You know: something that sticks out to you in a bad, unignorable way -- like a "sore thumb" -- every time you see/hear it.

Maybe its apostrophe misuse, maybe it's using cliches like they're going out of style, maybe it's b  a d k e  r n i  n g, or a lack of parallelism perhaps bothers you.

Whatever it is (and it doesn't have to be writing related), let us know. Also, most importantly, why do you think it has such a profound effect on you?

I think it's a pretty decent way of visualizing a general group of people and the hardships or triumphs they went through, the only problem is when said events don't translate between countries & social classes and people refuse to distinguish them accordingly.

(For reference I'm late Gen Z.)

Most of my internet browsing is done on mobile and I've used predominantly Firefox and Firefox Focus in the past. I just switched over to Brave now that they've finally implemented their own crypto currency.
What browser are you using?
Is there a reason for this browser specifically? If so why?
What do you use your browser for?

This topic is part of a weekly series. It is meant to be a place for users to discuss their weekend.

If you have any plans, things you want to get done, things you have done, things you haven't done, or even if you just want to talk about how you're doing this weekend, this is a place for casual discussion about those things.

A list of all previous topics in this series can be found here.

So, what (or how) are you doing this weekend?

This topic is part of a weekly series. It is meant to be a place for users to discuss their week.

If you have any plans, goals, accomplishments, or even failures, whether they be personal or work related, I'd love to hear about them. This is a place for casual discussion about your week, past, present, and future.

A list of all previous topics in this series can be found here.

So, what (or how) are you doing this week?

This topic got me thinking on this. Nowadays I'm not a very emotional guy but in the past some movies completely wrecked me. My Girl, Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, Blue Gate Crossing (cried from the movie theater till the bus stop), The Hottest State (which quite literally accelerated the end of one of my relationships) and Stand by Me are examples of movies that made me cry like a little baby. But also some anime, like Rec and Kare Kano, and books like The Sorrows of Young Werther. What about you?

This topic is part of a weekly series. It is meant to be a place for users to discuss their weekend.

If you have any plans, things you want to get done, things you have done, things you haven't done, or even if you just want to talk about how you're doing this weekend, this is a place for casual discussion about those things.

A list of all previous topics in this series can be found here.

So, what (or how) are you doing this weekend?

It can be for any reason:

• Perhaps the question leads toward some uncomfortable self-reflection (e.g. "Am I annoying?")
• Perhaps the question might make you appear foolish or uneducated to some (e.g. "What is an IRA and why might I need one?")
• Perhaps the question might be seen as offensive or in bad taste (I don't think we need an example here)
• Perhaps the question itself is just outright uncomfortable due to its subject matter (e.g. "What is it like to get a colonoscopy?")
• Perhaps there's another reason I haven't covered here

Whatever the reason, this thread is your chance to ask any questions you want to, regardless of how you'll be viewed. It's also a chance to have those questions answered, should anyone be willing to do so.

With this in mind, there are some pretty important ground rules:

As a question asker, do EVERYTHING IN YOUR POWER to frame your question favorably and show sincerity. Walking in with a one sentence bombshell question that's guaranteed to stoke fires is likely to get you tagged for malice. Better to explain your thinking and why you have that question in the first place so that people can know you're coming from a genuine place. The more effort you put into your post, the more people are likely to respond with effort in kind.

As a question answerer, do EVERYTHING IN YOUR POWER to apply the principle of charity. The whole point of this thread is to draw out uncomfortable questions, so do your best to answer them a way that acknowledges that discomfort rather than heightening it. Also remember that even if the person asking the question isn't doing so in the best way, there are probably people in the audience with the same or similar questions. Write your responses with them in mind too.

As readers, do EVERYTHING IN YOUR POWER to both vote on comments you feel are good contributions as well as flag any comments you feel are malicious or in bad faith.

I think we've got a lot of great people on the site, and I know there are probably a ton of uncomfortable questions lurking out there. I think this is a good chance for us to get some of them out into the open so that they can be addressed in thoughtful and illuminating ways.

