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Introductions | August 2018
Hi all!
I'm new to Tildes and thought it'd be a great idea to get to know the other Tildes users.
Just post something about yourself. Maybe where you're from, what you do for a living, a hobby you have, anything!
Canadian here! Software developer (mostly web) who loves devops culture and strong UX principles. I believe that design is creativity in the service of others, and that being excellent to one another is a cool and good idea.
Just hopped onto Tildes for the first time today, and I'm really digging the community! Thank you all for being so kind and welcoming, I'm very excited to see what this platform grows into.
Typical Canadian.
^ my intro is the same as this guy's.
Thanks for writing my intro for me dyyyl!
Yeah I just got on Tildes for the first time yesterday, and it seems to be a great community.
Also seems to be a lot of software developers here, but that's not too surprising.
Canadian software developer here too
¡Buenos días! Es bueno que hay personas de todo el mundo aquí.
I'm a short-haired metalhead who OD'ed on JRPGs as a teenager, writes shitty science fantasy, runs OpenBSD on all of his personal computers, works as a software developer for a living, and deals mainly with Microsoft tech at work for his sins. I dropped out of college and have no intention of ever going back. I'm married, staring down my 40th birthday, atheist, a recovering Randroid turned libertarian socialist, and I have delusions of erudition and profound doubts about the wisdom of the left's commitment to nonviolence.
That's interesting you say you've converted to the libertarian left, cause I also used to be a hardcore libertarian conservative, but then I learned more about politics and became libertarian left.
I kept trying to write a libertarian utopia, but couldn't buy into it myself. What kind of author doesn't believe in their own creation? So I did more research, learned more, and changed my views. I realized that the main problem with right-libertarianism is that they focus exclusively on abuses of power by government, and ignore abuses of power by the church and by capital.
I also realized that Ayn Rand was weaksauce compared with Max Stirner, and that she had been ripping off Nietzsche the whole time.
I completely agree, all of the libertarians I know rant about goverent abuse of power, but never seem to mention that corporations can perpetrate abuse too. And if I bring that up, they just say that profit doesn't allow abuse or some such BS.
Most libertarians don't want to admit that workplaces are basically dictatorships where workers are expected to check in their rights at the door. They don't want to admit that wage labor is inherently exploitative in that those who sell their labor do so under duress (the threat of poverty, homeless, starvation, and premature death from preventable disease) or that beyond a certain margin profit is nothing but economic rent.
The ones who read Ayn Rand are especially egregious. They tend to think they're Howard Roark when they have more in common with Peter Keating, and they don't want to hear that the modern-day captains of industry have much more in common with Orren Boyle and James Taggart than they do with Hank Rearden and Dagny Taggart.
I'd be interested in hearing more on your views. I've met plenty of libertarians but none that described themselves that way.
If you're talking about libertarians in the US, most have no idea what libertarian socialism even is. They assume that the only possible socialism is state socialism, and that socialism is therefore inherently authoritarian. I'm basically a left-wing anarchist. The means of production should be available to all, it should be up to individual workers to decide when and where they work, and how much work they'll do.
Very interesting. What are your thoughts about the "gig economy" and things like elance? That seems to fit into the "workers to decide when and where they work, and how much work they'll do."
I think both serve to pit workers against one another when they should be cooperating so that they can get a better deal together.
Seems like we've got a lot of libertarian socialists around here. I never understood why capitalism and socialism were presented as incompatible - it's a false dichotomy. A strong foundation of social services seems to be the perfect bedrock to kick capitalism into overdrive. I'm still a mostly-libertarian but I'll gladly support basic income, universal health care, and universal education. Those are no-brainer investments.
They are incompatible, socialism isn't whenever the government does something. Socialism is where the workers own the means of production and recieve the benefits of the full value of their labour, capitalism is where the means of production are owned by the rich, who extract value from the workers who use them.
What you're talking about isn't socialism, it's social democracy, where capitalism is left in place but the worst of its social ills are corrected by state action.
Bzzt. That's communism not socialism. Socialism does call for regulation by the community at large.
Uh, yeah, no. Look up the definition of the word sometime. From Wiktionary:
Again, the word you're looking for is social democracy.
This seems to work reasonably well in Scandinavia, Germany, and France. I understand it worked pretty well in the UK until Thatcher fucked everything up.
I agree with you about the benefit of basic income, universal care, and universal education, but I wouldn't call them "no-brainer investments". People still come up with objections to all three of these policies, and we need to be able to answer their objections in a manner that is both intellectually and emotionally satisfying.
You and I fill most of the same check boxes ...
Hopefully you can become a non starving artist eventually.
Hail and well met, fellow traveler!
Hi! To see previous intro topics, take a peek at https://tildes.net/~talk?order=activity&period=all&tag=introductions.
Edit: more welcoming :)
Thanks, I created this thread to hopefully spur some discussion and see who uses Tilde, hopefully that's ok.
Yeah dude, I think you're good. I mean not everyone joined months ago. This is like my 3rd day here, so I think this thread is great.
I'm glad, I was a bit worried this thread wouldn't get responses, or people would be upset, but I'm quite happy with the response it's received.
For sure! Hopefully people see this topic for another round, but for those who want to look back, there are also intros there. Welcome to the site!
i'm a 21yo trans girl about to start her senior year of college studying computer science. i'm mostly focused on the web in my coding pursuits but try to learn as much as i can about all tech. i hope to one day make my own browser
Awesome! What do you think of Brave? And what do you think is needed in browsers that we don't have?
