21
votes
What's on your mind?
My time going back to traditional forums has made me realize that Tildes is missing a general lounge kind of space. This group comes the closest, but even the threads here are focused in a way that feels a bit different.
So here I only ask: what's on your mind?
Many websites put important links to all the different parts of their sites in the footer, but many also load additional content on scroll, meaning that if you want something in the footer, you have to chase it down the page. The moment you get it on your screen, something loads ahead of it and pushes it down further. Again and again. Over and over. This has happened to me on multiple sites, most recently Bookshop.org (I don’t know if the desktop site does it, but the mobile site definitely does). It’s jarring and off-putting and also almost funny in a sad sort of way. I feel like I’m Charlie Brown trying to kick the football in the footer, and the site is Lucy — constantly pulling it away as soon as I get close. It’s like physical comedy that’s coded directly into a webpage.
Good news! You managed to do a fine job
I think you express yourself very well. But you shouldn't feel that you have an obligation to do so. Some people like to keep to themselves, that's fine ;)
It's habit. Express yourself more and it will start to feel natural and you'll express yourself better.
The NFL should change the overtime rule.
Currently...overtime is often won on a coin flip (opening drive => score a TD => game over. No rebuttal).
The second team should get a chance to equalize.
Even BEER PONG has better rules.
I am going to be a tutor for a university course. This is very weird for me as I always considered myself to be not a good speaker, socially awkward and things like that.
The main teacher of the course basically specifically choose me, because they thought I did really well in this course and the course following it and asked me to help. That feels very strange to me. I don't think I am bad at the subject matter of the courses, but I still would never think that someone would specifically choose me like this. These two classes were probably my favorite classes I took so far, so I couldn't decline when they asked me.
I hope I won't be too bad at this.
You were choosen for this task because you showed competence on the subject. You'll be fine! I did that before, more than once. Honestly, it was a blast!
Just remember that no one expects a teacher or tutor to know everything. If you don't know the answer, just tell them that. "I don't know the answer right now, but I'll look into it". Establish right from the start that it's okay to say "I don't know", and the students will respect you for it.
I am thinking about how annoying bluetooth is. Like, how do my cheap earphones connect the second I take them out of their case, every single time - but my expensive speaker only does that maybe 30% of the time and my car never connects without prompting? (but it will auto-connect to my wife's phone from 20m+ away so if she's at home when I go out, I have to drive out of range before I can connect my phone)
I have a reasonably modern phone running an up to date OS (Pixel 4A, android 12), how is this so fucking flaky? I would mind less if it was consistent - eg, if my speaker only connected by itself if it was the last BT device I'd used, that would at least be something I could see coming, but it's apparently random.
It's so frustratingly close to being really useful but so annoyingly far away. I mean, first world problems, but still. It's bugging me.
I think it would work better if bluetooth connections needed to be initiated by physically bumping the devices together with some kind of NFC magic. As is the devices are given the impossible job of trying to guess what you want. Why not require explicit human input instead? And bumping is analog enough that it's intuitive and won't require digging through some crummy UI.
Edit: There's definitely just some terrible bluetooth chipsets out there. But even Apple's airpods that are significantly less bad struggle when you have them registered with more than one device. Just turned on your laptop while on a call? Guess you wanted to connect your airpods to the laptop mid-sentence :P That would at least be solved with a physical bump connection process.
its strange. its the printer technlogy of consumer electronics. it just does not work well and never did. i dont know why its so hard to make it work really well. i mean @teaearlgraycold s idea seems a better way to do it by far.
The latest episode of the book of boba fett really sucked. It felt like the prequels.
I like the prequels! :P
Have you watched Hal9000's prequel fanedits? They're super good. I can send you some links to get them if you're into it.
Sure, send me the link's. It'll be a nice way to rewatch it. But I really do like the prequels, only certain specific things bother me.
Essentially, these fanedits cut out Jar Jar almost completely, but not where he is needed or where it would disrupt the flow. He stays part of the story, but not as failed comic relief, if that makes sense.
It also tones down the politics quite a bit without it feeling unnatural. The political stuff is the scene that this all takes place. Check the notes on the following pages for more info. I'm a big fan of the prequels and I think these tell the story the best.
I love everything the Star Wars scene is doing. 4k77 and 4K83 are excellent. 4K80 should be ready this or next year, which would complete the series. They're definitely worth obtaining.
