted titled Stop telling women they have imposter syndrome. I actually had to stop myself from posting in this thread because I had an inkling that it was going to exemplify the behavior I wanted to address in a thread like this and I didn't want to disrupt what would naturally happen on Tildes absent my intervention. Nearly every reply in that thread criticizes the author for not mentioning that men can have impostor syndrome too. Imagine entering this thread as a woman - even if you emotionally connected with the author on some level, would you bother engaging when highly regarded comments focus on nitpicking the author for not being 'inclusive' enough? As far as I could tell, even the title doesn't call upon the reader to critically examine what imposter syndrome is and who is eligible to suffer from it. It's calling upon the reader to stop telling women that they have imposter syndrome (or to stop others when they make this statement), when the problem is a sexist environment. I've even received recognition from women on Tildes outside of this thread (through DMs and discussions on different platforms) who thank me for posting these threads, but their voice is often conspicuously absent from the thread itself. I do not want to speak on their behalf, but I can guess that a major reason for that is the environment we are creating here on Tildes is not welcoming enough for them to feel it is worth commenting.

The insidious part of this problem is that very often the people creating a hostile environment do not intend to do so. They truly wish to be inclusive. Or they see behavior like this and they don't understand why it's problematic - it doesn't cause a flag to go off in their brain which tells them that they should jump in and fight on behalf of the people they want to protect. But this behavior is slowly causing minority individuals to flee this website. I don't know and cannot know them all, but waking up to PMs about someone else leaving makes my heart sink. Entering threads about the intersectional minorities that I find myself and my loved ones a part of often makes me feel similarly upset, downtrodden, and makes me feel like I want to engage less and less with this platform.

I wish I had an answer. I wish I could wave a magic wand and make everything better. To give everyone omniscience, or at least a day's firsthand experience of someone radically different than them. Unfortunately, I do not. I think the best I can offer at this time is this post - a call on all of us to do better; a start of an ongoing discussion on how we can protect the minorities among us so that we can be bettered by their presence.

A political example might be the fact that according to gallup, people have supported a popular vote for the US presidency for more than 75 years (this article is 20 years old, but the numbers still stand), albeit the partisan difference in opinion seems to be more recent and it's not clear if people knew what to replace it, or if they knew about all the other faults in the US political system.

Other more cultural examples might be things like romans drawing dicks on Hadrian's wall, eating fast food and their timeless graffiti, surrealism being 100 years old as opposed to 'Zoomer humor', etc.

So, what are your examples?

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!

What product features would you hope the vendors would add in preparation for that eventuality?

For example... For the last year, we all have had “one connection, one face on screen.” That’s given everyone a kind of equality, where we each have an equal seat at the table. (With or without cat filters.) Now we have to contemplate returning to an environment where SOME people are in the office, and thus huddled around a conference table, and the rest of the team is working from home. It was like that in the Before Times, but now everybody is more cognizant of the disadvantages… not the least of which is the poor video organization in conference rooms. Few companies are smart enough to install a camera that’s pointed at the people around the conference table, for instance, however simple/cheap an option that is.

A few years ago I watched a movie -- can't even remember what it was -- that heavily involved pagers. One character got mad at another for not returning their call, and there was a dramatic scene where they yelled something like "I PAGED you like an HOUR ago!" At the time of its release it probably made perfect sense, but from a modern perspective it had some unintentional comedy to it -- not to mention that younger audiences might not even understand what was going on given that pagers have likely fallen out of common understanding at this point.

I'm curious as to other things that haven't aged well, whether that's due to technological changes, shifts of the social or moral landscape, or even things that are fine in isolation but are hard to divorce from a larger context (e.g. They Might Be Giants released a song in late 2011 that jokes about Whitney Houston being the drummer for the band, but Houston died unexpectedly in early 2012).

Really anything is fair game: what hasn't aged well, and why not?

I'm looking for a new office chair to replace my old Ikea one, and I'm curious what people recommend. I'm looking at the Autonomous ErgoChair 2, but I'm not completely sold on it. I've heard amazing things about Steelcase and Herman Miller, but I can't justify paying $1k on a chair.

What do you have and would you recommend it?

Edit: I went to a used office supply store and got the Steelcase Gesture. Thanks for all the input!

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.

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!

I know that "over" is a nebulous concept as it relates to COVID-19, but I'm using that more as a way of prompting long-term thinking rather than identifying any actual endpoint to the pandemic.

