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?

I started getting into makeup about six months ago and I've become a bit obsessed. I've been trying to nail a natural, glowy everyday look which I mostly have down.

I managed to work out what my undertone is - always thought I had cool undertones but it turns out I'm neutral tending towards warm. I think this was one of the trickiest things to get to grips with, especially as it's one of the first things you need to figure out if you want to find a good foundation match. I tried lots of the recommendations online and spent an inordinate amount of time staring at blue and green marker lines on my arms trying to work out which ones more closely resembled the colour of my veins (the fact that I couldn't tell should have been a clue I was neutral). In the end I took a photo of my face and put it into Photoshop and used the colour picker to see the CMYK balance of my skin tone.

My approach to my makeup base has been to follow Lisa Eldridge's technique for covering acne/ redness etc. It basically involves using a base layer of tinted moisturizer before applying concealer where needed (I generally use a primer beforehand as well). I'd like to try some colour correctors to better conceal redness and the circles under my eyes but e.l.f has completely sold out of the colours I need and I'm waiting for them to come back in stock.

I really like Jecca Blac's glow drops for adding some glow/ highlights to my face. It's the only product of theirs I've tried but I would recommend them as a brand if you're just getting started with makeup. They're vegan, cruelty free and gender free/ trans inclusive, and they offer free consultations if you buy a product with them so you can learn how to properly apply it.

Another product I use all the time is the Body Shop's freestyle multitasking crayon in the colour 'staple'. It's one of the first things I bought and I think it's great as a starter product because it has so many uses - it's lip-liner, blush and eyeshadow all in one. It's good for travel as well for the same reason.

The other thing I do most days is tightline my eyes. I tend to follow this technique which works well for me and gives my eyes a bit more definition without being over the top. My eyelashes are quite dark and long anyway so I tend not to use mascara on a daily basis.

If anyone has any tips on doing winged eyeliner I'd love to hear them! I think I probably just need more practice but I find it quite hard because I'm basically unable to wink so I have to do it with my eyes open.

Also any product recommendations for a setting spray/ powder (preferably vegan and cruelty free). I'm currently using e.l.f's Halo Glow setting powder but I find it quite mattifying and it tends go a bit cakey for me after a few hours.

Anyway, I would love to hear any and all of your thoughts on makeup. What products do you love? Are you looking for some recommendations? What's your goal with makeup and what does your routine look like? Anyone that you follow for inspiration or tips?

Im a soundtrack collector, I have a ton of vinyl and tapes of various quality and I regularly listen to a mixtape or something of film music while doing my work. I lean towards more ambient styles like Prisoners and Arrival by Johann Johannson (rip) as well as Bladerunner the best soundtrack of all time. Also, im not entirely against pop soundtracks where the studio has just got a load of songs and not written their own but often the album release misses out songs due to rights reasons, so its incomplete.

today’s top 5: Vangelis’ Bladerunner, JJ’s Arrival, Prisoners, Jerry Goldsmith’s Chinatown and Tangerine Dream’s Sorcerer.

What are people into? Nothing better than decent headphones and a coffee with a soundtrack.

In the 2000s, I had Blogger or a subdomain on some random free host. I even tried Ning at some point.

Since 2012, I’ve had a personal site at a custom domain, on Squarespace, then WordPress who knows where, then Tumblr, then WordPress on Linode, now a combo Bear Blog and GitHub Pages.

I dislike WordPress for how clunky it is, Squarespace for how expensive it is, Tumblr for how obviously Tumblr it is (I could say the same about Squarespace and many WordPress sites), GitHub Pages for making me use git to post. Basically, I’m not happy with anything.

So I thought I’d ask los Tildeños—do you have a personal site? What web host and tech stack are you using for it? What do you like/dislike about it? What else have you tried?

See title. I thought this might make for an interesting topic and I can't see one like this in the search, so...

