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Hi,

I'm not being false-modest. I'm actually dumb.

I can tell by the initial interactions I have with people. Within 10 minutes of meeting someone, they'll point out how something dumb manifested... and I'm usually in the room when they say it and I'm usually the one who did the dumb thing and it somehow comes out that I did dumb thing... awkward silence... fumbling words/take backs to try and "save" it.

I wish people wouldn't try to take it back. It's like I should be ashamed I'm dumb. I don't think I'm dumb, I just think that I think differently (and I also don't know a lot of things).

I have my own narration. Instead of trying to "save" the situation, I wish people would ask me my narrative/thought process. If I bring it up without being asked, it sounds like I'm trying to make excuses for myself, or I dig a bigger hole because I expose how even more dumb I am?

It's weird. I know I'm dumb, I just don't know when I'm doing something dumb.

Do you know how hard it is going through life not really knowing why you're dumb or when you'll be doing something dumb?

Anyway. What's a dumb thing you've done?

Note: I don't love my title and am open to any community edits that improve it!

"Really big deal" is of course relative, and it doesn't have to be a big deal for everyone but can be big for a specific domain, field, or group of people. It also dosn't have to be recent. Many "big deals" of the past have yielded things that are largely invisible to us now and that we take for granted.

What is something that is hugely significant but also seems to have no common presence in current discussions or understandings of the world?

As part of a weekly series, these topics are a place for users to casually discuss the things they did — or didn't do — during their weekend. Did you make any plans? Take a trip? Do nothing at all? Tell us about it!

As part of a weekly series, these topics are a place for users to casually discuss the things they did — or didn't do — during their week. Did you accomplish any goals? Suffer a failure? Do nothing at all? Tell us about it!

As part of a weekly series, these topics are a place for users to casually discuss the things they did — or didn't do — during their weekend. Did you make any plans? Take a trip? Do nothing at all? Tell us about it!

As part of a weekly series, these topics are a place for users to casually discuss the things they did — or didn't do — during their week. Did you accomplish any goals? Suffer a failure? Do nothing at all? Tell us about it!

I'm throwing myself a little party here -- digital drinks on me!

Yes, I know my loans weren't accruing interest on account of COVID-19, but long before that all started I'd been aggressively paying them down because I wanted them GONE. And now they ARE! (Or, they will be once the payment clears, which for some unknown reason takes my loan servicer like two full weeks).

The quarantine actually helped me accelerate payments. I rolled over what I was saving in gas money and not eating out into my loan payments. Also, as a teacher I only get paid during the school year, but I have the option to reduce my regular paychecks and roll the difference into a lump sum that gets paid out at the beginning of the summer. I choose this option so that my budgeting is consistent year-round (rather than me having to squirrel away my own nest egg for the summer from my other paychecks). The payoff amount on my loan would have been done around August had I kept with my regular schedule of payments, so I went ahead and treated myself to making the final payment in full, now, as I had the money for it upfront.

I cannot tell you how good it feels to finally be free of them. I paid off my undergrad loans in under 10 years and felt super proud of myself, only to immediately have to turn around and start the process all over again for grad school. Months after I finished my undergrad loan payments I was again accepting tens of thousands of dollars in debt so that I could get a master's degree to qualify myself for a job that I'd already been doing for years. It was not a great feeling, nor something I was very happy about, but you do what you have to do, right?

BUT NOW IT'S OVER. NO MORE STUDENT LOANS. I'VE WON THAT AMERICAN MILLENNIAL BOSS FIGHT.

It honestly feels like I just got a big raise, as, come August, once my timeline for paying the loans is done, all the money that I was putting towards them is now mine to do whatever I want with. I'm not saying this to gloat (and I know that I'm financially very privileged even in light of my debt), but simply because I'm reveling in the feeling of being out from under the suffocating thumb of a difficult financial pressure, and it feels wonderful.

EDIT: If anyone's wanting to join in my festivities remotely, participating is easy! All you need to do is pour yourself a tasty drink of your choosing, grab a delicious snack you love, and throw Carly Rae Jepsen's discography on shuffle.

As part of a weekly series, these topics are a place for users to casually discuss the things they did — or didn't do — during their weekend. Did you make any plans? Take a trip? Do nothing at all? Tell us about it!

