What’s something you think more people should know about?
Any answer is fair game: serious, funny, big, small, substantial, trivial, broad, niche, etc. Let us know what it is and why you think more people should know about it.
Any answer is fair game: serious, funny, big, small, substantial, trivial, broad, niche, etc. Let us know what it is and why you think more people should know about it.
As part of a weekly series, these topics are a place for users to casually discuss the things they did — or didn't do — during their weekend. Did you make any plans? Take a trip? Do nothing at all? Tell us about it!
As part of a weekly series, these topics are a place for users to casually discuss the things they did — or didn't do — during their week. Did you accomplish any goals? Suffer a failure? Do nothing at all? Tell us about it!
As part of a weekly series, these topics are a place for users to casually discuss the things they did — or didn't do — during their weekend. Did you make any plans? Take a trip? Do nothing at all? Tell us about it!
Just curious. Wondering if I’m the only one on Tildes right now or if there are others. I’d also be happy to answer questions about nuclear issues, if all y’all would like.
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How often do you tend to give or receive advice?
If/when you're receiving it, from where/who? And about what?
If you're giving advice, what is it usually about?
If you're confident in your knowledge/advice in any given area, what places do you not reccomend people take advice in that area from?
What people/places do you get advice from?
Do you ever get or follow places that give advice you won't use until far later? (I admittedly do this quite a bit by lurking r/sex.)
I want to hear what you think. Is it morally wrong? Should it be abolished or reinstated? What's the situation where you live?
(This is a self-repost, hence the "duplicate question" tag.)
A guy named Adolf Hitler won an election in 1932. He won an election, and 50 million people died as a result of that election in World War II, including six million Jews. So what I learned as a little kid is that politics is, in fact, very important.
-Bernie Sanders
Good satire raises questions about reality.
(IDK the source, but I first heard it here)
The old world is dying, and the new world struggles to be born: now is the time of monsters.
-Antonio Gramsci, 1930
When I was a kid my parents warned me about the mind-numbing effect TV would have on me if I watched too much of it. They were referring to fluff entertainment, which I've consumed plenty of over the years. Meanwhile, my parents used the TV to watch important and meaningful shows like the news. Eventually Fox News. In the end, they were right— but not in the way they expected.
If God has made us in his image, we have returned him the favor.
-Voltaire
All tyrannies rule through fraud and force. When fraud is exposed, they must rule exclusively by force.
-George Orwell
If you do not use the person you are, you will lose the person you are and instead become the mask that you wear.
-Greg Guevara/Jreg
What do you need from your parents?
encouragement
-u/DeSteph-DeCurry
Each act, each occasion, is worse than the last, but only a little worse. You wait for the next and the next. You wait for one great shocking occasion, thinking that others, when such a shock comes, will join with you in resisting somehow. You don't want to act, or even talk, alone; you don't want to 'go out of your way to make trouble.' Why not?-Well, you are not in the habit of doing it. And it is not just fear, fear of standing alone, that restrains you; it is also genuine uncertainty. Uncertainty is a very important factor, and, instead of decreasing as time goes on, it grows. Outside, in the streets, in the general community, 'everyone' is happy. One hears no protest, and certainly sees none. You know, in France or Italy there would be slogans against the government painted on walls and fences; in Germany, outside the great cities, perhaps, there is not even this. In the university community, in your own community, you speak privately to your colleagues, some of whom certainly feel as you do; but what do they say? They say, 'It's not so bad' or 'You're seeing things' or 'You're an alarmist.'
And you are an alarmist. You are saying that this must lead to this, and you can't prove it. These are the beginnings, yes; but how do you know for sure when you don't know the end, and how do you know, or even surmise, the end? On the one hand, your enemies, the law, the regime, the Party, intimidate you. On the other, your colleagues pooh-pooh you as pessimistic or even neurotic. You are left with your close friends, who are, naturally, people who have always thought as you have....
But the one great shocking occasion, when tens or hundreds or thousands will join with you, never comes. That's the difficulty. If the last and worst act of the whole regime had come immediately after the first and smallest, thousands, yes, millions would have been sufficiently shocked-if, let us say, the gassing of the Jews in '43 had come immediately after the 'German Firm' stickers on the windows of non-Jewish shops in '33. But of course this isn't the way it happens. In between come all the hundreds of little steps, some of them imperceptible, each of them preparing you not to be shocked by the next. Step C is not so much worse than Step B, and, if you did not make a stand at Step B, why should you at Step C? And so on to Step D.