What sorta got me thinking about this - a couple days ago, I noticed that Dying Light 2 got a sizeable update, with a pretty heavy emphasis on changes to the game's parkour mechanics. I absolutely loved the first Dying Light, as well as both Mirror's Edge games - parkour and other kinds of momentum-driven gameplay are my jam - so that got me curious enough to check it out again, for the first time in a year.

I played for a few hours, got some of the way in, and... felt pretty underwhelmed. It certainly feels better than it did last time I played, and the change to retain momentum during parkour moves does feel pretty nice... but it still feels far too slow and floaty to me. It feels awkward and unresponsive to me. On top of that, the combat updates - while I actually appreciated DL2's changes to the combat over DL1's (a major gripe I've always had with DL1's combat is that sometimes zombies take just one or two hits and sometimes they take twenty, and I have never been able to detect any kind of pattern to it - combat level, game progress, weapon damage, etc., none of them seem to impact it so I have no idea what's up with it), playing it again now... left me feeling pretty disappointed.

I booted up DL1 for the first time in a while the next day, just intending to compare how it feels - and I've since found myself drawn several hours into it. Even in the first half hour of the game, where your climbing's super slow and everything, it feels so much more snappy and reactive - it feels good. And while my previous gripes with its combat are still present, it feels so much better to me now than DL2's does (for the most part - fighting human enemies still sucks). I can't quite put my finger on what it is, but there's just something really visceral and satisfying about it that DL2 doesn't have.

As I've been playing DL1, as well, I've been thinking about its story again. As much as it's maligned for its story, I think it's actually a really interesting subversion and deconstruction of expectations in a lot of ways - while that could be a thread (or video essay, I've thought about it) of its own, the way I see it: despite how the intro and story set him up, Crane actually fails pretty hard at being a hero until towards the end. I mean, the very first thing he does is take a crowbar to the back of the head, get bitten, and get someone else killed. It's a pattern that continues throughout most of the game (and even The Following, I'd argue, even though I don't care for it much). I find it pretty memorable beecause of that, even if it falls flat in some places.

Meanwhile, Dying Light 2... I honestly couldn't tell you much about the story? It didn't leave any kind of impact on me at all. I'm not really the kind of person who plays games for their stories very often (unless it's something like Ace Attorney where that's explicitly the point), and I have to admit that I went into DL2 with low expectations to begin with (I held off getting it at launch because of Denuvo, by the time I did pick it up reviews were already fairly negative; and I tend to view "your choices really matter!" in advertising as a huge red flag so that wasn't a good sign either), but even so. It might be in part because I actually quite liked DL1's ending - I found it pretty refreshing for a post-apocalyptic zombie game - so DL2 throwing that out didn't sit well with me from the get-go (also part of why I'm not too keen on The Following, but that's a different matter).

Overall, it just sorta left me thinking about how... even though I'd tried to go in with tempered expectations - all I really wanted was a fun zombie-flavoured parkour game, where climbing and jumping and swinging and stuff felt fluid and rewarding - I still found myself left feeling pretty hollow about it, even after an update that allegedly addressed some of my biggest issues with the game. It's especially frustrating, because the Inner Circle (I think that's what it was called, I can't remember - the second city map) is really, really cool and I would absolutely love to just aimlessly run around it... if the movement didn't feel floaty and awkward. Stuff like climbing to the top of the VNC Tower felt exhilarating and awesome - I could catch a glimpse of something excellent there, but it was so outweighed by everything else.

So... Yeah. I dunno, I thought this'd make for an interesting question. Have theere any been any sequels you've played that left you feeling underwhelmed, in comparison to the previous game? If so, why?

alright maybe some part of me just wants to ask this so i'd have an excuse to waffle about dying light and its story a bit but still i think it's an interesting topic nonetheless
EDIT: formatting

I've seen some tutorials that suggest installing the Amazon app store and then using a workaround to sideload apks. There's also emulators like Bluestacks. I'm curious as to what people prefer and what apps they've found useful.

