I have been reading a lot of the articles on uncivility. A big complaint is politicians don't like the power it gives people. Which I understand can be bad, but it also seems like for the first time in a long time, the average person has a way to impact these high powered politicians. Ordinarily there is nothing we can do, we can't touch them when they continually do things not in the best interest of the people they represent. They do shady things, and we have to go with it.

They are arguing uncivility is dangerous because it creates the problem of officials being scared to make decisions based on how they will be impacted. If a judge rules one way, and the masses start making his life hard, they say it isn't really fair to the judge. Which makes sense.

This is the information age. We have access to so much more going on than adults did before us. We actually have platforms to be heard on a large scale. Which means pressuring these people to do right through "uncivility" could be harnessed and used positively to enforce change. If the people making these decisions that are not in our best interest have something to lose, maybe they will finally start doing right by us.

What are your thoughts on this aspect of the uncivility debate going on right now?

This isn't a preper specific question, but a general preparedness thread. How prepared for general emergencies are you: apartment fires, blackouts, car emergencies, get-out-of-dodge situations, EDC, etc.

I'm interested in hearing how my fellow tildoes think and prepare :)

I feel like there's so much going on back at the mothership.

The whole vibe and color scheme of this place is just so relaxed, and everyone so far seems so polite and actually interested in genuine discussion. Like if there was a ~writing or something like that, I could settle down in a sweater with some of my username and just flip through this place for hours.

thanks for keeping the place awesome!

Today seems to be crawling by. I'm sitting here daydreaming about what I'll be doing this weekend, which hopefully includes a lot of sleep.

Who has exciting or pleasant plans for this weekend? What positivity is coming your way?

Inspired by @Marszalot 's topic about humor podcasts I would like to see you guys have any good recommendations about high performance mindset topic.

Recently I stumbled across Cindra Kamphoff's podcast at Spotify and I've been enjoying it a lot. Most of them are short, which suits very well my time to walk from home to the office (20 to 30 minutes), but it's weekly, so I'm searching for more sources to listen about high performance mindset / habits.

I'm driving a few hours to Cincinnati to catch a cubs game with my parents. I only get to see them about ~10-12 times a year since we live about 5 hours apart and this was last minute, so I'm super glad I get to sneak some more time in with em :)

What's everyone getting up to? Any fun plans, neat projects, or we'll deserved relaxing?

Hi folks,

I've seen a few posts and comments discussing "what is tildes.net all about?" or even "what does Tildes want to be about?" and I thought I'd throw in a related topic I've been thinking about recently. I am interested in the medium of communication itself, in addition to the goals and general philosophy of Tildes.

To start, the question of "what makes Tildes different from Reddit?" is interesting. One concern about Reddit is the huge proportion of either low-quality posts or attention-chasing memes. And a lot of Tildes users seem to be asking why that is the case; and whether a site like Tildes can be different.

Some say that Reddit is a victim of the profit cycle. As a commercial entity, Reddit must aim to bring in as many users as possible, thereby increasing advertisement revenue. And lowering the bar to new user entry means that you get more and more people who aren't really concerned with making thoughtful, high-value contributions to the discussions.

And there's certainly some truth to that. So by this model, Tildes should be different. It is non-commercial, not profit-driven, and it has mechanisms in place (and in development) that are specifically designed to weed out low-value contributions/contributors.

But still, even at this early stage, when the userbase is small and has been more selectively accumulated, some users are expressing concern that Tildes is showing signs of becoming just another Reddit. True or not -- I don't know.

Beyond the profit goal, another dimension for analysis is the medium itself. "Medium", as in the tools of communication; as in radio vs. print vs. television vs. web forum, etc. In 1985, Neil Postman wrote an interesting book called "Amusing Ourselves to Death" that reiterated Marshall McLuhan's idea that messages are partly shaped (and constrained) by the medium over which they are transmitted. And by extension, some media are better at communicating some types of ideas than others.

Postman was writing in 1985 when television was the dominant medium. He argued that the image-oriented medium of television was best suited for entertainment rather than rational argument or intellectual discourse. And thus the use of television (particularly commercial television) as a medium drifts away from thoughtful, intellectual engagement of the consumer, and toward gripping, decontextualized video clips that imprint ideas on the viewer and keep them coming back for more.

