Happy end of year, everyone!

I saw a comment today on Tildes that reminded me of a type of thread that I really enjoyed back on Reddit: end-of-year awards. Those were typically in individual subreddits and involved a lot of specifics and inside jokes related to that community, but I think Tildes is a small enough place where we could do one site-wide. (Full disclosure, I am not sure if this is a great idea and am open to any and all suggestions.)

Brief explanation:

• For starters, there are no actual awards to give out, sorry. Just some pats on the back and maybe some street cred to go with it.

• The purpose of the thread is mostly to highlight cool, helpful, and interesting things or users you've seen here on Tildes in the last year. This thread is hopefully a gateway to those interesting posts/comments/discussions that you might have missed.

• Top-level comments should be an award category (for example: Most Interesting Thread, Best Discussion, Most Helpful Comment, Funniest Joke, Most Helpful User, Best Prediction, Favorite Recurring Thread, etc.) Note that none of these examples are negative because again the goal of this thread is to highlight awesome stuff that others might have missed over the last 12 months.

• Responses to those top-level comments should be the actual nominations, preferably with a link to said comment/thread, and a quick explanation as to why you think it deserves recognition.

• Upvotes serve as the votes for each category, though I encourage you to vote for as many nominees as you'd like since the awards aren't real and the points don't matter.

That's pretty much it. I'll post a few comments as examples, but hopefully it should be pretty straight-forward. Feel free to add your own award categories, and please nominate as many users/comments/threads as you'd like!

If this thread helps at least one person discover a helpful thread from 6 months ago that they might have missed, then I'll consider it a success.

I find myself very bored at work. I have nothing on my plate to do, and I have exhausted everything I can think of doing on my phone. Browsing Tildes, and a little reddit though I hate Reddit now, making spreadsheets on Google drive for hobbies, catching up on any news, playing a dumb phone game, watching YouTube (though this is much harder and I can only do something audio based when I sneak away to a private corner which I can only do for limited amounts of time), browsing LinkedIn for other jobs/career path.

I'm at a loss for what else to do. I'm at the point where I have many hours in my day with nothing to do, and boss doesn't care I'm on my phone as long as my shit is done, which it is.

Obviously can't do much video watching or actual video game playing or anything requiring audio.
Also phone games have to be vertical so it isn't obvious I'm playing a game if a client walks in. Any suggestions?

Hey all, I have a root canal shortly, and I thought I'd distract myself from that stress with some things to ponder.

What are your best topics that you can regularly discuss or debate but have little real life concerns? Someone whose name I forget shared wondering what sort of food/rations aliens would bring with them.

Help me lower my anxiety and/or distract me from my pain. Or just ponder yourself.

EDIT: root canal successful, but I still would love a lighthearted "what could you discuss at Christmas that isn't politics" thread so thanks y'all

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!

It's almost 2025. You're being voted in to govern your school / uni / workforce / county / state / country. You only have enough time to push on through one new policy change that you hope will improve the lives of everyone under your overseeing. What are you governing, what change are you making, and why do you believe this would have the greatest positive impact? (Yes, you can use a wish style for the company you work at!)

I was talking to the other guitarist in one of my bands about the hedonic treadmill the other day. And he said to me that despite owning his swanky Range Rover for over 4 years, every time he gets in it he feels like a kid and is excited by it.

I think continued delight in the things that we already have is a really important attitude to take in life, and so I wondered what things my fellow Tilderen (yes, I'm refusing to budge on the nomenclature until I see at least one other person use it) have which they still feel the magic of owning, even after a long time.

Could be a hobby, could be a new habit.

This year I started using a water flosser! My dental hygiene isn't the greatest and I could count on one hand how many times I flossed in a year, but I read a post saying how someone uses their handheld one in the shower and, yeah, that absolutely clicked for me!

I feel like I have weird sensory issues with using it over the bathroom sink. But in the shower, everything is already wet anyways. I can't believe it's a habit I've been able to keep up for more than half a year now with ease. It's something that I look forward to doing every time I shower. I've even started flossing with regular floss more now because I no longer bleed or feel gross. (I prefloss with the water one first.) Really happy.