Awesome.
Yeah no one loves Jar Jar. I have nothing against the political parts, really, I actually think it's a good allegory (or something like that). I'm weird, George Lucas calls me when he's feeling depressed :P
Let me know what you think. It still has the politics -- if you're like me, you'll finish the fanedit and say, 'wait, what did they cut?' and check the list of changes.
Its all headcanon, but Darth Jar Jar really seems like the original intention for Jar Jar. It's a shame it was scrapped, if in fact that was to be the way.
That's one of the greatest fan theories of all time, IMO. And I really wish that ended up being the truth. The prequels would have been so much better had Jar-Jar turned out to be a secret Sith Lord, as that would have been a true "subversion of expectations" with a great payoff, unlike the hamfisted attempt at that in The Last Jedi. However, the unfortunate truth seems to be that George Lucas genuinely thinks Star Wars is "for children" (despite the prequels focus on galactic politics, war, slavery, and genocide?), and Jar-Jar was simply meant to be a "comic sidekick". See: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9fN2gypFa-I
The ILM animators might have been inspired by Zui Quan for Jar-Jar, but sadly George clearly didn't intend for him to be anything more than comic relief.
there is no sequel trilogy or Ben Solo. :)
It really is one of the better theories out there, though. I think it aligns with interviews and background footage from around that time, too. Lucas is great at some things, but not very good with others... I wouldn't be surprised if he's speaking to the revised Jar Jar. But again, its all headcanon. Its such a stupid character otherwise.
I'd love to see Favreau and Filoni come out and say 'franchise reboot! we're going back to Ben Skywalker and Jacen Solo!' -- there are so many amazing stories that they passed up on... and not for any reason, either.
Check those fanedits out if you haven't already. If you need a link, let me know. Its hosted on Drive but there are also torrents there, too.
None that I have seen. So if you have any links handy, I would be intrigued to see them!
Already have, several years ago. And I agree, they're a dramatic improvement over the official cuts, IMO. :)
You need to be generous with the context, but there's this where Lucas said that 'Jar Jar was the key to all of this'. This is the Phantom Menace behind the scenes documentary. It can be taken as 'he needs to be done right so he's still funny and not annoying' or it could be taken that the character is more important than we initially assume. I think the DJJ theory fits -- but there are a lot of theories that fit that weren't part of the plan.
I'd love for him to simply give a breakdown of the original intention for Jar Jar, even if it was just as a goofy sidekick -- but for him to be on sodium pentathol...
Well, given the fact that Jar-Jar was quite literally inspired by Goofy, I think the fan theory is a huge stretch, despite me loving it, and wishing it was true.
And IMO George saying Jar-Jar was the "key to all this" in the documentary (which I have already watched, BTW) is more than likely just about the character needing to be funny enough, which is why that character aspect is what he immediately starts talking about after that line.
but I want to believe! :) Goofy does make sense, though.
Its amazing what they did with those computers, small displays, and all, eh.
Haha, sorry to burst your bubble. I really do wish George Lucas was as much of a genius as some people think, and all the awesome fan theories were true... but, TBH I'm pretty firmly in the "his ex-wife is the only reason the original trilogy weren't just as shit as the prequels were" camp. As also perfectly exemplified by all the genuinely fucking terrible changes he made to them in the 90's "Special Edition" re-releases. :P
And yeah, George may kinda suck at writing and directing (IMO), but he actually is a genius when it comes to business, and pushing film-making technology forwards. So credit where credit is due there. Much like James Cameron, his influence on how modern movies get made cannot be denied.
My general conclusion in these kinds of situations is that some writers and directors are actually masters of world building more than anything. Spielberg is truly multitalented, the guy can do pretty much anything creative. He doesn't write anymore, cause honestly writing is boring as shit :P (and someone in his position must receive many top screenplays anyway...). But he could if he wanted to.
Lucas? Not so much.
hahaa yeah, Lucas needs his team. Everything great about the OT came from his wife or close friends.
In an alternate universe, DePalma directed Star Wars.
Holy smokes, I've never seen that before. That ... might've made me fall in love with the prequels if it had panned out that way.
I thought it was a fantastic episode of the Mandalorian, but that may say something that I liked Mando getting in a fight with his mom and a sportscar more engaging then Boba being kingpin of sand town.