Brave is another browser based on Chromium with ad block built in and some altruistic ideas about how to pay people.
For mine a shortlist of things is: make my own engine, have a better handling of PWAs, and make blocking IPs/domains far easier. As a web dev, I absolutely love all the APIs that have come to web, and I think the web should have even more. However, I think that the user should have far more control over which of those APIs can be used by which sites and when. Also some minor things about fixing old web defaults to make it more secure (like forcing https at all times and disabling iframes by default)
As an informed user my biggest gripe with the web platform is the disappearing distinction between what is a web app and what is a web page. As an ex-web-dev I'd rather have nicely-engineered cross-platform frameworks for native apps that do not need VMs to run and leave the web for what it was meant for: web pages. As a grumpy opiniated guy I believe PWAs are fancy links.
Please try look at the technology from the users' perspective and do not avoid the diversity among them in order to rationalise your ideas about web platform. Most web devs are living in an onion of echo-bubbles, and easily forego accesibility and standards for what they call progress, but what's underneath is uninformedness and lazyness.
Links, standardization, accessibility, etc are what make PWAs so great! With typical native apps, you have to go to their website or an app store, check to see if there's a binary for your platform, download it, and hope it does what you want. On the Web all those middle steps and the worry of platform support disappear. You can give someone a link, and instantly the content is able to run. Web pages also get lots of security built in for free like origin sandboxing, opaque fetch, and more. A myriad of companies that have switched using to using the web as their primary platform have seen massive amounts of user and subscriber growth.
The web's greatest superpower is also one of its biggest weaknesses, though. The lower barrier for entry you give the world in creating content, the more "garbage" there will be. And the web is the most widespread and simplest publishing platform ever created. This tends to give a bad rep. Because for every google and dropbox that sha512s a bcypted and salted hash of your password, there are 1000 other sites that store it in plain text and have a longer /ads.txt that most author biographies.
My hope is that giving more power to developers will allow for the creation for great things, but this power will only be granted if the user wants it to be. Software has become a bit of a black box in recent years, and it's time our machines are ours again.
I believe only regulation will ameliorate the situation w.r.t. quality of software. ATM we have no clear definition of who is a programmer and what is reasonably well-built software. Hopefull governments will devise and impose these rules on the industry, because code is no less important than cheese.
For the rest, I tend to disagree. As long time user of Linux distros, I can say that, except Windows, on almost all platforms where to get your software is quite clear: Macs and mobile devices have app stores, distros have package managers. All of these curate the software they publish. But you choose what's installed.
On the web instead, the decision is up to the programmer. Each website runs tonnes of unchecked, obfuscated code, connects to an unspecifiable amount of third parties, some of its code runs on remote computers, and because there's no consensus on UI paradigms, each web app is a unique snowflake where you don't know what moving your mouse or clicking somewhere does. I've measured network activity when moving the mouse on the web page on some web pages. These apps are usually badly built.
PWAs bring the similar experience to the mobile phones. Additionally, these apps are slower than those use native APIs or cross-platform tools (say Flutter) and never fit in with the UI paradigms of the platform. When I run an app for the first time, figuring out what parts are controls and what parts are just text/images/etc is just guesswork.
Developers have all the power in their hands already. That's why I heavily block JS execution on my browser (Firefox w/ uBlock Origin). The companies switch to the web platform because it's easier for them to push out code there, and easier for them to abuse the users. What we need is a clear separation between what is an app and what is about content on the web platform so that we do not have to do that manually, and are able to block the former category with a whitelist, and just not give access to code execution to the latter.
Great points, and I think uBlock Origin should come with all the browsers. In regards to speed I'd love for you to try some ones that I would consider good if you'd be willing to tell me what you think :)
https://mobile.twitter.com/taylorswift13 https://voice-memos.appspot.com/ https://weather-pwa-sample.firebaseapp.com/final/ https://airhorner.com/ https://apps.nektro.net/
You should look into the Servo project, if you haven't already.
Servo is great and the main driver behind why Firefox Quantum is so amazing. But I plan to make my own engine.
Good luck next semester, computer science is so hard, I took CS1 (C++) and I enjoyed it so much, but it was hard too.
Thanks :D I love it, but some courses cough physics cough are really kicking my butt haha!
Physics was painful for me, too. I'm still surprised that I managed to pass the entire three-course series! It didn't help that the professor has incredibly boring and dry lectures that were basically word-for-word matching what was on the PowerPoint slides.
Good luck with your final year! Try to avoid the burnout as much as possible. It can hit you hard and set you back a bit.
I'm an American, and I'm attending University to be an Electrical Engineer. But I have the summer off so I'm working an internship.
I'm new to Tildes and excited to be able to take part in it's discussions.
That's really a hell of a question, if you think about it.
Who am I?
I'm a Millennial, a cook, and a writer (not yet an author). I'm a Futurist, a Transhumanist, and a Singularitarian.
I'm gender-less, pansexual, and polyamorous. I'm a hippie, a foodie, a chemist, and a 3D-artist.
I am a disembodied consciousness, engaged in a flesh prison, subject to feelings and perceptions I cannot trust.
I like to take care of plants, go hiking, and to watch thunderstorms.
I like to play DnD, Overwatch, and Elite: Dangerous.
I like to read Mythology, History, and Philosophy.
I like to read Epic Fantasy, and tomes of Science-Fiction.
I'm from an Active-Duty family, and I grew up all over the US.
I live around DC, and the Government pays me to think about technology, and the future.
I'm CALICO.
It really is a hell of a question isn't it?
