Following on the spirit of the book recommendation topic we can just log here what we are reading recently. I'm guilty of reading many books in parallel and oftentimes not finishing them nevertheless, here is my current list:

• Andy Weir: Artemis
• Sapiens
• Umberto Eco: The Name of the Rose
• David Graeber: Debt - Updated and Expanded: The First 5,000 Years
• Michael Booth: The Almost Nearly Perfect People: Behind the Myth of the Scandinavian Utopia
• Cullen Roche: Pragmatic Capitalism

That's a mouthful but I'm really curious what drives the situation when you go on the Facebook support forum, on popular threads there's tons of people posting absolutely nonsense comments that have nothing to do with the topic, and a lot of them are accounts from Asia... has anyone else noticed this? Are they just spamming to get account visibility?

For those unfamiliar Kailo.com is a site somewhat similar to tildes in that it want to encourage rational discussion. Although it is also significantly different than tildes because it seeks more to organize the discussion into claims that are evaluated independently.

I tend to think the site has some potential and there might be ideas related to it that could benefit tildes. I'm interested in what aspects the community here likes about the site and what aspects might be worthwhile to incorporate.

As a side note, do sites wanting to encourage rational thinking need more facilities to encourage the use of sources. One thing I've noticed about Kailo is that it's not every concerned with sourcing their claims with evidence.

I'm posting this as a text post so I can give some additional background.

For those not in the loop, BronyCon is an annual convention hosted in the Baltimore Convention Center organized by fans of TV show My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic. It started in 2011 and it peaked in attendance in 2015 with 10,011 present. This year was the 10th BronyCon, and they had 5,465 attendees. That's nothing to sneeze at, but it's a far cry from 2015, and it would be expected to go down further as Bronies continue to go on in life and become less involved with the community. In addition, the show is expected to end with either season 9 or 10, which would shrink the community even further.

Rather than attempt to convert into a general entertainment convention (and try to compete with the likes of Comic-Con) or become a small convention like they started out, the organizers have decided to make 2019 the last BronyCon, and to make it a 4-day event (August 1-4) to go out with a bang.

There are other MLP conventions (you can find a list of those that have/will happen here), but BronyCon was the original convention for fans of Friendship is Magic, and none are as big as it.

With all this being said, you can see the announcement on the website, and in the video from the closing ceremony. I was there, and it was a huge shock. The lower-level staff were not told either, so as to prevent the news from leaking early.

So, what are your thoughts? To any current or former Bronies, do you plan on attending? For those who never cared for or watched the show, have any similar things happened to TV shows/movies/etc you are a fan of?

I'm working towards becoming a full time web developer and I would love to see a thread dedicated to sharing developer tools, tips, code help, etc. I have learned a lot from these type of subreddits and think they would be a great addition to Tildes.

Getting help, I always need help lol, always inspires me to help others. I believe that to be a desired trait of this new community. It's my dream to become a web developer. On my journey I'd love more help and also have the ability to help others on Tildes!

Have you ever wondered how little of a difference of input lag you can perceive? With this tool, you can find out.

The screen is split into two halves, and one of them has an artificial amount of input lag (default 50 ms, you can change it) added to the mouse cursor. Figure out which side feels laggier and click on it. After 25 trials, it will show your results. If you can consistently score at least 18/25 correct at a certain amount of lag, then you can probably perceive it. I can go as low as 20-25 ms on my 144 hz monitor.

Be sure to edit one of the files as shown here to disable v-sync, or if you trust me you can download my copy.

So, it might just be that I'm older and notice these things more, but it really seems to me that fan groups are becoming more and more toxic overall. It feels like over the past 5-8 years specifically fanbases are reaching toxic levels faster and faster.

I remember when bronies became a thing, it took them like 3-4 years before the dangerous, threatening, and assholeish behavior really began to become common. Then Steven Universe came out and it only took them like 2 years to start sending death threats to people who didn't support their head-cannons. Rick and Morty went toxic in under a year and a half.

Then there's the shit in long-running franchises. Star Wars has had multiple of the actors shutting off social media from the toxic bile being shot at them. Chris Pratt is getting hate for what Star Lord did in Infinity War.

There's memes too, weirdly enough. Calarts is the biggest example I can think of. People made a dumb joke about how all the cartoons look a like today and someone pointed out how a few of the artists went to this one school in California and it became a catch all term for the shitty artstyle, and then within like 4 weeks the school has to go into lockdown because someone made a tongue-in-cheek threat of shooting the school up. A few years ago trolling attempts would be things like ordering a bunch of pizzas to the school or something annoying and dickish but overall harmless like that.

I know toxicity amongst fanbases has always been a thing, but it really seems to me that they're reaching unseen levels and doing so faster and faster. I mean Rick and Morty fans rioted over fucking dipping sauce, there are the aforementioned Steven Universe death threats, the directed attacks of actors on social media, fucking joking about shooting schools up because you don't like the art-style a few of their graduates used in a time where we've seen like 6 school shootings in half a year, there was that whole Voltron incident where a fan stole storyboards or something and threatened to release them to the public unless the creators of the show made their favorite gay ship a thing.

I guess what I'm getting at is what the fuck is happening that's poisoning every single community online? It's like everything has suddenly devolved into Youtube comments. How did we get to this level of toxicity? Or am I just more aware of this shit now and it's not really all that different from how it used to be?