New job is alternating between manageable and anxiety inducing. Mostly because it involves a lot of driving of company owned vehicles on company property, and I'm nervous that eventually I'm going to fall short in some way, either wrecking a car, or getting carsick at an inopportune time, or otherwise being unable to perform. I have a fantastic driving record, but more road time means more risk, and I'm much more comfortable with a busted computer as a troubleshooter than a car tester.
Huh, how hard is that driving? Are you an ambulance driver or something? :P
I think you're gonna be fine!
Autonomous Vehicle Tester for a big three auto company. Not really difficult driving, but they need very particular conditions with unfinished code, so a lot of repetition.
Seems like human_fail_condition could generate some great test data. Your mistakes are a feature, not a bug!
I see. Well, that sounds more complicated than I thought, I thought it were just regular driving. But if you manage to not die from boredom, sounds like you'll be okay!
(PS: This comment was written for r/MensLib, so that's who "us" or "we" refers to. I also posted this same comment in the mental health thread, they both seem fitting.)
Tl;dr: Sometimes I feel treating yourself as equal to the person/people you are trying to befriend/date (or get a raise from, or convince them of progressivism) impossible because I feel doing those things is centered on convincing them you're worth their time and it makes me feel frustrated that I will need to do one or both of these things in the future.
...It also makes me understand why the traditional ideal of the self-reliant man can be so enticing to many people.
(Disclaimer: I don't mean to say this is how the people on the receiving end of whatever you do to indicate you want a platonic relationship/asking people out perceive those things. Realistically they don't make a big deal out of it and usually either tag along or give some perfectly benign reason to not do that. It's just that I feel really inferior to them because they can take me for granted and I can't. It's like this meme depicting asking women out on Tinder as a male court jester entertaining the queen, which I think would resonate really hard with a lot of us.)
Sometimes it feels wanting things from other people inherently puts you in a position where they have leverage over you because they have something you want, and that pushes you to either act in a conciliatory tone to them where you try to avoid outright disagreements with them and pointing out problematic logic if it shows up is kind of a no-go or to act as usual and inevitably have a much harder time getting what you want. From progressives talking about how debating moderate white people on police violence or trans rights or any progressive topic is frustrating to needing to do performative nonsense to earn raises and promotions in your workplace or your resume to how socializing and dating people feels like something mostly/entirely centered in winning their approval. Thing is, stuff related to racism, sexism and the workplace have been addressed by social and economic leftism and we all know that conversations about race or gender or income don't need to happen this way, that these problems with these subjects don't even need to exist. Problem is, human relationships can't be solved in a similar way. We can point out behavior based on negative (or positive) social stereotypes that are based on regressive (or just simply incorrect) notions about social dynamics so people aren't unfairly judged for some attributes they have, but I can't help but feel that this is easier to do when you aren't also concerned about winning social approval from the same others who might have said troubling thought patterns.
Yeah, I understand that those are things that happen, if I get what you're trying to say you express a concern with some hierarchical features of social interaction. The meme you shared makes that quite clear, I think.
Those are very real things. With time I realized that those people that view the world in terms of abstract degrees of status are not really worth my time. If a potential friend thinks I must prove my value over and over, they cease to be someone I wish to be friends with. If a girl on Tinder expects me to do all the effort like the guy in the meme, well, that is not the kind of girl I wanna be with anyway.
The good news is, there are bunches of awesome people to be friends with, and lots of great girls that will treat you with respect and consideration. In my view, every relationship must be based on mutual interest, effort and affection, right from the start. It's a collaboration, not a competition. It may take some time to find your matches in life, but believe me they do exist. Focus on them, and forget about those who like playing games. Even if you manage to be accepted, they're usually really bad company.
Been thinking that I need to start applying for work again. I feel a bit rusty with my programming, especially since I've been working in an uncommon language for the last few years. I've been doing some leetcode problems in JavaScript and Python to loosen up, but it still feels a little weird to swap between them.
What uncommon language are you using?
Clojure, a Lisp dialect on the JVM.
I suspected it would be some kind of lisp. Cool!
I kinda want to unload about this, but don't think it's thread-worthy. I tried twice, but couldn't think of a way to spin it into more than a, well... "What's on my mind" sort of topic.
I don't have a reddit account for the first time in 11 years. I switched to a new one, but got blocked from one subreddit because it was too new. I don't know why, but it seemed to be the final push to get me to quit. I think the first step was deleting an 11-year-old account and all the attachment I had to it.