I just wanted to clarify what kind of space we want this to be. What kind of topics are acceptable/unacceptable to be put here and so on. Are men encouraged to post here too (I hope so because I am one), or do we want this to be a place primarily around giving a voice to women?

Mookie Betts has been having another awesome year and is on pace to smash the personal season home run record he set last year.

While he had a few starts at second base last year, the Dodgers have also turned him into a utility player this year by regularly starting him at 2B and, to a lesser degree, short stop in addition to his usual RF (the choice every day comes down to a combination of who is healthy, who needs a day off, and how other line-up options are expected to fair against the opposing starter). Defensively, he’s been solid at those positions and ranks particularly well in OAA at 2B in addition to his usual Golden Glove outfield performance.

His season got me wondering about, who is the best utility player of all time? The Wikipedia article on utility players includes a number of notable ones, including guys that have played every position and guys who played multiple positions during at least one year they were all-stars, however most have average or below average offensive numbers.

Is there a widely considered greatest all-time utility player? If not, who would you nominate for the title?

Hello, I’ve been working in technology for nearly 10 years and I just can’t be arsed anymore.

The companies I’ve worked for have generally been B2B, providing technology solutions for other technology platforms, but there’s no “product” or “thing” at the end, just some more shitty software.

I try to provide the best service I can, but I end up burning out each week. Just utterly fed up and lacking any motivation to make improvements as I have too much other stuff to “deliver”.

My question is more around what drives any of you ?
Do you get up in the morning wanting to make a difference ?
Do you work in an area that directly does good in the world ?
How do you stay motivated and fulfilled in your careers?

What makes you want to get up each day ?

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!

Pretty much what the title says.
For me it was The New 52 run of the Flash comics. I started there because that was the current run when I first started reading and then once I got caught up, I went back and read the earlier ones. Now I'm just reading various Marvel comics as I have time, but if anyone has any recommendations for new comics, I will gladly check them out.

What have you been watching and reading this month? You don't need to give us a whole essay if you don't want to, but please write something! Feel free to talk about something you saw that was cool, something that was bad, ask for recommendations, or anything else you can think of.

If you want to, feel free to find the thing you're talking about and link to its pages on Anilist, MAL, or any other database you use!

My current collection is over 3500 individual issues with the 2 most numerous publishers being Marvel and Image. To try and make things easier I have a series of boxes devoted simply to image comics, sorted alphabetically. The downside is when I go to add issues to the A-D box, it becomes full, so I need to move a chunk of the D's to box 2, which then fills up and need to keep shifting down until I need a new Image box for T-Z. Even more fun is I digitally track with CLZ app and have to make large moves there between boxes.

Do you also fall into the same trap of constantly adjusting boxes or do you have a better system?

Hi boardtiddlers,

It's that time of the week again already. Another opportunity to discuss what you've been playing this week.

Personally I've only managed a single game of Hegemony, this time as the middle classes, with my opponents playing working class and state, and with a robot for the capitalists. It was a bit of a crazy game: capitalist automaton managed to open companies across all three rows of the board. I, as middle, had a fair number too, so production was massive and there was little unemployment. We actually ran out of unskilled middle class workers and influence cubes. Working class managed a comfortable win with state and middle coming joint second some twelve or so points behind. I really think we need to work out how to nix the working class, because they've been strong in every game so far.

So tell us about your sessions this week.

My most recent favorite is "Goodbye, Eri". The story is about a high school boy being asked by his mother to film her final moments before death, which led to him meeting the girl in the title and... things happen (saying more would be spoiler lol).

What's most striking about this manga is the consistent paneling, making it looks like you're browsing through film strip. It also gives the story a sense of urgency as if the panels are the ticking of a clock. The plot has many twists and turns and 4th wall breaking, reading it feels as if you're watching an indie movie.

I don't come across oneshots very often and only knew about this one from r/manga. So I'm looking for more!

