I know much of North America is under a heat wave right now, as well as some other parts of the world. My husband and I have central AC in our house, but it hasn't been able to keep up. We've closed up the vents for most of the house during the day and are forcing the air into our living room only as a way of keeping cool. We've also got some friends staying with us that don't have AC at their house at all.

What is it like where you are at? Are you able to stay out of the heat? Is this just a one-off weather pattern, or should we get used to this sort of thing happening more and more often on account of climate change?

Whether it be for school, work, a hobby, or personal interest, what are you learning right now? How are you learning it and what prompted you to start learning? What are some things that surprised you about what you are learning? What advice would you give to someone who just started to learn about it?

Give an honest review of something that you've been using (or possibly stopped using) that's at least a year old, so we get an idea of what it's like for long-term use, rather than fresh. Anything is fair game: webhosting companies, kitchen gadgets, facial cleansers, etc.

(This thread is a rehash of this thread, with the difference that you can give advice to any non-public figure you want from 10 years ago too, regardless of how old they are.)

(Also assuming they take you seriously, interpret it correctly, don't forget it immediately, don't cause a butterfly effect for doing so, etc...)

Advice for any generic 5-year old:

• If you don't know already, learn to write.

• If you don't know already, learn to read. (Neither of these are likely in most places but whatever.)

• If your parents tell you to not talk to strangers, what they mean by that is "don't talk to adults, unknown people who offer you things (which rarely happens anyway, lol) or people minding their own business." Most importantly, none of these apply to you current, or future classmates. Talk to them about things you might share in common.

(I would also include something about how watching children's cartoons are a utter waste of time but I have no replacement for those and I suspect only their parents would.)

Advice for me, 10 years ago:

• Pay attention to your future school material to make sure you don't lose it and call your teacher and interrupt class for everyone else.

• Some people will be very rude to you. You should probably tell your mom about it when you're home so she can tell the school staff about it. (You won't have time to tell your school staff unless you want to say that in fron of the people who will be rude to you. Also I have no clue if the staff will do anything about it.)

• Crying will often attract those people to you and give them satisfaction, it's better to do it at home to your parents. (Also, those people shouldn't dictate the morality of crying.)

• If you hear a word you don't know about from your classmates, it might refer to someone's genitals, particularly If it starts with X. (like a 5-year old would know what genitals are but anyway)

Some people will tell you or pressure you to do dumb things. ('Dumb' being needlessly harmful to others or humiliating to you.) Don't listen to them. (I have no clue how they will react to this however.)

To my mother, 10 years ago:

• In the future, it will be unanimous consensus that you should track everything your child does on the internet until they're a teenager and not have them spend more than like, 2 hours there. I'm not kidding about this.

• This is the ideal time to introduce your child to chores apparently.

• Telling your child to not talk to strangers will be a mistake, because your child will also assume 'strangers' to be his classmates, which is bad for obvious reasons. By 'strangers' you mean "adults, unknown people who offer you things (Have you ever seem this happen? Serious question.) or people minding their own business."

• Your child being autistic will mean your child will need more elaborate explanations for following social norms than most people.

• Children can often have their mouths not grow enough, and lack room for teeth to organize themselves properly. This will happen to your child, and if you wait too long, your child will have terrible teeth and need to use braces and palatal expanders to fix it, like your husband.

(I would probably also include something about my grandma dying of cancer, but my mom has never had problems with spending time with her parents so it's not really advice.)

The US emigration thread brought back a lot of thoughts I've had about leaving the UK, and I imagine a decent number of us have at least idly wondered about a serious move - especially after a year like we've just had.

For me, the difficulty has always been figuring out where to go: politics/climate/healthcare/lifestyle/language are a delicate balancing act, and I don't think anywhere's a slam dunk. Everyone's going to have their own take on what perfect looks like, and what compromises to make mapping that to the real world!

So let's assume you're packed and ready to go, nothing holding you back. You've still got to navigate inbound immigration, handle the language, find a job, all that good stuff - but the world is your oyster. Where would you choose to go?

I'm a 23 year old male originally from Southern California, and like the title says I'm curious to see if anyone else near my demographic has seriously looked into emmigrating in light of the past year and a half.

What factors motivate you to move?
What would be an ideal location for you?
What timeline would are you looking at?

One of the main motivators I seek to emmigrate is climate change. As the world continues to progress and evolve I do not think the United States will be able to equitabbly address the changing landscape and ways of life. As for when I would want to move, I'm not sure; currently it seems like a far off probability, but I know it's a choice I will have to make in my own lifetime.

