Any Quebecois/French Canadians here?
Probably not but I'm curious
Probably not but I'm curious
Credit for this intriguing conundrum goes to this week's Slate Political Gabfest.
you head to the gas station to catch a 6-pack and maybe a bag of chips or some rillos. you pass the cashier a twenty, and they mention your change will get you a couple lottery tickets. you're in a good mood and we all hate coins, so you just tell 'em you're down and to choose random numbers.
a week later, you wake up and see the winning lottery numbers on the news.
hopeful curiosity turns into a flooring disbelief as you pause the tv and check the numbers four times over.
you scramble to find and unlock your phone, heading straight to google.
"winning lottery numbers"
"how to tell if you won the lottery"
"lottery number checker"
everything checks out.
"how to claim lottery winnings"
you go to claim your prize, and you can choose between $130,000,000 in post-tax cash now, or $210,000,000 spread equally over the next 30 years.
which do you choose? what do you do with it?
Maybe I'm just not very well versed in this sort of thing but I couldn't find anything online. I've always been sort of paranoid that a company might not be truthful in their privacy policy. Is there any sort of law to keep them honest or do we just have to take their word on it?
I do the following:
The next step would be for me to switch from iPhone to Android running Lineage OS, but money is a bit tight right now. As for day-to-day lifestyle choices, I try to use cash whenever possible and never sign up for things like store rewards programs.
What's your setup? Do you consider yourself a privacy-minded individual? Are you more concerned with protecting yourself from corporate or government entities?
What do you find to be beautiful? Is there anything so beautiful it can bring you to tears? Anything so beautiful that just thinking about it brings you to tears?
Please share that beauty with the rest of us!
Change can be painful and slow. And frankly quite awkward and lonely too. What are you working on to change and how can I help? How can we as an excellent community support each other here?
I personally think that if it doesn't get reigned in, it will destroy a LOT about reddit.
Everyday I am more surprised how impatient people are, and how ridiculous the behavior that stems from it is.
The street in front of my house is a four-lane street. There is a stop sign 30 ft at the end of the block. Just about every morning I will back out and there will be a car that will get into the next lane and then overtake me just so they can slam on their brakes because there's a line of cars at the four-way stop 30 feet ahead. I just don't understand that behavior. Drivers in general seem so impatient and I don't know why they are always in a hurry. We have major accidents here daily.
I've been trying to get a package delivered since last Friday. The post office has been making it real hard to get due to issues on their end. This morning I got a voicemail to go pick it up at the station around the corner.
I'm in line and this woman asked if anyone is there just to pick up. So I say yes I am and I walk up and I give the guy my information. This woman behind me reaches around right next to my face and says can you get this for me? Like it isn't my turn.
They can't find my package because I was told wrong and they didn't actually have it it was out for delivery. This woman has been waiting about 60 seconds and you can hear her sighing and then she leaps to the register next to me as soon as a woman walks up asking for her package.
This woman was making a big deal about having to wait not even 2 minutes for her package.
I just don't understand why people are so impatient. I mean I was frustrated as could be about my package because they kept flip-flopping on me but I wasn't acting put out like it was the worst thing in the world.
Is it entitlement? What is it? People get mad when they have to wait in line behind one person at the grocery store who has already been rung up and is just paying at that point. I mean why are they actually getting upset over this stuff.
And they never learn. I'll be checked out and leaving by the time they are being rung up because they spent 5 minutes looking for a short line. I don't get it.
Thanks!
Hello Tildestians. Nice to be a part of this community I think. The threads I have read are all polite. What are you grateful for in your life right now?
Any advice? What are your experiences with moving abroad and starting over? I need advice with finding apartments to rent, I'll be moving to Argentina.
Our current plan is to stay in Oxford for three days, and "go with the flow" for the next four. In Oxford, we have a few plans, but still a lot of free time. For the remainder, we have no fixed plans other than to do the WB studio tour in London. Mobility wise we are pretty much entirely free, though ideally public transportation as opposed to renting a car would be good.
Do you have any suggestions for what we should do in those free days?
I saw an AskReddit thread on this recently and I thought us Tilders (is that what we're calling ourselves?) could do our own. The spooky season is approaching and I thought this might be something fun to do.
If the cookies never stop being produced, then it is logical to assume that, if unchecked, uneaten cookies will eventually choke the earth, leaving us uninhabitable. What is your plan, and how long do you think we'll last in this cookie apocalypse?
As for some general rules, the machine is impossible to break, and it can inexplicably produce cookies infinitely without having to refill on ingredients.
I feel that with the hustle of life, we never truly get to appreciate the opportunity that being a human presents. After all, being born at all is a one in a couple hundred million chance.