The question could also be phrased: what changes did COVID-19 bring about that you hope will stick around in the years to come?

I find myself at a point in my life where I have the time, energy, and money to adopt a dog. Growing up I never had a dog - my parents only had cats. I don't totally know what I'm getting into so I'm looking for some advice.

I would like to have a moderately active dog, as I live a moderately active life. However, many donation sites list even just moderately active dogs as needing a yard. I live in a fairly spacious 1 bedroom apartment that's in a small complex (5 units) on the ground floor. Does this severely restrict the kind of dogs I should adopt? I know a hyper-active breed wouldn't be happy here. But should I consider myself limited to small, lower needs dogs?

Edit:

Probably important bit of information, I don't plan to get a puppy.

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.

So there is this game called Valheim that recently released. You may or may not have recently read the article where they claim to have sold over a million copies around a week after release.

I bought it to give it the 2-hour smell test and it seems pretty darn good. However, this game seems best played with others and I doubt my friend group will end up playing this. Renting a server seems pretty cheap so I was wondering how interested you would be in a Tildes community server? I would be down for paying for a month and seeing where it goes from there.

It looks like min slots for a server would be 10 slots but I would imagine that's okay since we all wouldn't be in the same time zone. I can scale this up if the demand is there.

Thoughts?

Other Info:

What is Valheim, the Viking game blowing up on Steam?

Server is set up!

Game is password protected but if you click me, you will find what you need.

Vernacular mental health terms are used in everyday language as a nonspecific indicator of extreme value judgement or deviation from an expectation or norm. Examples of words include 'crazy', 'cray', 'insane', 'whack', 'mental', and 'retarded'. I think we can criticise the language on numerous grounds:

1. It normalises poor mental health as something extreme or atypical
2. Where the language is used to connote a negative value judgement (example 3) it reinforces the association that "poor mental health" = "bad"
3. It can be triggering to people with mental health issues because of the way they are or their condition is perceived or because of experiences they have had
4. It can be imprecise, in the sense that there are often more contextually appropriate words to describe the specific quality being discussed

Examples:

1. "This new track from Lone is insane!" -- positive use cf. 'extremely good'
2. "I can't believe Tesla bought all that BTC, that's insane!" -- neutral use, no value or ethical judgement, observing deviation from typical or expected behaviour cf. 'unexpected'
3. "Trump is fucking insane" -- negative use cf. 'extremely bad'

Some alternatives:

1. 'wild' -- I use this particularly for positive and neutral connotations
2. 'ridiculous' -- for the negative connotation
3. Something more specific to the context, e.g. "Trump is fucking evil", or "This new track is banging", or "I had a hectic morning" instead of "I had a crazy morning"

Questions:

1. Why has 'retarded' faced so much backlash and fallen out of acceptable usage, but other terms like 'crazy' have not?
2. Are the criticisms valid and do they apply to all of the examples? Are there more grounds to criticise this language on that I have not listed?
3. Are there other ways the language is used which is not covered in the examples?
4. What alternatives do you use?
5. Is use of crazy/insane/mental/... common in non-English languages? If not, what is used instead?

Thanks for your input! 🙏

Let's discuss themes for our March 1 Writing Club submissions. (If prompts or themes aren't your thing, you may write what you like and post when the submission topic opens.) Feel free to suggest a prompt (a scenario, dilemma, or background), a theme, or an ambiguous title to jump-start writing efforts. What do you want to suggest?

I've been thinking a good bit about gender-neutral language lately, and I've been making an effort to eliminate unnecessarily gendered language from my day-to-day speech. However, there are a few sticking points for me that I am having a hard time with finding my way around. One of the most difficult for me, having been brought up in the deep south and still living there, are honorifics like "sir" and "ma'am". I use these when addressing pretty much anyone, and it's a habit I'm having a hard time breaking. It's got me thinking about whether there are any good alternatives that would feel respectful of the person I'm addressing while not sticking out too much. If that's not an option (and I suspect it would be asking too much) then what are your ideal alternatives, either neologisms, borrowed from other languages, or just repurposed words that are in current use?

Examples of usage that I would love to replace:
"Yes, sir/No, ma'am"
"Excuse me, sir/ma'am"
"Mr./Mrs./Ms." (I use this less often but still catch myself at times. I also think this one has the best alternative currently in use, with Mx. catching on in some places)

Also, if this question is missing the mark or disrespectful in any way, please let me know. I'm still learning!

