Hey,wanderers of tildes it's time to share your travel stories.Are you on the move right now?
What was your last trip like?
Favourite food or hole in the walls you have come across around the world.
Share anything and everything.
Also any tip involving travels and scams you have encountered share it.
This is a tips thread that was on r/solotravel i found really helpful feel free to add more.
SHARE AWAY..

Reddit refugee here, I've been posting my book reviews on /r/Fantasy for years and figured some of you all would be interested in a best of list. My full list of all book reviews can be found here, but most of the links are broken right now because the Fantasy subreddit is still private. Still, perhaps the titles, authors and keywords are helpful.

What I enjoy

A brief list of things I care about in books, to help you jugde whether your taste overlaps:

• a good balance of romance and plot, where there is prominent romance but never feels like the story is just about that
• quality prose and dialogue
• believable relationship development, including romantic tension and explicit payoff for it
• high stakes drama, be it interpersonal, warfare, duels, court politics or heists
• LBGTQ+ main characters and queer romance

Note that these aren't the only qualities of the books listed below, just generally what I look for. I'll also gladly take recommendations for fantasy books that fit these criteria if you have any!

Books

Kushiel's Legacy by Jacqueline Carey

A divinely blessed masochistic courtesan and spy uncovers conspiracies against the crown of fantasy France. This series is probably my absolute favorite for how it combines intrigue, romance, kink and action, all with excellent prose and characterization. It has deliciously horny worldbuilding and ends up telling an epic fantasy story with an incredibly unique protagonist.

Silver Under Nightfall by Rin Chupeco

A recent addition to my absolute favorites. The author described the book as "vampire couple finds himbo in the trash and takes him in". If you're not sold on that, imagine a vibe like Netflix Castlevania and The Witcher - vampire hunter who's highly competent but looked down upon, vampire science, undead threat, dark gothic kind of setting, sprinkled with some "who's the real monster actually?" philosophy.

A Dowry of Blood by S.T. Gibson

A Dowry of Blood is about healing from abusive relationships through murder. It's also walks an excellent line between being sexy and horrible. It tells the story of Dracula's "brides", and the beautifully messed up relationship the four of them have.

Note: this one can't be described as having a "romantic subplot", since that implies some sort of happy ending. You know, because of the murder. (that's not a spoiler, it's revealed on page one)

A Charm of Magpies by KJ Charles

A disgraced nobleman returns to England years after escaping his father and finds himself and his family estate haunted. He hires a magician - who happens to bear his family a grudge. The Magpie series is fast paced, highly entertaining, well written, and plays with some delicious power dynamics between its initially hostile and soon reluctantly mutually attracted main characters.

Folk of the Air by Holly Black

The only YA series on this list, Folk of the Air holds a special place in my heart for its delicious fairy court politicking and for not pulling its punches. The titular Cruel Prince is a wonderfully hateable love interest, and even though I feel a few years too old to properly enjoy this series, the stabby and vicious dynamics between the two leads is just wonderful.

Nightrunner by Lynn Flewelling

A young man gets innocently imprisoned and receives unexpected help from his cellmate: a spy, rogue, thief and nobleman. The latter offers him a way out and an apprenticeship, which leads to well... spying and thievery, but also sinister necromantic plots against the throne. The highlight of this series is the ongoing relationship development between its leads. Book 1-2 are fantastic, book 4-5 are really weird, but the whole series remains a favorite despite some strange choices.

Rook & Rose by M.a. Carrick

A skilled con artist, a masked vigilante that challenges aristocrats to duels, and a dashing crime lord turned nobleman. The Rook & Rose series shines in its rich worldbuilding and prose, but especially in its handling of its main characters' multiple secrets, cons and identities. And especially shines when those schemes start crumbling down and some of the secrets become unveiled.

If the third book in the trilogy sticks the landing later this year, this series will firmly establish itself among my all time favorites.

The Stariel Quartet by AJ Lancaster

Years after leaving her family, a young woman returns home for her father's funeral and soon needs to deal with a magical estate that has a mind of its own, and discover that there may be more magic in the world around her than she's realized. The Stariel series is cozy and home-y in many ways, but doesn't shy away from tension either, and I find myself still in love with the main characters even long after finishing the series. I also really enjoyed the spinoff, A Rake of His Own recently!