I was wondering if anyone organizes their life in checklists, and if so, how people go about doing it. I'm interested in starting to try this, but haven't yet taken the time to do so and I'm curious what works for people.
My idea of this came off of CGP Grey's usage, which he often talked about in his podcast with Brady Haran, Hello Internet, but I'm a Windows/Android kind of person and would probably use a program such as Notion, which I'm using for notetaking and other tasks already, to do so.

What I'm mainly wondering is how you might structure checklists to a day of the week, and what to include/not include on there. What works for you if you've tried this before, and would you recommend it?

I'm going on a news fast until after Samhain (that's Hallowe'en for you non-heathens). Still figuring out what, exactly, that means, but basically, I'm minimizing (ideally, eliminating) my exposure to ... hmmm ... I guess "unnecessary stress and anxiety" is the best summary.

Turned off my Feedly (ahem) feed. No more Mastodon, etc. I'll still be visiting Tildes, but less ... and I just finished tuning out the news from my postings list (unsubscribed from ~enviro, ~finance, ~health, ~lgbt, and of course, ~news ... added a bunch of tag filters — covid, Trump, politics, the FAANG corps, etc). That seems to have killed 95% of the stress-inducing headlines. Will add more tag filters, as they prove necessary.

Thoughts? Anyone already try this? Anyone wanna join me?

PS: I have no idea how to tag this post. Tildes ModGods, please have at it, but try not to add any tags that'll inadvertently hide my own post from me. Danke, y gracias.

This could be anything, from presentation tips, to efficiently-managed breakout rooms, to finding ways to engage participants. How did it make a difference?

I’m writing an article about how companies can run better online events, so thinking “ideas worth stealing.” Give me details!

It’d be easy to focus on the things that don’t work — they are legion — but I’m aiming to capture the good stuff that we all wish everyone would adopt. So leave out the disappointments, and just tell me about the things you enjoyed.

If you’ve run a virtual event I’m interested in your opinions too, but keep in mind that this is meant to be tips-and-tricks worth sharing.

If applicable: how & why have your lost friends?

I'll start. One: I was terrible and certainly deserved some alienation. Though, I mostly self-pariahed. Beyond that, though... I worked with friends and they sucked so bad it was hard to continue liking them.

Well, how 'bout you??

I'd like to hear your stories of things your parents did with good intentions that went wrong. This is mine.

When I was very young – old enough that I can remember it, but young enough that I wasn't going to school full time yet – my mother would volunteer at a local nursing home. I never met my maternal grandmother. I think she died a year or two before I was born. I have a vague memory of meeting my maternal grandfather, and there are photos of it, but he died when I was still quite young. Maybe 4 or 5. I don't believe either of my grandparents were in ill health before their deaths. But I think that their deaths affected my mother and she wanted to help other elderly people, so she started volunteering at the nursing home.

I have 2 older brothers who by this time were in school most of the day, leaving my mother and me at home alone. I think she also got bored of doing housework and wanted to do something useful with her time. (I can't say I blame her!) I suspect she also thought that the residents of the nursing home would enjoy interacting with a child, even if it wasn't their own grandchild. So she took me with her. I think she wanted me to learn to value elderly people and to learn to value community service.

Unfortunately, she failed miserably. What I learned was that old people are scary as fuck and I didn't want to be anywhere near them. You this was a nursing home. This was not an "old folks home" where they play canasta, have dances, and engage in elderly hanky panky. This was end-of-life care for people dying of cancer, and the now-preventable diseases like polio. The entire place reeked of vomit, and the old people were hard of hearing and weird. They were almost always in a bed or wheelchair, and usually in hospital gowns. There were often sounds of screaming from other rooms where some patient was in terrible pain from whatever ailment they suffered.

The residents were all old and gray haired except for one. He was a young man. He had to be younger than my mother who would have been in her early 30s. He was probably 20-ish years old. His hair was not gray - it was dark black and close cut with electric clippers, though not quite a crew cut. He was always in a hospital gown and always in a wheelchair that had an IV pole on it (though I don't recall there ever being anything hanging from it). And while he looked normal, he had some sort of mental deficit where he could only grunt and moan. I would often see him loudly moaning and gesticulating as if trying to point at something to say, "give me that," or "take me over there."

