I've been progressively getting more excited about cannabis over the past year or so; we had a chat about drugs a while back, I figured we could try one specifically about cannabis.

I've been really enjoying Durban Poison lately, I tend towards feeling compassionate and really loving and open to folks around me, though that depends somewhat on context. Jack Herer and derivatives have been nice as well, but they're more for tasks that need some focus like programming or writing.

I've been trying a couple indica/evening leaning strains lately, but I haven't found one that I've really loved (my ulterior motive for starting this thread).

We should probably start a ~talk.casual, but maybe all talk on tildes is somewhat causal, and that's cool too, Also, this is aspie special interest territory for me, so if y'all don't think about this as much, I can do strain recs if that'd be something that was nice for you. Though, I don't some (relatively) that much, so someone on the internet could probably do that better.

Also, yes, I know that COVID-19 falls under SARS; I already got the gentle warnings from my dad.

(edit: thanks whoever tagged nsfw.drugs! Also the cannabis tag makes more sense as well)

I've seen a lot of different attitudes towards the virus and I want to talk about one of the more toxic ones.

You might think I'm referring to people attending lockdown parties or other dumb things like that; no. I am referring to those who usually mean well, but forget to remain human in the process. Please read on, because this might be something you yourself are doing without realizing it.

The last few weeks have been, and the coming months are going to be, a time of careful balance. You might hear politicians say they "want to fight the virus without creating a bigger problem"; usually it's about the economy, but it applies to everyone on a personal level as well.

• DO: Treat this virus seriously. Through collective action, we can limit its spread and its deadliness.

• DO NOT: Become selfish. I'm not just talking about "fuck you, got mine" hoarding. I am talking about prioritizing your own health above everyone else's. (Caveat: this obviously applies to different people, differently. Especially if you are at risk, now may the time to be a little selfish, without being ungrateful to those who would help of course.)

• DO NOT look down on people you see going out; you don't know why they're out. Maybe they have to be because they're part of the ones who still have to go out to keep the world running right now. Maybe it's the first time they go out in two weeks and they direly need it not to become depressed. The virus, and the measures to tackle it, affect many people differently.

• DO NOT deprioritize mental health. Yesterday, I've heard someone laugh when I mentioned that. In the past decade, the world has made great progress towards accepting mental health as important. It still is; the virus does not change that.

• DO: Check up on your friends, family and neighbours. Ask how you can help and be there for each other. Be neighbourly, as they say. If you're out and see someone else, give them a smile, they very likely need it right now.

• DO NOT treat health workers like they have the plague. You know those people clapping at their windows "for health workers" at 8PM every day? Maybe you're part of them. Yet I've heard several stories of people not-at-risk who aren't willing to be in the same room as a nurse or doctor. Obviously, this doesn't just go for health workers, but they are those most affected by it. So be careful.

• DO: Read up on (or maybe simply remember) the AIDS scare of the 80s. There is a lot to learn from the way humans treated each other at that time. A lot of lessons to learn so that we don't repeat them. I know it's scary for a lot of people, but right now, the world needs kindness.

• Most of all: DO NOT stop hugging your loved ones when they need it. I don't want to live in a world where this statement is controversial. Be careful, but be human.

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Whether it's a personality trait you have, an experience you've been through, or a way that you "come across" to others, or something else entirely, what's something that people commonly misunderstand about you? Why do you think that happens? How do you feel or respond when you're made aware of it?

Recently found one in a perfect state. I sterilized it and now I can have one. Just wanting people's opinions if they saw someone with an n95 mask instead of a surgical mask. Like, it could go to a hospital or something.

edit: I should mention I have type 1 diabetes

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• What's something that you learned/were taught wrong?
• Was this a singular error specific to you or whoever taught it to you, or a widespread misconception held by many?
• When did you realize it was in error?
• What impact, if any, did it have on you?

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corvid-19 has taken over my thinking. I haven't been this depressed in a very long time. Feels like I'm living in a sort of fog. I usually have national news on in the background during the day but the coronavirus is taking over. I don't know if I contracted it. I have been in a funk the last 2 or so weeks. My temp reader (which i don't trust) says im 2 degrees below 97.6. I don't know, i just had to get this off my chest.