Harrow Faire by Kathryn Ann Kingsley

Most of the books on here are fantasy with romance, while this one sits more firmly in the capital R Romance genre. But it is dark romance ("villain gets the girl"), and features an absolutely unhinged love interest, a lot of murder, and an evil circus. The series isn't without flaws (some of the side characters get a bit too much page for
how flat they are, and the pacing is a tiny bit uneven in parts), but I blasted through all five (short) books in a week because I had so much fun with it.

The Last Binding by Freya Marske

This series takes place in an early 20th century England where a secret magical society exists in parallel to the world 'as we know it'. There's even a bit of magical British bureaucracy that reminded me of aspects of the Harry Potter books, though the series have little in common otherwise.
Every book in this trilogy follows the same overarching plot, but features a different pairing of main characters and romantic leads. It's queer, fun and fast-paced, though sometimes a bit on the fluffy and romancey side for my taste.

That's just a brief selection of favorites, I highly recommend heading over to the reddit post (I should back that up at some point with Reddit's future being a bit shaky rn) to find more titles.

Thank you for reading! There's lots more to say on each of theses books of course, but I didn't want this to get way too long.
Let me know if you found this interesting, if you have similar books you'd recommend to me, or just share if you also enjoyed any of these books. This is my first post on Tildes and I'm happy to meet new fellow readers :)

I don't intend this to be a sales pitch or anything, I just wanted to share my impression of the Bambu Labs P1P 3D printer in case anyone on here was curious and maybe considering buying one themselves.

I have owned a few Prusa FDM printers over the years but recently tried the Bambu Labs P1P after seeing tons of rave reviews, especially in terms of how fast it prints. Anyone that has done any 3d prints knows that print time is among the least enjoyable aspects of the hobby: lots of waiting.

Right out the gate, the P1P is a solid device with impressive construction given its relatively low price tag (I got it for $600 USD). And this thing easily rivals high performance machines in it's same "category", like the Prusa mk 3 and 4. And those are typically more expensive; the P1P comes 99.5% assembled at that price but a Prusa machine fully assembled is around 60% more expensive.

Most of the "assembly" is just removing packaging, like zip ties, that kept the unit safe and secure during transit. Then you connect the power cable, screen, spool holder, and filament tube. And that's it. The whole thing took maybe 10 minutes.

Getting the WiFi to connect is impossible for me at the moment, but I don't mind copying sliced gcode to the included microsd for printing. Sure, sending the gcode over WiFi would be super cool, but my Prusa doesn't do that so it's not like I've lost something. I'm hoping to eventually figure it out but that's not a deal breaker for me. I'm guessing I just need to temporarily move the printer next to the WiFi router but I haven't made time for it because I'm enjoying just printing off the card.

With the included 0.4mm nozzle (a standard size), it prints typically 2 to 3 times faster. Something that takes 23 hours might take 11. Something that takes 3 hours might take 1. For larger and more complex prints, you can get stuff done so much faster. For smaller and simpler prints, you no longer need to plan batches either first thing in the morning or overnight, you can just start them whenever. Whatever you printed before, you can print 2 to 3 times as many in one go in the same amount of time.

I don't have the AMS system but hope to get that at some point. If it has the same high quality build and performance as the P1P then I'm certain it will bring me simple multi-filament printing. And although I'm not nearly rich enough to afford more than 1 AMS, you can technically connect up to to 4 at once. Each unit holds up to 4 filament spools, so 4x4 means you could theoretically use 16 different filaments in a single print. The colors you could have! But each unit is like $350. Ouch.

I only have 2 real gripes with it so far. First, it purges way too much filament at the start of a print. I get why it does that, it absolutely ensures that your filament is always properly primed to assist in printing that critical first layer correctly, but it feels very wasteful to have a seemingly-excessive amount of filament thrown away with each print.

Second gripe is that the default spool holder is awful to access. You are likely to put the back of the machine facing a wall and that's where the spool holder will end up facing: the wall. You need to ensure the printer is a little more than two spool's width away from the wall - at the very least - so you can slide your spools on and off. Thankfully the bed doesn't move back and forth like with traditional fdm printers, thanks to the corexy technology, so you can more easily plan out where to put it and how much space it will need.