The one bright side to this place was that there was a woman in a red and white striped uniform who pushed around a cart full of every type of candy imaginable! I wanted so much to get a peanut butter cup or a chocolate bar from her, but no. Her candy was strictly off-limits to me. (I don't know whether it was cost or health that made my mother refuse to ever let me have a piece of candy.)

I'm pretty sure my mother was trying to teach me the value of both old people and volunteering to help our community. But as a ~4 year old, it was too much. It instead taught me that getting old meant pain, suffering, and eventually death, and that old people are scary as fuck. I didn't want to get old or be around old people. (I eventually got over it and now am nearing being an old person myself. 😉)

As it is only possible to know what it is like to be yourself, it could be that you perceive the world in a completely different way than is typical and have no idea that that is the case. Hence the existence of invisible disabilities such as face blindness or double vision, conditions such as synesthesia and aphantasia, etc. I am curious if anyone here experiences any such mental/perceptual phenomenon that could possibly be unique to you/atypical. Or if you experience one of the above it would be very interesting to hear about as well!

Some examples of what I'm going for:

• a YouTuber/blogger I follow claims their internal monologue takes the form of a humming or buzzing following the cadence and intonation, but not the sounds, of speech.
• my personal inner monologue is usually more of a "dialogue", as in a discussion between me and 1+ imaginary participants (usually someone I know IRL or a character from a book). Although I don't perceive "them" as a separate entity I can't really predict what "they" will say. (feel free to comment if you experience this as well! I only suspect this is weird because mental vocalization is typically referred to as monologue but maybe this is totally normal?)
• I'm pretty sure I experience emotions at a much shallower level than most. When I was very young I actually considered the possibility that I was a robot constructed by my parents, based on some Twilight Zone episode. I would say 95% of the time I don't really feel any emotion and when I do, it feels much less intense than it seems to be for most people judging by their behavior.
• When I'm reading particularly dense text or have spent some time memorizing things, there is sometimes a certain sensation in my head, which, while I wouldn't really call it tiredness or exhaustion, does compel me to stop studying or whatever I'm doing. It's almost analogous to muscle soreness?

i'm currently on the path to receive a BS in business administration management information systems concentration from a four year state school. i was accepted to my major near the end of this spring. my university also has a data analytics minor that i am heavily considering.

once i am done with summer classes i plan to really dive deeper into excel and ease into learning sql b/c that will help in lots of MIS contexts it seems.

i read online that MIS is a great degree that can lead into system admin, database admin, network admin, or business/it/system analyst roles. id find any of these careers interesting so at this point in time i feel on the right path. most importantly i just want to a job that will allow me to live a comfortable life, ya know?

i have never really met anyone that has an MIS degree before so i have no idea what the job market is actually like for degree holders beyond clickbait articles that say how great it is. if you have an mis degree, what is your experience with it and what kind of role are you working? would you recommend this degree to someone else? what skills do you recommend most for hire-ability? id assume this is area specific, but i live in the PNW and live near an area with a strong biz/tech scene and lots of govt opportunities.

i was recently speaking with some CS majors and they were talking about how MIS is a garbage non-technical degree that isnt good for much. obviously CS is a harder more technical degree that can result in higher salary but i feel they were just trying to put my down for pursuing what they saw as a lesser degree, but nonetheless it put a sense of fear into me about my potential career opportunities.

i just need some guidance and would like to hear your experience.

thank you

Responsibilities can be hard sometimes. Sometimes, we aren't acknowledged for our efforts.

What gets you out of bed? What's the narrative you have with yourself as you stare at the ceiling as your alarm jingles? On a side note: What your alarm sound? Is it as brutal as a bullhorn? Or do you prefer something calm, like trickling water?

Related: How do you prefer to be acknowledged at home or compensated at work? Do financial incentives get you going or do you prefer thoughtful gifts or do you look forward speaking with a coworker you get along with?