I don't need answers so much as an idea of where to start.

Essentially, I have a Google Sheet that uses importjson.gs to pull from the following APIs

• OMDB (IMDB)
• TheMovieDB
• TVMaze

I also use another script to scrape Letterboxd for ratings.

This works well, but sometimes it'll time out or I'll hit urlFetch limits that Google has in place.

Basically, I'd like to have a text file (input.txt) where I pop in a bunch of titles and year or IMDB IDs, then the script runs and pulls set endpoints from all of these, outputting everything on one line (a pipe as a delimiter.)

My thinking is that I can then pull that info a sheet and run all of the formatting, basic math, and whatever else so it suits my Sheet.

I have a feeling I'll be using requests for the JSON and beautifulsoup for letterboxd -- or maybe a module.

Can anyone point me in the right direction? I don't think it'll be too difficult and should work well for a first python project.

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!

Previous topics in the series (which are still open should anyone want to add to them):

What's hard about being a man?
What's hard about being a woman?

This topic is for people who do not fit into the roles of "male" or "female": what is hard about being non-binary?

As before, please be mindful of the atmosphere of the post and the lived experiences of the individuals posting and try to keep things not only civil but welcoming to them. Furthermore, please be aware that majority voices can easily override a thread like this. As such, please make room for and elevate the voices of the non-binary people who choose to participate.

I am looking to buy a headset. It's for my child to use on PS4, and when stock comes back in on PS5.

Which models have you used and liked? Are there any you'd avoid?

I think I'd prefer either USB, or something easy to repair, or cheap so I can just buy a new set of this one breaks.

All writers are invited to take part in the newborn Tildes Writing Club! Let’s let the club organize as it grows, but as a starting point, I present loose, inclusive guidelines formed from the meeting of ideas in the last thread. (I was going to list aspects as separate replies for easier picking apart, but I guess I can’t make separate replies to the same post.) Feel free call out an aspect to compare it with a different approach.

Schedule

A thread will surface every three weeks inviting you to post your work. You may post your piece to the thread at any time before the next appears, but you risk missing out on readers. Finish and submit your critiques before the next recurring thread. (I declare this quite confidently for someone with no idea how recurring threads work.) Should the inaugural submission thread open on March 1?

Sharing

Reply to the recurring submission thread with a link to your work, which may be housed anywhere you like, including on Tildes. Prioritize venues that are not known to be aggressively anti-privacy (e.g., Google Docs). You may share a selection from a larger work, but your submission should not exceed 7,000 words. Shorter by half that is likelier to be read. There will be no minimum length. You may provide questions for readers in hidden expandable text, if you like.

Feedback

Critique participation will operate on the honor system. When submitting, you are encouraged to provide meaningful feedback to three pieces each cycle. These will be self-assigned. To assign yourself a piece, post a reply to it as placeholder. Assign yourself to pieces that haven’t yet been taken before signing on as a 2nd, 3rd, or 4th reader. That is, while there are still pieces without assigned readers (which will be apparent due to the lack of replies), take one of those first to ensure everyone is getting read. Naturally, you may leave critiques or comments in a free and unregulated fashion if you aren’t submitting work for critique this round. I suggest leaving feedback in the reply you created as placeholder. Others may have better ideas.

Themes / Forms

Hopefully, taking part in the club will motivate you to produce new writing. The community will suggest themes as inspiration after the posting of a submission thread. These could be chosen democratically, or by a rotating theme-warden, but should be mooted outside the submissions thread. I prefer themes to be extremely flexible, rather than a prompt: “Orange; Breathless; Common Parlance;” instead of “On Tuesday you discover the ability to control trains with your mind.” Submissions do not need to follow the theme. We might decide to have a round dedicated to poetry, but then again, why not gather an assortment of forms and genres?

Showcase and ‘Zine

As motivation for writers, and to benefit the wider Tildes community, I would like to see a periodic showcase thread highlighting the best of our work. It makes sense to post this separately, rather than just by tagging exemplary pieces, because most of us will want to improve our submissions with feedback in mind. @acdw has the idea of organizing a ‘zine to further showcase our best work. This, it seems to me, suggests wonderful opportunities for collaboration with visual artists. The schedule for both of these will have to depend on activity in the club.