I haven't messed around with them yet but I just got additional hotends for it that I will be testing soon. The pack I got contains 0.2mm for prints that require very fine detail, 0.6mm for prints where detail is slightly less important than speed, and 0.8mm for when you want to go fast and don't care how much detail you get. Because they use a proprietary construction of hotend, you must use theirs, but the upside is that it's fairly fast and simple to switch them out. Most hotends, you just replace the tip, the actual nozzle. But because filament can gunk up the threads, you need to run it hot to unscrew the nozzle, which is very dangerous. With the P1P, you just pull off the magnetic faceplate, undo a few screws, swap the hotend, put the screws back, and pop the faceplate back on. In just a few minutes, you're done. And no need to turn on the hotend either; just unload your filament prior, let it cool down, and swap away. A much safer and more pleasant experience.

Overall, I'm in love with 3d printing all over again. It's the same feeling I got all those years ago when I did my very first 3d print. And sure, the Prusa is still great when you want high quality detailed prints. Going slow and steady wins that particular race still. But I get quality that is 90+% comparable to what the prusa gives me in exchange for literally 2x to 3x print speeds. That's an easy trade for me. And the slicer software estimates that some of my larger and less detailed prints could print in right 2/3 the time using the 0.6mm nozzle instead of the default 0.4mm. That translates to roughly 7 hours on my Prusa (0.4), 3.5 hours in my P1P (0.4), and 2 hours on my P1P (0.6). Given how much easier it is to swap out nozzles on the P1P, I can see myself actually doing that not frequently for certain prints that, like in my example, see substantial benefit.

I'm very excited to see how this machine holds up in the long run!

Hey everyone. I just beat FFXVI and wanted to share my thoughts in case anyone was thinking of getting the game, or if anyone wants to have a good discussion about the game. I tried to make it as spoiler-free as possible, but please do be advised that this could end up accidentally spoiling certain story elements.

Please note, these are just my opinions. I haven't really played any other FF games, so I'm only comparing this one on it's own merits. Please, if you disagree with something, don't lash out at me. I'm just a dude posting this for good fun and have 0 accolades on why I'm qualified to review anything lol

Also, if you're reading this and have a gaming recommendation for me, I am 100% open to it. I've been looking for some new games to play, so if you think of one I might enjoy while reading this, please let me know.

Pros:

• Graphics: This game looks amazing. There were times where I would just walk through locations and really appreciate how everything looked. I don’t do this often in video games, so it’s nice to see a world that felt genuinely awesome to appreciate and admire. You can tell a lot of work went into building these towns/locations, aside from some of the later areas.


• Combat: The combat in this game is great, addicting fun. I know this is a point of contention for fans of previous FF games and how this is a definite departure from the turn-based style, but some of the best moments I had were chaining combos and getting staggers quick. Towards the end of the game, I was able to bring down some of the mini-bosses extremely quickly and it never got old to pull off. I see people saying things like “You just press square the entire time and win” which I don’t agree with at all. If that’s how one chooses to play the game, then you’re actively not engaging with the combat mechanics and that’s on you. The combat can be complex with different abilities interacting with each other to obtain massive damage, that's what I like in a game.

• Story: The story of this game is phenomenal and I was engaged most of the way through. I’ll have some of my thoughts on story-beats below because there were times where this game dragged on, but the overall concept of a nation at war with each other and essentially starting your own faction from the ground-up is a lot of fun. About 50% of the way through, you’ll unlock a mechanic that allows you to see how all the factions have been interacting with each other, what wars were started and why those wars were happening throughout the entirety of timeline of the game. I spent a solid hour reading everything in these menus because I was intrigued by the complexity of everything and how it all tied into other events, and how sometimes your main characters crew were beyond detached from what was going on in the main world to achieve an ultimate goal. It’s really awesome to see what other antagonist are doing despite your current story beat being involved with something else at that moment, and I wish more games would incorporate this because it really works to make it feel like the game doesn’t revolve around you but that you are apart of an overall story.