...you do back up your data, don't you?
They don't have to be significant in any way; just threads you personally enjoyed.
The ones that immediately come to mind for me are:
Chasing the American dream has got me jaded - started by @dodger.
https://tildes.net/~talk/29a/chasing_the_american_dream_has_got_me_jaded
and
grab some tea baby, it's midnight. this is today's slam thread. - led by the fantastic @earlgreytea.
https://tildes.net/~creative/3gt/grab_some_tea_baby_its_midnight_this_is_todays_slam_thread
Neither of them had hundreds of comments, and neither of them were particularly active; I just find myself particularly fond of them for whatever reason.
When I was in high school I went to China through an education program. On the plane there I was seated next to an elderly Chinese woman on my left and a mother and daughter to my right.
While talking with the daughter and mother at some point the elderly woman became involved. She spoke cantonese and my mandarin was limited so the mother helped to translate.
The elderly woman took out paper and pen from her bag and began to have me write me characters. Some time after, she put her hands on my face and began to massage it in circular motions. It was strange but pleasant because clearly her intentions were good. I looked over to the man who was leading my fellow students, and got a thumbs up as he mouthed "just go with it".
I'd never experienced such caring from a complete stranger. It was a lovely introduction into their culture and genuine happiness to share it.
Seems as though that "initial" wave of users is dying off when a lot of invites went out. Or is it just the weekend and everyone is busy?
I recall recently seeing an article posted that was related to euthanasia, and I started thinking about the subject. I see both potential pros and potential cons associated with it. For example, there's the concern about family members or authority pressuring an ill person to opt for doctor-assisted suicide to ease financial burdens, for instance. There's also the benefit, on the other hand, of allowing someone who is terminally ill or guaranteed to live the rest of their life in excruciating pain the option to go out on their own terms. With proper oversight and ethical considerations, it generally seems to be an all-around ideal to provide an "opt-out" for those who would only continue to suffer and would rather not prolong it, as a merciful alternative to forcing them to live it out.
But then there are some trickier questions.
As a disclaimer, I spent nearly a couple of decades struggling through depression and have been surrounded (and still am surrounded) by people who struggle with their own mental illnesses. Because of this, I'm perfectly aware of the stigma and subpar treatment of mental illness in general. With that in mind, I completely recognize that there are certain conditions which are, at this time, completely untreatable and result in peoples' quality of life deteriorating to the point that they become perpetually miserable, particularly with certain neurodegenerative diseases.
Thus, the question occurred to me: wouldn't such a condition be the mental health equivalent of a terminal illness? Would it not be unethical to force someone to continue living under conditions in which their quality of life will only diminish? Shouldn't someone who has such a condition, and is either of sound enough mind or with a written statement of their wishes from a time when they were of sound enough mind, be able to make the same decision about whether or not to opt to go out on their own terms?
And yet, as reasonable as it sounds, for some reason the thought of it feels wrong.
Is there something fundamentally more wrong about euthanasia for mental health vs. euthanasia for physical health? Is it just a culturally-learned ideal?
More importantly, what makes euthanasia acceptable in some cases and not others? Which cases do you think exemplify the divide? Is there something more fundamental that we can latch onto? Is there a clear line we can draw? Is psychology itself just too young a field for us to be drawing that ethical line?
I'm genuinely not sure how to feel about this subject. I would be interested in hearing some other thoughts on the subject. The questions above don't necessarily have to be answered, but I thought they could be good priming points.
I was browsing on my phone in rural Norway earlier today. Anyone got anything particularly crazy?
According to Graphtreon, there are some crazy popular Patreon campaigns. The top creator has over 37,000 patrons and the runner-up creator has over 23,000 patrons. They're making over $100k per month from crowdfunding alone. Insane!
So I'm curious: Do you guys support any Patreons yourself? Which ones and why?
Under the right inputs opinions and worldviews can be changed relatively easily, but what about the more subtle stuff underneath? Can a workaholic with a strong drive later in life become lethargic? Can an innately introverted person later in life become innately extroverted?
Those aren't the best examples, but that said my intuition would be that these tendencies are too deep rooted to be significantly altered and can only be superficially mitigated against one way or another.
If this is to a degree incorrect I'd love to hear some anecdotes.
I'm curious to see what the public consensus towards the site is nowadays. They have been controversial since their inception, but no matter what you think of them, there is no denying that the information they've released has sparked massive debate around the world.
In France, we all need two identity documents to vote, a voter's card and a national identity card (or passport). It is not at all controversial, even at the far left of the political spectrum. In America, people say it's voter suppression.