It leads to this problem: I feel like I've cast myself adrift. It's just the Internet, and I already spend too much time on it/in front of my computer, but I've just cut myself off from a my biggest time waster and knowledge reinforcer (I liked answering questions on various subreddits). I've got more thoughts and emotions than I though I'd have about it. There's a lot to unpack here, but I'm not sure how to go about it, I guess.
I finished work and studying, and I really wanna play The Outer Worlds, but my girlfriend is watching some moody drama with Olivia Colman on the TV :P
All of the media management tools I've been using on my collection of ~300 shows/~4000 movies flatly suck at their jobs. :P
Let's meet the contenders...
If there are any other functional ones out there I'd love to try them. I've been raging at metadata for about a week now in my spare time. It really shouldn't be this hard.
I know you're currently using Kodi, but have you considered just switching to Plex, since it's more of an all-in-one solution? I have been using Plex for over a decade, and IMO it does a pretty decent job on all fronts (including metadata & subtitle fetching, etc.) without needing much manual intervention. The vast majority of the time I can simply download a tv show/movie, and my torrent client and Plex do the rest of the organizational BS for me automatically.
I set Plex up last Christmas (comes with my Synology as a one-click setup). That was so a friend could run the Plex client on that garbage Roku-TV operating system (which doesn't support Kodi or installing apps or even the google play store). It works well too, and I did consider changing to it because it is a lot easier to manage than Kodi - except that there's this pay-for premium membership if I expect to access my media using it from more than a couple of devices or use features I get for free on Kodi with plugins and various apps. I like it, but not enough to drop a $120 lifetime membership on it yet.
I have a lot of devices (four just in this house not counting phones) so that was a non-starter for me. The Synology I'm using is also too old/slow/memory limited to do the transcoding for anything over 720p/x264 so if I go Plex I really should upgrade the media server so it isn't gimped. I was tempted, though. Plex is pretty badass now.
I do like the feature set and the plex library interface. Tiny Media Manager and Media Elch support exporting the metadata as plex-compatible and I bet they do that better than Kodi with the plex xml format. I also like how dirt simple Plex makes accessing things over the internet, though I do have some reservations about their claims to 'privacy.' If money is involved they'll be selling that data someday no matter what they say now.
The main reason my media is such a mess is because I'm finishing up a media cleanup that I've been putting off for years and adding a truckload of stuff from two other collections to my own (including a lot of dedupe/better copies). Once it's done, it's done. I was just surprised and annoyed to find it harder now than it was the last time I got this deep into the maintenance. Feels like the apps moved backwards rather than forwards.
I like to have all the data on my server so that my media apps never need to touch the internet at all to pull up trailers, art, themes, shows, summaries, actors, etc. Local information only, no internet required. I guess I'm just old fashioned. :P
Plex is a privacy nightmare, you could take a look at the very cool Jellyfin open source project. ;) I think it is a fork from Emby?
Has Jellyfin improved their app support? My friend who has a plex server was looking at moving to Jellyfin but they didn't have apps for Roku and another major platform I can't remember off the top of my head. The only reason I know Roku has their own proprietary programming language was when I was trying to write a Jellyfin for Roku app from scratch.
Hum... It is definitely a work in progress it seems. Here is the list with all the available and upcoming clients.
I have an Apple TV and there is no native app (work in progress, called SwiftFin at the moment) but with Infuse works flawlessly. I think with MrMC or Kodi works well too.
Edit: ah, the comment above already replied with the client list. Oh well :)
There's a Jellyfin channel for Roku. Here are the supported clients.
I'm not sure how well it works with Roku, but I've set it up for a parent and at least did basic testing that it worked. The Android app works reasonably well, too.
@TemulentTeatotaler
Very small story that might only be funny to me: Just got headhunted today by a tech company called Jellyfish. It took me an embarrassing amount of time to piece together that this was not the open-source project Jellyfin. I was sitting at my desk like "Really? The open-source video streaming project that didn't have a ton of programmers just raised $71m in funding and is hiring full-time infrastructure engineers? Weird..."
Please lord let the coffee get into my bloodstream.
Congrats on the job offer!
And if the patron saints of caffeination get in the way of some addled appreciation of coincidence, may their beans always be unground.