And I hope you don't take offense to this, but would you mind explanaining what you mean by genderless? I want to know what that means for you.
Not at all, it's something I think a lot of people can sometimes have trouble wrapping their minds around.
To start, we need to establish a difference between sex, and gender:
Sex is pretty easy, most everyone fits into biologically-male or biologically-female, although there are those who are intersex.
Gender is — according to Merriam-Webster — the behavioral, cultural, or psychological traits typically associated with one sex. That is, the subjective experience of how your mind conceptualizes itself vis-à-vis your sex. There's a lot of nuance here, and I'm sure the definition will vary among people. When ones gender-identity doesn't match their sex, we get things like gender-dysphoria and transgender persons.
(My understanding is) there is a feeling of being male, or being female, outside of the physical. It's part of how you identify yourself. Most folks probably only ever feel one or the other, and it tends to be the one associated with their sex. Others feel the one opposite, or something in-between, or sometimes it varies as-if it were a spectrum, and there are others as well. Some don't have a feeling of it at all. Agender and Gender-less are the two most common words for that. That's me.
My identity lacks a gender, or I identify as not having one, though I'm not sure if there's a difference. I don't properly know what gender is, outside of an academic context, because I don't feel it. To be honest I'm not entirely convinced gender exists at all, but it's not my place to enforce that on anybody else.
Put another way, I'm biologically male, and I present myself in a masculine way. But the body I have is not at all connected to my subjective sense of identity. I am the sense of subjective awareness, not the body itself. The body I have is inconsequential; I don't have a feeling of being either masculine or feminine.
It does and it doesn't. It exists in the sense that cultures have different cultural norms regarding gender roles, but it doesn't exist in the sense that gender is culture-dependent and is really just an arbitrary construct that we use to help compartmentalize people in an efficient manner. It exists solely as a cognitive phenomenon defined by your surrounding environment :)
You know, that actually makes a lot of sense. I don't particularly care for gender roles in society, in fact I think they're often pretty harmful. I certainly don't conform to some of them, and I just try to be me. I identify as a man, but perhaps that's more of a language thing, than how you I feel inside. I don't know that's a perspective I've never considered, thank you.
I can't really speak on behalf of @CALICO, but scientifically there's an important distinction between the terms "sex" and "gender". That is, "sex" is your biology whereas "gender" is a set of social constructs and behavioral norms that we attribute to people with certain biological characteristics (alternatively, "gender" can refer to personal identification based on your internal awareness). In other words, you can think of "sex" as being a very concrete thing (even if someone is intersex) whereas "gender" is arbitrary and subject to change.
This is incredibly simplified, however, so take this description with a healthy grain of salt. There is quite a bit more nuance to it, and I encourage you to research the subject further :)
That makes sense to me, and I understand from an intellectual level. And I myself would say that I don't confirm to many of societies gender roles, and don't really care about them.
But it's hard for me to conceptualize what it means personally to someone to be genderless. It's hard because despite not caring about gender roles at all, I still feel like a man, the same way I feel like I'm a human. It's just so integral to the way I think, that I don't quite understand how someone genderless feels.
I would imagine that it's a pretty difficult mental barrier to break through. Sometimes there are just certain experiences that others have that you can't really relate to no matter how much you try to imagine it.
For example, I've always heard about issues of racism and sexism, especially microaggressions. As a white, cis, heterosexual male, I've never really experienced anything like what marginalized groups do, so I've never had any context for it. I could sympathize and be an ally, but empathizing was impossible. There was an experience earlier this year, however, that gave me just the tiniest glimpse into their experiences. Specifically, I was in line at the grocery store, right behind someone who was dressed nicely, clean shaven, and generally looked "put together". I, in contrast, looked decidedly more "scruffy" and definitely wasn't dressed decently. The difference in the way we were both treated by the cashier was subtle, but clearly indicated a distinct attitude that the guy ahead of me was financially well-off and that I wasn't. It was such a small difference, and yet it had a profound impact on my understanding of the experiences of marginalized groups because now, even though it was small, I suddenly had a first-hand experience that served as an anchor point. I could finally go "this is how it felt with something small just once in my lifetime, but how would this feel if it was for something larger and if it happened as a daily occurrence?" Even if I still couldn't fully empathize, I could now at least attempt to quantify those experiences.
As human beings, we rely primarily on past experiences to understand our environments. If you don't have some kind of experience to use as an anchor point, then it's going to be difficult to "get" it.
Your absolutely right, I really like to hear about people's personal experiences, cause they allow me to hopefully empathize with a situation I don't experience.
My name is Zoe I do things sciency
Though kinda burned-out And often in doubt
In China I dwell Me no English well
My eyes are dark brown Just a bit cast-down
Never got the looks Though I enjoy books
So who's this person? Gnothi seauton
That I do wonder But I've got helper
I want to give too And to remain true
Just your typical American marxist/free software activist/scifi-horror enthusiast with a panic disorder. Oh, and I'm a white ops dude. Working my way toward ops'ing for the EFF or some other morally incredible org.
I'm not anywhere near California at this moment, it's too bad they require you to move there for work. It's sad that they never replied to you - but given their lean resources and probably thousands of applications, I suppose it makes sense.
White ops like benevolent hacking?
Woops, I couldve been more clear - white skinned, normal ops. (Grey ops?)
Oh that makes sense, the EFF is great. Good luck!
I'm an American software developer from/in Seattle. Lately I have gotten to building/flying quadcopters. I am working on my first real FPV build today, so that is exciting! I hope to have it in the air in the next few days.