This topic is part of a weekly series. It is meant to be a place for users to discuss their week.

If you have any plans, goals, accomplishments, or even failures, whether they be personal or work related, I'd love to hear about them. This is a place for casual discussion about your week, past, present, and future.

A list of all previous topics in this series can be found here.

So, what (or how) are you doing this week?

This topic is part of a weekly series. It is meant to be a place for users to discuss their weekend.

If you have any plans, things you want to get done, things you have done, things you haven't done, or even if you just want to talk about how you're doing this weekend, this is a place for casual discussion about those things.

A list of all previous topics in this series can be found here.

So, what (or how) are you doing this weekend?

I am not even remotely knowledgeable about economics and stocks so if any logic in this is flawed, please tell me why.

If it happens (which seems likely but not a given) I think the most likely offenders would probably be companies like Uber and WeWork because they kept going with their current practices (mainly unsustainable and sometimes still unprofitable) to the point where venture capitalists decide it's too risky an investment to make and the stocks eventually crash in these companies and the whole market soon follows.

This topic is part of a weekly series. It is meant to be a place for users to discuss their weekend.

If you have any plans, things you want to get done, things you have done, things you haven't done, or even if you just want to talk about how you're doing this weekend, this is a place for casual discussion about those things.

A list of all previous topics in this series can be found here.

So, what (or how) are you doing this weekend?

This topic is part of a weekly series. It is meant to be a place for users to discuss their week.

If you have any plans, goals, accomplishments, or even failures, whether they be personal or work related, I'd love to hear about them. This is a place for casual discussion about your week, past, present, and future.

A list of all previous topics in this series can be found here.

So, what (or how) are you doing this week?

This topic is part of a weekly series. It is meant to be a place for users to discuss their weekend.

If you have any plans, things you want to get done, things you have done, things you haven't done, or even if you just want to talk about how you're doing this weekend, this is a place for casual discussion about those things.

A list of all previous topics in this series can be found here.

So, what (or how) are you doing this weekend?

This topic is part of a weekly series. It is meant to be a place for users to discuss their week.

If you have any plans, goals, accomplishments, or even failures, whether they be personal or work related, I'd love to hear about them. This is a place for casual discussion about your week, past, present, and future.

A list of all previous topics in this series can be found here.

So, what (or how) are you doing this week?

We've all felt it: the idea that something about us or something we're into is subject to unnecessary, invasive, or hurtful scrutiny or skepticism from others. Sometimes it's something small ("You like licorice? Really?!"), and sometimes it's something big ("You don't want to have kids? Really?!"), and each of us likely has faced both within our lives. I'm interested to know what other people's experiences are with this.

• What do you feel unfairly judged for?
• What, in particular, makes it so unfair?
• How do you handle it when you encounter it?
• Do you find yourself changing your behavior or pressured into dishonesty in order to avoid encountering the judgment in the first place?
• Why do you feel this sentiment exists in others and is widespread/shared?

Also, it probably goes without saying, but on a post centered primarily on people's feelings and experiences, potentially very difficult ones, it's probably best to do more listening, empathizing, and asking than explaining or rationalizing.

This topic is part of a weekly series. It is meant to be a place for users to discuss their week.

If you have any plans, goals, accomplishments, or even failures, whether they be personal or work related, I'd love to hear about them. This is a place for casual discussion about your week, past, present, and future.

A list of all previous topics in this series can be found here.

So, what (or how) are you doing this week?

This topic is part of a weekly series. It is meant to be a place for users to discuss their weekend.

If you have any plans, things you want to get done, things you have done, things you haven't done, or even if you just want to talk about how you're doing this weekend, this is a place for casual discussion about those things.

A list of all previous topics in this series can be found here.

So, what (or how) are you doing this weekend?

I watched this talk with David Brooks and I was blown away. It was an eloquent talk with strong words on how we need to find our sense of community again at a variety of levels (local to national).

So I'm curious, what communities are you involved in? If you don't have a sense of belonging, where would you like to belong?