As someone who deals with ADHD, I often have a lot of trouble keeping myself organized. I have so many different thoughts swirling around in my head, and things I want to do, but it's hard to plan my time correctly. I often get the feeling that I'm wasting my day.

I'm wondering if anyone else has this experience, and what you do to keep yourself organized.

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.

Do you have a home carbonation system? What do you carbonate with it? Just plain water? Flavored drinks?

My girlfriend gave me a DrinkMate as an early birthday present, and I love it. I've been going crazy with it.

Recently, I began revisiting some older films and purchased a few Criterion discs. My first one was Women on the Verge of a Nervous Breakdown (Pedro Almodóvar, 1988) but I’ve since purchased a few more and am slowly working my way through my small stack. The amount of special features is sometimes overwhelming! I’ve enjoyed some of the interviews (Carmen Maura from Women, Sheryl Lee from Twin Peaks: Fire Walk With Me) but have a lot more to get through. Many include a booklet, too.

I also recently got my hands on two of Peter Greenaway’s films - The Draughtsman’s Contract through Kino-Lorber, and Drowning by Numbers in 4K through Severin. I’m a bit spoilt for choice at the moment but there are still films that I’d like to get the “premium treatment.”

Do you enjoy premium/upgraded versions of movies?

Which special features do you look for?

Is there a film that you’d want to get the “premium treatment” or a 4K remaster?

For me, I had never tasted the salt and vinegar potato chips until I moved to America.
The first I had it, I almost spit it out, but after a few months I bought it myself and felt it wasn’t ‘that bad’.
From that point, I went to picking it up every time I now get a sandwich.

Tailored music streaming apps seem to be all the rage now but does anyone still listen to internet radio stations?

I used to enjoy a lot of alternative music stations but many of them have either shut down now or switched to fully web based sites requiring accounts.

Currently I've been listening to lots of Groove Salad from SomaFM which I find really relaxing.

What are your favorites?

It's summer, and it's time to relax. What is everyone drinking tonight?

I'll start:

I got sick and tired of drinking margaritas so I made a Paloma with the tequila I had around

2 oz of Tequila (blanco preferred)
1/2 oz Lime Juice
1/2 oz Grapefruit Juice
1/2 oz Simple Syrup

After mixing add all the ingredients into 1/2 a grapefruit soda.

I mixed the ingredients sans a soda and strained it into a highball glass then added the soda. Normally, I'd juice the lime myself, and garnish, but I'm lazy and my wife wanted a margarita instead. It's incredibly refreshing and citrus-y, but it is incredibly refreshing especially on a hot day.

What's everyone else drinking?

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!

You always see a lot of threads around the best books of the year or of their favourite ever books, but how about the opposite - let’s have a thread of books you hated. There are so many books in the world to read, it can be handy to know which ones to avoid!

I’ll start in the comments! I’m not sure how to do spoiler tags (if that’s possible here?) so I suggest putting the title of the book in the first line so anyone who hasn’t read it can minimise the comment without seeing spoilers :)

Curious to see if there are any other sports sim fans around here. If you're not familiar with the genre, the two most popular and longest running are APBA Baseball/Football/Hockey and Strat-O-Matic Baseball/Football/Hockey. Personally, I'm a big fan of Second Season Football and I'm playing with Back to Minnesota's 1965 season so I can bring Jim Brown and Cleveland back to glory!

If you've never heard of this before, think of these games as "story generators" where you can play two teams against each other and see how close the dice rolls and stats get to real life. I play as a sort of chill night where I listen to a baseball game or a podcast with a cup of coffee. Throwing dice around and watching Jim Brown plow through some poor defense is really enjoyable :)

You can also play head to head with another player! I highly recommend a smaller game like Pocket Pennant Run if you're interested in diving into games like this. A similar game would be Stone Cold Hockey for hockey fans and Fast Drive Football for football nerds like myself.