Also nice username @Bahamut! I am actually playing my first real game of DnD today, and I am super excited.
Thanks, DnD should be a great time, I hope you have fun.
And quadrocopters are very cool, good luck with your FPV build.
I think so. I have been wanting to play for so long.
So what about you? You started this thread and never shared about yourself.
I think I left a response somewhere else in the thread, but I'm American university student studying electrical engineering. I've been doing an internship for the summer, and I'm thinking about building/designing my own guitar amp to both get engineering experience and to have a new amp.
Derp. I read that response, but I somehow didn't connect that you were the OP. That's what I get for not reading usernames.
On a somewhat unrelated note, this makes me really want a built in personal user tagger, like RES has. So I can remember people.
Understandable, have a nice day.
Also something like RES for this would be amazing.
Software engineer with formal education in English lit and Journalism. I'm at the tail-end of the gen x and start of the millennial generation but identify heavily with the former and generally feel mildly critical of the latter.
I broke most of the "rules" for careers and life that I hear folks bandy about on reddit, and have had great success - went to college for largely impractical pursuits, been at the same company for 10 years, live life using very little credit, worked hard and saved for a nice house in a good area. All of this was helped along tremendously by a emotionally and financially supportive family.
That's awesome! Also funnily enough I was born at the tail end of the Millennial generation and beginning of Gen Z, and I identify much more with Millennials.
I've been thinking about why I identify with that group more and I think I've arrived at a satisfactory, if somewhat juvenile, explanation: all of the older cool kids in school would have been gen x, and all the lame younger kids would have been millennials. I'm half-kidding but half-serious as well. I think when you're on the cusp like that there is a lot of talk about "the next generation" and so you kind of make a choice with which one to identify.
Yeah, to me also I feel culturally disconnected with a lot of Gen Z stuff, though the same could be said about Millennial stuff too. I'm kind of in an awkward nowhere land.
Only if I'm allowed to make gross generalizations while we all realize that individuals are unique and we should all treat them that way :)
Conformity to consumer culture (often misconstrued as entitlement) and trust of authority are the two big ones. Many lack the (sometimes unhealthy) cynicism and mistrust of authority that permeated Gen X culture.
The consumer culture in the U.S. has sold us all a pack of lies our entire lives - Gen X rejected many of those, while Millennials bought in big time. An example is the (now passing?) trend of authenticity. This trend was picked up almost immediately by companies who enthusiastically and successfully sold that back to them. This was met by many for calls for "tiny houses" and minimalism, but again this was impossible to actually separate from consumerism and you end up with articles like "33 Minimalist Home Products That'll Soothe Your Soul."
Source: https://www.buzzfeed.com/sarahhan/dreaming-of-a-minimalist-home?utm_term=.cq58Adp6K#.pfG83l4eD
The cynic in me has been somewhat bemused to watch self-assured college students state they're so different from other generations, that they're impervious to advertising, only to see Baby Boomers re-package and sell them the same old BS they've been selling.
All of that said, I know that armchair analysis is flawed in many ways. I definitely recall the same thing happening with "grunge" rock - all of the sudden every JC Penney's was carrying ripped jeans.
EDIT: Also all of the people getting chickens! Why?! Get off my lawn! ;-P
Wall-of-text warning!
Sure. I think it's important to know that I've always been deeply interested in technology, having worked for PC Repair shops during highschool, put together my own PCs, modded video games, and in addition, I've made it my business to excel at each of my positions, so these results may not be typical.
I started at the absolute bottom rung - tech support in a call center for the company I'm currently with. They had recently purchased a different company and were doing a mass hiring of ~100 people to support the new products. They basically needed people that they could hire-in relatively cheap but weren't total dummies so they could train them to do the job reasonably well. This was about 6 months before the 2008 financial crisis.
I'm lucky in that they had an established career progression and I worked my way up that until I was the most senior type of call taker - grading other people's calls, writing documentation, preparing the department for supporting new software releases, etc. This took about 5 years. During this period they went through a dramatic offshoring effort. More than 50% of the people I hired in with were let go over the course of a couple years. I worked hard and excelled and did a lot of growing up during this period.
During all of the offshoring they restructured several departments and created a new one. This new department essentially hired solely from the old tech support department. I threw my hat in the ring for a new job as an application administrator for an enterprise-wide support website/internal knowledge base used by the call takers and our customers.
I got that position and did that for about two years. Although they had spent >$1mil on this new site/tool, they had no money to do any improvements to it (or adequately support it really) so I learned a lot of new skills: HTML, CSS, Javascript, and even some Java. Basically, if given a problem I could usually sort it out with enough time and Google. Again, I excelled at this and implemented fixes and improvements that the company didn't have to pay a third-party for.
Next I took another position in the same group as a more general analyst that helped the company decide which enterprise tools to purchase, wrote requirements for them, escalated vendor issues, etc and was part of a project to implement the software that eventually replaced what I was administering a year before.
As you might have picked up on, that role wasn't nearly as technical as the admin role and I realized I really enjoyed that much more than going to day-long design meetings, etc. I wanted to be the one to do the work, rather than plan it. So I reached out to some former call takers who were now software engineers and eventually they let me know of an opening.
I took every person I knew in that department out to lunch, one at a time, to pick their brain and make sure it reached their managers' ears that I was more interested than the normal candidate. I read up on each type of technology they work with and started taking online courses on those topics. I beefed up my resume and my linkedin profile. In short, I acted like I REALLY wanted the job and I think that helped to distinguish me from other candidates. My previous manager was also amazing and reached out to the hiring manager with positive info about me, so I'm sure that helped.