Television is just not as good as print media for communicating deep, complicated ideas that the consumer can engage with. (This isn't to say tv can't do it, but it's just not as good at it.)

So what about web forums like Reddit and Tildes? This is what I've been thinking a lot about recently, and I wonder what other Tildes users think about it.

Web forums are different than television for sure, in that they are mostly text-based, and users can interact with them by both posting text and responding to what others have posted.

But web forums are different from ye olde fashioned books too, in the sense that web forums seem to eschew longer, more highly-structured arguments. (Speaking of that, I hope this post isn't too long!) There seems to be a "king of the mountain" syndrome in web forums, in which posters vie for attention, while watching as posts rise to the top and are quickly replaced by newer, catchier posts.

Is this the fundamental dynamics or metaphysics of web forums? --the rapid turnover of attention-seeking, short posts?

If so, will Tildes get pulled down into that same whirlpool?

I don't think it has to be that way, but I believe it is a strong warning that we have to think hard about how the structure of the medium itself channels the type of content we will see here.

--
Stepping back further in Postman's argument is his deep concern about the effect of the dominant medium on popular discourse in a society.

When mainstream media is reduced to commercial jingles and quick, entertaining memes, the very foundation of liberal democratic society is at risk. People become uninformed about the important issues of the day, and become disengaged from the democratic process. As that disengagement increases, special interest groups (read: corporate lobbyists) fill the void of providing direction to governing bodies. Citizens then become more disillusioned and even more disengaged. This is a well-documented phenomena called "the death spiral of democracy", and it scares the shit out of me.

When I first read Deimos' "Announcing Tildes" blog post, I saw a motivating philosophy that I feel is one of the most important issues of our time. We don't live in a perfect world right now, but we're in a world that appears to be on the edge of tragic yet avoidable decline; a world in which the values I assume many Tildes users would like to promote are being paved over by entities that only value profit.

I think that Tildes can be really, really important, and it needs the user base to deeply engage in the analysis of what will make it work. What is it about the web forum as "medium" that shapes the content we are exposed to here? And how can we devise the mechanisms that prevent it from degrading into another Reddit? Is a shared motivating philosophy enough, or do we need to re-engineer the medium itself?

So into the discussion of "what should Tildes be about?", this post is a long-winded way of saying that I think part of it should be about discussing how we can we construct a sustainable new form of media that improves society and supports our highest values. What does this next generation medium look like?

--
Note: just to be clear, Deimos has already put a lot of great thought into this (cf. https://docs.tildes.net/). I'm just arguing that the topic of the medium and the mechanics of the medium should be a topic that all Tildistas engage with.

We're finishing up the graduation season which has me thinking about some of the impactful teachers in my life. Who's someone that made a big impact on you? What lessons did they teach you or passions did they instill?

Today's political climate has all sorts of terms being thrown around with varying meanings and history behind them. There are Liberals (political ideology for FREEDUM), and Liberals (foreign policy), and Liberals (economic policy), and Liberals ("conservatives"), and Liberals ("centrist, anti-absolute monarchists"), and Liberals ("democrats"), and Liberals (some other field that annoys the shit out of me). There are Progressives, and Conservatives, Nationalists, Socialists, Social Democrats, unreconstructed Monarchists, Reconstructed Monarchists, Anarchists, and I'm sure some other political identity that I've missed.

So, given the rather long list of ways to identify politically, and the just about as long history for those ways to identify politically, I thought we should have a discussion focused exclusively on the political history of the terms we used.

So, the questions:

1. What terms do you commonly use to describe yourself and others in your political environment? 
2. What is the relevant history that informs the way you use common political terms to describe yourself and others?
3. Got any links, movies, books, etc., that delve into that history?

