This is the eighth Tildes Book Club Discussion for 2026 and the twenty-eighth overall. We are discussing Light from Uncommon Stars by Ryka Aoki. At the end of September we will discuss Dr. No by Ian Fleming.

I don't have a particular format in mind for this discussion, but I will post some prompts and questions as comments to get things started. You're not obligated to respond to them or vote on them though. So feel free to make your own top-level comment for whatever you wish to discuss, questions you have of others, or even just to post a review of the book you have written yourself.

For latecomers, don't worry if you didn't read the book in time for this Discussion topic. You can always join in once you finish it. Tildes Activity sort, and "Collapse old comments" feature should keep the topic going for as long as people are still replying.

And for anyone uninterested in this topic please use the Ignore Topic feature on this so it doesn't keep popping up in your Activity sort, since it's likely to keep doing that while I set this discussion up, and once people start joining in.

I'm attempting to make a font for a little kids book I'm working on and realized I don't know anything about the "theory" of font making. I feel like the choices I'm making aren't adequately reflecting the feeling I'm going for.

Has anyone attempted to make their own font? Are there any guides or materials you suggest looking at? If you're up for it I'd love if you could share it and talk about your process! Looking for a combination of guidance and inspiration!!

Cheers!

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.

I don't normally give my own examples for my own questions, but for this one I think it'll help with clarity for what I'm trying to get at:

I mentioned recently that we're in a golden age of N64 decompilations/recompilations with several high-profile games getting releases that make them run on modern machines with huge quality of life upgrades, and many more in the works (one for Extreme-G just came out two days ago).

I know that, with everything going on seemingly everywhere in the world right now, it can be difficult to think of things in terms of abundance and prosperity, but I also think there's a lot of it around if we look for it, especially in niche corners.

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• The top 7 chillest Genesis games YOU NEED IN YOUR BUSY MODERN LIFE
• Best video game barrel explosions, ranked
• Five games that defied your expectations (plus one you'll never guess!)
• These 3 console flops make the Ouya look like a success
• The best magical swords of the 16-bit era

The internet is loaded with clickbaity articles like these (note: I specifically made these up, so apologies if any sound interesting). They were already somewhat low effort content, but they've gotten far worse in the age of AI.

As such, I thought it might be cool if we could make our own hand-crafted, artisan, bespoke humanslop ones here. You know, for fun.

1. Choose a list topic.
2. Populate it with games/mechanics/series/consoles/controllers/whatever.
3. Explain how each fits the theme.

Be as serious or as nonsensical as you like. Be as generic ("top games of 2025") or as specific ("games that kfwyre spent more time setting up than playing") as you want. Create the video game listicle of your dreams, with as little or as much clickbaitiness as you like.

What I've had so far:

• Yaeji - Waking Up Down (2020)
  https://youtu.be/pNNf4I1dc_U

• Diverseddie - Sparkling Clean (2020)
  https://youtu.be/6UwAjJLxwMU

• Game Changer Improv Karaoke - To-do List by The Supremes (2022)
  https://youtu.be/z4uAd1g9BKs

Looking for more to make a playlist to keep myself entertained when doing tasks. No limits on genres or languages!

We all know the big-name ones: Dune, 1984, The Martian Chronicles, etc.

What are some sci-fi books that you loved that you never hear about or that won't be making those top-of-all-time lists?

Why do they stand out to you?
What do they do well?
Why do you think they didn't get wider appreciation?

(Cross-ref: INSERT CARTRIDGE topic)

Thanks to everyone who joined me on playing A Link to the Past this month!

Whether you were playing it very first time or the twentieth time, and whether you were playing vanilla, randomized, or multiplayer randomized (!), I hope you had a good time. I definitely look forward to hearing about everyone's experience, e.g.:

• How do you think it held up for a nearly 35 year old game?
• How do you like this style vs. the newer franchise entries?
• Would you likely play it again?
• Did you 100% it and find every last heart piece for a full health bar?
• Any particularly tough puzzles or fights that stood out to you?
• Did you have to resort to any hints or guides?
• If you did a randomizer, what was the craziest thing you encountered?
• Who was your favorite NPC?

(Personally, I had a blast trying the randomizer for the first time, with oddities like getting the flute for fast travel in the first two minutes while going without a shield for several dungeons, not to mention seeing the quirky changed dialogue and trying to get faster at my runs. I'll definitely be playing the randomizer more in the future.)

Next month, we'll be taking a break from our recent sword-and-sorcery run (Castlevania -> Lufia 2 -> Zelda), with u/J-Chiptunator hosting Tony Hawk's Pro Skater 2 as the final game in this season of CGA.

Linux has certainly come a long way, but it's also got room to grow.

• What are the things that are current issues with Linux for you? Annoyances, incompatibilities, lack of polish, etc.
• Also, if you're willing, share your level of experience with Linux (e.g. newbie, seasoned veteran, etc.). (I imagine those new to the OS will have very different pain points than people who have been using it for 20+ years).

Importantly, I ask this NOT to have people dunk on Linux or to start arguments about different aspects of it, but I do so to start a conversation about what could be better/smoother/easier. I love Linux and love that it just keeps getting better, day after day and year after year. The idea of highlighting where it could continue to grow in the future is exciting to me.

I love gaming and I love lots of different genres of games. Yet somehow I can’t get into gta. I’ve tried. I played it a couple of times. I looked at the extended gameplay reveal. Yet, it doesn’t seem to click.

Now that’s all perfectly fine. Not everyone has to like everything. But because it’s such a huge game in terms of people playing it, I am really curious.

Is there anyone here who does love playing gta? And do you mind sharing what you love about it?

I don’t want to argue or convince or be convinced. Just really interested in learning about your perspective!

Is it static, or does it change?

How does that feel to you?

How does it play out in your day-to-day life?

What thoughts do you have about rigidity/fluidity in general?

(As always, I'm using LGBT as an umbrella term here, so this question applies to anyone with minority gender, sexual, or romantic identities)

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?

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.

Whether it's a loading bar on the google play store, the metronome on a guitar tuner or the progress bar of an offline audio player downloaded from F-Droid... everyone seems to have adopted the squiggly line loading bar seemingly overnight, and I can't fathom why, as it can be really distracting at times to have multiple moving things on screen.

I can understand wanting to renew the look of an otherwise boring loading bar on the app store, but does a music player really need to have a progress bar with a wave animation? Is this a new trend or design choice in the tech world? It's driving me insane...

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 won't be surprised if this is moved to ~misc or something, I thought transport might be most appropriate since it's about EV's, but I'm probably wrong.

I made the jump to an EV this week (Ioniq 5), and for the first time, I'm charging away from home. My work has free level 2 chargers (via ChargePoint), but I can't for the life of me activate the charger by tapping my phone to the terminal, I have to activate it through the app.

When I tap my phone (Pixel 9 Pro), it seems to act like I'm tapping a credit card, I get an error screen:

Card rejected error
Card not supported

The only things I can find online are in response to iOS people who apparently have to add a virtual ChargePoint card to their wallet, but from what I've read, this isn't necessary on Android since the ChargePoint app can interface directly with the phone's NFC capabilities.

I'd appreciate any tips on where I may be going wrong.