I personally see:

• The enaction of the progressive policies that have been continuosly amplified over the last 5 years during the election of Bernie or Warren (in the US, be it after 2020 or 2024)

• Increasing regulation of the Internet (be it the breakup of tech conglomerates, increased pressure by VC investors for the companies in the red to turn a profit or more surveillance by 3-letter agencies in bad faith)

• Increased tension between the US and China as China becomes increasingly more powerful especially over tech companies

• A recession which throws the item in the top 15 years down the line.

• Automation and AI begin to become more pressing issues during the next depression, leading to people taking candidates like Yang more seriously.

• "Apophis 2029 is gonna hit the earth." "Finally."

Edit: Ok, here's some non-political predictions:

• Mojang runs out of already existing biomes and dimensions to overhaul in minecraft, so they'll shift their development focus to adding more unique biomes, worldgen and mechanical depth and maybe some sort of progression to the game (more complex combat, more dimensions, more bossfights, more mobs like the iron golem with better attacks, more Redstone components, more unique worldgen). By the time this happens, hytale will already be a big competitor and great at al this, causing high controversy that Microsoft is stealing their ideas.

• This also applies to mobile phone makers as they get rid of all notches, bezels and ports and so they either focus on specs and battery life and nirvana is supposedly achieved at 1600$ per phone, in making the phones as cheap as possible , which makes people get mad about the working conditions of the laborers or in even more exclusive wearables like now.

• A new manned moon landing, finally. This time the whole journey will be streamed live on an 8k camera via starlink.

• The (further) normalization of anime, similar to what happened to gaming this decade. More people from more different backgrounds will be watching anime, and they will be less focused on self-depreciation because of it. They will watch anime in public, and will demand more and better anime from the production teams in Japan. The more diverse audience will mean that fanservice will be gradually less effective and non-tanned black characters will appear way more often (and someone will lose their shit over it).

• HN finally comes up with a site redesign, mainly to make it clearer which threads are which. The new design is similar to Tilde's now and HN usage grows 3-fold.

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From the NY times

Senator Bernie Sanders of Vermont was reassessing the future of his presidential bid on Wednesday after a crushing round of primary losses left him with no realistic path to the Democratic nomination and the 2020 race itself looked increasingly dormant because of the coronavirus outbreak.

Mr. Sanders’s campaign has stopped actively advertising on Facebook and its campaign manager sent an email to supporters without asking for donations — the kind of steps that other candidates have taken before ending their campaigns. Mr. Sanders’s aides said he is not suspending his campaign at this point, even as some Democrats have become increasingly vocal that he should consider leaving the race.

Even among Democrats who view Mr. Biden’s eventual triumph as inevitable, there is a belief that contested primaries are good for the party, making some of them reluctant to call for Mr. Sanders to withdraw. In Wisconsin, Democratic officials worry that if Mr. Sanders drops out before the state’s planned April 7 primary, it could dampen his supporters’ enthusiasm, depress turnout and hurt progressive candidates for state and local offices.

Mr. Sanders also views the coronavirus crisis as a moment when the progressive agenda he has championed for years is especially vital, and he is eager to leverage his influence for good at a time when issues like health care and economic inequity are so resonant, some allies say.

And top advisers see potential for him to continue to shape the narrative around how the country should be responding to the crisis and are holding out hope that they can harness existing virtual infrastructure to allow him to get his message out and keep his supporters engaged — a tacit admission that the campaign is no longer trying to win.

The above paragraphs show that yes, Sanders knows his electoral situation is done for, despite never clearly indicating if he is dropping out.

Some suggested Mr. Sanders should declare a moral victory — Democrats have moved broadly toward his progressive policy platform since he began his first presidential campaign — and throw his support to Mr. Biden.

“It’s time to throw in the towel knowing that he has won the battle of issues,” said Wilbur Colom, a D.N.C. member from Mississippi. “The Democratic Party has moved within inches of his revolution on all major issues. We all are feeling the Bern.”