Cons:


• Eikon battles: For those not in the know, you’ll occasionally transform into a giant beast (Eikon) named Ifrit and take on other giant beasts (Eikons) throughout the story. At first, these were really fun to play and were truly spectacular to watch but as the story goes on, the fights get less and less engaging. In these parts of the game, you really can just press square and win. Aside from dodging, there is practically no complexity or strategy to these fights. There really isn’t strategy with the main combat either but at least with the main combat, you can pull off insane combos. As Ifrit though? Forget about it. The best combo you can do is ‘Square, Square, Square, Square, Triangle’. You do get 2 abilities as the story goes on, but they’re really nothing special. I actually started to play these section how I play Diablo; outheal the damage. I just used the one combo and healed 2-3 times per fight, while closing the distance as much as possible. I guess this is a valid strategy but I can’t imagine this is how the devs wanted these parts to play out.


• Quicktime events: I think QTE’s should stay in the 360/PS3 generation. I haven’t seen a current Gen game utilize QTE’s, let alone utilize them as many times as FFXVI did and it’s these dated mechanics that are definitely contributing to others saying the game feels outdated. There are multiple times where you’ll go up to a door click ‘X’ and it will be like ‘Now hold R2’. This happens a lot in the game. It happens so often that I’m not convinced at all that it has anything to do with enhancing the gameplay and was made simply to show off the Dualsense controls because, whilst I don’t like the QTE, the Dualsense will give this haptic feedback during these parts. I can’t really explain it, but it does occasionally work well enough to be immersive. The other QTE events are during Eikon battles, and they’re literally just ‘Press X’ and ‘Press R2’ in an extremely generous amount of time. There’s also another QTE even where you just mash square endlessly until you win, which reminds me of mini games in Mario Party 1… on the Nintendo 64 nearly 30 years ago. It’s just an outdated design IMO and I would have rather just watched cutscenes than occasionally press a button. I will say though, there was one QTE which I laughed at. There’s a scene where the MC is coming to grips with an important story-beat and the QTE literally says “Press L3 & R3 to accept the truth”. This gave me giant “Press F for respects” vibes, and I don’t know whether they meant for this to be hilarious but it was. This is the only QTE event I thought was good.


• 70% fun, 30% drag: I found the first 70% of this game to be an insanely good experience. Truly next-gen and one of the best action games I have played. The story was engaging, the combat was really fun and the character/world building peaks about here. Afterwards though, not so much. It goes from being a story about conflict between nations but once that resolves, it’s a story about killing God. From here, I really couldn’t care less about the happenings. The people you’re built to dislike from the beginning have resolved story arcs, they introduce new antagonists that aren’t super interesting and it’s just an overall slog the last 30%. Also, that’s a specific percentage, but when I found myself wanting the story to wrap up, it was right at the 70% mark. From what I’ve read/watched about the FF series, it seems like a few of the games have this inevitable drop-off and can get pretty convoluted, but what I can say is… that first 70% was some of the best gaming I’ve had in a while. The last 30%, not so much.
 The ending of the game was great though and I hope that we get a continuance of this story later on.

Random Thoughts:


• Side-quests: I’ve seen people saying the side-quests are generic MMO like side-quests and I flat out disagree. First off, I think the only reason anyone is making the MMO comparison is because the same team that made FFXIV (an MMO) created this game, so it’s low hanging fruit and easy to criticize without putting in any effort. The side quests are not any different from any other RPG game I’ve played. Most side quests in most RPGS boil down to “Talk to this person, go kill this thing, come back and get a reward”. I have played very few RPG’s that didn’t have these as a majority of their side quests. Even something as recently as Diablo 4 has primarily only these types of side quests. I don’t understand why people give FFXVI so much flack, but I just don’t agree. The side quests are more about world-building and getting to know what your average person existing in this world deals with. You’ll learn backstory about your companions you wouldn’t know otherwise, get various upgrades/mementos and really get to know the world you are playing the game in. I’m not saying that some of these side quests aren’t just “Go talk to this person, then talk to this person and win”, because there are some that are really that simple, and if that’s not your thing then that’s okay, but I seriously don’t understand why people are giving this game flack for doing the same things that every RPG has done before. Just seems unfair IMO.


