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!

I am an introvert, I hang around online most of the time. But, I've cut off most of the social media in past couple of years, now my online presence is reduced to whatsapp, tildes, youtube and sometimes reddit. I take in news from well respected sources, although most of them are left leaning.

Even after significantly limiting myself from news and social medias I cant help but feel world is getting worse everyday. Climate change, Increasing support for far right politics, increased consumption of fake news/propaganda etc..

I am going through some personal job related issue myself, I don't know what I am working towards. Why the hell should I waste my energy and time if I can't even see a better future? I don't think I am depressed, I am sad and frustrated that I dont have anything to look forward to.

Surely there are people in here who dealt/ dealing with this. How do you cope with this? what do you tell yourself when you see another fuck up from the world?

P.S: English is not my first language.

I ask people this all the time, especially lately to check in with them, and everybody says they're fine. I get it, because I say the same thing to everyone who asks me that too. It's just "what you do" with that question, especially over text.

So, here's a chance to let someone know how you're doing beyond "I'm fine", even if it just us random internet strangers here on the site. I'd love to hear where you're honestly at: good or bad, up or down, stable or unstable, happy or sad, or anywhere in between or outside any of those.

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'd probably want a tail with features similar to other primates. I'd use it for better balance, and also wag it to demonstrate I'm happy or excited. It would probably need some fur, otherwise it would look hideous. I don't think any tail can really support my whole 90kg adult body, but it would certainly make it easier to climb trees and other stuff. Not that I have a need to climb, but I might give a try if I had a tail.

And it might also come in handy to swing a Brazilian hammock or hold a cold beverage.

This can be anything, big or small, serious or funny. What's something you've learned about yourself recently? How and why did it happen?

I was mostly thinking of this in terms of what the pandemic has brought to light for us, as it's undoubtedly caused a lot of self-reflection, but answers don't have to be related to that (though they certainly can be). The question is fully open to any realizations you've had for any reason.

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!

(Hot take alert)

I personally think mass protests should be brought back. Many governments around the world are rejecting democracy and so can really only be held accountable with drastic measures. I'd even argue people should be armed and follow domething like in the Charlottesville gun rallies or the 1968 DNC riots as a model for protesting particularly egregious stuff like Trump's impeachment trial. A few hundred thousand armed people pointing at the US Senate saying 'A trial without witnesses is unconstitutional, the president is not above the law' would definitely send a message to the Republicans there and watching in FOX.

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!

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!

Many people have plenty to do just figuring out how to protect themselves and take care of their families. Others are busier than ever with essential jobs. But at least some of us are stuck at home and could probably be doing more to support the common effort, something besides avoiding infection and watching it happen.

There are many to choose from, but what charities do you think are most deserving of support, and why? What are good ways to volunteer?

Edit: LessWrong has a section of their link database devoted to work and donations

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!

Mine is about my spirit animal.

Manatees have long been known as gentle giants, and somehow sailors once confused them with beautiful women. What fewer people know about manatees, is that they control their buoyancy with flatulance. Their whole life is floating around and eating seagrass. They get gassy and start to float up, so they let a few farts out to get back down to the seagrass. And you thought dolphins had life figured out.

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 week. Did you accomplish any goals? Suffer a failure? Do nothing at all? Tell us about it!

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

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!

• 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?

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 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.

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!

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)

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 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.

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!

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...)

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!

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.

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'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 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.

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!