I suppose online communities would count, but I think the point is to have away-from-keyboard interactions because of the additional layers of intimacy.

By putting the word SILLY in the title, I mean SERIOUS ISSUES such as those are strictly prohibited:

• politics
• religion
• abortion
• capital punishment
• gender politics
• anything else that usually causes trouble or heated discussion
• anything that could lock this thread

Allowed subjects:

• movies
• television
• technology
• love
• food
• animals
• any seemeling stupid thing that will definetely NOT cause any kind of heated discssion

I'm most interested in entertainment/media of any form - movies, tv shows, youtubers, stand-ups, theatre, music, whatever.

Something that was really (truly) funny to you, not just "comedy genre".

If you find yourself laughing more actively at the world around you then feel free to mention that too, with context.

You can explain why it makes you laugh, too, if you like. Although more importantly please indicate how much you laughed at a particular thing.

Did something cool recently, and no one’s bothered to ask?

Got some stuff on your chest, and no one’s checking in?

Super passionate about a niche topic that not too many people think of?

Toss your question-hopeful here, and let someone pop it!

1. You're with your wife at a party. At your eyes, she looks absolutely stunning. But, with the years, she gained a lot of weight. She asks you: "Honey, does this dress makes me look fat?". And it does. It definitely does. Is lying virtuous in this situation?

2. You're in a relationship. He's handsome, tender, caring and perfect. You feel a bundle of good feelings towards him, but you don't even know what "love" really is. You don't know the true nature of your sentiments, but you know they're strong and you don't wanna hurt his feelings. He asks if you love him. Saying no would be false. Saying yes would be false too. Is lying virtuous in this situation?

3. A three-year-old is dying of cancer. He's only got a few days. He asks you if he's gonna live. You say "yes". Is lying virtuous in this situation?

4. Your fellow soldier lost his legs and torso. He's bleeding through his mouth and high on morphine. He asks you if everything's gonna be okay. You say yes. Is lying virtuous in this situation?

5. You've been married for 5 years and, after some problems, you decide to take a real break (not like Ross and Rachael). During this break, you have sex with several woman/men. You decide to resume the relationship, but you know your partner would not be able to deal with your sexual adventures. When he/she ask about it, you say you didn't see anyone in the time you were apart. Is lying virtuous in this situation?

6. You know the project is dead. You also know that saying so will have absolutely no effect on its direction. Do you say the project is shit, or do you say it's got a shot just to save face? In that case, is there any virtue in telling the truth?

7. You believe A is true, but you also know that declaring A right now will lead to unfavorable result C. Do you declare A right now, or do you wait to declare it when it will lead to favorable result D? This guy knows what I'm talking about...

What are the Big Problems? I'm leaving this open-ended, there's no specific criteria for responses.

I'm interested in both your list and the reasons why. Submitting your list before reading others' contributions would be preferred.

Optionally: who is (or isn't) successfully addressing them. Individuals, organizations, companies, governments, other. How and/or why not?

I've asked this question periodically on several forums (G+, Reddit, HN) for seven years now.

I've written fairly extensively on my own views, reasonably findable if you wish, but my interest here is in gaining fresh input, resetting my own biases, and not colouring the discussion overly myself.

If I had a really rough day or accomplished more than expected, I make sure to reward myself as such. I've found that I treat myself to a local pizzeria or take a bath in steaming hot water and zone out from the world for an hour.

In English-speaking countries, the name "John Smith" is often used as a placeholder name because it's boring and common: John is one of the most common first names among English-speaking men, and Smith is the most common surname/family name among English-descended people. Together, they make a very boring and bland name.

What's the equivalent in your country? What's the most boring, common name? What do people use as a placeholder when they need to use a name that isn't a real person but looks like it could be a real person?

99% Invisible is a podcast about "the unnoticed architecture and design that shape our world". Episodes from other podcasts that have a similar theme are always welcome.

Edit: moved my favourites to a comment.