If you want to give premium a try, you can get a free month with the promo code HDHR01MONTH.
IMO, $120 is a small price to pay for not having to deal with such a massive headache. :P But to each their own. If you want to keep banging away at organizing your media so its all exactly how you like it, and want everything stored locally, Kodi is probably still the best for you.
p.s. FYI, you can actually add extra media, like artwork, embedded metadata, subtitles, trailers and such, from local storage to Plex though, you just have to enable the Local Media Assets agent. See:
https://support.plex.tv/articles/200220677-local-media-assets-movies/
https://support.plex.tv/articles/200220717-local-media-assets-tv-shows/
https://support.plex.tv/articles/local-files-for-trailers-and-extras/
How do you get your shows / movies? Sonarr and Radarr can both pull the metadata and generate NFOs when the stuff downloads.
Doesn't help with the existing stuff, but it'd be handy for new downloads.
quick edit: TMM v3 is still available -- it seems to be what everybody is sticking with. There's also Bazarr that works with Sonarr and Radarr for fetching subs.
Interesting, I'm unfamiliar with Bazaar/Sonarr/Radarr. I'll check them out, and thanks for mentioning them. <3
they're pretty great. It can automatically organize the download, pull all of the metadata, etc, and even set permissions and a group -- but not a lot of people use this part.
Aside from the actual automation part, Sonarr has a calendar, which I use a lot. You can also export the calendar as an iCal or RSS. Pretty handy in some circumstances.
Sounds like I could automate adding media to the library with this, and that's just what I need to avoid this annoying, though infrequent, cleanup work.
yeah, it should work well. When you import a series, it'll only pull the basics for the series like an NFO with actors, other basic metadata, and then the series posters (banner, fanart, poster, season##-poster, tvshow.nfo.)
When you download new stuff it'll pull episode NFOs and thumbnails. :)
Insomnia, plain and simple.
Do you have that often?
I’m a non 24 so it comes and goes, but this week it’s been particularly bad.
What's a "non 24"? :P
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Non-24-hour_sleep%E2%80%93wake_disorder
It was interesting to see gaywallet get nuked off the site. I’m not familiar with any Tildes drama so that was insightful.
That’s actually sad. I disagreed with them on some subjects, but did understand their concerns with moderation and discourse. A lot of major users (gaywallet, suspended, Tindall, arp242) have gone off the site. I’m worried them leaving will impact discussion for the worse.
I’m sorry, what happened?
Gaywallet and Deimos have been butting heads for a long time, mostly because Gaywallet insists (and I agree) that we need more than one moderator here. After the exchange you identified in the antiwork thread, Gaywallet asked that those comments be removed.
He also had a global (not per thread, mind you) rate limit applied, and when he posted about this in ~tildes, Deimos chose to ban him without warning.
I think I've seen more of his threads complaining about the moderation than I have his comments/conversations that sparked the moderation. When I saw that thread you mentioned my reaction was wtf, another one?! I can't say I'm surprised. Complaining repeatedly about being moderated in public, attempting to stir up drama, is a sure fire way to get canned on any site. Deimos has been more patient with him than I'd have been.
I submit that this is an unfair characterization of Gaywallet's motivations.
Perhaps. It's a pattern I've seen repeat a thousand times in many forums over the years, and that's typically the motive I ascribe to this behavior. In this case there were multiple incidents, multiple warnings. That may just be my own bias as a burned out moderator. What would you say the motive was from your perspective?
Is it possible that Gaywallet has genuine and good-faith disagreements with Deimos' moderation policies, and wants to discuss them in public? I certainly don't agree with everything Deimos does, and transparency in moderation is one of Tildes' principles.
That’s a shame. I think it’s a good sign of a healthy community when there are some regular complainers around. Organically that’s how things should be. But I don’t know the whole story and maybe there were some spicy DMs.
I’m honestly not really sure. I just know I recently witnessed a user on here get banned for a year in real time. I am not here enough to get into the drama so that was the first time I had seen anything like that here.
Do you have the context and/or thread where and why this happened? Or has it all been deleted?
All I really know about Gaywallet is that he’s a long-time Tildes user
Edit: I followed my hunch and checked out the r/antiwork thread. And it appears that Gaywallet was getting heated. Looks like the comments in question have been removed so I don’t know exactly what happened. But I think I can fill in the blanks.