I took the Oath to become an American citizen today, after having lived in the U.S. since I was a little girl. I'm glad to have finally done this, but I'm wondering on what to do next.

Any and all advice would be greatly appreciated.

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Tildes has had a couple of threads about podcast recommendations in the past, but most of them are over 18 months old now, and podcasts are always evolving, and we have new members who may not have participated in those threads before—I certainly only picked up podcasts in the last few months.

So. Three questions!

• What podcasts are you listening to?
• What podcasts have you dropped, or picked up, in that time?
• If you had to recommend a couple of podcasts to others, which shows would you pick? Why do you recommend them? Got a favourite episode?

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This question isn't about people so much as it is about anything else. It's hard to explain outright, so I'll use an example:

A few months ago I read Emily St. John Mandel's Station Eleven. I just finished with Ling Ma's Severance. The two books are completely unrelated but feel very, very close to one another. There are a lot of topical similarities: both portray a global pandemic, a lead female character, and narrative shifts between pre- and post-societal collapse, etc. However, more than that, both feel very tonally similar. I couldn't read Severance without constantly thinking of and comparing it to Station Eleven, and I think I liked both books better together than I did either of them on their own. Even though they're clearly different and written by different people, they very much feel like they come from the same family -- like they're unrelated siblings.

I'm curious as to what other examples people can come up with, in whatever category you consider: media, historical events, languages, etc. Anything goes as long as they have a familial resemblance.

Cynicism is the bastard cousin of skepticism. While optimists look for the silver lining, cynics can't fail to see
the fly in the ointment and true skeptics are somewhere in the middle. Cynicism is an overwhelming trend in internet forums. The most upvoted reactions are usually the more pessimistic (regardless of factuality), and seemingly virtuous attitudes are immediately met with assumptions of bad faith.

Cynicism is tiresome and can very well lead to false conclusions.

This may be unlikely, but paradigms can be improved, governments can adopt better policies, corporations can act for the good of society, billionaires can be virtuous philanthropists, assholes can learn to be nice, and bigots can learn to respect diversity. We should be absolutely skeptical of sudden changes of attitude, but indiscriminate cynicism creates an environment that does not reward positive changes, and I don't think that's in the best interest of a community.

EDIT: I feel I need to clarify that cynicism is not equal to skepticism. Skeptics refrain from conviction in face of insufficient evidence, while cynics assume bad faith even without sufficient evidence. I am not advocating for naïveté, but for healthy skepticism.

As part of a weekly series, these topics are a place for users to casually discuss the things they did — or didn't do — during their week. Did you accomplish any goals? Suffer a failure? Do nothing at all? Tell us about it!

I think the biggest effect of this will be that a lot of white suburban Klobuchar-ites will be more apprehensive of keeping the police as it is and a lot of progressives (like me, I always thought it was a class matter disguised as a race one) will take identity politics and racism more seriously and see themselves as privileged white people because it's become pretty hard not to. There will also be a lot of people in poor countries who will relate to the experience of being brutalized by the police and see the US as increasingly like them. I'm Brazilian and I honestly can't really see how is the US any better than my country anymore and in my state I scarcely see the police with more than batons and only in Rio de Janeiro (where drug gangs hide in the mountains and the state government is run by the party led by a former military officer) is the police really comparable.

Organizers might see that strength in numbers does little against FOX News and other media outlets so serious organization (proper mottos for example) might be taken more seriously.

Black people might be energized enough by this to turnout at an equal rate to white people despite the institutional barriers, which hasn't happened since Obama.

In other words, what do you do between things? I already worked from home before, and used to take medium to long walks between tasks. Now that is discouraged, so I tend to take a shower and change clothes more often. But that’s not very green and my skin started to show signs of wearing. The apartment is relatively large, but not enough for me to feel in another ambient by changing rooms.

So what do you do to help give structure to your routine?

It feels so strange. I am right here in time. Not in the past, when I screwed up some stuff. Not in the future when I'll be living somehow, whether like a good adult or somehow else. It just feels strange to be so aware of it. So aware of the moment, of the fact that I am currently typing stuff into a textbox on a website, hoping someone else relates to this feeling.

