The other day, I made a comment regarding our political climate that a number of people reacted to with anger. It is ironic because it is the very thing i was commenting on, that I wanted to avoid causing more emotional distress in that segment of the populace in my country which is right now very upset. I made my comment without taking into consideration that the very environment on tildes was no different than the environment I was commenting on.

It is something that has caught me off-guard in the past on this site as well, where I said something that I thought of as innocuous, which some people reacted to with extreme emotions. When I was told to police myself more, I felt indignant and infuriated. I thought I was already trying to walk on eggshells enough!

I don't think anything I've said or done on Tildes is objectively offensive or inappropriate - and I recognize that sometimes people see things from a completely different reality than I experience. I want to make a solid effort to get along with people here, and that appears to mean that I need to learn how to communicate in a way that doesn't provoke discord.

So how do I do it? What can I do to make sure that I'm not pissing people off here just by conversing and expressing my thoughts or feelings? What specific strategies can I employ to filter my self so that it is safe? Cfabbro and Deimos both have told me that I'm doing it wrong, but i want to know how to do it right. Please teach me.

A few minutes ago, I mentioned having used "an invite" to join Tildes.

As soon as the words left my lips, I realized something interesting about the word "invite" being used as a noun.

While most people would probably assume that "an invite" was verbal shorthand for "an invitation," that doesn't seem to be the case. In fact, the two terms actually appear to have discrete (albeit related) meanings that haven't officially been codified yet: An "invitation" is either an action taken to welcome someone or a means of offering that welcome (like a physical card or a verbal statement), whereas an "invite" is a means of accessing an area to which one has been invited. This distinction is most apparent in digital environments, where one might require an access code or a link in order to enter a given site.

Think of it like the difference between asking someone to come into your house and providing them with a key. The former would be an invitation, whereas the latter would be an invite... or at least, as close to an invite as one can get without straining the metaphor. Furthermore, an invite will always include an invitation (even if it's a tacit one), whereas an invitation won't necessarily include an invite.

This is one of those cases wherein the phrase "Language evolves!" actually applies, because using the word "invite" as a noun (with the above definition) meets all of the necessary criteria for correctness: It doesn't violate any existing conventions, it adds complexity or clarity, and it arises from previously codified structures. As such, well... the next time folks are provided with invites, they can use them as part of their invitations.

Hey I was wondering what if Google is tracking our behaviour and using that neural (whatever the word is) to create artificial human replicating exactly to that human's behaviour..i know it's a weird thought which lead to..what are the dark side of the tech industry which is unheard of, or nobody is paying attention on it

Before we get started, PLEASE, no political agenda harping, shit posting, trolling, etc. This is something that is on a sharp increase right now in the Bay Area and I'm genuinely wanting to hear other people's thoughts and opinions on this.

The homeless camps have officially reached an out of control level. There is no denying this. Trash and used hypodermic needles litter the streets. Drug use and sales is seen on street corners near the camps. I personally have seen residents of the camps painting graffiti in broad day light. There are unsafe cooking set ups causing explosions and fires putting residents at risk and leaving charred remains for weeks at a time. Cite: https://evilleeye.com/news-commentary/public-safety/explosion-home-depot-homeless-encampment-rattles-emeryville-west-oakland-neighbors/

What is going on here? How come cities are not cleaning this stuff up? I realize that if the city did conduct some massive eviction/clean up, the residents would just move somewhere else. But what about the trash? Can't that be cleaned up? In many places, I've seen it up to the ankles of people walking around in the camps.

I truly don't know what the non-camp residents are suppose to do? Do we just turn a blind eye and let the trash pile up? Or do we demand action to keep our streets clean and safe?

If you don't have motivation but you can master discipline. How will it work out in real life? Will you still be successful,happy, bla bla bla...
Is is similar to, "hard work can beat talent"? Or is it something else.

P.S Related example of these scenarios are appreciated.

Last night before bed, I was posting about some books that I really liked. One of them is called Stay: A History of Suicide & The Philosophies Against It. Another person noted that it sounded interesting, and I started to reply to that user. I got about a paragraph in before stepping back and thinking, "this isn't something I should write here," and deleting everything.

This morning, I rolled over and checked my phone. Anthony Bourdain, died by suicide at 61.. This hurts. I loved Bourdain, his work for years was to broaden our cultural awareness and open us up to new worlds. He was, in many ways, a tangible Star Trek. His death will be mourned by thousands, and that he was taken by suicide will be considered by many, many, other people with suicidal thoughts.