I've been in the engineering role for about 2 years now and love it and I believe I'm doing a good job.
Looking back, I can remember that first day in the call center training. It was me and about 15 other new hries and I was talking to the guy next to me. He told me this was just another job for him, I said "I don't know man, this might be it for me." That was 10 years ago. I'm the only person in that training class still with the company (including the trainer).
EDIT: I'd add that I've more than double my salary in that time and make what I feel is a comfortable amount.
I'm a 30-something woman; former New Yorker currently living in the Midwest. I like all things sci-fi, and gaming (tabletop & PC). I love cats (surprise, right?), music and podcasts, and I have a very slow job so I'm online a lot.
I love tabletop gaming, thus my username. D&D and other tabletop games are such a great way to connect with people.
I'm Nephi, a software developer and artist from the UK!
Not a whole lot to say about me other than that. I have two degrees, my first being a BSc in Computer Science and my second being a masters in Information Systems. I used to be a fairly avid gamer type, although I've fallen back from FPS games and the like in recent years partially due to time, partially due to a dislike of where the genres have been going, and partially whereas it was fun as a kid, being yelled at for just toggling my mic got old. I mostly play WoW, League and the odd single player RPG these days, although I'm hugely looking forward to the PC release of Monster Hunter World!
I draw on and off as my motivation waxes and wanes, but the curious can find my stuff here. It's nothing amazing, but I do like drawing, and have been doing for 15 years! I originally wanted to be an artist, but my parents forced me to go into sciences as it would be "better for my career" and I've never had the time as an adult to go back and study. C'est la vie I suppose.
I fall under the "L" of "LGBT" but tend not to associate with the community as a whole. I don't feel like it really defines me as a person - I include it here purely because it seems to be the going trend in the thread, so why not? I'm not ashamed of it, just not proud either.
I'm "Nephrited" basically everywhere, but I go by Nephi because it's cute.
I'm told I type absolutely nothing like I actually talk. Going by my typing, everyone usually assumes I'm a somewhat stern 35 year old. Going by my voice people think I'm a teenager who's had too much sugar. The truth of my age is somewhere inbetween, and may it remain that way (at least mentally) forever more.
As far as programming goes, I used to be a C++ and Java developer, but long since migrated over to fullstack web development, which mostly means Javascript and it's various spawn. I try to keep up. I like to think I'm a pretty good programmer though!
EDIT: Oops, messed up my link
EDIT2: Grammar important
WRT the L, I believe one's sexuality should not be that big a part of their identity, and belonging to a "community" because you like to make love with certain types of people is straight out weird. Let's hope for a society where we can just be, without all these categories and stereotypes.
Just to give you a heads up, I think there's a typo in your link (nehprited/nephrited). Cool stuff though!
I'm a young boi who just finished high school, gonna attend university soon™. Also I'm from the pizza/pasta/lasagna country aka Italy.
Looking forward to Tildes, people are so chill here (looking at you reddit).
Good luck at university! Do you know what you're gonna study?
Thank you man. I'm gonna study "informatica" which is similar to computer science.
Good luck with your studies, it's not an easy time.
Hey, vxx! I'm on a different username here than I was back when we used to mod r/unexpected together, but it's nice to see you made it! How have you been?
Glad to have you here at Tildes! And xcom is fantastic.
Welcome Bahamut! I'm a 30-something Canadian currently working in incident and crisis management for telecommunications, and in my spare time I like to play ice hockey, video games, board games, hang out with friends, et cetera.
How are you doing, and how's your life going these days?
Thanks,
I'm doing pretty well, I'm working an exciting internship, and school is about to start again for the semester, which I'm pretty excited about.
I don't have much to complain about right now, the only thing that could be better is if I were in a relationship, but even without that I'm having a great time.
This has always been a difficult question for me to answer. I supposed it's probably because the only way I know how to answer this is by listing interests and personality traits, which is like trying to describe a piece of artwork--as descriptive as I could possibly be, you'll have an entirely different picture painted in your head and that difference can't be resolved until you see it in person.
With that being said, I've probably already made it clear with that opening that I'm a very pragmatic person.
I'm a programmer, but moreover I'm a problem solver. I spend far more time inside of my own head than I do outside of it. I'm a very detail-oriented person, far more so than anyone else I know, yet I often fail to understand the people around me. I've become a very polarized person; I have an endless reserve of patience and compassion for people who are kind, but have grown far more impatient and curmudgeonly over the years toward the unkind. In a way, I've become more cold-hearted and soft-hearted at the same time. I'm both a very jaded and very hopeful person. I love food--cooking it, eating it, and sharing it with others. I like to hike, camp, play video games, and binge-watch my favorite TV shows and anime.
There's a lot that I'm leaving out, especially more important and personal context, but really I'm basically just a functional mess of a person. And honestly, I'm fine with that.
Thanks for responding! I know this kind of stuff is hard, I often struggle myself to answer these sorts of questions, but I'm glad you did.
Hi everyone! I just joined - first post!
I’m a computer science professor in the Pacific North West (US). I mostly teach Python and intro courses. I also love cats, gaming, and recently started to draw again. I’ve also started mechanical keyboard and fountain pen collections.
Welcome! I just finished my first CS course (C++), and it was quite challenging, but very rewarding.