• RPG Mechanics: This game should have either added more RPG mechanics, or leaned into the action style and got rid of them entirely. There is no point in leveling up in this game. You don’t get rewarded for leveling up. It happens automatically and you don’t get to distribute any skill-points or anything like that. You literally don’t get anything but new weapon unlocks and an increasing number. I have never played a more shallow RPG. You get Ability Points which can increase your Eikon powers, but somewhere down the line, you just start stockpiling these because you have nowhere to spend them. Sure, you can unlock more abilities and increase those powers, but why would you do that? This game has obvious skills that are significantly stronger than other skills, so why would you use those other skills? I’m sure if I experimented around, I can find some great ways the skills I never used can interact with each other, but why would I when the ones I use now are already doing massive damage? IMO, they should have just leaned into the action gameplay and did away with the RPG mechanics. I know this is FF and FF is an RPG series, but the RPG mechanics are insultingly bad in this game and I can see why FF take offense to it. I do, and I’ve never extensively played any of the others. They could have at least added damage modifiers, resistances, etc that you can spend Ability Points on. By the end of the game, I had 8000 unspent Ability Points because there was just nowhere to spend them once you've got your play style.

Overall, I'd give the first 70% a 9/10 and the last 30% a 7.5/10.

Every time I would be in the market for something particular, say, a keyboard, or a camping tent, I would ask google, “What is the best air fryer, Reddit.”

I would get the link to the subject, however niche it was, and see discussions from assumedly real folks talking about the subject I was curious about. It was informative, and I could research deeper into brands or products I didn’t know about before.

Is there another site that even comes close to that? Or are we currently in a dark period until something like that comes along? I don’t typically use advertised websites to tell me “lists of the top ten handheld gaming consoles.”

Just wondering if there’s an alternative to my previous method of research.

The Verge, Washington Post, CNET, Engadget reviews

RIP to my Pixel Fold: Dead after four days

Haven't had time to go through all the reviews but as it's a major new device from Google I thought there might be some interest here.

Books, films, foods, gadgets, games, etc. A good review/analysis can enhance our understanding and appreciation of the works or products. Let's give them some shoutout.

Edit: add analysis (can't believe I forgot one of the big categories like this) ^facepalmed

To set the stage, I've always been a fan of non-nonsense reliable phones. My cellular usage started with a Nokia brick, moved on to a few Motorolo flip phones, then entered the Blackberry world as soon as data service become available in my area. With the demise of RIM, I went o a Moto X, made a misstep in to the Samsung world, then to a Pixel, a Pixel 3XL, and now a Pixel 7 Pro.

I only made the jump to the 7 Pro due to the 3XL starting to show it's age. The charging part wouldn't always connect, the battery would barely make it through the day, and the case was starting to fall apart. Of within three days of removing the case I dropped the phone, cracking the glass back....

The 7 Pro is awful to hold, without a case. I was waiting a week for the Spigen Liquid Air case to show up, and during the time I hated using the phone. The camera bulge felt awkward and sharp, the surfaces were slippery and the phone would slide around. The rounded edges of the screen would produce phantom taps, just all around a bad experience. Now that I've added the case though, it feels a whole lot better.

The user experience has been fairly good, thought not without some annoying bugs. I did the migration from my old Pixel to my new one, and while it did a reasonably job, preserving the launcher layout etc, the app installation process was strange. Google Play tried to install all the apps, but was stalled. I had to tap on each app to manually install them, they were just sitting there "Pending...", whether I was on battery or charger, WiFi or mobile. Once everything installed, and I added my accounts, it was fine, and now apps auto-update.

Notifications are acting a bit funny with Reddit is Fun, although that won't be an issue for much longer :-(. If I get notified of Mod Mail and a Message in RiF, tapping the notification message does nothing. This worked fine on the 3XL. I've also had one spontaneous reboot, and one night where the phone was plugged in, but decided not to charge. Lots of people complained about heat issues, which was a problem for me on the 3XL, but only in extreme cases. After sitting out in full sun with the 7 Pro, I'd say it is about the same, possibly a bit better regarding it's overheating. Many people also reported that the phone would feel warm/hot in their hands for the first few days as it "learned" your behavior. Never experienced that. Battery life and (lack of) heat levels have remained the same.

Preface: I usually post my book reviews on /r/Fantasy. With reddit's future being uncertain right now I figured I'd experiment with posting on here, let me know if you're interested in future reviews. I should add that this probably isn't my most interesting book review ever, it just happens to be my latest read.
Please feel free to let me know if you'd like to see more fantasy book reviews in the future, I am new to Tildes.

