Good morning!

I was listening to the CBC radio on my way to work and there was a very interesting discussion about how people choose to interpret the results of DNA tests. I did a quick search and unfortunately couldn't find the radio broadcast on CBCs site.

Points mentioned (from my memory):

• People don't look at the results of a DNA test and go "this is who I am", instead they use it to cherry-pick who they want to be
• Statically, "white" people tend to identify with a more "exotic" finding in their test
• Example used included a person that chose to identify with who they thought they would pass as; results showed Native and Celtic blood, and person went with Native because he didn't believe they physically passed for Celtic

The cultural appropriation part:

• When non-minorities, who have generally not been raised or have much interaction with the minority they are now choosing to identify with, they can skew, more specifically flatten stats. For example, for a person who's always identified as caucasian to start checking off boxes for a minority, they are potentially 1) disregarding the consequences there are to race (discrimination), and 2) pumping up the stats for minority representation.

As a visible minority myself, I just find it in poor taste. I would love to think people who find a little bit of Asian blood will go and try to discovery more of what it is to be Asian, but I would definitely roll my eyes, if you just come up to me and say "I'm 1/64th like you".

So thoughts? Has anyone done a DNA test and how did it go?

The calendarepoch for the gregorian calendar (that the western world has been used since the 16th century) is 400 years. After that, the whole calendar repeats itself. It is exactly 146097 days in these 400 years. (Including all 4/100/400-rules.)

Out of these, there are 28 that are slightly more common than all others. One of those, is Friday the 13th, occuring 688 out of the 146097 days.

The least common day is a Wednesday the 31st, which happens 398 out of 146097 days.

Source, and more info

A number of years ago at a family reunion, I remember a rather raucous aunt of mine who sat at the table gloating that she reads “so many books.” After she thoroughly disparaged society for its preference of films, television, and video games, etc., it was revealed that the entire corpus of what she reads is harlequin romance novels.

Being the shy and tepid fellow that I was, I didn’t call her out on her somewhat vapid achievement. But, the thought that crossed my mind was, “Two hours spent watching ‘A Clockwork Orange’ or ‘Lawrence of Arabia’ would be a much more rewarding and mentally invigorating experience than spending six hours filling my head with the risqué adventures of Fabio.”

To which, this (kind of) opens up a question about the worth of the medium that we use for storytelling. Is there intrinsic value in written stories versus audio/visual ones? Often enough, a film will be adapted from a book. The sentiment that frequently seems to follow is, “the book is better than the movie.” Is this because we value books as a format more? Is it the greater degree of detail? Perhaps our “mind’s eye” creates a more appealing interpretation than a film director ever could? Or maybe it just makes us feel good to say that we like to read.

I’m just using the books and movies dynamic as an example. The truth is that we can have this debate about all forms of artistic medium, whether it is live theater, television series, poems, music, radio plays; the list goes on. Marshall McLuhan famously coined the phrase, “The medium is the message.” How true is this, and how does it affect how we value each different kind of medium? What are your thoughts?

...I clearly haven't been doing a lot lately...

It's a good feeling though, knowing that you accomplished something, no matter how small that thing is. I've had a hard time the past several years but yesterday not only did I go to the store, I also managed to change the sheets and wash all my clothes, and even cleaned the kitchen and scrubbed the sink from all the hard water deposits.

It's a good feeling and so I don't know why I don't do those things more often... I guess it's just easier to watch TV shows, movies, and play Fortnite all day long.

I have been on break from school for over a month now, and have another entire month left before it starts back up again. I'm 25 so you'd think I'd've gotten used to it by now - but nope. It's still ridiculously hard to stay motivated and to keep going with a proper, healthy routine day-to-day.

The custom of tipping your server dates back to the mid-1800's. 150 years later, it seems that tipping is less customary, and has become entrenched in the service industry.

Some view tipping as a positive. People may feel compelled to give their server 'something extra' for extraordinary service, and tipping gives them that option. They might also say that a tip provides extra motivation for the server to do a better job. From the perspective of the server, they may even feel enticed to pursue employment where tips are readily available as it could supplement their income.

Opposers of tipping often feel that employers should offer a 'living wage' to their servers instead of relying on their clientele to 'make up the difference.' Sociological critics have also noticed that physically attractive servers might get larger tips, regardless of the quality of service they provide, thus negating the "motivation" argument. Again, from the perspective of a server, they might also not wish to pursue a job that forces them to rely on tips as their income may fluctuate from month-to-month, making it difficult to budget accordingly.

These are just some of the most common arguments for and against tipping. I'm curious as to what you all think!