And one day, too late, your principles, if you were ever sensible of them, all rush in upon you. The burden of self-deception has grown too heavy, and some minor incident, in my case my little boy, hardly more than a baby, saying 'Jewish swine,' collapses it all at once, and you see that everything, everything, has changed and changed completely under your nose. The world you live in-your nation, your people-is not the world you were born in at all. The forms are all there, all untouched, all reassuring, the houses, the shops, the jobs, the mealtimes, the visits, the concerts, the cinema, the holidays. But the spirit, which you never noticed because you made the lifelong mistake of identifying it with the forms, is changed. Now you live in a world of hate and fear, and the people who hate and fear do not even know it themselves; when everyone is transformed, no one is transformed. Now you live in a system which rules without responsibility even to God. The system itself could not have intended this in the beginning, but in order to sustain itself it was compelled to go all the way."
Back in 1950, when both major parties were broad and moderate with overlapping appeals, many of America’s leading political scientists wrote a report in which they bemoaned this state of affairs.
In a report, “Toward a More Responsible Two-Party System,” they saw two national parties that were but loose confederations of state and local parties, incapable of bringing forward coherent programs to the voters and carrying them out when they got into power.
If the American political parties failed to heed their advice, the authors issued a dire warning:
If the two parties do not develop alternative programs that can be executed, the voter’s frustration and the mounting ambiguities of national policy might also set in motion more extreme tendencies to the political left and the political right. This, again, would represent a condition to which neither our political institutions nor our civic habits are adapted. Once a deep political cleavage develops between opposing groups, each group naturally works to keep it deep. Such groups may gravitate beyond the confines of the American system of government and its democratic institutions.
Assuming a survival of the two-party system in form though not in spirit, even if only one of the diametrically opposite parties comes to flirt with unconstitutional means and ends, the consequences would be serious. For then the constitution-minded electorate would be virtually reduced to a one-party system with no practical alternative to holding to the “safe” party at all cost.
(That being said, this quote does show some age, as we now know that this "constitution-minded electorate" doesn't really exist. And "moderate" is extremely relative)
As part of a weekly series, these topics are a place for users to casually discuss the things they did — or didn't do — during their weekend. Did you make any plans? Take a trip? Do nothing at all? Tell us about it!
Asked mainly because
Conservatives say that's one of the things they believe in
It often seems to be wrong or misused ("if everyone just used masks and stayed home the pandemic would have ended long ago") ("not using masks during a pandemic has consequences for other people and thus doesn't belong in personal freedom")
A definition for stuff that fits the question could be this:
The credit or blame for consistently failing or succeding at it is largely on you
While you can ask for advice to get better, you have to do it yourself
So the main examples that come to my mind are largely (well) personal:
Being motivated and committed to work towards what you want
Being hygienic
Being good at socializing and figuring out what's your relationship with other people gonna be
(although obviously, given socializing depends on other people, this is very dependent on them doing the same and accepting/recognizing you or your choices and so is more accurate on progressive or apolitical social environments)
Which is good but doesn't explain it being used as a political belief.
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Specifically, the kind of folks you like so much that whenever they release new content, you stop what you're doing and eagerly check out whatever it is they've put out.
This could be YouTube channels, podcasts, illustrators, webcomic artists, blogs, Twitter users, writers, you name it. (As long as they're not a nameless, faceless infinite feed!)
As part of a weekly series, these topics are a place for users to casually discuss the things they did — or didn't do — during their weekend. Did you make any plans? Take a trip? Do nothing at all? Tell us about it!
As part of a weekly series, these topics are a place for users to casually discuss the things they did — or didn't do — during their weekend. Did you make any plans? Take a trip? Do nothing at all? Tell us about it!
As part of a weekly series, these topics are a place for users to casually discuss the things they did — or didn't do — during their week. Did you accomplish any goals? Suffer a failure? Do nothing at all? Tell us about it!
As part of a weekly series, these topics are a place for users to casually discuss the things they did — or didn't do — during their week. Did you accomplish any goals? Suffer a failure? Do nothing at all? Tell us about it!
Voting is determinative, especially where the constituency is precisely known, as with a legislature, executive council, panel of judges, gerrymandered electoral district, defined organisational membership. If you know, with high precision, who is voting, then you can determine or influence how they vote, or what the outcome will be. Which lends a certain amount of predictability (often considered as good), but also of a tyranny of the majority. This is especially true where long-standing majorities can be assured: legislatures, boards of directors, courts, ethnic or cultural majorities.