Lately, I've been reviewing companies I interact with a lot, and thinking about whether I feel comfortable supporting them as a business. This is mostly based on whether they are a good, ethical company who cares about the consumer. I'm interested what companies you think fit this criteria. I'm not going to lie, I originally intended this question to be about Valve, but decided to make it more open ended. So to start the conversation, do you think Valve fits this?

I've made a lot of life changing decisions recently and am going to give school a try again. I'm actually going to take a legitimate shot this time. One thing that always held me back in the past were group projects and peer reviewing of the work. Could anyone give me some anecdotes on how I should tackle this anxiety? I started seeing a therapist *:but I was wondering if there would be something supplemental I could do also.

Thanks

*: I just want to say thanks again for all the feedback

I'm interested in the stories of anyone willing to speak about their experiences, whether it was cyberbullying, stalking, doxing, hate mobs, or anything else.

Given the sensitive nature of the question, only share what you're comfortable with, if at all. The following questions are not a list to be answered but more just jumping off points for consideration.

• What was the harassment like for you?
• What platform(s) did it take place on?
• Was there a specific inciting incident?
• Was it related to any larger cultural factors?
• What was your response like?
• What impact did it have on you and/or others?
• How long did it last?
• What takeaways do you have from the experience?

For those of you who may be unaware of 'flow', here is how it is described in Daniel Kahneman's Thinking Fast and Slow:

Fortunately, cognitive work is not always aversive, and people sometimes expend considerable effort for long periods of time without having to exert willpower. The psychologist Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi has done more than anyone else to study this state of effortless attending, and the name he proposed for it, flow, has become part of the language. People who experience flow describe it as "a state of effortless concentration so deep that they lose their sense of time, of themselves, of their problems," and their descriptions of the job of that state are so compelling that Csikszentmihalyi has called it an "optimal experience." Many activities can induce a sense of flow, from painting to racing motorcycles - and for some fortunate authors I know, even writing a book is often an optimal experience. Flow neatly separates the two forms of effort: concentration on the task and the deliverate control of attention. Riding a motorcycle at 150 miles an hour and playing a competitive game of chess are certainly very effortful. In a state of flow, however, maintaining focused attention on these absorbing activities requires no exertion of self-control, thereby freeing resources to be directed to the task at hand.

For me, I would say getting into a just difficult enough programming problem or working on a data analysis can put me in this state where hours can slip away in the blink of an eye. The same thing for a game of Civilization V can do the same thing for me.

I thought it would be fun to take Tildes's temperature on humanity's future prospects. If you respond, can you include your approximate age, your opinion, and maybe a brief explanation of why you think/feel the way you do.

I'm in my early 30s. I'm cautiously optimistic. I think it's an interesting time to be alive, as its the first time humanity is facing a problem of this scale. I think it'll pull through in one way or another. It may get bad for a bit, but nobody will let it stay bad for very long. I also think humanity has more control over the current situation than it realizes, it seems like the last two generations and maybe the current gen were content to let tunnel-visioned, big business interests do the metaphorical driving. Hopefully that'll stop soon, and we'll put people without a profit motive in the driver's seat.

Thanks for participating!

Let's do a little show and tell for our new toys :)

(I was thinking about this as a non-recurring equivalent to the listening threads and such but I probably worded it a bit too...fluffily for ~tech so I moved it to ~talk)

I'll get the discussion started -- I'm somewhat into contemporary art, recently Can't Help Myself by Sun Yuan and Peng Yu.

Mark Rothko is another favorite of mine, hopefully some day I can make it down to the Rothko Chapel.

Mine is: do others see the same colours that I do? As in, is my "green" the same as your "green"? Or would my "green" look "blue" to you? I like this one because it's completely possible, points out the plasticity of our minds and makes a distinction between sensation and perception. There are variations of this but I like it formulated as such. It's my favorite because it was also my first foray into the philosophy of consciousness and I'm often reminded of it when in an altered state of consciousness (e.g. by psychedelics).

Your favorite experiment can be whatever: either something that has affected you deeply / changed your life or just something fun and amusing to think about.