This has the potential to get hairy because of how broad it is, so I'm going to try to remind people of some best practices that I use when engaging in meaningful discussion:

• Understand before criticizing. - Be able to frame someone's view in a way that they can agree with themselves before critiquing their view. Questions are your friend, but make sure the questions are focused on better understanding someone's view, not on biasing reactions to a view.
• Assume good faith. - Calling people "trolls" makes me very angry. Don't do it. For any reason. To anyone. If your case is so bulletproof that you'd be willing to call someone out for it here, take it to @Deimos instead. I don't want to read it here.
• I Could Be Wrong - There is nothing wrong with having confidence in your view, but there should be some part of you that recognizes you can be wrong about whatever claim you make. Nothing is 100%. Absolutely Only Sith Deal In Absolutes, etc.

I'm a bit behind the news cycle, but I saw the first images of the families being separated on the news last night. I'm aghast. I'm just so utterly confused. Not addressing the issue of immigration or even the splitting up of families...

We don't fucking lock people in cages.

(Sidepoint: I know prisons exist, but this is a very different situation.)

Recently read a Reddit post about a jesus nut: the nut that holds the main rotor to the rest of a helicopter. In more general terms, it applies to a single point that would cause a catastrophic failure if it were to fail.

What is the "jesus nut" (single point of failure) of your field?

You can't talk about stupidity in corporate culture anymore - certainly on Reddit - due to the hoardes of people who will comment saying "They're a business, what do you expect" or occasionally "Capitalism at work" and general low-effort replies. Like yeah, I get it. I know why company x does greedy thing y. Obviously it's to make money. Your comment doesn't contribute to the discussion. Yes companies have to make money but that doesn't mean they should sacrifice all their morals to do it.

First of all: Desabafo is an idiom in Portuguese which means "to get things off your chest, when you're upset about something". I didn't find a one-word English equivalent, but, hey, at least your learnt something :P

Anyways, I'm a Brazilian man in my mid 20s and I can speak English and Spanish pretty well (at least, I think), but I don't get many opportunities to practice both languages verbally. I found this local group "poliglotas" which hang out in a restaurant every week for 2 hours to practice foreign languages (mostly English). I actually liked this group a lot and it's helping me get better at talking, each week there's a theme so we have something to guide the conversation

The thing is, yesterday's theme was "patriotism" and, as you can guess, the conversation got to politics pretty fast. And... it was weird...

The conversation started with Brazil vs US patriotism, but it quickly went to how the US border control policies are justifiable, how in the scandal about the children of immigrants being separated from their parents is the parent's fault. There were a few rebuttals mostly from me and one other guy

Then it went to the problems we have with Brazil and how it could be solved. The arguments presented were to inflate the sense of nationalism, taking votes away from people who they felt were not qualified to choose their own politics, one of them specifically feels that we need a dictatorship and gave compliments to people in the veins of "Rodrigo Duterte" the infamous guy from the Philippines and even mentioned things like how Hitler was great for Germany, just not the rest of the world (wtf). Needless to say, I didn't agree with anything about it and just decided to keep my mouth shut for the rest of the meeting

The most extremist one though did want to hear my opinion, which I said very non-confrontational way "we need stability, we can't keep changing our government whenever things go bad. We need to choose a path and stick with it" but I also took the opportunity to talk about the things we lose with a dictatorship: freedom of speech, transparency, people being alienated

And they countered by saying that in democracy people are alienated because of "fake news" and that giving rights to people is no good if they don't know how to use them. The worst argument in my opinion though is how an older woman said that our people are like children who can't take care of themselves, so they need a parent to give the rules and take care of them until their old enough to be able to take care of themselves

Their mindset border those of a conspiracy where democracy is actually hurting people and that we need some saviour to free us from some unknown enemy force. It really left a bad taste in my mouth, I think I'll keep going there because I don't think someone's political opinion defines who someone is, but it's a little hard to swallow this last experience I've had

Pheew, making this desabafo made me feel better :)

Thanks for reading, feel free to share your opinions about it or to make a desabafo of your own!

This thread isn't supposed to be about debating issues, just more of a conversation about the consequences/responsibilities for holding certain views. So what's the best way to talk to people with fundamentally different values from you?

I've been on mastodon for a bit now and I'm very much enjoying it. There's a few other options out there, with a variety of goals (pleroma/mastodon for microblogging, pixelfed for photos, hubzilla/diaspora for a more complete package).