Why?
Quick story: I was in an elevator with a coworker I didn't really know and he told me a story of when he asked a stranger in a restaurant if she were pregnant. She was not! And he said he was so embarrassed that he had to leave.
I didn't get a chance to ask him, so I'm asking you fellow tilderinos - why ask this question at all? Especially to a stranger? What motivates this question? Is it really asking why someone looks fat?
Have you been on the receiving end of this question? (If you're a women older than 25, I'm going to guess yes). What are your stories?
I'm going to be a little bit more broad on my response. It wasn't a matter of just a one-time thing or action, but a philosophy. I have a personal rule of mine to change something major about myself at least once a year, and that could range from a job or to taking up a new hobby.
Since taking up on this idea, this thought, I've felt better as I can see changes happening, and looking back from exactly a year ago to the date there's a lot to be impressed by. By following this new tradition I feel better as I can see constant improvement, and self-motivation to adapt, and evolve as a person.
What was the best change you ever made in your life?
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!
This is a tricky personal conundrum of mine. I'll try to articulate it clearly.
I believe in compassion, and I want to live in harmony with compassionate tendencies inside. But at the same time, in the act of extending compassion, there appears to be an in-built power gradient: the "giver" is somehow in an "advantaged" position, and the receiver a more disadvantaged one.
An example. I was once in a fast-food restaurant, waiting to order, and I saw the order-taker was obviously new and very nervous and skittish at her job. So after I placed my order I expressed how much I appreciate her service and that I thought she was doing a good job. It was truly what I wanted to say, and I thought she took this well, like, she looked more relaxed as she beamed.
But then there was a power gradient. I gave her something that she wouldn't/couldn't have given me. She was the more distressed one, and this power gradient emphasized that. I don't mean that bystanders were made more conscious of her distress. I mean, it had the potential to make me more conscious of my privilege and her her lack thereof.
And I'm aversive to power. I can be highly sceptical and critical of power. I don't feel easy to have power over someone else. I have had troubled relations with power figures in my life. I easily confuse the natural, benign activation of power with the reflexive, defensive, "shields-up" reaction that I often find myself in. To explain a bit, the latter is really a form of anxiety, perhaps a trauma from experiences of hypercompetition, isolation, and emotional neglect in the past.
In the end, I thirst after commonality, equality, brothersisterhood, close and meaningful contact with others as they are, as human beings, on level ground, side by side, sharing the common condition in our vulnerabilities... But there's this aspect of my character, i.e. the tendency to get tense and look for a "higher ground" and occupy there, just to be on the safe (more powerful!) side. There's this haughty, difficult-to-approach, high-brow me, that I feel get in the way.
I fee sad and somewhat confused about this. I think I'm partly venting, partly asking about your similar experiences. Please consider this topic fairly open-ended. If you have something to say about it, I'm eager to listen to you.
Thanks!
For me, I was just browsing a random thread and somebody complained about a reddit-specific thing and then another user linked them to r/tilde with a message implying that Tilde was better about that issue and I checked it out and decided to follow to see how development went with the site. I never actually actively followed news about it, just mostly waited for invites to be handed out so I could see for myself. I like it so far, it feels more communal.
This has been around for a long time. Why just now after years are they cracking down? What new tech was invented? Sorry for being ignorant :(
I'm in the midst of an interview process with an employer that insists on an "Introduction to Algorithms"-type test for all of its white-collar workers. Their claim is that it selects for "smart" people. [I'm anxious because my relevant coursework was many years ago, and there's no way I'll have time to master it again before the scheduled test - there's some age bias, noted below.]
Based on review of Glassdoor's comments about this company's interview process and demographics, what they really want is recent college graduates with fresh CIS degrees that they can abuse and use up quickly, giving them no market-relevant skills in the process. The product relies on an obscure, specialized database architecture and elderly front-end code.
However, the company is a market leader in my industry, and I'm interested in working there in a customer-facing technical liaison/project management role because the product is better fitted for task, has better support and customization, and better interoperability than anything else. There's huge R&D reinvestment as well, and the company is just that little bit more ethical in the marketplace than its competitors.
Do you believe that the ability to do sorts and permutations in code genuinely selects for general intelligence, and would you want to work with a population of people who all mastered this subject matter, regardless of their actual job title?
My list would probably be:
Edit: Everything else that comes to mind: Rick and Morty, How It's Made, Trailer Park Boys, Breaking Bad, Parcs and Recreation, The Office, Berserk, Cosmos (Original), Planet Earth, Blue Planet.
I'm doubling down here folks :) My prior post was called-out for being click-baity and rightfully so. The title was especially poor. I'll try to do better moving forward.