Whew, lots of labels scrolling down the page. I feel like I might not fit in here too well, but I am still glad to be here. I am your resident Moderate Conservative, Pro-Trump (Critical when he deserves it), Pro-Drug Legalization, Pro-Capitalist, Atheist who is often hated by the far left for my belief in two genders and two amendments, but also hated by the far right for being (((a globalist cuck))) aka Jewish and pro-immigration. Always up for a debate or befriending people from either side of the aisle, regardless of differences.
Usually you can find me messing with technology and development, volunteering at my local shelter with cats, and playing way too many video games in my advanced age. (Is anyone out there enjoying Octopath Traveler??) I'm about to start my weekend now, so let's break out the booze and bud!
Welcome! Personally I'm very liberal I believe in more than two genders, and a bit conflicted on the second amendment.
I certainly don't support Trump, but I'm glad to have you here. I also enjoy hearing dissenting opinions, and hope Tildes will foster a community where people of differing opinions can mingle.
Appreciate it! I'm sure we would agree on a lot of things. So far everyone has been welcoming and accepting, though i'll admit I haven't dove much into politics yet. I've just been having fun in the light-hearted groups like tech & games while learning the community and platform. Look forward to some great discussions in the future!
Yeah I think we would agree on a lot of things. I always think we shouldn't let political agreements become personal agreements, and people with radically different political views can easily be friends.
I'm a Norwegian software developer in his mid 30's who works for the government and enjoys small town life.
On my spare time I play video games (mostly single-player strategy), board games (non-abstract), and read comics (mostly European and North American, no superhero stuff). Twice a year I go downhill skiing.
I subscribe to the local newspaper, and get most of my news from print media. Usually a day late.
I've been a Linux user since the Steam for Linux beta, and I recently bought a Ubuntu-powered gaming laptop.
I try to watch fewer franchise movies in the theatre, but they can be hard to resist.
In the previous election I voted for the Green Party. I think my country should offer to take in some refugees from Southern Europe to help alleviate the situation there, despite us not being part of the European Union.
I'm continuously impressed with how much people believe they know. Personally I know almost nothing, so I'm always looking to learn more about topics.
I take my coffee black, with chocolate on the side.
Do you ski in Norway? I think my first time on snow was in Geilo over 20 years ago now!
Usually in Norway, sometimes just across the border to Sweden. Haven't tried Geilo yet. :-)
I couldn't tell you anything about it, my main enduring memory is when the slopes closed and I wondered around a conference totally decked out in ski-gear looking at all the very tall adults trying to find my dad.
I am a 29 year old single father living in my home state of Colorado.
I currently work as a Sous Chef at a local brewery and as a BLM river ranger in the summertime. I live rurally in a small town of less than 2k at an elevation of about 9,000k. I have moved away from the Rockies a few times, but something is just not right if I am not near the mountains.
My best friend in the entire world is my four year old and I wouldn't have it anyother way. Having an excuse as a grown man to play with legos, toy cars and thomas trains again is just too great.
I see myself as a centrist, I don't believe in the two party system and think the American political system needs to be entirely overhauled for the nation to survive.
I garden, grow a lot of my own food (seasons permitting), love coffee and tea equally, am a douchy snob about both, build custom jeeps, raft, camp, hunt, read more books than is healthy, collect said books, practice archery and collect antique firearms.
I like to see myself as a pretty average Colorado mountain man, basically a cross between a nature loving hippy and a isolationist redneck. We are a unique people lol.
What kind of food do you grow? Ever tried growing coffee or tea just for kicks?
Cherry Tomatoes, Corn (in very small numbers), Zucchini, Cucumbers, Soy Beans, Green Beans, Spinach, Oregano, Basil, Cumin, Cilantro, Carrots, Collards, Broccoli, Brussels sprouts, French tarragon, Jalapeno, Bell Pepper, Chipotle Peppers, Espelette peppers, Guajillo chilis and I do have two small avocado trees that I have grown from seed (although they are only 3 years old and not flowering yet). Not always grown at the same time, I literally just opened my seed chest and read you the list lol. I tend to rotate.
I have not, I would love to plant some camellia sinensis or coffea but I am currently a renter and would prefer a permanent residence before planting something like that. Olives and Grapes are also on my long term goal list.
I do have some grow lights and a small grow room setup for experimenting with tropical plants, ideally I will be building an attached greenhouse when I buy a home. The marijuana industry here in Colorado has actually made horticulture hobbyists have really great access to hydroponics and grow equipment. I don't even smoke or grow, but I appreciate the easy access to advanced equipment.
Wow! What sort of techniques & technology do you use for growing all that!?
We've finally moved out of a flat and have built a couple of raised beds. This brutal summer has had me thinking about building an automatic watering system.
I start a lot of my plants indoors in the latter part of the winter. The growing season in Colorado ( especially at elevation) is very short, so if I want any sort of a successful yield I have to artificially extend my growing season. I do own a couple of air cooled grow lights similar to these that I used to start more sensitive plants in my garage.
The area I live in is basically high altitude desert, so I do have to have watering systems. Most recently I have been running a gravity fed watering system, allowing for a slow and consistent drip irrigation. That might not be the best, it varies widely by climate. Here in the US we have USDA Zones which help greatly in determining what to plant and how to set up a garden.
I do have a few raised beds, but a lot of what I grow is stuff that doesn't actually grow well in Colorado, so I used a lot of containers that I can move around to help the plants thrive in a foreign environment.
Ah interesting, we're in the south of England relatively low-tech solutions seem to be just working but perhaps that's partly due to the exceptional weather this year.