I had some questions in mind (but feel free to discuss anything vaguely related): how do you think federated social media is doing? Do you use it? Do you try to get others to use it? What do you think some barriers to widespread adoptions would be?

It's hard to have a neutral position or tone about sexual assault. I think we can all agree that sexual assault is bad and should be punished when credible evidence exists, and I think most of us can also agree to the corollary that it's hard to prove allegations of sexual assault on a good day, let alone 10, 15, 20, or 30 years after the event happened (which is after the statute of limitations expires in many states anyway).

So from this starting point (sexual misconduct = bad, proving sexual misconduct = hard), let's talk about that lovely and unique junction we've been finding ourselves in, in the current year: (1) the use of social media to amplify stories of sexual misconduct and (2) to organize economic punishment of famous persons who have engaged in such conduct (when it is credible enough).

Let us take the case of Kevin Spacey. After Anthony Rapp publicly accused Spacey of sexual advances while Rapp was 14 years old, about a dozen similar stories surfaced to show a fairly similar trajectory of behavior. Even if nothing ever crosses the line into "rape," a clearer picture seems to emerge from these myriad stories of a pretty damn creepy, repressed dude. Spacey lost several acting jobs as a direct reaction to these stories.

We might also look to Al Franken for further insight. In this case, eight women to my knowledge have separately accused Franken of violating behavior, with one pretty outrageous photo as proof of the most famous initiating accusation.

There are plenty of other serial predators that have been exposed in the last year and change too. Let me be clear on this: I see exposing serial predators as a good thing. I hope you do too. There can be a problem of believing claims too quickly, which I think we're all aware of and need to be careful of, but as far as exposing and at minimum economically punishing serial abusers, I think that's pretty much a good for society as a whole, especially when done through legal channels (i.e., a Hot Cosby).

So to the questions:

1. How should we as a society deal the increased ability to share horrific stories of sexual misconduct and abuse?
2. How can our governments adjust to better handle cases of unaddressed sexual assault?
3. How should we individually react when someone we know (famous or otherwise) is accused of sexual misconduct? Along these lines, should we make economic choices based on the allegations that surface about some person?

I always thought that meritocracy seemed like such a loosely defined idea that people still always defended and in this article I just wrote I hoped to tear it apart. It is a core idea of our zeitgeist but it is so weak philosophically. https://diogenesoftoronto.wordpress.com/2018/06/13/against-meritocracy/

I live in the US.

I used to play music every day. I used to skate almost every day. I used to surf TWO times a day. I used to write songs and poetry. I used to contemplate the cosmos and reality and come up with fun projects with friends. I used to garden. I used to spend more time with my pets.

Now I work.

I work and stress so hard that I wear myself out, drink too much to "help me sleep", still stay up stressing about my job - how I can improve my standing, and stress about needing to do side projects to supplement my income AND stress that I don't do any of the fun things I used to do.

This is all to be able to afford a living space and ensure that if a disaster (personal or natural) happens I won't be completely screwed.

Any friends that did have loans are still paying them off. I have been fortunate enough (and diligent enough) to pay off all my loans, but I had to ditch my hopes and dreams.

Will I ever be able to afford a decent house in a metropolitan area? No. Will I ever do the things that used to make be happy? I don't see how. Will I ever be truly happy? I have no idea.

Is anyone else in this situation? What are you doing to mitigate? Moving to a more affordable area (leaving friends and family)? Are you learning a new trade to up your financial standing? Are you as bummed out as I am that we have to work so hard just for a mediocre standard of living?

I wrote this thinking about how people think that world peace is something worth moving towards in a lot academic spheres. It is being used to justify modern continued injustice and i have a lot of problems with that. I think that this more 'peaceful' world isn't that great of one if it comes at the sacrifice of our many current problems we face today. I look at few major academic theorists like Ian Morris and Pinker. I was thinking of actualy discussing both in more detail but i just gave their wiki sums for their books though i have read them becaause i was a little lazy. i should change that in a possible follow up but i wanted to hear what people thought about this before that. https://diogenesoftoronto.wordpress.com/2018/06/05/a-closer-look-at-world-peace/

My friend and I were talking the other day about how for a perfect society to exist, surely every person within that society must also be perfect, which lead us to discussing what defines a perfect human.

