TLDR/Warning: this might be a tedious read. But I'm curious if I could have gone about rating my albums better.

I tend to simply either favourite an album or not. The idea of giving albums and tracks marks out of five stars seems tedious, difficult to match to how I feel and just doesn't match how my head works. But my collection has grown over the decades and I've been bed bound a lot lately, so I'm trying to organise/categorise based on my feelings towards the albums rather than genre. I'm also hoping to rejuvenate my old interest in music (playing in a band and recording for a living took the shine off of casual listening for me). I thought it would be an interesting experiment to try out, so I rated songs from over 50 albums.

I came up with a rigid and hopefully balanced definition for each rating:

• 1 star - Dislike. I hope I never hear this song again (but I'll keep it purely because it's part of the album)
• 2 stars - Neutral. It doesn't annoy me, but it's too generic to be interesting
• 3 stars - Sometimes this song hits the spot.
• 4 stars - This song usually hits the spot.
• 5 stars - This song always hits the spot.

Then I rate the album out of five stars based on the average of the song ratings. The result is that no albums got 5 stars, a seven got 4 stars, the vast majority of albums are rated at 3 or 2 stars. Even among the 3-star albums, some I like much more than others depending on whether they contain mostly consistent 3-star songs or half 4-star songs and half 2-star songs.

I wonder if the lack of 5-star albums is because of the definitions I gave each of the 1-5-star possibilities. For example, I don't know if any song "always hits the spot". Or maybe it's just that I'm not as into my music as I used to be.

Anyway, I thought maybe people interested in music and data might have thoughts on going about this differently. It's worth asking before I do the next 1,000 albums :) Maybe you'd define each of the 5 stars differently. Any takers?

Edit: thanks to everyone for reading all this and commenting their thoughts. I have a system I'm happy with now, but always happy to continue to chat with fellow (and reluctant) pedants about this.

I forgot my driver's license today but had my phone with me. I remembered seeing stories that google and apple both allow these (for some states) in the digital wallet.

Before doing this, I thought I would ask people here to weigh in on whether it is a good idea. Is it considered secure? Is it going to cause me more privacy issues than a physical card in my wallet?

This is also related to recent discussions about online age verification.

This is a related Tildes post from last year: Google Wallet adds age verification and more government ID support

as a grapheneOS user, I obviously care about my privacy, hence why the iPhone will not be my main driver, the grapheneOS device will continue to be.

but I might be getting a free iPhone soon and I have an idea of what I would use it for (Podcasts as Apple Podcast is the best cross-platform podcast app I have come across) but am not sure what else I would be comfortable using it for as I don't know what actions are safe without having Apple gather that much data or telemetry on me.

I know that I won't be using iCloud on it. I have no need for Apple's data storage. Nor do I see myself ever using the App Store, except for installing a VPN app. I might install Signal on it but not anytime soon (not least of which cause Signal does not yet support multiple smartphone usages for the same device). I definitely won't use iMessage as I don't believe in using a messaging service that is limited to a specific ecosystem.

I will note that I wont install a SIM on it. It will be using Wi-Fi for the foreseeable future.

Given these things, i am not sure if there is anything i should be on the look-out for in terms of privacy concerns with the usages I have outlined above.

This is a recurring post to discuss programming or other technical projects that we've been working on. Tell us about one of your recent projects, either at work or personal projects. What's interesting about it? Are you having trouble with anything?

I'm looking for a kit that will give me some practice holding wires in place and soldering connections, hopefully also while giving me a completed object or set of objects that's fun at the end. I'm not completely new to soldering; I've done a couple simple kits and some repair of model trains with loose wires, but I definitely could be a lot better at it and I'd like some guided practice. Emphasis on the "guided," I'm not looking for additional things to repair, I really want a straightforward kit, a range of difficulties in connections would also be great. Any recommendations?

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Have you watched any movies recently you want to discuss? Any films you want to recommend or are hyped about? Feel free to discuss anything here.

Please just try to provide fair warning of spoilers if you can.

Decided I wanted to try vibe-coding some stuff. It's been a very long time since I coded anything, and it was all very amateurish, but as the tooling has become better I wanted to give a shot at some silly ideas. Got tired of writing about random teaching and AI related stuff, decided I wanted to build some more stuff to get more acquainted with agentic tooling.

I have gathered some sparse links here and there, but I was hoping the community here may know of some more "definitive" guides. My plan is to use Claude Code, but if people want to share guides for other coding agents (Codex, etc.) please feel free.

Very interested in iOS app development if that helps, but I feel that best practices can likely look very similar across platforms and tools.