I wish I could maintain more habits like that.

I also bought a standing desk and I really love standing and working now, too.

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!

This could be an organizational and curation method, a "simple" task you thought you could automate, or an open ended interpretation of the question. If you've spent "an adequate amount of time" on such a project, but others disagree, you're free to share as well.

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!

Maybe you ended up on an email chain you weren’t supposed to. Maybe you stumbled across a gift from your partner in its hiding place. Maybe you heard a friend talking about you without them realizing you were there?

This can be about something serious, funny, sad, lighthearted, etc. Anything goes.

Tell us the story: What did you see/hear? How did it impact you/others? How did you feel about it?

This is one of those mysteries that I haven't been able to solve. For context, I was hiking Pima Canyon back in 2017 or 2018. I was with another hiker. After about a mile or so, the other person said they needed to take a break, so I decided I would get a quick trail run in. I started jogging further along the path, dodging boulders and cacti.

After about another mile (so I'd guess two miles into the hike from the trailhead), I heard a sound. It was one of those situations where your brain doesn't know how to interpret what it is sensing, so it fills something in as a placeholder. In this instant, I thought it was the sound of someone starting a lawnmower. It was a brief sound -- maybe 1 second in duration. It also sounded close to me.

As soon as I came to the realization that nobody was mowing their lawn out here, I felt very threatened. I bent down and grabbed the largest rock I could find, and turned around and started walking back down the trail. After a few minutes, I picked up the pace and sped back to the other hiker.

To this day, I have no idea what that sound was.

Good things come from the pursuit of legacy, by calling it a delusion I don't mean to paint it as a fundamentally bad thing.

To establish some context, I'm putting aside supernatural rewards and punishments like valhalla and hell.

Legacy for the purposes of this post is having an impact that outlives you. People remembering your name. A lot of people claim it as a significant motivation and, I suspect, a lot more people are motivated by it without openly admitting it.

The obvious reason being that it's an antidote to mortality or, at the core, impermanence. Chaos. It's a fear that motivates us all more than we probably admit because most people avoid thinking and talking about more often than they don't. It's the unnamed void that's always there at the edges, creeping in and reminding us every once in a while that it could all end any time. That nothing lasts.

Legacy, or the eternal rewards I'm leaving out of the conversation, is a big shiny counterpoint to impermanence. You might even call it a psychological coping mechanism. We all need them sometimes and a key part of their operation is that they're not entirely rational.

And legacy is pretty irrational. No matter what we do we'll die, and then everyone who knew us will die. Not long after, in the scope of time, everyone who remembers us will die. If we're Einstein then maybe people love and remember us for a few extra centuries before we become a rarely visited piece of ancient history. At some point even Einstein will be forgotten.

So legacy isn't actually an antidote to impermanence, it just feels like it if you don't think about it too much. You can't make a mark on history big enough to last forever in any meaningful sense. Which leaves its impact on the lives we're living. Does it make them better? When people wear t-shirts with Einstein and hearts on them does it echo back through time and give the still living Einstein a tingle? Does he get better orgasms, smoother skin, deeper relationships? I don't think he does.

He probably gets a sense of satisfaction and fulfillment from knowing that he's moved the needle. That he's leaving the world better than he found it. That's worth a lot, but it's not really about legacy, it's about impact. Something which is available to everyone all the time.

I bring this up because periodically I see legacy contextualized as almost a virtue. Something noble to strive for. To me it's a false idol, like fame, celebrity or wealth worship. It comes with a partially broken set of values.

Whereas values that arise from prioritizing the lives we're living and the people we're living them with seem to me to be a lot healthier and more fulfilling. And I think, in a bigger sense, more conducive to a healthy society. If more people are investing their identities and energy in values that give them a meaningful return without needing to achieve a particular level of historical impact, they'll suck less. If legacy is the goal, and you need to step on people, or neglect relationships, or put off mental health in order to get there, it's very easy to rationalize doing it. And if we hold the people who do those things up as ideals, we're tacitly telling society that it's something they should be pursuing too.