The biggest communities online are definitely the Delphi Forums for Tabletop Sports as well as the Digital to Dice Podcast Facebook page.

Digital versions of the APBA and Strat games exist, and there is a huge fanbase for the Action! PC Games, and a hugely popular game is Out of the Park Baseball which has simulator-like features but is mostly a baseball management game.

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.

Like the title had said is there any books that you had picked up multiple of times but simply set down?

Mine would be Dune by Frank Herbert. I simply can not get through the first chapter, let alone the whole book. I think I had picked up the book like 5 times already from my library and failed to get through it. I get that is a classic sci-fi space opera, part of the reason I keep punishing myself with trying to read it. And because I keep hearing good things about it.
Edit: forgot a period

For me it was when I went with my family on vacation to Knotts Berry Farm. My parents gave my brother and I each a set amount of money (I think $10). We went in a store in the park and I bought the first thing that grabbed my attention, a change purse that said Knotts Berry Farm. Mind you, I'm a 5 year old boy that has no use for a change purse. No idea why I did it, impulse I suppose.

My brother took his time and searched the entire store carefully. After looking for a while he found in the back corner they had a toy section. They had GoBots for sale. He got a GoBot. I still had my change purse.

I asked my parents if I could return my change purse and get a GoBot and they said nope. They explained that I made my choice and in the future I should make more thoughtful choices. I'm now in my 40's and my wife and kids regularly reference the change purse story as I'm very careful in researching anything I purchase to avoid another change purse incident. My wife has searched for years to find that stupid Knott's change purse as a memento of our beloved family story.

Love to hear other people's life lessons

Imagine you suddenly become an important figure on an international level. You invented a new kind of funky pop. A funky pop like no one's ever seen before. One that will change the marketplace and the course of humanity.

Theres probably some important internal politics behind the upper class of the funko pop game right?

So what's your plan if your wildest dream came true and you're suddenly the talk of the town?

Since the minimum and recommended specs for Starfield have come out, I've been budgeting to do a big upgrade on my PC with an AMD 6800 xt and a fancy new 1 TB SSD (which is the first game I've ever seen that requires an SSD) just so I can run the game in all it's space epicness.

What was the game that you were so excited for that you made the jump to upgrade your PC to the next gen of hardware? New or old!

Hoping this is the right group?

Inspired by coffee/cocktail threads, here’s one for my favorite consumable, cigars!

Here’re some potential questions to maybe inspire some discussion.

• What have you smoked recently that has surprised or impressed you?

• What’s a favorite cigar memory?

• What’re your stogie rituals?

• What’re some recent acquisitions and why did you purchase them?

• What’s your #1 cigar rec of all time? What’s your top rec from something new to you in the last year?

• How did you get into cigars and how long have you been smoking?

And anything else!

I’ve discussed cigars extensively in various online spaces and I’m very optimistic about the idea of tildes’ text-only and highly discoursive environment to provide some cool cigar content and a bit more than just photos of half smoked sticks (which I love too but get a lot of!).

I’ll hit on a few of my icebreaker questions at once. My most recent smoke was a Plasecnia Alma del Fuego Eduardo I which was absolutely fantastic. A lot of pepperiness throughout, with a lot of earthiness and meatiness. Quite full bodied, phenomenal smoke production and a very easy draw.

This stick was new to me but I am no stranger to Plasencia. I’ve been closely following their growth the last few years and the Alma Fuerte Salomon was my top stick of 2022.

As my 2010 Wrangler goes under the knife to replace a shredded rear main seal today, I find myself wringing my hands like a nervous father, waiting for the operation to be over and my wallet to be lightened to the tune of a grand. If only I had had the presence of mind to grab a tranny jack all those months ago when I could afford it, but alas...

Anyhoo... Tell me about your heep 😁

I am planning on going into the peace corps after I finish up my degree. My first priority is an education position, but if I can't get that, I'm open to other options. I would love to hear about the experiences anyone had while in the program.