Spirit

I hope for the club to be egalitarian, advanced by participants with good ideas and a flair for organization. Despite my failings, I hope to be such. To the degree that I can direct the energy of the group, I would like to give the following precept: Be generous. Writers, be a gracious guest in the minds of your readers. Be generous in your criticism. Don't abstain from lauding your favorites--that is important. At the same time, recognize that you compliment writing when you take it seriously enough to voice serious problems you may wish to see it avoid. Interpret criticism in the same spirit of generosity.

Hi everyone, I'm looking into getting a new laptop for university work. Thanks to a scholarship, I can get up to $2000 covered off a laptop purchase (and I'd be willing to pay a few hundred more out-of-pocket too).

I plan on using this laptop primarily for basic web browsing, word processing, and Zoom calls. I may be playing some video games on it like Slay the Spire or Hollow Knight, but these aren't too demanding and most of my time will be spent working anyway. My use case shouldn't require a lot of processing power or a high-end dedicated GPU. After graduating, I'll have more consistent access to my desktop anyway, which already has a dedicated card for gaming and can easily be upgraded to suit my needs if I get into video editing or programming, which further reduces the need for a laptop that can do these things. In light of this, I'm looking primarily at a laptop that is lightweight, has a long battery life, good build quality, and a 14-inch screen, to upgrade from my current 13-inch. I haven't decided whether I'll be dual-booting Windows/Linux or running Linux only, but I do plan on running Linux so compatibility is important. Ports aren't a huge deal since there isn't much need for anything more than HDMI/USB on a college campus and I can get a docking station for post-graduation needs.

After lurking around on this forum and others, I've settled on a few potential options:

• Thinkpad X1 Carbon
• Thinkpad T14s
• System76 Lemur Pro
• MacBook M1 Air (added after suggestions, link to specs)

ThinkPads seem to offer the best build quality and potential to last years after purchase, so I'm leaning towards those, but System76 appears to have upgraded their build quality recently, and I just love their designs as well. Lenovo will be releasing the next-generation X1 Carbon soon, but it may be priced out of my range, and I'd like to purchase soon. Even the Carbon Gen 8 is above my price range, though as I understand it Lenovo usually offers discounts so I'm waiting for the sale on customizable builds (they already have discounts on pre-designed builds). I'm totally open to suggestions not on this list, and I've also read that purchasing refurbished ThinkPads can be the way to go, though I'd like to take full advantage of my budget if possible. If anyone has any experience with the above laptops, reason to recommend one over the other, or knows why I might want to wait on purchasing (e.g. for a release of next-gen hardware), please let me know!

edit: Table working now!

edit2: Thanks for all the suggestions and discussion everyone. I've yet to make a final decision but will update again later.

My beloved Duke controller has developed an extremely squeaky right trigger. It sounds like a mouse or bird is in distress every time I play something. My dog is getting concerned.

When I search the issue online, seemingly everywhere says to spray WD-40 on it, with people immediately saying “don’t do that” without offering any real alternatives. Given WD-40’s toxicity, I’m not comfortable using that for something that’s going to be in my hands for a long period of time anyway (plus it’s even more potentially toxic to my dog).

What’s the right, preferably non-toxic way to fix this issue?

I'm currently working on a site for learning MonoGame: https://learn-monogame.github.io/. The front page alone is a collaboration between 3 people. Do you guys know of a good way to give credits for each page? Is that a good idea? I'm currently thinking of adding a section at the bottom of each page with categories like:

• Written by
• Edited by
• Corrections by
• Brainstormed with

With a link to each contributor's preferred social medial. I'm not sure where to look for inspiration for giving credits in a documentation site.

From a reader's point of view, I think it can be nice to get introduced to members of the MonoGame community. Perhaps check out their released games or the ones they are working on.

I want to try something new and send some sacks of coffee over the atlantic and maybe start a sidehustle. I'm in the process of checking tarifs and stuff, but I have no idea where to even start looking for somebody who would do the actual transporting or what it might even cost.

did anybody here do something like that?
how did you do it?
what did you send?
why did you do it?
what was your experience with it?
would you do it again?

Apple Music - https://music.apple.com/us/album/black-nova/1548548049?i=1548548061
Spotify - https://open.spotify.com/album/0CVcV4F07U0RN81MlKTbKS
YouTube - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9nLJ4Y9t98c&feature=emb_title

Late 90s alt-rockers Eve 6 return with their first new music in almost nine years. The extremely catchy hooks the band has been known for are back. Lyricist/sing Max Collins has also with a return to form on his excellent lyrics with lines like "wayward jehova/ask for a corona/ in the ambulance. The growth here seems to be a bit of the electronica influence from Collins' side project, Fitness, and his vocals, which sound more like Scott Weiland than the teen we know for singing the heart in a blender song.