To put it one way, and digress a little, we'd probably have a lot less self involved billionaires if we didn't put them on pedastals and talk about them all the time. As things stand it's no wonder that so many children grow up believing that achieving wealth or fame is the best way to get attention. It absolutely is. Whether we love or hate it, we can't shut up about it.

Of course talking about wealth and fame brings in a bunch of factors that aren't necessarily about legacy, and I don't want to turn this into an essay about everything that's wrong with culture. But I do think that all of the above are part of a sort of package of self defeating values that we all (mostly unintentionally) play a part in perpetuating.

I don't expect we're going to stop doing that any time soon but I think at some point, between here and a future where we're not constantly flirting with annihilating ourselves, we're going to need to.

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 am at the end of a phase of my life in which for many years, finding contract work was as simple as contacting 5 or 6 people and letting them know I was available. This work is no longer tenable for me and I am attempting a career transition.

Edit: I wasn't sure whether to mention, but over the last 10 years I have come to suspect that I have undiagnosed ADHD. Any advice from that perspective would be greatly appreciated.

Asking people with more recent experience than me, what methods do you use to job hunt? How do you manage your time while unemployed? If you are willing, would you please share advice?

The user @trim posted an interesting question in ~Tech and it made me wonder: what are my forgivable sins? What kinds of misdeeds on the part of companies that are suppliers of goods or services do I tacitly concience or to which I will turn a blind eye?

Whenever there is a scandal, the easy answer is, "I don't know, but definitely not that." This, however, is just an ad hoc definition that can be applied to any unsavory revelation on the part of a service or product provider. What would I be left with? I couldn't retreat from society if I wanted to and the cost of commercial puritanism would be prohibitively high.

What I realized in that topic was that (1) I will not sanction providers merely for doing business with others to whom I am opposed and (2) I will not sanction providers merely for issuing words or statements that I disagree with.

That said, I'm curious about others. What are your criteria for bad behavior in a service or product provider that you would judge to be nonetheless admissible?

The recent history of social media has made me interested in the factors that make online communities successful/healthy, or toxic etc.. This is one of the appeals of Tildes for me. I'm also emotionally invested in seeing a healthy future for the Irish language, which has seen some interesting developments in the internet age but remains in a precarious position as a community language in the country. You can see how these two interests dovetail together. At the moment this is a thought experiment, but later, who knows...

Tips I've got so far:

I've heard that some barriers to entry can increase group loyalty by making members feels slightly "invested" by earning a place in the community

I've also noted that some of the most persistant subcultures operate online but also have a strong in-person element (eg: furries)

There's also the common observation that good moderation is crucial to user experience and therefore group cohesion

Then I got some pointers from the Tildes docs:

• Trust by default, punish abusers
• Focus on user experience, not growth metrics
• Favour deep engagement over shallow/clickbait
• Empower members to make choices
• The golden rule (apply charitable interpretations, don't tolerate bad actors)

So, people of Tildes: what factors do you see as crucial to building and maintaining a strong cohesive online community?

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 am not a native English speaker.

Because that word became prominent in recent years, with a meaning that is heavily disputed, dictionaries and encyclopedias are useless in determining how it should be interpreted.

Tildes has a good assortment of intelligent native English speakers. In that light, when applied to people and in the context of social discourse, what do words such as "cancelled" and "cancelation" mean to you? In your view, are there situations in which these are employed either correctly or incorrectly? Or are they multiple and fluid in such a way that they can be applied to a vast array of situations dissimilar from each other?

This discussion is about semantics and subjective interpretation. It's about how words are employed to convey meaning. If you find semantics or subjectivity irrelevant, boring, stupid, unnerving, or otherwise unworthy of discussion, please do not comment.

I'm not a teacher, professor or anything, but I had a speaking engagement at a school recently and saw myself in front of a class of students who where tired, bored out of their minds, and just wanted to go home. It was a demoralizing experience because I was invited to talk about things that are very dear to me on a personal level. It wasn't easy because in a sense I was putting my heart out to a sea of rolling eyes.

I lectured two classes. The first was wonderful, the students were very interested and made great interventions. The second was a complete disaster and I almost ended it before the time. They were interested in anything but my talk. At some point I wondered, why should I keep talking? Do teachers face that routinely? If so, there's a place for you in haven!