From the Star

Charles Chamberlain, chairman of the progressive group Democracy for America, said Sanders can play a potentially “critical” role in unifying the party by continuing his campaign.

“Bernie has already made it clear that he will 100% support the Democratic nominee and that he’s going to campaign for Joe Biden if that’s who it is,” Chamberlain said. “The reality is, that’s not 100% true for all Bernie Sanders supporters. So there is a real value to Bernie staying in the race as long as possible to bring those people into the party deeper.“

That underscores the sensitivity of how Sanders proceeds. Justin Bamberg, a South Carolina state representative and Sanders supporter, said it’s wrong to assume that, if the senator quickly drops out, his backers would unite behind Biden.

“It’s a mistake for the party, regardless of whether the nominee is Biden or Bernie, to think that beating Donald Trump in and of itself will be enough motivation for the average person living their day-to-day life to come out and be excited about voting in November,” Bamberg said.

I agree. Biden needs to emphasize that he can be trusted to keep his promises of endorsing and then carrying out Warren's plan despite their controversies and that the bernie or bust folks won't gain nothing from a Biden presidency.

How's everyone doing?

I'm feeling quite a bit of stress and mental burnout, so I wanted to post an "off my chest" style thread. Figured I'd keep it for the comments; maybe others could use the space, too.

(Posted in ~talk as I don't think it's productive to post this to ~health.coronavirus)

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Following an off-topic conversation starting here:

https://tildes.net/~health.coronavirus/mq7/advice_from_a_doctor_who_studied_coronaviruses_for_50_years#comment-4qi7

I thought it would be handy to establish that life still continues even in pandemic lockdown. One participant mentions a successful video date, and another wishes for sex.

The questions below may be personal and sensitive - please use your best judgement in answering or refraining to do so. Usual Tildes rules of courtesy apply.

1. If you're in a relationship, what are you doing to keep it alive and healthy?

2. If you're not partnered, what are you doing, if anything, to date or otherwise meet your needs while everything is closed down (if this is the case where you are)?

3. Does your idea of love or sex require physical contact?

4. If physical contact is required, what, if anything, are you doing to stay safe right now?

There are some very specific kinds of interactions that are much harder to find anywhere else. At the same time, large subreddits tend to have stringent rules, which mods frequently apply in an inconsistent and subjective manner.

I get that it's hard to manage a sub with thousands of people, but at the same time, it is frustrating to make an effort to write a long post just to realize there is no place for it.

To make matters worse, the principle of charity is basically unheard of, and people will evaluate your sentences in such a way to make them the least true, sometimes adding personal hostilities.

Posting on Reddit feels like something that should require a legal department, and I would very much like to stop doing that altogether. At the same time, places like /r/emacs are essential to help me quickly solve issues, and /r/destructiveReaders/ gave me some of the best criticism of my material I have ever had (and I'm including people from outside the Internet).

So I guess it comes up to self-control to not waste my time with subs that are prone to be toxic. But it's hard, sometimes.

Do you still post on Reddit? If so, what are your strategies to avoid unnecessary frustration?

Admittedly I deleted and re-uploaded this because I was worried I had posted the original thread too soon.

A'ight, here we are. Spreadsheet time.

When will the debate be broadcasted?

The debate will be recorded March 15th, 8-10 PM ET. (1-3 AM UTC)

Where will it happen?

In the CNN studio in Washington DC. Note that they moved it from Phoenix due to the Coronavirus.

Who will moderate it?

Dana Bash and Jake Tapper from CNN and Ilia Calderón from Telemundo.

Where can I watch this?

It will most likely be livestreamed in CNN's YouTube channel. it was livestreamed on CNN's website.

So, what's new and how will this change anything?

This is the first and possibly the last one-on-one debate in the primary between Bernie Sanders and Joe Biden and (also due to Coronavirus concerns) It has no live audience. It will also occur before some of the largest states in the primary vote.

So what do you think should happen? What questions should be asked? What should the candidates do and what should we talk about?

I'm usually the least anxious person among all the people I know, even when shit is hitting the fan. I practically revel in hardships for the problem solving.