NOTE: This does have slight self-promotion which I'm aware is against what Tildes is. While it is to drive attention to my band and although originally so, music promotion is NOT the sole reason for this post. It is here for context. It does benefit me, but I make music for this type of discussion. Grief and mourning are important things to me, and art helps me open up and process those feelings. Music is art.

Want to do more of these posts, as I have found my niche in ~music to be this. Nevertheless, I want to balance these to be fair and to make these special. Please leave feedback about what you think, and whether or not I should continue these posts. DO NOT VOTE if you think it does not fairly contribute to ~music or Tildes as a whole. All I ask is you read this entire post before reacting or commenting.

I've been going back and forth on this but I decided to do so. I want to keep things as anonymous as possible, so please respect my wishes.

I am part of a band called LUCY. Over this fortnight, I've been grinding hard trying to promote the discography in order to get as many eyes as possible. I wanted to make this post to highlight "Film" — which I strongly believe is the best released song thus far. But I didn't want to use my account just for promotion. I love Tildes, even with its quirks, and I wanna do quality, meaningful posts. Then I heard from a friend or an acquaintance that a good friend of theirs died.

Suicide, no less. I was......

There's no word or phrase or idiom. There's nothing that can describe the feeling and realisation when someone is gone. It reminded me of why I wrote "Film" in the first place — to grieve and remember a friend who killed herself. I don't think a number of grief songs or popular anti-suicide songs really talk about grief. That one Logic song was bleh but cool, but that remix that goes "WHO CAN RELATE" was insulting.

You may not even have a loved one who killed themselves. You may have one who just died, or disappeared. Or the worst:

The relationship you once had with a person you loved lots. One of your most prized people in the world. That one day, breaks and bo matter what. It will never happen. They're gone from your life

Forever.

And they're not coming back. You have to move on. Even tho you don't want to and sometimes, you yearn for the connection. To be near. Bittersweet nostalgia, to fall back into place. Y
In the end, it is what it is. Yeah..

Grief is hard. Mourning is hard. Moving on is hard. It's messy and there's no right way to do it. Life is unfair and one day, it will end. Songs and albums help. Music is that language and that lexicon that knows just how you feel. "Film" was what I wanted to do, to bring attention to that process. Nowadays, it's an occasional comfort song that's best played when it's overcast and blue. And you'll know when if you know.

So my question for y'all is... what songs or albums have you listened to that reminds you of someone you've lost? What are some lyrics that don't stick out like a sore thumb, they hit you like anaesthesia? What are your stories? What are your regrets? What are you afraid of? Hell, if youre a musician, what songs have you done that address this? And no matter what, please don't feel like it's too much. To the extent of the code of conduct and what is appropriate, there is nothing pathetic about grief. Esp if you're hanging on and can unravel at any moment.

Ask me anything about my list of songs for grief too (won't include my band's songs heh). I have another song in the works that I'd love to just talk about. I'm an open book as far as grief, fear and such. I write songs for catharsis anyway.

Hope you are all having a wonderful day or night. Forgive me if I can't reply or listen to all the songs, I really do wish I could. I will vote tho.

It has been 1,071 days since Tildes had a user introduction post. This one here in fact.

After seeing a few new usernames around the corridors since the Reddit API announcement, and seeing Tildes mentioned on Reddit a couple of days ago, I thought it might be kinda fun to do another.

• Brand new users, feel free to spill the beans on a few fun facts about yourself.

• Perhaps you're an old school Tildee returning after a long sabbatical... Fill us in on what's new in your world.

• Those of you who missed out on a little light 'getting to know you' by signing up in the previous 1,070 days, drop a word or two.

• And that leaves the old guard. You know who you are! You aren't excluded from this social gathering today. Perhaps a bio on what you love to post here.

I'm not expecting the 266 comments we saw with the very first 'Introductions', but a number between 1 and 266 is fine. 😊