Hi friends,
I'm frequent lurker, infrequent poster here on a throw away account for what will be obvious reasons.

I have very difficult, potentially relationship ending problem in my life and I need some outside perspective.

Some context- I have a long term girlfriend who I love and cherish very much. We own a home, car, dog, have shared friends, finances, etc etc, we're very intertwined. Her sister moved in with us a few years back and while I was initially put off by this we've grown to love and care for each other a lot and are a large part of each others lives. All three of us are in our 30's. Our little family is very close- We spend every evening and almost every weekend all three of us together. Vacations, eating out, etc are always with all 3 of us (not literally, an anniversary dinner would be just us but on a typical day out we're all together). I would move mountains for either of them and if any real harm befell either I would be devastated, I think they would both say the same.

The problem is over time feelings have grown for the sister. Romantic feelings. I've been doing a mix of suppressing / ignoring / living in denial of this for over a year now, maybe two? It's all quite fuzzy. For a long time I've lived this mindset that if I just pushed it down a little harder the next time, did a little better about not thinking about her, it'll eventually go away. A couple months ago I decided to take a step back from her and limit my time around her and utterly failed. My new distance was noticed and became a thing. I was confronted and admitted I was creating some distance. She was very upset at this. Tears were shed on both sides, I felt awful and in the ensuing heart to heart found out she cared for me at a deeper level than I ever knew. My love for her (in all forms) grew from this making me worse off than when I started.

I think it's worth mentioning that I dont think the sister is "in" to me in the same way, at least she's never done or said anything to indicate as such. She is also very shy and has some self esteem/confidence issues and has made some remarks about "probably dying alone" and being "not attractive" (which is wild to me, shes a beautiful girl). Shes never been on a date or been kissed. The reason I mention all this is I think a part of me wants to be some "savior" for her from this path. It's certainly not the only thing drawing me to her but it is something.

So now this is all starting to boil over in my psyche and I'm left wondering what to do. I can only think of a handful of options. (1) I tell my girlfriend the entirety or maybe softened version of all this. I have no idea how this would go, maybe she wants to try to work through it with me, maybe she sees it as a betrayal and leaves me (2) I give no reason and break up with my girlfriend. We lose our home and life and turn everyone's lives upside down in the process, but in some circumstances possibly the nicest option?(3) I tell the sister, most likely permanently destroying the relationship we have and making our interaction uncomfortable forever. I think expressing all this to her and hearing the most likely response of "No I dont like you like that at all you're a freak get away from me" maybe would undo this spell Im under though. (4) I keep it inside, bottle it up, and live like this forever. Am I 100% confident that I can do that forever and something will never slip out? No. (5) Try a new means of dealing with this, maybe therapy, and hope and prey it works. I dont think this is an option for me anymore. There have been talks and expectations of a proposal next month on our anniversary and discussions of having kids on the horizon. The appropriate time to mentally confront this would have been a long while back, now I've lost the luxury of time to work this out. No more experiments, I need to make a decision and move forward.

All of these options are AWFUL and most involve hurting my girlfriend, her sister, or both which tears my heart apart and neither deserve that. I would love to hear any alternatives. I hate myself for allowing myself to get sucked into this mindset and fantasy realm. I know it's my fault, I know I failed them, I know I should have better control over myself. I'm mentally weak in that way I guess. I have no idea what to do.

The May 2026 Backlog Burner event is officially over!

Over the month of May, 14 participants moved 176 games out of their backlogs.

Congratulations to the following Bingo winners:

• u/aphoenix
• u/BailerAppleby
• u/CannibalisticApple
• u/kfwyre
• u/ShroudedScribe
• u/SingedFrostLantern
• u/Wes

Special congratulations:

• u/1338 playing a total of 39 games (including many that you can't even buy anymore)
• u/aphoenix for masterfully executing a thematically relevant plan for participating
• u/BailerAppleby for playing so many games from the Tildes Game Giveaways
• u/dannydotcafe for a truly mellow win
• u/Durinthal for finishing a game from the 2024 Backlog Burner
• u/J-Chiptunator for prioritizing their health
• u/JCPhoenix for posting awesome Let's Plays
• u/Wes for his many thoughtful comments

To everyone who played games, shared their thoughts, or even just read through the comments for the event:

This event is amazing because y'all all make it amazing. Thank you for playing.