As part of a weekly series, these topics are a place for users to casually discuss the things they did — or didn't do — during their weekend. Did you make any plans? Take a trip? Do nothing at all? Tell us about it!

I thought this might be an interesting subject for conversation, inspired by the rationalist emphasis on the importance of noticing your confusion for figuring out important warning signs that could easily be overlooked.

I think it's best to try to answer the question as genuinely as possible. Sometimes, saying you're confused is implied criticism of others' behavior, but I think it's more important to notice those moments when things about the world genuinely don't add up.

As a simple example, I'm somewhat confused that the stock market has been going up. It's not all that confusing because bear market rallies are a thing, and many others are puzzled by this as well. But still, I must admit that I don't understand the mechanism behind it.

As part of a weekly series, these topics are a place for users to casually discuss the things they did — or didn't do — during their week. Did you accomplish any goals? Suffer a failure? Do nothing at all? Tell us about it!

I can think of several good reasons why protesting is a really bad idea right now:

• The virus doesn't care if your cause is just.
• If you end up going to jail, that's another hotspot.
• It provides cover for violence.
• The courts are going to do whatever they do at their own pace anyway.
• The long-term work of police reform isn't even going to begin until the crisis is over.

And yet, despite all these good reasons, I don't see leaders, black or otherwise, clearly saying that people should stay home. For example, Obama's statement is carefully neutral on this. It seems to be taboo?

But I'm out of touch. What am I missing?

As part of a weekly series, these topics are a place for users to casually discuss the things they did — or didn't do — during their weekend. Did you make any plans? Take a trip? Do nothing at all? Tell us about it!

There's a lot of unrest in the US lately, with protests going on in several cities.

How do you feel about the state of things in the US, regarding racism, police brutality, etc...? What's your viewpoint on the protests? How do you see the situation evolving? Some fear deadly confrontation between military police and civilians.

Have you had the misfortune of having a negative encounter with police officers? Care to tell your story? Have you participated yourself in one of these protests? What was your experience like? If you haven't, do you keep yourself informed? Where do you primarily find news? What's the general mood in your neighborhood, in your community, in your city?

We've seen protests pop up a lot more in recent years in various parts of the world - eg. Hong Kong, Lebanon, France, etc... Do you feel that this is symptomatic of a larger, global unease? Or can the US protests be considered wholly specific?

There are many thoughtful posters on Tildes that are much more eloquent than I. In the discussion of recent events I find myself struggling to successfully illustrate these issues.

Any help would be appreciated.

A pretty light-hearted/whimsical question.

I'll start.

Over here in São Paulo City temperatures range from anywhere from 10-30 degrees and the climate tends to be more rainy in the summer (the end/beginning of the year as in the southern hemisphere, which makes stuff like christmas really odd) and less so in the winter, which often leads to pretty beautiful sunsets. Sometimes the rain comes with pretty heavy wind in what looks like a diet hurricane. The clouds are mostly cumulus in the summer. I don't think it has ever snown here.

How I narrate my life has a lot to do with how I feel in the present. Bad things happened to me and I have done bad things. But there has been good people and good things also, and by forgetting them and only remembering the pain, I do a disservice not only to them, but to myself and my own wellbeing. I have been changing my story, not because the old narration is not true, but because it omits. It was not intentional omission, I just couldn’t remember. So

I want to tell the story about a boyfriend I once had named Jack. Jack was a huffer, he huffed paint, and you could always tell what color spray paint was on sale, by the color of the ring around his lips. I believe Jack loved me. He was older than me by about a decade, and I was young, but emotionally I think we were the same age. At the time of my relationship with Jack, I was a ward of the state and moved in and out of foster homes, behavioral modification centers, juvenile hall, and state mental hospitals.

I want to tell this story about Jack not only because he is most certainly dead, and tenderness and epic feats should be remembered, but also because there is never a place for me to speak about Jack.

So Jack loved me. When I was struggling with my sexuality and claimed that I only had sex with him and with men because they were easy, he stopped touching me, and allowed me to use his place to explore girls I liked. He would make them feel at home, make food, and leave to do something else elsewhere. He would never participate in a threesome when girlfriends and I were tripping our asses off, or drunk or high on something else, instead he’d go to a corner and huff paint and leave the world for a bit. When a john beat the crap out of me, and I wouldn’t go to the hospital because I was afraid of being arrested, he stitched me and set bone, all while cheerfully talking about how we would murder the bastard. In recovery we made elaborate plans for execution and giggled, and snuggled, and listened to music and had gentle sex, because I like girls, but I am not really gay.