No genre restrictions, so a tell-all memoir is as valid a response as a high-fantasy tome. Maybe you want to dive in deep on an anthropological topic, or maybe you want to pen a full book of contemporary political commentary. Any and all options are on the table, with the only caveat being that you'd have to write enough to fill a book, so it would have to be an area of knowledge or passion for you--likely both.

Also, for those here that have already written books, feel free to talk about those if you like, or one you hope to write in the future.

For those that haven't, don't feel constrained by real-world concerns/inhibitions. Pretend you have the time and resources to adequately devote to the book to fully see your vision through.

Make sure you give us:

• A summary of what the book would be about
• An explanation of why you'd want to write that specific book
• And, most importantly, a good title!

When I refer to social media, I'm talking about the main platforms such as Facebook, Instagram, Twitter etc. rather than those on the cusp (reddit? tildes?).

I'm personally not on any of those platforms. That is not to say I haven't used them in the past - Facebook in particular I've had an account a number of times, my longest time away from facebook was around a year and a half and I relented and signed up for an account. I'm now about six months away from Facebook and think that "this is probably it" in that I cannot foresee myself signing up again.

I have had a Twitter account up until around three months ago, which I had for roughly a year. Instagram I had a brief flirtation with for a few weeks and decided it wasn't for me so killed that off.

My main reasoning for killing my social media accounts is the absolute toxicity of those communities. Of course you can avoid the toxic elements but I find it fairly easy for it to creep up on you when you're not expecting. My second reasoning is privacy issues. I'm not a massive tin foil hat/privacy advocate however it is certainly a concern of mine. There are certain aspects to privacy issues I'm willing to overlook for convenience sake, but I feel like Facebook et al have got it entirely wrong and I'm simply not interested in providing them with any more of my data than they already have.

I do feel that I am missing out, that it is far more difficult to keep in the loop of what friends/family are doing but I'm reasonably happy to make that sacrifice. It does highlight how absolutely reliant people are on Facebook (certainly within my social group) for communication. That's also quite a concern of mine that Facebook does control (I think that is fair) the means of communication between so many people. I feel like nothing good will come of this.

How about you guys? Am I being ridiculous? Am I missing out on something? Do you side with me?

Anything you've been working at lately and finally got it done? Anything you finally got around to finishing/starting? Anything big happening? Feel free to gush about anything you've done but want to talk about!

Yesterday I decided to pick my acoustic guitar back up and learn Blackbird by The Beatles (Only mildly inspired by Kmac). Today I got it all down! Feeling super proud that I nailed a song like that so quickly after having played bass almost primarily for a while now.

~movies.horror?
~life.parenting?
~creative.poetry.limericks?
~comp.dev.games.godot?
~tildes.taxonomy? ;)

The possibilities are, of course, endless. Right now, with few users, we're all still living in top-level land, but I think it would be interesting to see what everyone's more specific interests are, as well as how some people would tackle defining a hierarchy. (e.g. ~games.overwatch vs. ~games.fps.overwatch vs. ~games.multiplayer.fps.overwatch etc.).

Furthermore, what content would you like to see in your specific subgroups? What types of posts would make having them worthwhile?

I was thinking about how I can get caught in negative/critical thought patterns and fail to give gratitude to the people and things in my life that I love and spend time with. I end up taking a lot for granted or spending too much of my mental energy critiquing small flaws instead of appreciating the bigger, better picture.

As such, I'm curious to hear about stuff in your life. It can be big or small. It can be a person or a thing, or a person behind a thing (e.g. I'm grateful to the people that grow and roast the beans in my favorite coffee). What deserves more love and admiration in your life?

For example:
I remember that I had a really short fuse when I was in highschool. One day, I was having a bad day anyway, and a friend of mine made a comment about my appearance. I slapped him. I don't know why I thought it was a good idea. We then got into a fight which ended our friendship. I didn't apologize and haven't had the chance to do so since.

I am still thinking what the friend feels about the situation today and I am ashamed that this happened.