Use this topic to post your final bingo cards, give recaps of your games, and share any thoughts you have on the event itself.

Who won?

The question on everyone's mind.

The feud between the Motivateds and the Mellows was a (possibly one-sided?) rivalry for the ages.

Who came out on top?

Well, I'm happy to report that the final numbers are in, and the Grand Winners are:

Statistics

• We averaged 12.6 games per person and 40.0 games per week.
• There were 424 comments posted across 5 topics.
• Games starting with the letter S accounted for a full 12% of what we played.
• Shortest game title: 3 characters (Hue)
• Longest game title: 54 characters (Bubsy 3D: Bubsy Visits the James Turrell Retrospective) (a 1700% increase)

Game Lists

I was talking with a friend about recent events that seemed eerily suspicious to me, and was wondering if all of you might have any similar experiences.

(Preemptively tagging this as politics. If anything in this thread is deemed malicious or inflammatory, let me know and I'll delete the thread)

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.

June 2026's Humble Choice is now available with the following eight Steam games.

Does anyone have experience with any of the games and, if so, would you recommend them? Is there anything in here that you're particularly excited to play?

With Google search going AI-first, I'm really interested in trying it out. But I don't know anyone IRL who's used it.

Kagites of Tildes, what do you think of the search subscription product? Do you find the privacy satisfactory? And for bonus points, how do you find the anti-AI ("slop-stop") features?

Some of the discussion in another thread inspired me to try making a user-script that would inject some rich text editor into the tildes desktop site. I have only tried it on Firefox, but figured it might be worth sharing in case anyone finds it useful or has suggestions for improvements.

Install Tampermonkey extension. (Chrome, Firefox).

With the extension installed, this link should be detected as an installable userscript.

https://gist.github.com/allemangD/faf9bb796aad686593404a76b0e372c6/raw/073ca80d9dddc231e3f41c24c1989e8a40b7c243/tildes-easymde.user.js

It injects EasyMDE with some extra css to make it match the Tildes theme. EasyMDE uses FontAwesome for its toolbar icons, but Tildes's content policy seems to make it impossible to use this. Instead, I add some CSS to put plain text in the toolbar buttons. Some nice features

• Full-screen and side-by-side editors.
• Spell checker.
• Auto-save. (Based on the URL and element ID, so each comment reply is saved separately.)
• Keyboard shortcuts like Ctrl+B, Ctrl+K, etc.
• Conveniences like "enter" on a list adds an item to the list, or in a quote adds a line to the quote.

It is not perfect, however. It bugs out if you pick the built-in "preview" tab (the editor is still visible but does not update the preview), and it does not understand username mentions or group mentions.

I used it to write this, and the auto-save behavior seems to be fine, but I'm not sure how much I trust it not to lose my work.

Screenshots!

• Inline editor
• Side-by-side full-screen editor
• Firefox Android

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.

Hello Tildes.

I feel like i have movie fatigue, i don’t feel like i manage to get hyped for new movies.
Do anyone of you have any recommendations for older movies, lets say 2010 and older. It can be any genre.
Can go really old as well, i really enjoyed 12 Angry Men.

Thank you very much in advance!

About every six weeks, I go on a "stock the pantry" shopping trip to buy long-keeping items and non-perishables in quantity - cat food and litter, Costco, etc. After two hours of shopping yesterday, I was a little shocked to realize I'd spent half of my take-home pay on a trip that previously was about 25% less expensive. No one item had drastically increased in price - everything had just gone up that much.

[I'm also smarting because my primary care physician announced she was switching to a concierge care model, and I just made the first quarterly payment. U.S. healthcare sucks so badly that I can't take a chance on the two-year waitlists for in-network primary care M.D.s who provide 10-minute "annual exam" visits in my area.]

I'm dropping subscription services, buying cheaper conventional food instead of organic, getting generic personal care products instead of brand names and using less of them, cooking even more at home, thinking about making my own cat food, skipping buying pretty flowers for outdoors this year... and still feeling like the budget isn't going to keep stretching.