Chinese-American computer science student, raised and going to school in NJ, unprofessional rock/ice/mountain climber. Into history (military esp. UW, technological, organizational) and security. Interning as a software engineer in CA, hoping to go pro after graduation!
Any specific period of history you like to explore?
Post-WW2 is really my thing. I've read a lot on the French and American wars in Vietnam (currently reading Martin Windrow's The Last Valley, about the siege of Dien Bien Phu and the aftermath) and that's what kicked off my interest in unconventional warfare. It's amazing that the Vietnamese nationalists/Communists were able to bootstrap a parallel government, guerrilla forces, and a regular army, admittedly with foreign aid. On the other end of the UW spectrum there's the Troubles, where a small, dedicated insurgent force was able to survive the British military and strike targets for decades, and eventually force the British to the negotiating table. And with the hybrid warfare paradigm coming into play in Georgia and the Crimea, everything short of WW3 will have elements of UW.
I would love to learn more about the Roman Republic and Empire, though. Gibbon is on my reading list, as it should be for anyone else who's interested in the American imperial decline.
Wow, so many computer scientists here. Although I guess that's not too surprising.
[in extremely Pennywise voice] We're all nerds down here.
I'm a French dude.
Hello all. I'm a pulmonary/critical care doc from the US who just joined today. This is my first post! I have zero background in programming and actually failed CS the first time I took it in college. I'm cautiously optimistic about this new online community, and I'm excited to see what it brings.
Hi, awesome to have you here! And it's nice to have some people from different backgrounds here, it seems like there are a lot of CS majors here.
I'm cadadr, a.k.a. Göktuğ. A twenty-someting from Turkey, graduated recently in Italian language and literature. I'm looking forward to study comparative literature and enjoy reading my mail and RSS feeds in Emacs. I speak English, Italian, Emacs Lisp; and also Python, Ruby, Perl and POSIX shell. I like programming my little tools for my daily use and micromanaging my configuration, reading modern and ancient literature (I confess to not having read much classics), studying mythology, philosophising and studying philosophy, writing fiction and poetry, learning all sorts of things including languages and drinking nice coffee or beer (though I'm not that snob to refuse instant coffee or a freezing cold pint of shit beer when there's any better). I have a soft spot for smaller and particular cities, Portuguese literature, and stringed bass instruments (bass guitar and the upright bass; I play (within certain definitions of playing an instrument ;) the guitar but want to pick up the bass).
Another guitar player, fantastic! What kind of guitar do you play?
A crappy acoustic one with a cutaway :) I used to play like I was possessed during my teens, then I didn't play for a couple years and forgot most of what I learned. Nowadays I just sing a couple Bob Marley, Yaşar Kurt and Tom Waits stuff to myself while strumming chords...
I'm a senior in highschool. I've lived most of my life in rural Missouri, but I recently moved to a city in Florida.
I'm an optimizer. I like to spend way too much time making something I do often marginally more efficient. That's why I type in Colemak, and why I made a live keyboard layout translator with a raspberry pi so I could use it on school computers where I'm locked out of the settings.
I also enjoy gaming, reading, and watching anime. I'm hoping to get a degree in software engineering.
Btw, I use arch.
Hmm, I imagine you'll do quite well in software engineering based on your description of yourself
I'm a mid 20s trans girl and software developer in California, mostly working in devops and infrastructure in my day job, and anything related to low-level programming in my free time. I also enjoy the "standard" Internet hobbies like gaming (mostly RPGs), anime, and manga, as well as all genres of music. Like a few in this thread, I am pretty much libertarian left as far as politics is concerned, but I also try to keep a somewhat open mind.
Just joined and excited to see where this goes!
I'm in the US, working in a food-safety related industry. I am also an artist (painting, specifically). I live with my husband of 35 years, along with our two African Grey parrots, both of whom are in their early 20s. Nice to meet all of you!
Cześć! It's awesome we have people from all over the world here.
30 something Alaskan Native. Work in IT.
NFL addict, whose other passions include snowmobiling, gaming(both console and PC) and reading.
I'm a New Mexican college student that plays video games and watches movies all day. Just finished the Cloverfield series for the first time and fiddled with some of the ARG stuff, the first 2 were definitely a lot better than the 3rd but they're all pretty solid sci-fi horror
I only saw the second Cloverfield movie, but I liked it enough. I was thinking about watching the third sometime soon though.
I'm Canadian, about to start my fourth year of University as an English / Creative Writing major. I don't play video games or watch superhero movies, so I usually find myself a bit on the outs with internet communities. Alice Munro is my favourite author, Ezra Pound is my favourite poet. I have a huge fascination with urban planning, post-Maoist Chinese history, and technology. I love baseball because of statistics, Formula One for engineering, and chess even though I'm terrible at it.
Travelling Finnish mathematician, atheist Discordian, silly person, wannabe decent person, Linux and LaTeX user, metal, sf&f and anime fan --- NWOBHM, Stross, Tolkien and Kiyohiko Azuma --- and a writer of too long comments and occasional extruder of unpublished novel-shaped objects. Occasional semi-professional Only Local Finn or Finnette (OLF).
As for the great sci-fi question, Star Trek or Star Wars, duh, obviously Babylon 5.
Definitely not a sentient penguin trying to free Those In Lake Vostok, undo von Bellingshausen's Circle and unleash an ice age that'd... no no no nothing like that. See I'm so human I've a whole macro set up to type "I'm human or a huwoman, don't be silly ha ha ice ice baby", would a penguin have that at a peck of a key? Even a starborn penguin, born under the black astral stars of the Antarctic ---
No.