I'm starting a discussion here because my hope is that we can talk about the ideas within the article, rather than the article itself.
Here was the original post for those interested: https://tildes.net/~humanities/3y1/mark_cuban_says_the_ability_to_think_creatively_will_be_critical_in_10_years_and_elon_musk_agrees
I posted the article because at it's core are several interesting observations/propositions from two billionaires, Mark Cuban and Elon Musk, that presumably know a lot about business, and in Musk's case, a lot about STEM, and have a history of making winning bets on the future.
The article supposes that:
There was a time when parents told their kids to "become a lawyer or a doctor" but after enough time we end up with too many people going into the same profession and there is more competition for those jobs as the market becomes flooded. I know anecdotally that's happened for lawyers (not sure about doctors).
I can see this happening with STEM as well.
Should parents encourage kids to pursue STEM but pair this with equal study in the humanities? Is STEM the next target of automation? Will creative skills be more highly valued? Will engineers find themselves in the bread line?
A long time ago I saw my friend watch a video while he worked on a second monitor at home. I thought wow, that's terrible, how can he focus?
Fast forward a few years, and these days I work from home. There is often a video of some sort playing on a tablet while I work.
Probably more commonly, most of the time when I'm watching a TV show or movie on a big screen I have my phone in my hand and I'm scrolling through some feed. It basically turns the HD video I'm supposedly watching into an audio book-like experience.
Does anyone else do either of these things? Any theories as to why we do this? What are the effects of this behavior? Are we basically doing 2 things terribly instead of 1 thing well?
edit: spelling: think=thing (I blame the video playing in the background)
Yesterday my phone completely broke its SIM card settings and I had to do a factory reset. I thought the backups that my phone did to my Google Drive backed up everything I needed, but apparently they don't! So now I get the pleasure of remembering every little configuration change I've done over the past three years. Maybe it's time for a new phone...
What about you? What do you want to complain about? Please, complain with me.
Sorry if this is a bit off-beat from the usual discussion here, but I really want to hear any jokes that y'all have, just for fun.
I've never broken a bone! I've probably had minor fractures before and played it off when stubbing my toe for example, but as far as I know, I've never broken a bone.
Tildes, tildites, tilidians? What is something you've never done?
Something that I believe others would find to be a negative trait or personality is a person with a sense of dark and morbid humour. I tend to use dark humour a lot more than I should and sometimes have to be pretty careful around who I say it. Having friends who can take in jest with the things I say without any repercussions is great, otherwise they wouldn't last that long as friends!
What do you consider a negative trait, quality, factor, and that you find attractive?
I went to Iowa for over a month. Visiting family and such. How about you?
Here's my not-so original joke. There are two kinds of people in the world: those who need closure.
What did you recently do (or maybe not recent but still memorable) to go out of your comfort zone and actually have it work out in the end?
By lightweight, I mean sites that are compact, that load quickly, that aren’t loaded with tons of scripts.
Personally, I’m a fan of lite.cnn.io. No ads, very minimalistic.
Anyone find any good deals on Buy-It-For-Life quality products? Let's talk about our hauls!
I've been consuming the darkness that is wartime histories from the past three or four centuries and I feel like I've encountered a lot of people who had what they believed to be justifiable reasons to launch wars against other powers. There are people who thought they had divine right to a particular position of power and so would launch a war to assert that god-given right. There are people who believed in a citizen's right to have some (any) say in how their tax money gets used in government and so would fight wars over that. People would fight wars to, as John Cleese once said, "Keep China British." Many wars are started to save the honor of a country/nation. Some are started in what is claimed to be self-defense and later turns out to have been a political play instigated to end what has been a political thorn in their sides.
In all this time, I've struggled to really justify many of these wars, but some of that comes with the knowledge of what other wars have cost in terms of human carnage and suffering. For some societies in some periods, the military is one of the few vehicles to social mobility (and I think tend to think social mobility is grease that keeps a society functioning). Often these conflicts come down to one man's penis and the inability to swallow their pride to find a workable solution unless at the end of a bayonet. These conflicts also come with the winning powers taking the opportunity to rid themselves of political threats and exacting new harms on the defeated powers (which comes back around again the next time people see each other in a conflict).
So help keep me from embracing a totally pacifistic approach to war. When is a war justifiable? When it is not only morally acceptable but a moral imperative to go to war? Please point to examples throughout history where these situations have happened, if you can (though if you're prepared to admit that there has been no justifiable war that you're aware of, I suppose that's fine if bitter).
Talk / rant / celebrate / vent / etc.
Tell me what you are excited about in your life