But, what is freaking me out right now is this mass panic. It started off as a joke but now it's real, people are literally selling toilet paper on craigslist of whatever. Maybe it's still a joke, I don't know. But mass hoarding of important goods seems to be causing disruptions already, from a lack of toilet paper to a shortage of surgical masks for medical professionals.

I would like to ask the community here what they think about this and how they expect things to go on. Are we going to have a second-order crisis in supply shortages? Are shipping route delays going to hit us on top of the local supply shortages? Because right now it's feeling apocalyptic, and I'm struggling between not acting like a selfish hoarder but also making sure I can get through this.

EDIT: Toilet paper is just a prominent example, not my primary concern (we have plenty still). I'm more concerned about e.g. pharmacy goods and produce, since where I live literally 95% of our produce is imported.

EDIT 2: This article articulates what is on my mind much better: An Infectious Diseases Specialist Reflects on COVID-19

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I'm sure it comes as no surprise to anyone familiar with what I generally submit to tildes that videos, history and history.military are my favorite topic tags... but some of the other slightly more obscure ones I also enjoy (all music related) are live, soul.blue_eyed, singer_songwriter, and cover_songs.

What about you all? What are your favorite topic tags on tildes?

p.s. If you provide the associated https://tildes.net/?tag=topic_tag links to the ones you mention so that we can all peruse them, that would be greatly appreciated. :)

It always bothers me that I know American politics presumably pretty well but my own nation's politics on a nearly surface level so I guess I'll ask this, but this can be for practically any country that isn't the US or maybe Britain.

Since this is specifically for your countries the sources can be limited to your country's language.

One source of Brazilian (my nation's) news I've heard of that isn't a from a large cable channel like CNN is Nexo, although the paywall makes serious consumption inviable simply because my parents wouldn't pay for me to read news of all things, but if you can, do it, the charts are great and the rest seems pretty good.

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The trick is to find something interesting enough to make chores less boring, but not interesting enough to distract you to the point of making you stop what you're doing.

I used to play Friends on repeat, but that grew old when I quite literally memorized every single episode.

And my usual interests are way too interesting for me! (I wonder why hahaha).

Does anyone have the same habit? What are your current preferences? (TV shows, podcasts, docuseries, whatever suits your boat...)

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Inspired by the @culturedleftfoot post.

Try providing links, and, if you feel that your country is too big for this exercise to make sense, feel free to limit your choices to your region, state, city or even neighborhood!

Definition of Homeland (adapted from Wikipedia):

A homeland is the concept of the place where a cultural, national, or racial identity had formed. It can also mean the country of nationality, the place in which somebody grew up or lived for a long enough period that shaped his or her cultural identity, the place in which one's ancestors live for generations, or the place that one regard it as home.

(You could replace FPTP with STV to keep the districts that elect representatives in the house intact.)

I'll start.

The Democratic party breaks up into the neoliberal and progressive parties.

The neoliberal party is where centrist candidates like Joe Biden and Michael Bloomberg go.

The progressive party is where progressive candidates like Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren go.

The Republican party might lose a large part of their electorate to the libertarians, since many Republicans are more concerned about letting business prevail and don't really want cultural conservatism.

Andrew yang maybe also leaves the Democrats and founds his own party, the party for online reform.

The greens also become significantly more popular but they may have too much in common with the progressives.

The Senate could be changed to include as many seats as the house for proper representation.

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This is an intentionally broad question with a lot of different angles. It's also a question that's naturally hard to get solid grounding on now that nearly everything gets painted as false, misleading, or disingenuous by at least someone.

Normally in my ask threads I throw out a lot of potential talking points, but in this case I want to leave the question open, for people to take it in whichever direction they wish: What do we actually know about modern disinformation, especially related to (but not limited to) online spaces? What are some real, genuine takeaways we can hang our hats on?

Also, a point of clarity: disinformation here does NOT strictly refer to high-level government propaganda and can include something as low-level as, say, an influencer not disclosing product sponsorship to their followers. I'm interested in distributed falsehoods of any caliber.