Suicide spreads as a contagion - it can be looked on almost epidemiologically. The way that we talk about suicide is... Telling. It's something that we try to avoid talking about, despite us almost all knowing someone who has died by suicide.

I have worked in mental health for several years and in high acuity settings the past year. I work with people experiencing suicidal ideation every single day. It is often my job to talk around what I consider to be a monster that lives in our heads. To try and convince or guide people away from their monster and take the day for themselves. Some of the people I've worked with have ideation only, sometimes they have had as many as two dozen hospital-resulting attempts in their history. This work is stressful, it's draining. It's very meaningful, especially when change or at least the flash of change is present. It hurts, too, when it isn't enough.

A big part of our education attempts is to be able to talk about the monster. It isn't easy for someone experiencing suicidal ideation to talk about it. There are fears that they will be seen as attention seeking - they are! It is a just thing to seek attention when you feel that you're losing the battle. There are fears that they won't be taken seriously - and often they are not. We minimize our problems to bad days or bad weeks or bad years. We say, "Just get over it," and sometimes people simply do not have the capacity to do it by themselves.

We would never, ever, tell someone with a broken arm to get over it without treatment. We would never, ever, tell someone with a bone protruding from their leg that they were just looking for some attention. And yet, this is how we approach mental health.

I have been suicidal myself, somewhere in the haze of depression that clung to me for about five years. Even as I write this, I feel the urge to minimize it and say, "but never to the severity of those I've worked with." Simultaneously minimizing my own experience and serving to stigmatize those that I serve. The monster's power lies in its language. The more we refuse to talk about it, the more we isolate, the more control it has.

I went to counseling for sixteen weeks, and was only minimally invested. It took me another two years after having left counseling to start using the tools. A big part of my own ability to hold on was the book, Stay, because of its humanistic approach to prevention, one that does not rely on religion. An unfortunate thing about working in mental health is that I now understand what it is to plant a seed and not know if it will grow or not.

Anyway, I wanted to write something about this when I saw the news this morning. One of the major themes of Stay is that suicide is theft not just from your friends and family, but from yourself. I have not felt suicidal or depressed for several years, and I can say that this theft would have been true. Except it doesn't include just my friends or family, but the people that I've interacted with and helped with similar thinking styles along the way.

I encourage you, if you think a friend or colleague is struggling, ask the questions. "How are you feeling today?" You never know how this might help. Do you feel like someone you know might be suicidal? Ask the question. Asking someone if they are feeling suicidal is not a significant trigger that may cause them to commit - though this fear often stops us from asking. Consider, they live with the monster every day, how welcome it must be to have someone else recognize it?

I will leave off with Hamlet's Soliloquy. I have never been huge on Shakespeare, lacking time to read. I read this as well in Stay, and now I listen to it frequently. I even had the opportunity to use it in a Group I lead the other day.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xYZHb2xo0OI

I am not American but it seems to me that it is an incredibly broken system that 7 judges can essentially halt an entire country's progress. They decided that corporations have rights like a person, they can decide if gay marriage is legal, they can decide basically anything if they wanted as I understand it.

So why does this even exist? Surely such gigantic decisions should be left to a parliament or something.

Let me be straight and clear because it might be hard to explain and come up with words to explain it.
How do you guys take a side/stand when you have seen the both side of the argument/situation (anything similar to it), and both are correct in their own way. If you take one's side, you know you're not being fair to other one because you can rationalise it and know that other side is also correct. But if you're forced to take one. How do you come to the conclusion.

I always tend to avoid this type of scenario but it eventually happens again. And if you avoid it, people will be left to wonder it they were right or wrong (but you know both sides are right) in the decision/situation/you get the point.

P.S sorry for the bad english

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

thanks for keeping the place awesome!

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

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

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

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

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

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

Hi folks,

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The USA in particular has one of the lowest voter turnouts and the lowest registration levels of most developed countries.

http://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2018/05/21/u-s-voter-turnout-trails-most-developed-countries/

In 2016 only 61% of eligible citizens voted and only 70% were registered.

https://www.census.gov/data/tables/time-series/demo/voting-and-registration/p20-580.html

And that was a good year.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Voter_turnout#Trends_of_decreasing_turnout_since_the_1980s

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

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

So, the questions:

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

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

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

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

We don't fucking lock people in cages.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Pheew, making this desabafo made me feel better :)

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

So to the questions:

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