Chinese Grand Prix
Shanghai International Circuit
March 13-15, 2026

Next race:
Japanese Grand Prix
Suzuka Circuit
March 26-29, 2026

What have you been listening to this week? You don't need to do a 6000 word review if you don't want to, but please write something! If you've just picked up some music, please update on that as well, we'd love to see your hauls :)

Feel free to give recs or discuss anything about each others' listening habits.

You can make a chart if you use last.fm:

http://www.tapmusic.net/lastfm/

Remember that linking directly to your image will update with your future listening, make sure to reupload to somewhere like imgur if you'd like it to remain what you have at the time of posting.

What have you been doing lately for your own fitness? Try out any new programs or exercises? Have any questions for others about your training? Want to vent about poor behavior in the gym? Started a new diet or have a new recipe you want to share? Anything else health and wellness related?

Schedule

Discussion Topics

Each month will have two discussion topics:

• "Insert Cartridge" - 1st of the month
• "Remove Cartridge" - 28th of the month (25th for February)

Insert Cartridge topics are primarily for getting the game set up and running. Remove Cartridge topics are primarily for reflecting on the game once you've played it. However, the game itself and anything else related to it can be discussed in either one.

Hosting

Each month, the discussion topics will be posted by a different "host" who will act as the emcee for that month.

Hosting is not required, but it is encouraged that people host months for games that they are either already very familiar with or that they are strongly interested in playing.

People who nominated a game will be given preference for hosting, otherwise it will be given to whomever claims it first.

Check out old months to get a feel for what it's like.

If you would like to host a month, let me know which one and I will add you to the schedule.

Before your month begins, I will send you a "Hosting Package" featuring templates that you can edit to your liking.

If no one claims a month, I will host it as a fallback.

Voting Results

The top 6 games from the voting round were chosen to be played.

Of the remaining games:

• The top 50% will advance to the next round. They will start the next round with a base score of 30% of their vote totals.
• The bottom 50% will be removed from the list.

Removed games will be able to be re-nominated in future rounds if someone chooses to do so.

Radicalization has, of course, varied meanings to pretty much any person you ask to define it and it is both contextual and a spectrum. I will provide no definition of such here as this isn't a pissing contest and a person's definition is likely to be highly personal based on their own lived experiences up to and post said "radicalization".

Today is my yearly reminder of what I consider to be the impetus of what "radicalized" me.
So thought I'd ask all of you for yours.

TL;DR: I just need your help to erect some kind of mental deep sea bunker in my soul :-)

Context: My job brings me into private homes with lots of permanently switched-on large televisions and with lots of super-talktative and socially starved human beings ambiently living around these screens.

The job is personal assistance: to remain emotionally present and relateable for hours on end. Quite an effort, not only because I get easily distracted by television sounds and screens (war-footage + sports = random mainstream deluge of endless pixel poison). I did not grow up with television and my audio-visual filtering capability is very poor. I get fixated by any stream of noise and trapped within it. This job makes me want to get better at filtering.

Thus I would much appreciate if anybody who knows this type of problem, would share techniques to filter and/or ignore external stimuli. More useful answers would take into account that being rude or flippant is not an option, and it would not be socially acceptable for me to regulate the televisions.

What would be some terms that I could use to find books about the topic? Any experiences you can share with me? Thanks <3

They are old. They are a guest here and want to be helpful, but it ends up being annoying because every time you set down a used pan or cooking utensil, they want to wash it for you. (They know perfectly well we have a dishwasher and that we use it.) They hover while you're working in the kitchen and always seem to be in the way.

It's like they're hijacking my attention span all the time to make decisions. It also feels like (again definitely unintentionally) they're telling you to hurry up and do this thing they want you to do.

I have just come withing a microsecond of biting off their head. I'm baking a pastry, and came to check on it to see where it was at and make sure it wasn't browning too much. I checked internal temperature, noted browning, and the moment I closed the door, before I could turn around to get the foil, they asked me if I knew it was getting brown (that's the way they worded it, "do I know". Fortunately, "YES NO EFFING KIDDING I WAS HERE TO CHECK ON EXACTLY THAT" came out as "Yes."

I don't want to react like this. Please give me pointers.

Add awesome game deals to this topic as they come up over the course of the week!

Alternately, ask about a given game deal if you want the community’s opinions: e.g. “What games from this bundle are most worth my attention?”

Rules:

• No grey market sales
• No affiliate links

If posting a sale, it is strongly encouraged that you share why you think the available game/games are worthwhile.

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