Dear almost all other parents with kids between the ages of 2 and 5 years old,

I appreciate all you're doing. You are taking an active role in raising your children, and I applaud you for that... it's hard to do nowadays.

But this is a rant that I won't say to your face because I largely believe in parental autonomy. You need to hear it though. It's important, because many of your good intentions are crippling your child's development., and my own kid's. If at the end of this rant, you agree with it and aren't horrified or offended, PM me cause we could be best friends.

So let's start with the basics: If you take your young child to a children's play area, stop with the hovering. If your child can walk for more than 5 steps without falling on their face, give them some space (like more than 15 feet). Even if they get hurt, that is a teachable moment. If nobody is going to the hospital, don't worry about intervening. Sure they might get some scrapes and bruises, a couple of hard falls....but they will learn and they will grow. Shielding them from everything teaches them nothing. Hovering over your children also scares other children that are not yours, and discourages social interaction. I know this, because I am a very tall man who easily and accidentally terrifies anybody more than a foot shorter than me. It took me a few months to learn this lesson.

Next, let's talk about sharing. I know everyone wants to instill in their child that it is important to share. It's generally a good principal. But sharing is a two-way street, and every time you intervene whenever there is the slightest possibility of conflict, you're teaching your kid that 'sharing means to give whatever someone else wants to them no matter what' and you're teaching my kid 'you can totally take what other people want with 0 consequences.' My child can utterly dominate children twice as old because of this. I do my best to prevent that from getting instilled, but it's a long uphill battle when myself and my spouse are the only two teaching that lesson.

Children need to be able to have conflict with their peers. They need space from adults, and learn to interact with others their age. Yes there will be conflict, pain, and suffering. But there will also be joy, reconciliation, and fun. It's part of learning to be a human with empathy. My child learns far more about socializing in 5 minutes of interaction with your kid than 5 hours of interaction with me.

Next up: Potty training. My kid potty trained at 2 years old. They showed signs of being ready at 18 months, but couldn't quite verbalize well enough at that point. By 2 years, they were completely potty trained during the day. Took a while before being able to get through the night without accidents (tiny bladders have trouble going 8+ hours without peeing), but during the waking day 0 accidents for months on end. I see many of your 4+ year olds still wearing diapers and shitting themselves in the aisles in the grocery store, and it's one of the most depressing things ever. If your kid isn't potty trained by 3, it's your failing, not theirs.

I know my spouse and I are not the best parents (our stance on screen time is very controversial), but I also can blatantly see when development issues are forming as a result of hovering parents, both in my child and yours. Do these things, and everything will be better for everyone.

Signed,

A parent who is judging you harshly.

I'll start with @TheFanficGuy's reply to a comment of mine where he said you can bring down an authoritarian regime without a coup'd etat/successful civil war, although I admittedly can't really imagine any dictator just giving up power like that unless it hurts their economic allies. (And the Arab spring shows this above all else.)

I also wouldn't be surprised if many of these regimes only make a minimal amount of effort to keep their population shut.

I'm Brazilian, and personally (in the most radical, electability-indifferent and honestly meme-y campaign) would go for Bernie with the campaign finance and tax reform but with a platform for civical reform like putting STV as the nomination method for our chamber of deputies and supporting automating or funding new technologies to replace menial labor, like funding lab grown meat to replace all farming companies and labor now or robotics to automate large parts of the industrial and service sectors and use that money saved from not paying wages to people doing bad jobs to fund free universities and better schools/wages/welfare/infrastructure to the people once doing that work, along with adding civics and economics as subjects in school and always including notes as to where do you use the content you're learning, along with requiring subsidiaries to go independent or drop their branding. Clearly this isn't very realistic so feel free to expouse absurd policy.

I really want to talk about the SCP Foundation with other people, so let's get a thread going!

For those of you who don't know, The SCP Foundation is an online creative writing project where people write fake files and stories about The Foundation, a secret organization committed to containing various anomalous creatures. It's a really cool website, one that I recommend to anyone who likes thrillers, horror, sci-fi, or are just looking for something interesting.