The result is a very high-stakes game in establishing majorities, influencing critical constituencies, packing courts, and gaming parliamentary and organisational procedures. But is this the best method --- both in terms of representational eqquity and of decision and goverrnance quality?
Hands down the most fascinating article I've read over the past decade is Michael Schulson's "How to choose? When your reasons are worse than useless, sometimes the most rational choice is a random stab in the dark", in Aeon. The essay, drawing heavily on Peter Stone, The Luck of the Draw: The Role of Lotteries in Decision Making (2011), which I've not read, mostly concerns decisions under uncertainty and of the risk of bad decisions. It seems to me that it also applies to periods of extreme political partisanship and division. An unlikely but possible circumstance, I'm sure....
Under many political systems, control is binary and discrete. A party with a majority in a legislature or judiciary, or control of the executive, has absolute control, barring procedural exceptions. Moreover, what results is a politics of veto power, where the bloc defining a controlling share of votes effectively controls the entire organisation. It may not be able to get its way, but it can determine which of two pluralities can reach a majority. Often in favour of its own considerations, overtly or covertly --- this is an obvious engine of corruption.
(This is why "political flexibility" often translates to more effective power than a hardline orthodoxy.)
One inspiration is a suggestion for US Supreme Court reform: greatly expand the court, hear more cases, but randomly assign a subset of judges to each case.[1] A litigant cannot know what specific magistrates will hear a case, and even a highly-packed court could produce minority-majority panels.
Where voting can be fuzzed, the majority's power is made less absolute, more uncertain, and considerations which presume that such a majority cannot be assured, one hopes, would lead to a more inclusive decisionmaking process. Some specific mechanisms;
Concensus/majority decisionmaking tends to locked and unrepresentitive states. Fuzzing might better unlock these and increase representation.
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The question is straightforward, but the point of the thread isn't to just signal your dislike about or confusion towards something -- it's to hopefully get an explanation from someone who can actually put the appeal into words.
Thus, for everyone reading this thread, if you see something in the comments that you actually do like -- or that you feel like you know enough about to do it justice -- then explain away!
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It's been one year since I asked Tildes users what they're thankful for.
2020 has been an insane year, but even among the despair and uncertainty, I still think there are things to be grateful for and things to be hopeful for.
So, what are you all thankful for to have had in 2020, and what are you looking forward to?
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Asked mainly out of curiosity and because, personally, most of the changes I've been through (well, that I remember, with I don't do nearly as well as I'd like) as a person are basically the implications of autism often getting weaker with age and just getting hormones like most people instead of anything deliberate or conscious, with the exception of this.
As part of a weekly series, these topics are a place for users to casually discuss the things they did — or didn't do — during their weekend. Did you make any plans? Take a trip? Do nothing at all? Tell us about it!
As part of a weekly series, these topics are a place for users to casually discuss the things they did — or didn't do — during their week. Did you accomplish any goals? Suffer a failure? Do nothing at all? Tell us about it!
As part of a weekly series, these topics are a place for users to casually discuss the things they did — or didn't do — during their weekend. Did you make any plans? Take a trip? Do nothing at all? Tell us about it!
As part of a weekly series, these topics are a place for users to casually discuss the things they did — or didn't do — during their week. Did you accomplish any goals? Suffer a failure? Do nothing at all? Tell us about it!
We've all been in situations before where we're the odd one out: everyone's using a new app you had never heard of, everyone is wearing the same color for an event, etc. An often refrain in such situations is "Well I didn't get the memo". So I'm curious, what memos have you missed?
An example for me: I suddenly have started seeing lots of people using this substack website, which seems kind of like a Medium alternative. No clue where this came from or how it got big - I totally missed the memo on Substack.
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After many years I recently started reading comics again, both Marvel and DC. I don’t have a tablet and reading on my iPhone 5 would be cumbersome. Besides, print is durable, looks really good—in my view better than any screen. I’m also fighting against a screen addiction by engaging in more non-digital activities.
There’s a newsstand close to where iI live that still sells comics, but they do not carry many titles.
Today I went to the doctor that is close to a large mall. After I went (against better judgement, I know...) straight to one of the few remaining large bookstores in the town only to find out that the entire magazines section was wiped out. They now only sell a few overpriced hardcover comic books.