A little more laid back than some of eve 6's prior work, we'll see where the rest of the EP goes when it's released this summer.

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.

To elaborate more, the realization that LGBT rights, marriage, transitioning, etc are more than just human rights, they're your rights and whenever homophobes succeed in stopping LGBT rights, your rights are stripped away by people who hate you.

Also, If you're bisexual, did/do you ever consider just tagging along as if you were straight because you could and would rather not deal with homophobes? (Assuming this question makes sense)

I'd like to gauge interest in a writing group. The quality of expression I find at Tildes and the nature of some of the Timasomo projects prompt me to wonder if maybe there aren't enough regularly-writing members to form a circle for critique and support. I have some experience teaching, but never have run a group. I'm a committed generalist--I don't think I would want to limit it to a particular form or genre.

Anyone interested? Have you taken part in one before / belong to one now?

I recently fixed my old wristwatch when I realized the need to know time is one of the causes for my smartphone addiction. It is nice to know the time from a device without WhatsApp, a web browser, or notifications.

Here it is, nothing fancy but extremely durable, about 15 years old: https://imgur.com/gallery/daDVelR

I’m looking into getting a Casio digital wristwatch with a simple alarm function and a light to see it in the dark. Again, nothing fancy. Just a piece of reliable, single purpose hardware. I love things like that.

They also look really nice.

Do you have and enjoy “dumb watches”? Why? Let’s talk about that :)

Hey, so I'm looking for more comfy Nintendo (or maybe retro stuff in general?) focused youtubers like Scott the Woz or Nitro Rad or even AVGN to leave on in the background. In general I'd prefer people talking about games or gaming trends or whatever over just playing them...I don't think I really have much interest in let's plays or highlight reels anymore.

It can be full-on silly AVGN stuff or super dry Gaming Historian stuff, I love it all, though my ideal is somewhere in-between. Of course, I'd also like for them not to be terrible human beings, so no jontron or anyone like that please. Thanks!

Unlike the current tendency, unless I'm playing with my real-life friends, I don't care for multiplayer in shooters. I'm usually surrounded by highly skilled players that seemingly dedicate their lives to becoming experts in that game. I don't wanna become actually skilled, I wanna play in my own way and feel I am skilled in face of limited AI. You know, fantasy!

Most franchises are leaning towards multiplayer, and my playstyle is quickly becoming old fashioned. I recently purchased the Xbox Series S and would love suggestions of great shooters with a focus on offline missions. Especially historical shooters (like WWI and WWII), but not limited to it.

Thanks!

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!

Have you been socializing with friends or family using Zoom, Hangouts, Skype, Facetime or the like during the pandemic? Beyond the typical chats, meals and drinks, what sorts of activities have you been engaging in over these services? Games? Karaoke? Watching movies? What sorts of activities have been the most successful or lent themselves to working remotely?

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.

I've recently gotten into paying the wall rather than jumping it.
Until recently my only paid subscription was The Correspondent, before it unfortunately passed away.

I'm now subscribed to:

• The New Yorker
  A publication I've long wanted to subscribe to, but never did. It lives up to its reputation, only wish it had an Android app.
• The New York Times
  This one I started on the basic subscription, but upgraded to All Access for the crosswords and bonus subscription. I've found the Cooking subscription included to be quite interesting too.
• The Wall Street Journal
  I subscribed to this one to provide me another perspective apart from NYT. I also have known them to uncover many stories in the past, and would like to have access whenever that does happen.
• The Washington Post
  This one I'm not sure how I feel, I don't feel right giving Bezos money, or rather trusting him as a news source—but I got a pretty good deal on it for the year. I know The Washington Post rates highly in terms of credibility, but I can't help but be skeptical.
• The Information
  This one I started before all the ones listed above, I've enjoyed it, it provides tech news, but I think I'm going to cancel it as soon as my billing period is over. They make quality articles and such, but they're a bit pricey for my taste.

Anyway, I'd like to know what publications y'all subscribe to. Do you get paper or are you all-digital? And are there any credible conservative sources to broaden the perspectives I see?