For me, it's definitely the topic particles in Japanese. It just seems like a really interesting thing that is a reason enough to want to learn Japanese, even excluding other great features it has. Here some info on them.

link to the source Tweet

Things that happen in Silicon Valley and also the Soviet Union:

• waiting years to receive a car you ordered, to find that it's of poor workmanship and quality
• promises of colonizing the solar system while you toil in drudgery day in, day out
• living five adults to a two room apartment - being told you are constructing utopia while the system crumbles around you
• 'totally not illegal taxi' taxis by private citizens moonlighting to make ends meet - everything slaved to the needs of the military-industrial complex
• mandatory workplace political education - productivity largely falsified to satisfy appearance of sponsoring elites
• deviation from mainstream narrative carries heavy social and political consequences - networked computers exist but they're really bad
• Henry Kissinger visits sometimes for some reason
• elite power struggles result in massive collateral damage, sometimes purges - failures are bizarrely upheld as triumphs
• otherwise extremely intelligent people just turning the crank because it's the only way to get ahead
• the plight of the working class is discussed mainly by people who do no work
• the United States as a whole is depicted as evil by default
• the currency most people are talking about is fake and worthless
• the economy is centrally planned, using opaque algorithms not fully understood by their users

This is a hard topic for me personally, so please be gentle. I am at my core an institutionalist and an incrementalist, so I tend to want to both value and improve institutions through incremental (bit-by-bit) change.

A common concern and criticism of people who are impatient with incremental changes is that there would be tons of unintended consequences. While that concern resonates with me, it clearly doesn't seem to resonate with much of anyone else right now.

So in this I feel alone, frankly, and a lot of the reason for that loneliness is because incrementalism seems to have been firmly rebuked by both left and right wing political groups around the world. Help me understand what's happening. Where is incrementalism failing for you? Do you see any role for bit-by-bit change?

The scope of this thread could expand to the high heavens, so please understand how widely varied the examples might be that we each might bring to this discussion.

Just got in a huge argument with my aunts and uncles who are engineers (I am as well) who don't believe climate change is real. Or as my chemical engineering aunt and my emissions engineering aunt put it "I don't believe carbon dioxide is a pollutant"

What are your guys family gathering stories?

Used to sound like a war zone from the end of June on. Now almost nothing until the the 4th, and even then nothing like in the past years. Rents have been slowly climbing, maybe that has pushed out the young and reckless. Maybe it is facebook. How about your neck of the woods?

In opposition to the post about incrementalism, I wanted to talk about a truly revolutionary and designed based approached to a policy called experimentalism. When I was a believer in public policy, this was the final stage for which I believed a benevolent state would move towards. Incrementalism doesn't work unless you have a dictatorship or some unchanging party like in the soviet union or China. This is because incremental changes need people to agree with the degree of which to increments and need to have the shared goal to continue adding them. Also, incremental change might bring little effect on their own or even make things worse rather than just enacting what you think is the final policy. It is politically impossible in a democracy. Instead what I argue for is radical experimentalism. This is a position people of radically different ideas can take an appeal to a general audience to test their political ideas on large groups of willing participants to see what effects policy has on them after certain periods of time. Isolating variables to really see what society works best. Regardless of general political will, the evidence wins out as we test ideas in different parts of the state as they compete to see who provides the best results for people. The only thing that is required is a dedication to results based on political decision and commitment to evidence. Lastly, an acknowledgement that we must dive into the unknown to truly find some answers. A scientific approach to policy that is consistent with democratic values and structures. I find that this spirit of democratic education on a societal level is much like John Dewey would have described as really necessary for democracy to continue to function. Without a dedication to experimentalism and skepticism there is no way I see democracy working very well over time if faced with structural problems and public ignorance.

Today, I had a dream. In this dream I have confronted the idea that systems are much like entities, they are living creatures of a sort. Just as groups have some selection process that makes them more likely to survive over time so do systems. Rulesets are not made for human beings but for themselves. Sets of rules beget their own continuation. Their constant reproduction. But this is no reason for an individual or a group to submit to a particular ruleset but a reason for them not to submit to her because she has no interest in the specific survival of a group or individual but in the survival of herself. The survival of herself can easily misalign with that of the group and the individual. Rulesets much like the State or other such things are self-interested. And to complete self-interested systems with altruistic systems would be a grave mistake . And since all systems are infact selfish we we cannot conflate the interest of the system with the interests of the people within the system, that would be the fallacy of composition. If a system existed that perfectly aligned its ideals with that of the people that lives under them there would be no need for such a system to be coercive because all would act according to the system regardless. Competing interests of human beings and of different proofs makes such a system impossible. we are then left only to consider the ruleset in decision-making processes but under no obligation to operate in its interest. We are only able to operate on our own.

Wanted to see if we could get some conversations going with any freelancers who may be around. I figured a good place to start is with one of the more commonly discussed topics, which is the online marketplaces catering to freelancers.

These days, Upwork seems to have gobbled up a huge chunk of that market, while garnering plenty of criticism and complaints along the way for how they handle it. The graphic design space seems to have a little more competition in marketplaces, with 99designs being a frontrunner it seems. Truthfully, there just aren't that many platforms to pick from regardless of your specialty. Which can be a positive, as it provides a centralized place to look for and post available work, can increase exposure to the freelance market as a whole, and ensures you don't have to maintain profiles across numerous platforms which can be far too time consuming sometimes. But of course there are many downsides that come along with that.

The standard advice that comes with such discussions is to ignore the online marketplaces entirely because of those downsides. Competing against an international labor pool, as well as an under-experienced labor pool much of the time, in a format that heavily encourages price competition above other factors can be disastrous for your bottom line (and your sanity). These platforms also generally remove a lot of the negotiating power that a freelancer needs to leverage, as it is much more difficult to establish the captive audience that can be built with more personal interactions.