I was giving up hope when I found a little kiosk with all sorts of cool stuff, inclusive a generous assortment of all kinds of comics. I bought a volume with stories of the Hulk, Dr. Strange, and Namor. It’s supposed to be fun. I already bought some stuff online, but I made a decision to support that mall kiosk as much as I can.
Now tell me about you! Do you buy comics at all? How?
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Tl;dr typical news sources tend to prioritize political and governmental events and the things that surround them, like economics and social issues, even if they cover everything, and by covering everything they probably stretch themselves thinly among what they don't prioritize. (At least that's how it feels.)
A few examples of what I'm thinking of are:
Foreign Affairs, who focus specifically on geopolitics
The Scientific American, which focuses specifically on... science.
Aeon, which seems to focus on "the humanities". (vaaague.)
So... what are your examples of news sources/publications like this that you follow?
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Most California voters received their ballots this week, and as usual there are a bunch of propositions to vote on that we’ve barely heard of because nearly all election discussion is about national issues. So, what are you using to study up?
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This will be a noisy thread. Please use the ignore feature if you do not want to see it in your feed.
Watch on YouTube
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Debate starts ~90 minutes from the time of this posting.
Info from The Washington Post:
Location: The University of Utah in Salt Lake City.
Moderator: Susan Page, Washington bureau chief, USA Today
Details: The debate will be 90 minutes long and have no commercial breaks. It will be divided into nine segments of 10 minutes each that the moderator gets to choose.
I'm interested in hearing your stories.
And of course, feel free to share anything else not asked in these questions.
If you personally have not had it but someone close to you has, feel free to share your experiences with that as well.
META: If this topic is better served in ~health.coronavirus feel free to move it!
Whether it's thinking about a videogame, fantasizing your future, a new workout, pondering existence, etc. What do you spend your free time thinking about?
I like to spend a lot of my free time defining what a human is and what it means to be one, and I always enjoy watching as my ideas progress over time. So what is something you muse about in your free time? What do you like to sporadically think about and what questions do you often return to?
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I really don’t have much to say, that’s 100% an honest question about something I truly fail to understand. I’m not opposed to having children if it seems right for some reason, but this is not a dream or project of mine. When I ask people about it, I get vague answers or stuff I cannot relate to at all. And some people seem to want to get married and have children just because they think they’re supposed to.
I’m really not in a position to judge, but I will probably politely ask further questions for my own education.
If that’s a sensitive topic for you and you don’t wish to indulge my curiosity, maybe this post is not for you! Everything surrounding parenthood tends to generate gratuitous animosity, so please be patient with my earnest ignorance.
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My personal favourites are wallhaven for desktop wallpapers and Walli for mobile ones. I also like Wallpaper Flare for desktop and sometimes Unsplash for both desktop and mobile.
Is there any psychological thing behind it. if you are a changer why do you change your picture so often ? and what do you think about people who don't change it at all ?, and if you are constant why ? and what do you think about people who change it ?
it's not that important I know, but it has been in my head for long time not. why people change their prof pic, computer/phone background so often than others ?
As part of a weekly series, these topics are a place for users to casually discuss the things they did — or didn't do — during their weekend. Did you make any plans? Take a trip? Do nothing at all? Tell us about it!
As part of a weekly series, these topics are a place for users to casually discuss the things they did — or didn't do — during their week. Did you accomplish any goals? Suffer a failure? Do nothing at all? Tell us about it!
I read the Wikipedia article about "gaslighting" and know it comes from a 1944 film of the same name in which an abusive husband gradually dims the gaslights at home – while denying doing so – to drive his wife mad.
Yet whenever I see the term used (which happens a lot, lately) I can't make the connection. It seems people use it for the simple act of lying or denying something, which to me is mostly just... lying, not "gaslighting". Any kind of stupid, misguided act is getting the sinister "gaslighting" stamp as if it some 5d chess move when it simply looks like incompetence. The core principle of it seems to revolve around having a plan to psychologically manipulate someone but I mostly don't see the plan nor the actual goal. If anything untruthful you say about an important topic is "gaslighting", then the term doesn't seem to have a lot of value on its own. Wikipedia actually mentions "unconscious" gaslighting which seems to contradict its purpose of actually wanting to manipulate someone.
So, given its popularity, I'm curious if there might be a (succinct) definition of the term that helps me understand it properly? Do you think it's just a trendy term to throw at politicians doing shit you don't like? Am I missing an important detail?