Recommended if you like: ottoman empire inspired setting, royalty/bodyguard romance, MC with anxiety, queernorm setting, low-magic setting, m/m romance, homoerotically washing each others' hair, royal palace slice of life, fake-dating (sort of), gay yearning

Blurb

Kadou, the shy prince of Arasht, finds himself at odds with one of the most powerful ambassadors at court—the body-father of the queen's new child—in an altercation which results in his humiliation.

To prove his loyalty to the queen, his sister, Kadou takes responsibility for the investigation of a break-in at one of their guilds, with the help of his newly appointed bodyguard, the coldly handsome Evemer, who seems to tolerate him at best. In Arasht, where princes can touch-taste precious metals with their fingers and myth runs side by side with history, counterfeiting is heresy, and the conspiracy they discover could cripple the kingdom’s financial standing and bring about its ruin.

Review

• This book starts out by throwing you in the middle of a handful of political machinations already underway - the inciting incidents have basically already happened off-screen beforehand. That is fine, but don't expect massive developments on these plots or new plot points to really matter. The book basically goes "this is the political background for this story" and then takes its time for the rest of the book to focus on the romance.
• I should find this book too fluffy and romancey for my taste but I couldn't help but loving it. Some of it is really dumb, it's transparently obvious that the narrative only exists to facilitate a lot of gay yearning, but I also found myself very much enjoying all that gay yearning.
• I feel like I logically shouldn't have enjoyed this so much, because the worldbuilding is negligible, the magic (touch-tasting, i.e. sensing the origins or compositions of metals) is an afterthought for most of the time, and the plot constantly takes breaks for everyone to talk about their feelings a lot. But somehow, I was totally here for all that and was sad when it was over.
• There were various aspects I found a bit grating, from some very obviously contrived setups to make the two leads have to get closer (or make drastic choices that bind them together) to some of the side characters sounding rather anachronistically sassy, to just how often the plot takes a break for people to talk about their feelings. I can list a ton of things this book does "wrong", but none of them actually managed to tip the scale away from me being into it, don't ask me why. Maybe I was just in the right mood for it.
• The setting is very queernormative and progressive in other ways, while maintaining a historical veneer in terms of technology and (for the most part) style. The use of neopronouns for some side characters caught me a bit off guard in the audio narration, but it's done with such a complete nonchalance that I assume many queer readers will find refreshing.
• The main character has anxiety and panic attacks (without quite having the language to articulate what he suffers from, and equating it with cowardice), and I thought that topic was treated pretty well. Then again, everyone that matters is super supportive and understanding the whole time, so it doesn't really serve as a source of conflict for longer.
• I've said that action often takes a backseat to the romance, but I found the action that was there pretty good.

Discussion

In conclusion: I really liked this, but I completely understand anyone who didn't. The only previous Rowland book I'd read is A Conspiracy of Truths (link to my review), where I had the opposite experience: I found it well crafted but didn't enjoy it all that much. This one just happened to vibe more with me.

Intro & Tier Definitions

I've been mulling over a ski town tier list in my head for a few weeks and I was just thinking of putting it on paper when all the reddit stuff happened. So instead of posting it to /r/skiing I'm posting it here. This is completely subjective and is only based on the relatively small number of ski towns I've lived in or visited. My ulterior motive here is to get your thoughts on additions to this list along with which tier they should fall into... specifically S Tier places I haven't visited. I'm not doing any research - this is strictly based on my opinions from places I've personally been to.

A quick note: I'm only thinking about the towns themselves here. Not the quality of skiing, snowfall, or anything else. For the purposes of this ranking system, a 200' hill in the Midwest with a great little town at the base would fall into S Tier while 10,000 acre mega-resort with a $10B purpose-built resort village would fall into B Tier.

Here's my completely subjective ranking system:

S Tier: S tier is the "perfect mountain town". These towns typically existed prior to the ski area, and still have a strong community of locals living right in town keeping things vibrant (admittedly, in most places short term rentals have made that community smaller). The towns are also right at the base of the mountain; if they didn't run the plows you could ski from the top of the highest peak right down onto main street, pop your skis off, and start après.

A Tier: These towns are S Tier towns but for one problem - they're just a little too far from the actual ski area to ski right into town. You're going to have to hop in your car or take a bus, or take a long bike ride to get to town. While these towns are still amazing, beautiful places, they're not quintessential perfect towns for that one reason alone. I think for the purposes of this discussion the town has to be within a few minutes of the ski area. Most of these towns will have a B Tier style village at the base as well, but the village isn't the focus here.