I was glad to go back home knowing I would not have do it again...

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 was thinking about one of the threads here about missing the specific subcultures on Reddit. Maybe we just aren't in the habit of sharing our interests or want to know who else is interested in the subculture.

If absolutely forced to, I could probably blog about:

• Occasional game learnings - either new games or specific mechanics in games
• things in relation to the city I live in (I still check this on Reddit)
• Recipes or foods I've tried to make or bought and liked with a bent towards fermentation, coffee, plant-based stuff
• smart articles I thought were worth recommending to others, or fun facts.
• software - nothing super technical, but either small projects, language learnings, thoughts around companies. Maybe occasional "software used to make art" stuff I stumbled upon
• Episode reviews of detective shows, kdramas, and anime
• Deleting Instagram and trying to export my saved posts without using a script (my advice... code review something online and use that script) and other things in relation to introversion

I've spent the past months with an unhealthy obsession with "the news", due to both an election in my own country and the one in the US. Maybe it was an attempt at being in control of a situation I have absolutely zero control over, despite it shaping aspects of the world I really care about. But that control is an illusion.

I've rediscovered an older article by Rolf Dobelli called "Avoid News – Towards a Healthy News Diet". It argues against the value of high-frequency (daily) news consumption in 15 points. It does not vilify journalism as a whole, however, arguing for replacing a daily feed of online news with individual, high-quality, in-depth articles consumed weekly or so.

I know that I probably can't resist having some idea of what is going on in the world (and I have some niche interests that I genuinely find productive to keep up with). So I'll try something simple: No "news" (quotes because I include random social media feeds in this) during weekdays. No news websites, no tildes, no reddit. There's ways to filter for the top posts of the "last 7 days". I never use this feature since I look almost daily, anyways. Well, I'll try and make that my default way of consuming social media. On weekends I can decided to use some of my precious free time to read up on the "big" events of the week. I hope this will make me realize that most weeks go by without producing any information that I can use to improve my own life (both privately and at work) or that of people I care about.

There is stuff I'm looking forward to: This sounds depressing but I have this huge list of non-critical things I wanted to accomplish that I kinda stopped even considering because every damn minute of free time I had was spent doom-scrolling. I hope the "touch grass" people are right and spending more time focused on my own environment will also help me get a better sense of what is important.

I also feel slightly guilty about the thought that this will make me less compassionate towards people who live outside my own bubble and whose stories I would not hear just talking to friends and family. This is an attempt to put my head in the sand and pretend that large parts of the world do not exist. But the truth is: There is only so much I can do, effectively. I can maybe join a group dedicated to fixing a specific wrong or raise awareness. Maybe two. But I could never address that whole laundry list of problems from my news feed that left me paralyzed with fear. I will have a more positive impact on the world if I focus on less.

Let's see where this goes.

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!

Obsessively refreshing results is the most stressful way to follow an election, but it can be an easy trap to fall into. This thread is a place to try and consciously disengage with that process, and talk about or link to anything and everything: how a sports team is doing, your latest hyperfixation, a silly video you liked, wax poetic about an obscure hobby, do a small text based let's play for a game, or elucidate the proper usage of commonly misapplied Latin phrases. So long as it's not related to the election and you don't feel it warrants a topic all its own, throw it in.

Hello all. I feel like our US election upset (or victory depending on viewpoint) has really run wild on Tildes. I appreciate all the solidarity and encouragement from the non-US folks. I know for better or worse it affects many of you as well.

While knowing these are special circumstances, I was thinking maybe folks feel a little left out or overshadowed by our drama.

Back before I had to go on a podcast diet, I really enjoyed the weekly updates from American Prestige because they would discuss important or interesting political/social developments and explain their implications.

So what's something happening where you are? How do you feel about it? What do you wish more people knew about it? It can be big or small. It does not have to be something political, just something important to you.

Inspired by a recent conversation I had with a fellow museum lover: what is your favorite museum or favorite museums? Why? Curious to learn about some really interesting and unique places that other users might have been to.

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!