Be warned though, there are over 4,000 entries on the wiki (they just had a 5,000th entry writing contest), so if you are feeling overwhelmed by the number of articles, feel free to start out with SCP-2030, one of my personal favorites. And if you're someone who prefers audiobooks to regular reading, a YouTuber going by the name Brendaniel has a great video narrating SCP-2030.

The nice thing about electability being uncertain is that you can choose the candidate you think is best.

Unfortunately I have lost faith in my ability to decide that. Studying candidates' policies seems useless since, after all, Congress makes the laws. We are likely to see either stalemate or centrist legislation regardless.

Maybe I should decide based on foreign policy instead? Most people don't do that but I don't see why not. Any recommendations for interesting articles to read?

So I don't know about all of you, but I'm pretty sick of terrible healthcare in the USA.

So I'm starting this thread for all of us to rant about our personal issues with healthcare. I'll be writing my rant into it's own reply later (it's a bit of a long one), but I wanted to start the thread now to give others a chance to start venting.

Rules of Rant Thread:

1. Don't argue a rant
2. Thread is likely going to be incredibly USA-centric. USA healthcare is assumed unless stated otherwise.
3. Rants should involve people no more than 2 degrees of separation from yourself. This thread is to vent about your personal experiences, not hearsay from total strangers.

In order to foster further discussion, and include those without a rant: Here are some things I personally would appreciate and expect for replies, but others might not.

• Explanation of how things would work out for you if you were in a similar situation
• Advice for dealing with any ongoing or future problems

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New debate, new thread. (Unfortunately somewhat late as the debate was streamed right at the time I wrote this post.)

The debate was being live streamed in CBS's channel in YouTube.

Twitter is one of the debate partners so expect a few questions from there.

The south Carolina primaries are due February 29th and there willl be no more debates until after super tuesday so this debate is pretty important.

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At work there's a project that was originally pitched as an automated system we would build for a new client, and now the conversation has shifted towards automating away some data entry tasks for an existing client. If the project is successful I would guess that some or all of the people doing the data entry tasks would be out of a job. And if it's a resounding success I would guess that the powers that be would be eager to apply it in other areas and potentially put more people out of jobs.

This project is in the very early stages of gathering requirements and whatnot so it's not really clear what exactly we're building or what my role in building it would be. But it involves a technology that's new to us (natural language processing) and often times I end up playing some role in a project that involves learning something new, even if it's just in some small way.

So yeah, I know automation replacing low-skill work is nothing new and if these jobs can be automated away, they will be sooner or later, but this is the first time I've been confronted with the idea of using my skills to put people I don't know out of a job and it sticks in my craw. Normally I love automation and interacting with new (to me) tech even if it's nothing groundbreaking and I'm just doing the plumbing to connect system A to interface B, but in the past it's always been in the name of freeing up people from tedious tasks so that they can do more interesting and more important work, rather than "freeing" them of their paycheck. So I'm finding myself adding this to the small but compelling pile of frustrations I have with this job and weighing it against the also-small but also-compelling pile of things I love about it.

Anyway, if you've ever been in a position where you were asked to automate away someone else's job, how did that go? What did you do?

If you haven't, what do you think you would do?

What question have you asked yourself multiple times but have not come to a solid conclusion? Why have you not been able to come up with a answer that satisfies you?

edit: only now do I realize I misspelled quandry

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I don’t like my name, and I never really have. It has nothing to do with ‘tomf’.

My main questions are:

1. How did you go about choosing the new name?
2. How did you manage/roll out the new name?
3. What unforeseen challenges came up?

My main concern is that I’ll settle on a ‘cool’ sounding name and that people will think it’s weird. While I want something normal, I do have some parameters:

1. The name should be free for the .com and major social media
2. I don’t want a main ‘S’ sound, since I don’t like how I say it.
3. I am hoping to have something simple to use over the phone. I use ‘Tom’ for Starbucks and reservations because it’s clear, short, and not me.

Anyway, has anybody done this? Any feedback is great, but I am more focused on changing my first name.

Pardon the crappy tags.