I've had 3 "adult" jobs. With each job, I've been getting less and less financial compensation (yeah, I know, I'm going the wrong way!). However, with every job, I'm getting happier/more content. I'm not sure if it's related to the financial compensation or just me learning more about myself. I remember working 24/7 at my highest compensation. I had to have my work phone on me at all times, getting phone calls at any time of day (coworkers) and night (contractors). At my second "adult" job, I found that my interpersonal relationship with my coworker(s) made me happier. I'd get out of bed and say "oh, can't wait to tell 'x' about this dream I had" or a new recipe I tried. It also helped that my second job was something I found important (I was an engineer who worked on reducing energy and water consumption for apartment complexes), and the majority of my coworkers felt the same. The job I'm currently in falls right in line with what I studied in school. I work for a consultant company in the wastewater infrastructure field. I'm happy to even have gotten this opportunity. I see it as very important. However, since I work in the field of poo, many of my coworkers and contractors I work with seem very jaded and only has financial compensation in mind. It's hard to be surrounded by that type of attitude. One coworker mentioned that "it's not like people want to work in sewage" and I said "actually, I studied it in school. I just never was able to get my foot in the door until now and I feel lucky that it happened." Don't get me wrong, the work is hard and there are days one gets exhausted and it ALWAYS stinks. But it's important. It effects the health of people and the environment if it isn't done right. Yeah, I'm rambling. I'm just trying to say I thrive off the attitude of people around me. Interpersonal relationships, for me, are better than financial compensation. Don't get me wrong.. pay me fairly, but I'm not going to be bummed if I don't get a huge raise every year. The pay check doesn't get me to work, the people do.

Are you in a male dominated field or have you been in a male dominated field in the past? What was your experience like? Any funny/heartbreaking/etc. stories or interactions you would like to share? What do/did you like/dislike about it? What would you change? How would the field change if males were no longer the majority? What advice would you give to anyone coming into a male dominated field?

With widespread lockdowns and quarantines having been in place for awhile now, I imagine many of us are more intimately familiar with our living spaces -- houses, apartments, rooms, wherever we're stuck -- than we ever have been. We know them inside and out, along with all their positives, negatives, and quirks.

Tell me all about:

• What's the breakdown of your living space?
• What do you appreciate about it?
• What bothers you about it?
• In what ways have you made the space "yours"?
• Do you share it with anyone: pets, plants, or people?
• Are you happy with where you are?
• Is there anything you'd recommend for others regarding their living spaces?

If you are tracking your time, how many hours of focused work are you doing per day on average?

What I mean with focused work is only the time that you are working. Not counting the time you take a break, not counting the time you go to the bathroom, not counting the time you get up to drink water, etc. If you don't stop your time-tracker during non-work activities, please mention it.

I recently went through some old boxes and found my collection of mementos - birthday cards, love letters, ticket stubs, etc. - from years gone by. I'm not convinced marriage will ever be for me, but I've always imagined if I were to get to that point, I'd want to show such a collection to my SO as a way for them to fully understand my story, so to speak. On the one hand, I think of it as a pretty powerful expression of trust in your partner... but I realize the potential for that to massively backfire by introducing jealousy and insecurities. At the same time, I'm very strongly of the belief that what is shared within a relationship is not to be shared with others outside it without mutual consent. I hate gossip, and have had my share of conflict throughout the years over desiring more privacy and discretion in my various SO's conversations with their friends and family about us. That means I would probably choose to leave aside certain things out of respect for my exes, but then I'm not sure if that devalues the gesture.

Any thoughts?

TL;DR: What do you do with your SO (if anything) to spark some fun? Do you have a go-to move, or game that gets interest going for some fun?

A lot of us have been sheltering in place for some time now due to covid-19. What do you do to keep things from getting stale- to show effort, appreciation, and attraction for your significant other?

I'm trying to keep things relatively fresh, but we don't have much space where we are. It takes, for example "naked billiards" off the table. I think they have a copy of "Twister" somewhere, so I might try to see if they're into a game night for some physical closeness. If you have a deck of cards, you can always do strip poker, but it might be a little underwhelming.

Of course, it doesn't always have to be a competition either, back/foot rubs are always a well received from both sides in my experience. I'm also aware of a concept called "Chore-Play[*]" and I try to do what I can to make sure my SO never feels like they're pulling the weight for both of us.

I obviously had a couple ideas, but I'm looking for some inspiration too! I'd like so have some things on the back-burner to whip out when the occasion calls for it, or when the time is right.

PS: I'm not really sure what to expect for responses to this, I know it's a rather personal topic and sharing information like that can be uncomfortable for some. You don't have to share what you do in your relationship if you're not comfortable (obviously), but maybe you share a link of some cool ideas you found somewhere instead? IDK, let's get creative with it!

[*]: With that being said, there is another definition of choreplay that I don't think is what we're after (collectively). I'm not talking about using sex as a bargaining chip for chores, which is what some perceive it as. I'm talking about taking the actions to make your partner feel like valued and appreciated half of the relationship. With those feelings of appreciation and care, comes romance and intimacy.