Jack was also a planner. And not only could he make a conversation about plans to murder some deserving asshole, he could also devise and follow through on plans on how to bust me out of my various incarcerations. Most of them failed, and one cost him his own incarceration, but he had some successes. When I would be incarcerated, Jack would go to libraries and planning offices and find architectural and electrical plans for the buildings I resided in. We had this coded language we used in our letter writing where I could let him know where exactly I was located inside the building and he could let me know how far into a plan he was without a censor being able to casually figure out what was going on.

And Jack succeeded. Power went out, and I crept down stairs without alarm, and we met in bushes, and we moved through yards, and made our way to bus stops and subways until we were safe, and far, and naked, to talk and laugh, to tell the story, and have or not have sex. And then he would go to the corner and huff and fall away from the world. And I would go out into the night to make a buck.

Jack made it his mission to keep me from being locked up. He would pretend to be the brother or uncle to gain entry, to find weaknesses and to exploit, constantly on the lookout to find ways to extract my freedom, almost like he understood that I was locked up not because there was something inherently wrong with me, but that there was something wrong with the system that could not be bothered to parent the child who they had authority over. Me drugged on Thorazine, Jack carrying me down an elevator through a front door towards freedom, a quick puff at the parking lot, a friend waiting in a car around the corner, laying zoned out together, looking at Jack with his mouth stained blue. Grateful.

He had a horror story of his own that he never foisted on anyone. He also had once been a child of the state. And paint and other inhalants completely annihilated his pain. But he loved me, and paused his own decline to show me acceptance and love and tenderness. I could rest.

Jack’s name is not Jack. His name was Bill Pfeiffer. And it has been easy in my life to tell my story that no one loved me, that no one believed in me, that no one ever let me breathe. But Bill Pfeiffer did. And as the narration of my life changes, and I focus more on what I have had instead of what I did not have, Bill once again comes to free me.

As part of a weekly series, these topics are a place for users to casually discuss the things they did — or didn't do — during their week. Did you accomplish any goals? Suffer a failure? Do nothing at all? Tell us about it!

As part of a weekly series, these topics are a place for users to casually discuss the things they did — or didn't do — during their weekend. Did you make any plans? Take a trip? Do nothing at all? Tell us about it!

Datahoarders are people who will keep an absurdly large amount of data on a number of large capacity hard drives. That data can be anything from 4K movies, family photos and recordings, archives, YouTube channels... anything really. I find this practice to be intriguing. Do you feel like this description may apply to yourself?

If so, do tell us more about your endeavor: do you collect anything you can get your hands on or do you have a more specific aim? Do you share any of it? Do you have a particular setup? That could be hardware, software or some cloud subscription.

As part of a weekly series, these topics are a place for users to casually discuss the things they did — or didn't do — during their weekend. Did you make any plans? Take a trip? Do nothing at all? Tell us about it!

Could be anything, either simple or complex, general or specific. And it doesn’t need to have remained literally identical, sometimes a product receives minor or external adjustments while maintaining its core.

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I guess I'll start.

"From accountability/transparency one derives trust."

"If you don't learn where your problems come from and how to solve them someone might just claim to have done those things for you and you'll have no way to know if they're being sincere."

Edit:

"A nostalgic society is not a society that loves it's past but one that hates it's present and dreads it's future."

What things -- big or small, successful or not-- have you put your money towards in hopes of bringing them to light? Tell us the story of why you chose to support them and whether or not you feel your contribution was worth it to you in the end.

My brother and I have been going at it on if a YouTube channel puts out a video, based around a conversation with either a static image or a simple eye catch behind it, can it be considered a podcast? I'm of the opinion that a podcast is a podcast because it's an audio file, in an aggregator, that can be downloaded to a portable device with minimal fuss. He's of the opinion that the content makes a podcast, and if all podcast aggregators suddenly go under, any audio files with album art uploaded to YouTube would be considered indistinguishable from podcasts, so podcasts can live exclusively in the YouTube space and still be considered a podcast.