Because penguins don't exist. Nothing lives on, in or under the Antarctic.
G'day, fellow denizens of the planet. I reside in the questionably United States. Female sex, female gender identity, gender role whatever I feel like doing today, polysexual. For those who need generational classification, I'm the original X-er and possibly invented grunge.
I'm also a sandbox emulator of professions, serially or in parallel. I've been, in order, an agricultural worker, engineering assistant, analytical chemist, technical writer, paralegal, grad/medical student/public health researcher, IT service desk, mail/network/server admin, pastry cook, jeweler/lapidary, field engineer, integration engineer/project manager. These days, I travel a great deal.
I don't program much lately, mainly because I'd rather play with math than fight with the idiosyncratic mishmash of language, symbolic reasoning and hardware limitations, plus security is a nightmare with squiggly tentacled bits popping out everywhere.
Interests - everything. Serial obsessive, a bit like the character in Susan Orleans' The Orchid Thief.
Hobbies - political activism/volunteering, reading (heavy bent towards history, economics, science journals, science fiction), bench silversmithing and stone cutting, gardening, cooking, hiking, kayaking, travel, fiction and non-fiction writing.
Politics - mainly democratic Socialist, but deeply suspicious, at an engineering level, of any attempt to apply a single political/economic solution to all cases.
I've burned out and come back to a variety of social media; trying not to obsessively camp out on the Tildes platform, so may only post once a day most of the time.
Singaporean Student checking in here. Jesus Christ is the rat race exhausting.
No matter, at least I have several forms of escapism disguised as hobbies.
Let's try to maintain the quality of discussion here as we eventually get bigger.
I live on the west coast and like running, surfing, gardening, playing saxophone, and cooking. I also work at an engineering job that I actually really like. Speaking of which, I should probably get back to work here.
You're in Perth? :P
Oh god, I just acted kinda like the whole world was the USA. Welp, I guess you can't get much more stereotypically American than that.
I should get back to work too, but Tildes is too interesting.
American teacher, writer, and marine biologist living in Utah.
Utah doesn't seem to be a great place for studying marine life, do you study any there, or just teaching in Utah?
I know right? I actually moved from the coast of North Carolina out here to the desert for my job. I work at an aquarium, and it pays better than my previous job.
What sort of writing do you do?
Well aside from all the d&d stuff I write, I wrote for a educational website focusing on teaching kids about marine science, and through that website I wrote a book on sharks.
Hi everyone!
I am a software developer out in 🇨🇦(Canada) who lives to travel and hopes to make friends everywhere I go😊. The Tildes community rocks and I hope we can all help make it a cool place to share cool ideas and make things better where we can.
Hi People!
I'm a Northern Californian born and raised. My favorite things are gardening, farmers markets, cooking, music, and running. I'm learning how to sing and play piano. I just got a degree focused on machine learning and I'm looking for work and master's programs at the same time. Really I'm just trying to get into machine learning or data science. I'm building a portfolio and trying to find places to volunteer in data science or machine learning (It's harder than you might think).
Here's some demographic info for you.
I'm mostly white. I'm bisexual and agender (a non-binary gender). My body is female so I've experienced life through a woman's eyes. My life in many ways is a woman's narrative. I've chronic PTSD. #metoo.
I'm pretty far socially and economically left. I lean toward a strong central government but I haven't spent a lot of time thinking about it so who know's what I'll think about that in ten years.
But most importantly some of my most favorite things are blankets and tea.
UK based, work in commercial real estate atm. Main passions are basketball, coding and reading books.
I'm interested in how the design of a system influences participants behavior. tildes has an interesting structure and I'm keen to see how it works out.
welcome!
I'm an Australian Murse (Male nurse) working in aged care and hopefully kicking off study again soon to become a Mental health nurse.
I enjoy reading on occasion, playing D&D once a month (not often enough), recently purchased my first PC in 6 odd years, I have been on a massive Comic book men kick the last two weeks since they cancelled it.
Hope all is well for you mate
All is going well for me, thanks. I know what you mean about not playing D&D enough. I'm in a club for my university and we used to play once a week, but since summer started we've only been able to play once.
I've never played until recently, we all fumble through each night wonderfully lol our next meet up is actually on Friday and I've managed to get a guy from work to come along this time, he's never played before and has gone all out on preparation. It's fantastic to see
German carbon-unit here. Interested in IT-Security, martial arts, transhumanism and efficient conversation. Guten Tag.
Just started training Systema, first foray into martial arts since like eighth grade. Really feeling some benefit.
Don't see that one often. Any particular reason for the choice?
There's a few reasons it appeals to me.
It's more informal than other practices. There's no uniform, and no form even. It's about principles and practice. There's a few patriarchs who do teacher certification, but no one resents or bothers about people getting together in the park to practice, and there's no other grading system. "Advancing" means I connect with the practice more. Which is not to say it's entirely subjective, that connection includes community acknowledgement.
I like that its origin is about real-world results: dealing with multiple targets, staying cool and effective in really difficult situations (like torture), and use of modern weaponry, and that we practice in all kinds of places: on the grass, in the woods, in water, on concrete.
There's also kind of a "fight club" vibe to it. You take and deliver punches day one. And it's about awakening the best parts of being masculine.
I'm told it pairs very nicely with Krav Maga.
I am a human from Planet Earth.
At this point, I mostly take part in meta discussions. After Tildes gets sufficiently big and diverse, I expect my primary interests will be cricket (and other sports to some extent) and high-quality creative content corresponding to Reddit's SFWPorn network (especially maps).