In these lean COVID-19 times I feel like a lot of people are trying to make a bit of extra cash. I've been thinking about trying out some freelancing platform to market a few of my skills (apparently people pay for at least few things I do for fun?), and I was wondering what people who've used any of the main platforms think of them. I keep seeing conflicting stuff around the web.

I'm finally giving up Reddit and trying to do the traditional catholic "fast" which is 2 small snacks and 1 meal a day during lent. I recently learned about the Black Fast which is a sort of Pescatarian vegan-ish, one meal a day fast which looks interesting. I might try it on Fridays but being coeliacs would make it more challenging.

Ok I'll start:

Brazil: here the schools are split between the fundamental level, which is 1-9th grade, which is then subdivided onto fundamental I and II, which range from 1-5th (ages 6-11) and 6-9th grades (ages 11-15) respectively. Then we have 'medium' level ("Ensino Médio") which goes from 10th-12th grade, and then we have a national test called ENEM, where everyone takes a test to be able to enroll in the many colleges/universities which accept it, where you then reach 'superior' class and take technical courses and the like.

Class goes from 7-12:20 Am for fundamental II and 1-5:20 pm for fundamental I. This is because each day is divided into six periods of 50 minutes (+a 20 minute break, like in most places) for the sake of making subject distribution easier.

There are 8 subjects in fundamental class, Portuguese (grammar), math, geography, history, science, physical education, English (still mostly grammar) and arts. (Unsurprisingly it's more about culture & music than how to draw)
In 'medium' class, 3 more subjects are added, which are biology, physics and chemistry.

Funding for education is reserved for the states to decide, although it usually goes from 15-25% of total tax revenue.

This is sort of a "backlog post" but for real-life: take care of something small that, for whatever reason, you've left unaddressed for too long.

Maybe it's something that keeps ending up on your to-do list but never gets resolved. Maybe your desk is cluttered. Maybe you haven't vacuumed your carpet in a while. Maybe your fridge could use a cleanout. It doesn't have to be cleaning themed, but that's what's coming to mind for me right now, so you can probably guess what mine will be.

Whatever it is, take a few minutes to resolve the issue, then tell us about it here.

• What was the issue?
• Why do you think it kept getting put off?
• How do you feel now that it's done?

I have been thinking recently, if a climate crisis is almost inevitable at this point what actions could an individual take to stay safe? I'm thinking some kind of underground bunker able to to sustain life. The main things you would need is power, water and food. The power is fairly simple since you could set up solar and wind generation and probably use that to grow food underground but I'm wondering what you would do for water. How possible would it be to collect barrels from the sea and have a personal desalination plant.

Inspired by similar topics such as "what are you reading" and "what creative project are you working on", and being obsessed with structured self-development, I thought I'd start this.
As the title says. Share what your goal is, why you want to achieve it and how you will go about it (the steps/behaviors). You can include a timeline/target date which hopefully will instill a sense of accountability and increase motivation.
I'm also hoping to get some inspiration and/or tips for my own life goals.

If this gains interest I might post this once a quarter for follow-ups and new goals.

I'll share mine in a comment below.

The question is open to anyone attending any level of school in any capacity.

How are you feeling?
What are you excited about?
What are you nervous about?
What are your goals?
What are you hoping to get out of your education?

I've written about my living situation previously but am curious as to whether there are any other tilderinos living off grid. What sort of accommodation do you live in? What do you do for a living (if anything)? Are you self sufficient to done extent? How do you use technology to improve your lifestyle?

It can be specific or broad, and it can be aimed at a particular type of person based on your experiences (e.g. people in my city, people with fibromyalgia, etc.) or just people at large.

Also, given that age is a very identifying piece of information, feel free to give a range if you're not comfortable sharing your exact age (e.g. "I'm in my 40s" rather than "I'm 42").

• What advice or wisdom would you give to someone 10 years younger than you?
• What would you have wanted to know 10 years ago that someone older could have shared with you?
• If you'd heard the kind of advice you're giving, would you have listened to it 10 years ago?

Consider the life you want to live, from the essentials to the luxuries. House, car, food, tech, kids, etc. Furthermore, consider where you want to live. Rural France? Downtown Tokyo?