Clearly we live in a imperfect world and therefore it can never be accomplished, but we realised there are multiple ways in which a perfect human could be defined. This included such parameters such as emotional stability, morally perfect, physically perfect (whether or not this is even possible) and a whole array of other parameters that have escaped my memory.

What do you think defines the perfect human, assuming it's even possible in the first place? Should it just be defined by one parameter or a mix, and would some parameters be valued higher over others? For example, is a perfect moral compass more valued over physical perfection? I would love to hear your guys take on the question.

EDIT: By perfect I mean functioning within a society perfectly.

I feel so cheated- I went into college with no clue what my interests are and got a degree in something irrelevant that doesn't interest me ( BBA in digital marketing).
I was too young when I made the decision to get this degree and in the years since, I have discovered my passions are art and the environment- I can't see myself feeling fulfilled working in any other field.
But now I don't have the qualifications or skills to get into either, and it seems like a bit of a stretch to go back to college and do another four years!

I just don't know where to go from here, I feel demotivated and I wish that college was something that happened to us later in life. I would do things so differently!

I'm taking some time off to figure out what to do next, but honestly...I don't have a clue.

I'm hoping for serious, honest responses - i.e. don't make up stuff just to troll or try to trick people, nor to just exercise your creative writing skills for entertainment. I am optimistic that people can be respectful to those sharing stories that may be difficult to believe, or which might have mundane explanations.

I've had an interest in the paranormal and unusual for a long time, but haven't delved as deeply as might be warranted. I do my best to keep an open mind, have had a few experiences that are on the fringe, and have met and known people who have recounted much stranger things and i always love hearing about them. Since Tildes is at a point presently where there aren't easy throwaways, and where reputation matters to an extent, I would suspect that tales shared here might have a bit more credibility than those shared pseudo-anonymously on reddit.

So, any experiences you've had which just didn't have a completely satisfying explanation? Any spooks or strange places or times or sights? I invite you to share your experiences here. :)

My husband and I moved to Japan from America in March due to a job opportunity. There are several things that we've noticed that we miss, mostly food items! I was curious if 1) there are other ex-pats on the site and 2) what do you miss the most? Also, what is the best thing about your new home?

With the incredible pace of automation and AI taking place across all sectors of our Global Economy, countries/governments/citizens need to start seriously thinking about how we can continue to survive when there are simply not enough jobs to be had. UBI is one option that countries have attempted to "beta test" with varying results. What is ~'s[sic] opinion on UBI and automation and AI "taking our jerbs"?

Earlier I saw a post on imgur about how the mars rover has now been carrying out it's mission for almost 15 years, but recently a large dust storm has resulted in NASA being unable to contact the robot at all. Whilst reading the post I felt a sudden sadness for this poor little robot that has been on its own for such a long time and now it can't even communicate with home. I caught myself and wondered why I was feeling such sadness for a electronic device on the other side of solar system.

One possible explanation I had was that most humans all share a common disliking of the feeling of loneliness, and feel sad for those experiencing that feeling, regardless of whether that thing is human or not. Maybe it's just me, but I feel like a lot of other people also hate to see others in a position of loneliness as I think at some point in everyones life you experience some form of loneliness and therefore know how horrible it is to be in that situation. There's a really good quote by Carl Sagan that sums this up rather nicely: “In all our searching, the only thing we've found that makes the emptiness bearable is each other.”

Do any of you fellow users occasionally feel bad for robots or have done so in the past, and why? I'm sure I can't be the only one but I'd like to hear other peoples take on the subject.

I want to have a discussion about how decentralised communities and individuals best defend themselves. In the face of disaster there are many ways people can come together and find solutions through direct action but i think that constantly planning ways with your affinities will help you survive a lot of disasters or a attacks and figuring out a way to do this is of hyper importance as the state attacks or declines. Anti-institutional and formal or federal ways of doing this should be valued and investigated allowing people to still be incredibly flexible with various contingency plans for self preservation.