Does anyone else have a take on this? Can I use Tildes to definitively prove my brother wrong?

I was looking for an old movie review from a movie news website that (sadly) no longer exists and it took me down an Wayback Machine rabbit hole that got me thinking about all of the websites I used to be extremely active on that aren't reachable any more.

So I'm just curious if others have any fond memories of sites that they used to be a part of that no longer exist?

Tl;dr human birth rates are falling universally and globally and at some point in this century will mean a decrease of the world's population. The effects of this will/has been felt in stuff like pensions/retirement and so far, noone has proposed any solutions other than increased immigration and denying women abortions. So what should we do to solve this? Should we even find solutions given that stuff like pollution and climate change is man-made?

This is a scenario question similar to the "You are stranded on a deserted island, what do you bring?" question. The following guidelines I offer stem from my planning and experiences, I begin my 4 months shortly.

• There is no electricity, no running water, no plumbing, no cell phone service nor internet service.
• US Postal Service is available.
• It is about 45 minutes away from the nearest town and is located on United States Forest Service owned land.
• You will be sharing the cabin with several other like-minded people that you've never met before in a roommate dynamic.
• The accommodations are free through the program.
• This program runs a 9 days on, 5 days off work schedule. For the 9 days on, you will be camping along trails you are maintaining and not be at the cabin.
• Basic food storage (coolers), a solar shower, washboards and tables will be provided.

What do you bring? For functionality? To maintain comfort and/or sanity? Entertainment purposes? Keep in mind the point of this experience is to remove yourself from the grid, expose yourself to the rawness of nature and the elements. While it's tempting to say you'd bring a $10k solar/battery array, download all the things, and just host 5 day binge watching sessions with the bears, that's not the purpose. ;)

In an episode of the TV show Seinfeld, a woman invites George Costanza for a cup of coffee in her apartment after a date. George rejects the offer, saying if he drank coffee that late he would stay up all night. The woman leaves the car visibly underwhelmed. After a second, George realizes "coffee" meant "sex" and he just lost a great opportunity.

Have you ever had a moment like that (not necessarily about romance), in which a silly misunderstanding led to the loss of an opportunity?

Disclaimer I was going to post this on ~tildes but thought we could have a more casual conversation about it here.

So how can tildes stop corruption from happening on its platform, it’s no secret that other similar websites have become corrupted the best example of this is Reddit they do what advertisers want them to do or who ever is giving them money, only a couple of days ago I saw this video about a guy who was running a cult on there recruiting vulnerable people and they did nothing because he was buying thousands of awards a day.

Tildes doesn’t have advertising and is a non profit with no investors so those are 2 big places it can’t get corrupted from. One place I could see problems is donations I would be interested in if all donations are Anonymous I should probably have looked into them before writing this but maybe someone else knows the answer, if they aren’t what is stopping big donators getting special treatment?

My main reason for this topic is the video mentioned above but I also thought it would make an interesting discussion on here.

We're overdue for another introductions thread, we've had a couple hundred new people come in since the last one and today's seeing a wave of new people interested in joining.

So, tell us about yourself, as much as you want to share. How did you find out about Tildes? Do you have any questions, hobbies, interests? The ~talk group is the most casual part of Tildes, you could think of it as a sister to /r/casualconversation, so feel free to talk about anything!

Past introduction threads for posterity: -1- . -2- . -3- . -4- . -5- . -6-

As part of a weekly series, these topics are a place for users to casually discuss the things they did — or didn't do — during their week. Did you accomplish any goals? Suffer a failure? Do nothing at all? Tell us about it!

It could be anything: an odd food combination that's surprisingly delicious or a schlocky movie that's surprisingly entertaining. It's something that you wouldn't normally anticipate is great or possibly even good, but it, for whatever reason, is.

What's something that's better than expected? What makes it that way?

As part of a weekly series, these topics are a place for users to casually discuss the things they did — or didn't do — during their weekend. Did you make any plans? Take a trip? Do nothing at all? Tell us about it!

As part of a weekly series, these topics are a place for users to casually discuss the things they did — or didn't do — during their week. Did you accomplish any goals? Suffer a failure? Do nothing at all? Tell us about it!