For the purposes of the question I don't want you to think of the life of your wildest dreams (e.g. private jet, personal island, etc.), but I don't want you to think bare minimum either. Focus instead on "comfortable and fulfilling" according entirely to your own standards--a life that lets you live well and follow your aspirations with a sense of financial safety. Do not feel obligated to give a low, reasonable answer if your aspirations are higher, and don't feel obligated to shoot high if you're fine with a lower-cost lifestyle. Set your number entirely based around the desired archetypal life you want, rather than what you think is necessarily achievable based on your current financial situation.

Furthermore, don't anchor your hypothetical income to real-world standards. If you want to, for example, teach kindergarteners for a living and live in downtown San Francisco, and your desired income is $200,000 USD a year, that's perfectly fine for the purposes of this discussion despite the fact that you would be hard pressed to find a school there in real life that pays that much. I'm much more interested in the hypotheticals of the costs in your life rather than the feasibility of the income. Think of this less as a real-world budget and more of a thought experiment/personal reflection.

With all that in mind:

• What are the details of the life you want to live?
• Where do you want to live it?
• How much money would you need each year to make that feasible for you, and why?

I'm not interested in anything exact--just a ballpark estimate. And you don't need to give a full budget or anything. This should loose napkin math at best.

Also, to make things easier for everyone:

• Give your money as an amount per year.
• Give the currency you're using.
• Use combined income if your desired life involves multiple people.
• Do not judge someone else's desired life nor income.

Also, please specify which currency you are reporting in so that people can convert it to their local currency if needed to get a better sense of it.

There are, sadly, far too many people and companies out there more than willing to take advantage of people. Fortunately, awareness is usually a good defense. What are some scams that we should all know about so that we don't fall for them?

Working and studying from home, it's hard not to acquire bad habits. Most of the time I follow the Pomodoro Technique, so I have constant small breaks instead of large ones. But sometimes I just stay on the computer looking at different things such as Reddit and Tildes, and it doesn't feel very restful. At the same time, if I change the context too much, it's easy to lose track of time (yes, even with apps), and I have trouble refocusing on my work, study etc.

This may seem like a trivial problem for some, but not for me!

Summing up: what can I do on my breaks (4 x 5 minutes followed by 1 x 25 minutes) that is both restful and pleasurable, but not excessively engaging?

A bit of a darker or at least more introspective question than I usually ask, but I think it's a valid one and something worth considering. It's something I've been grappling with recently myself.

As you reflect on your life, is there something which makes its absence known? Something you wish you had, but don't? Do you think you'll ever be able to change, fill, fix, or work around it? Do you think it'll change with time or remain permanent? How does the missing whatever-it-is impact your life?

A final note: given that people are likely going to be sharing some difficult stuff, it's important to remember that empathic listening, particularly online, isn't usually about offering solutions. Questions are often better than answers in conversations of this type.

After watching Office Space for the first time a few weeks ago, I was struck by the scene where Peter is talking about his average working day, and it got me to wondering about how much actual work I do at my job. I'm pretty sure that even on a good day, I put in less than 2 hours of actual graft. The rest is just mindless internetting, chatting with my colleagues, and wishing I was elsewhere.
So I'm curious how much work other people actually do in a day, and how you pass the time when you're not doing anything at all?

By “happiness” I don't mean “the place where happy people are happy all the time”, but rather “the absence of persisting suffering”.

For some context, I've been suffering from clinical depression for over nine years now. Maybe more. I've been hurt by other people many times in my life, especially in childhood and during school. I have almost never felt connected to another human being, and the older I get, the harder it gets to get any kind of intimacy. I feel like “I'm a creep and I'm a weirdo” regularly, as if my teen angst has never left me. On a good day I will merely be tired, and I think I don't need to describe a bad day.

Recently I've been discovering interesting approaches to therapy and using awareness to “pull yourself by the boot straps”, but whenever the time comes to actually use them in practice, a very real question: “Why should I do it? Happiness is impossible, I will always be what I am, so why go through additional pain of trying to change anything when the result isn't guaranteed?”.

So the question is: how do you answer this (loaded) question? How do you get back your faith in better future for yourself when you have so little experience actually being better? Can you actually do that?

Whether you will start it on January 1st or already doing it, what is it that is going to make you a better person?

For me, I decided to limit my two biggest timesinks, namely, Youtube and Reddit. I started several days ago and won't wisit them at all before I pass all the exams. Before, they were often an excuse for me to spend time basically doing nothing. Time to change that. (And yet, I'm doing the dame thing right now with ~, but oh well, it doesn't have content anyway)

I find myself on a bit of an unending quest to organize my own thoughts, especially since my work evolved into multiple streams on different projects.