I know a great many aspects of Western lifestyles aren't sustainable, and I've tried to do my part to minimize material consumption. But there are so many expectations that you'll pay for perhaps excessive shelter (we didn't need a house the size we have, but it was what was available and affordable), have a car for work, be able to pay for services for things you don't have time, skill, or physical capacity to do yourself, and other monetary drains. I'm losing some sleep.

What are you doing to cope with exorbitant rents/mortgages, skyrocketing utility and grocery bills, extravagant medical costs, unaffordable childcare and services?

Do you feel like your quality of life has declined, due to missing luxuries, anxiety, fewer opportunities to connect with friends and family, or anything else?

Open rant here.

Before I go into my rant I would like to ask you: Have you played Destiny or Destiny 2? What are your thoughts on Bungie, the imminent death of Destiny, their push for Marathon, and “games as a service” in general?

As for my opinion, I think that the real problem is that (probably) most managers, CEOs, investors, and shareholders involved in live service games aren’t gamers. They don’t care about the quality of the games. A majority of them probably don’t even play what they publish.

What they care about is to maximize revenue with minimal effort, cost, and risk.

The programmers and artists suffer from low wages and job insecurity, and the gamers suffer from live service slop that eventually gets sunset even when it has a dedicated fan base (that could grow if the game was better).

We can’t win against this horde of managers, CEOs, investors, and shareholders. They got AAA in a chokehold, especially in live service.

We gotta continue to vote with our wallets and give our money to the companies who deliver quality games, and pull our money out when they don’t.

If Bungie dies, I’ll be sad because I have a long history with Halo (Combat Evolved, 2, 3, ODST, and Reach), but so be it. Something better may rise from their ashes.

We gotta resist the slop. It’s like fast food. We gotta resist it even if it’s addictive, and go get better quality grub elsewhere even if it costs more. If we keep eating the slop, they’ll continue frying more of it.

Edit: To make sure I don’t confuse anyone, I should add that Destiny 2 will receive one last content update this month, and will remain playable, just as its predecessor, for the time being. What I think most people are complaining about is that a game that could potentially be excellent, will be left in a messy state, designed mostly around maximizing revenue through micro-transactions, rather than offering a good experience. It has a large and passionate fanbase, but will basically abandoned by Bungie, in favor of their new game Marathon, which no one cares about

Have you watched any TV shows recently you want to discuss? Any shows 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.

A little less than a year ago, I asked for your recommendations on bread maker tips, tricks, and recipes, and thought I’d give a small update.

The bread maker I bought is functionally the Breville Custom Loaf, rebranded for the local market (“Tramontina by Breville”). I paid R$3069 for it. It was on sale: the same machine now sells for anywhere between R$2991 to R$3690. (These equate to about 565USD then and 594USD to 732USD now, considering contemporaneous exchange rates.)

My +/- weekly recipe eventually settled upon via much trial and many errors comes from an amalgamation of various sources, by now mostly lost. In the summer, I have to halve the recipe and make bread twice as often, or the maresia / damp sea air makes it mould before we can eat the whole thing!

I have also not tried to make anything but this exact bread since I started. My dreams of raisin buns are as of yet unrealised. Next year for the end of the year, I plan to make panettone in it, as we don’t plan to travel.

My unhalved recipe is:

• 450ml water (filtered, cool)
• 1 tbsp olive oil
• 4 cups 100% whole wheat / integral flour
• >1 tsp demerara sugar
• <1 tsp salt
• 1 tsp (freezer stored, instant dry) yeast
• ~3/4 cup walnuts, in pieces, raw, unsalted, to fill the “automatic” dispenser on the machine (sometimes the bulk goods shop by me is out of nuts. the bread is better with nuts, but fine without.)

Cost wise, this breaks down to:

• 500mL olive oil : R$25 (0,75/loaf)
• 1kg flour : R$7 (3,17/loaf)
• 1kg sugar : R$10 (0,05/loaf)
• 1kg salt : R$4 (0,02/loaf)
• 100g walnuts : R$10 (12,50/loaf)

I didn’t include the yeast in the breakdown because I have yet to buy any. The 1kg package of yeast I purchased four years ago to make pizza and kept in the freezer since is still going strong. At present, a kilo of yeast costs ~R$23.