And frankly, that standard advice has continued to be my own, both for my career as well as to others who may seek such advice. But it does make me wonder if there is a better way to do it. Of course as a developer I'm always looking to find a way to solve problems, so I can concede I may be looking for solutions in a place that is misguided to try to fix.

What has been your experiences with freelance online marketplaces? What advice do you give when asked about it? What would you like to change?

I have been using Tildes for about a week now. I have come over from Reddit where I am primarily a lurker. I lurk because I often feel my thoughts and opinions on topics and discussions have been touched on because discussions are already hundreds of comments deep by the time I arrive. The biggest positive with Tildes is the fact that the community is currently small and I read the post/sarticles that interest me instead of jumping straight into the comments to be given a synopsis. I now read more than just the headline.

I still have not found my 'voice' in regards to posting comments related to articles/stories that I have read. I think it is because I haven't found a discussion that I am really interested in. I have posted a couple of news articles that provide information about the part of the world I am in but, while they interested me, I didn't feel the need to discuss their contents further so I didn't add any comment to start a conversation to the post.

Regarding providing some more content to the site. My hobbies include, like everyone else, traveling, reading, and photography. I am no where near being an influential voice in any of these! I am not interested in having a travel blog or a website but I would like to provide information, incase someone else here is interested or has experiences too. For example, I recently took a short weekend trip from Bangkok, Thailand to Ayutthaya, Thailand. I rode the train, visited the sites, visited a bar, ate some food, and stayed the night. I want to provide a write up on my experiences and thoughts of this trip. Is a post in ~hobbies with the tags of: thailand, ayutthaya, bangkok, train the way to go?
What do y'all think?

Sharing photographs - Taking pictures is another hobby I share with everyone else. I enjoy sharing pictures I am proud of. I tend to post to r/nocontextpics, because I like their rules of no back story in the title. I also post to location specific sites. I do this to show off my pictures and to feel good from earning points. I do not post pictures to facebook very often because I like having the feel of anonymity. I don't want to be perceived as a pretentious twat. How does everyone feel about picture posts in ~hobbies with the tag(s) like: location, device used, etc..

My problem would be not 'spamming' photos. With the age of the site, and my brief interaction with it, no one wants to see 2+ picture posts from one user in the ~hobbies group.
Any thoughts on etiquette or rules for picture posts? Allow: Yes/No?

Inspired by the post on HN, was curious about your favorite memories or nostalgia you feel about internet in the 90's or even earlier.

I really didn't come fully online until the early 2000's. We didn't have the means to get internet at home so until I could get online unless it was at school. Even so my most pleasant memories were spending time playing games on yahoo (yahooligans), with a tetris like clone being my favorite. Also spent a huge amount of time playing macromedia shockwave based games on various sites that I don't remember anymore. I do remember playing a game where you had to build up your hobo soap box car to see how far you could jump it.

It was soon followed by the discovery of various chat groups, making up identities, lying about age, revealing too much personal information in the process. At one point I even convinced a woman to send me photos that she claimed were for her modeling career. Not sure if it was some creepy old guy trying to lure me in with promises of being a real woman or if I legitimately fooled some poor girl into sending me modeling pictures.

Also remember my first foray into fan theory sites with the show LOST, ended up getting chewed out for suggesting a theory that was apparently well known. Was too embarrassed and scared to post after that and ended up lurking for the duration of my time there.

Some folks say that the "old internet" is now gone with the likes of reddit and Youtube, but for me it seems like what really changed was us and the sense of wonder. For those who are still discovering the internet as they're growing up, that sense of wonder is still there just waiting to be turned into nostalgia as they get older.

I'll level with you right now: I hate both of these terms.

"Political Correctness" is a term that gets used by a lot of people to talk about what I would consider to be basic politeness ("don't intentionally offend someone if they've made it clear they don't like a word, or would prefer to be referred in a certain way; just try"). I have suspected for a while that what these people typically really mean when they talk about political correctness is a fatigue with feeling like they're being forced to meet standards of politeness that are decided by others, and which they do not share.

"Civility" is a term that gets used just about every way you can imagine. It can mean politeness, it can mean "nonviolent protest," it can mean voting, it can mean only certain kinds of protest, and it can mean meeting decorum (which is a more formal way of saying politeness, but it has its nuanced differences, so I suppose I'll list it, goddamn, twist my arm why don't you). The range of possible meanings makes it pretty annoying, and borderline useless to talk about directly.

The title of this thread is an intentional play on one of my frustrations with a munk debate which was shared about a month ago. I believed the terms were too dependent on who "you" are in the statement. So rather than have them redo the munk debate, I thought we could have one of our own.

I definitely have my own views on this claim (that I'll be sharing below), but this has been such an awkward issue on this site that I think it's worth exploring directly. So explore with me:

1. Is there a difference between "political correctness" and "civility"?
2. Is either term valuable to society?
3. Why the hell are so many people so hot and bothered about these two terms, and also seemingly unable to interact meaningfully with anyone else?

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.

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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?

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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