I have been looking for a tool to help me organize myself and focus on the things I want to do. More specifically, I keep wanting to improve my ability to remember things: Be able to remember faster, longer, recall more reliably, categorize, filter and export those things, etc.
Links, reading material, "watch later" material, todo lists, contacts, phone numbers/emails, identities, what I know about people, reminders, highlights, emails to respond to, work logging, etc. The more I think about it, the more I have this need for a tool that essentially acts as a permanent second brain.

I feel like I've tried everything. Note-taking apps like Keep, orgmode, wikis, journals, disorganized text files, issue trackers, Pocket, gmail itself, calendar reminders, even Magic. Nothing quite works. The issues I most consistently hit are:

• The method is not good enough at ingesting abstract data. Examples: Anything calendar-bound is not good at storing anything that isn't related to a point in time. Pocket cannot store things that aren't links to web pages.
• The method is far too cumbersome to be able to braindump into it or too impractical to retrieve data from. Examples: Wikis, Keep and other object-based note-taking systems are unfilterable unless you take a ton of time to attach a lot of metadata to each note. Magic is too asynchronous as you sometimes wait several minutes for responses (and it also gets far too expensive to use at the level I'd like).

Despite trying everything, I don't know if I want to build that tool myself, because I think it probably already exists somewhere (and it might be down to me not knowing how to use the things that are already out there). Although if someone does feel inspired to build that, hit me up. :)

My current flow looks like a frankenstein mix of Keep/Gmail/Calendar, which at least integrate with one another, and a ton of proprietary or dissociated methods (including Pocket, Discord, Spreadsheets/Drive, Magic, Kayak, 1Password and a ton of duplicate files and documents). Then it just becomes a matter of remembering what type of information is where, and how to best find it.

So Tildes, what do you use?

Basically the title. Looking online you see stuff like "get sleep!" "eat healthy!" but that's just like general health stuff and yeah unhealthiness is stressful but it doesn't really reduce stress much.

So what do you guys do when you want to depressurize and relax a little bit? I haven't ever actually tried it but I hea want to try meditation, just need to set aside a chunk of time for it.

There are so many variants of beards, stubble, mustache, etc. around, and also clean shaven style. It's interesting why people prefer their particular facial hair styles, kinda the ideas behind them. Maybe depending on how it grows, and to feel confident, to be liked by others, or it feels nice, or something else. What's your story?

I was having a conversation with one of my coworkers who mentioned that her child showed a fascination with scary, Halloween-type stuff starting around age 6. She and her husband had a hard time with whether they should let him enjoy it or limit it. They weren't sure whether to let him read scary books or watch spooky stuff on YouTube, particularly because it's the type of content that can very easily be age-inappropriate--especially for a 6 year old. Nevertheless, it was relatively easy for them to keep it to stuff like Jack-o-Lanterns and black cats since he was so young.

The boy is now older but has retained his interest, and the parents are still struggling with decisions about allowable content, especially because he is starting to age into books and movies that deal with much darker stuff, particularly ideas about death/violence.

I'm not a parent, but I am a teacher, and I have to admit that I'm uncomfortable with some of the stuff my students are exposed to. Over the years I've heard students as young as twelve discuss horror movies like the Saw series or The Human Centipede. I've had middle school students bring books like Gone Girl and 50 Shades of Gray to class. On one hand, I think kids are resilient, and I think a lot of the more difficult or disturbing stuff doesn't quite land for them because they don't really have a context into which to put it yet. I also believe that fictional media is a mostly safe way for us to explore troubling or disturbing ideas.

On the other hand, I think the internet has caused our children to grow up a lot faster than they used to, as they are exposed to mature content (whether intentionally or accidentally) from a very early age. When I was growing up the worst I could do was check out a slightly-risqué book from the school library and hope my parents never found it in my backpack. Now kids are watching violent (often real-world) and pornographic content starting as young as elementary school. Nothing can make your heart sink quite like sixth graders talking excitedly over lunch about a video of a real person getting crushed to death.

What I genuinely don't know is if this has any negative developmental effect. Am I just clutching my pearls here? I'd love to hear some parents talk about how they've handled the decision of what's right for their kids and whether they've had fallout from their kids consuming content that's not appropriate for them.