Without nuts, my cost per loaf is R$3,99, while with nuts, it’s R$16,49. My local supermarket sells a (frankly inferior) and much smaller (350g) “100% whole wheat” loaf for R$25.

Having kept incomplete records, I believe for most of the year we have made a loaf about every five days: let’s pretend means over the past year, I’ve made 70 loaves at about a 50/50 split of nuts or no-nuts, so let’s put my total cost of making bread as R$716,80. If we buy bread, it’s an every-other-day occurance, so R$4562,50 spent on bread in a year. Adding the cost of the bread maker to the mix, if these were real figures, we would have saved R$776,70 so far, just in this year alone.

And it has served us well, with some slight oddities!

The first is based on the machine: never once in the usage of the machine has the “automatic” dispenser of nuts automatically added the nuts at the proper stage. I have read the documentation, and I can find no explanation. At present, if I want nuts added, I have to remain at home when the maker is going, as it screams something awful (buzzer) when it’s “going to” add the nuts, and then I run along and poke open the dispenser door with my finger until the latch opens and the nuts dispense into the awaiting dough. If I know I won’t be home, I don’t add nuts, because otherwise, I will come home to a nice loaf of bread and a small dispenser of lightly warmed nuts. (Heh.)

The second is that my recipe is not as good when I have to halve it! In the damp season, I had to throw away a few half-loaves, as mold loves my poor little bread, and the bread does not survive well in the fridge. But splitting the recipe (and altering the settings on the bread maker to reflect, which is itself an imprecise science) has yet to lead to a smaller version of my usual recipe: what comes out is a biscotti-shaped, flat, dense, but still edible loaf. I’m still figuring it out!

All in all, thanks to everyone who encouraged me in the previous thread, and let this be encouragement to anyone else on the fence to try out a breadmaker!

Only a few days left!

Post your current bingo cards.
Continue updating us on your games!

Quick links:

• Backlog Bingo Site
• Week 4 Discussion
• Week 3 Discussion
• Week 2 Discussion
• Week 1 Discussion

Week 4 Recap

11 participants played 9 bingo cards and moved 43 games out of their backlogs!

There were three bingo wins. Congratulations to u/CannibalisticApple, u/kfwyre, and u/Wes! 🎉
There was one ✨⭐️ HONORARY BINGO ⭐️✨ for u/aphoenix.
There was one betrayal. u/Wes will go on trial following the conclusion of this event

teamellow

• u/BailerAppleby
• u/Bullmaestro
• u/CompChris
• u/dannydotcafe
• u/Durinthal
• u/JCPhoenix
• u/SingedFrostLantern

TEAMOTIVATED

• u/1338
• u/CannibalisticApple
• u/kfwyre
• u/Wes

Y'all are going to have to wait on the game list. I got my allergy shots today and they wreck me, so I don't have the energy to link up everything right now. I'll get to it tomorrow. Sorry!

Game list:

• Alt-Frequencies
• Another Crab's Treasure
• Baba Is You
• Beyond Blue
• Cat Quest 2
• Crash Time - Undercover
• Crescent Bay
• Doc Clock: The Toasted Sandwich of Time
• Dreadhalls
• Dead Space Demake
• Escape First Alchemist (x2)
• Fabledom
• Gods Will Be Watching
• Haimrik
• Hexcells Plus
• Hive Jump
• Immortals Fenyx Rising
• Infinite Air with Mark McMorris
• Intergalactic Bubbles
• Ironclad Tactics
• Kaeru no Tame ni Kane wa Naru (The Frog for Whom the Bell Tolls)
• Keyboard Sports
• Magicka
• Minami Lane
• NUTS
• Out There Somewhere
• Pie in the Sky
• Quern - Undying Thoughts
• Quiet City
• Ritual of Raven
• Rogue Mansion
• Roman Sands
• SMIB: Mission Cure
• Stray Gods: The Roleplaying Musical
• Still There
• SUMMERHOUSE
• SuperTuxKart
• Tales of the Neonsea
• The Ball
• theBlu
• Tyrion Cuthbert: Attorney of the Arcane
• ZODIAC XX