B Tier: These towns aren't really "towns". They're purpose-built shopping malls or villages made for the ski area with condos and hotels. Unlike A Tier towns, they don't have a nearby "real" town to tie onto. They may be big and vibrant villages, but they don't have (many) locals living in the core village area, and they never have.

C Tier: Basically a parking lot. Maybe a bar, cafeteria, and a ski rental shop. Usually have a larger town nearby to support some locals, but it's going to be too far away to feel like it's part of the ski area scene. Finally, I'm not really filling out C-Tier that much unless it has an interesting anchor town within 30 minutes or so. I'm also leaving off the dozens of Midwest and East Coast ski areas that I've been to because I frankly haven't skied east of the Rockies in so long that I don't think I could properly categorize them based on memory.

S Tier

• Telluride
• Breckenridge
• Park City
• Aspen (Ajax)
• Heavenly: If memory serves, you can't actually ski to town. But you take a gondola down to town instead of a car/bus so I'm counting it as S Tier. Also South Lake is an interesting take on a ski town. I was on the fence but I'm leaving it in S Tier.
• Kleine Scheidegg-​Männlichen-Grindelwald-​Wengen: you have to take a train to Interlaken but I think the "villages" here count as actual towns, so this is S Tier.

A Tier

• Steamboat Springs: Almost S Tier. I think if you really tried you could ski from the top of Pony Express into town.
• Silverton
• Whitefish: should maybe be B Tier. I can't remember how close Whitefish (the town) was to the actual ski area.
• Crested Butte: I initially had this in S Tier based on memory, but after looking at the map I realized it was a little further from the base to town than I remembered.

B Tier

• Jackson Hole: this was a tough one. Jackson, WY is one of the coolest towns I've ever been to. Teton Village is also a great little base area. But Jackson is just too far from the tram to really bump this up to A tier.
• Vail: I've lived here since 2015 and I haven't met a single person who lives in Vail Village or Lionshead year-round. The north side of the highway doesn't count as a town, it's really just an amalgamation of box stores, strip malls, and parking lots...
• Keystone
• Beaver Creek
• Aspen (Snowmass & Highlands): not really close enough to Aspen proper to go into A Tier. But close...
• Winter Park
• Big Sky
• Copper
• Squaw
• Kirkwood

C Tier

• Arapahoe Basin: close to Dillon / Frisco / Breck.
• Aspen (Buttermilk): I've only been here during X Games but I think without all that infrastructure they bring in it would just be a parking lot and a cafeteria. I might be wrong. Close to Aspen.
• Monarch: close to Salida.
• Ski Cooper: close to Leadville.
• Bachelor: close to Bend.

Edit: I'll append this list with your suggestions if you'd like to add to it.

Edit 2: The lists within the tiers are in no particular order. I just happened to type them in that order when I thought of them.

I figured it'll be easiest to consolidate discussion of all these in one place. As you find more good, thoughtful ones feel free to comment it and I'll edit them into this list.

Overall impressions seem very positive. LTT, in particular, tends to be pretty comfortable being critical of Apple and even he seems impressed (though I think his is the only review that doesn't have a hands-on component.

The Bloggers:

Daring Fireball: https://daringfireball.net/2023/06/first_impressions_of_vision_pro_and_visionos
Nilay Patel: https://www.theverge.com/2023/6/5/23750003/apple-vision-pro-hands-on-the-best-headset-demo-ever

The Vloggers:

iJustine: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AtCEGztr8cw
MKBHD: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OFvXuyITwBI&t=917s
Linus Tech Tips: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SqB0lUcqFbA
Snazzy Labs: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uUblFIaZKIk
Norman Chan (via Adam Savage Tested): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f0HBzePUmZ0

I just watched an old movie on television: The Boy With Green Hair. It’s a boring afternoon, with nothing to do, and I thought this old 1948 movie would be a pleasant way to kill an hour or two.

I was wrong.

It moved me to tears.

It stars Dean Stockwell, whose name I recognised from ‘Battlestar Galactica’, as a child actor, which is one reason I decided to watch it. He gives a great performance. Doing a bit of research, it looks like he was dragged into acting by his performer parents. His Wikipedia page quotes him as saying he didn’t enjoy acting. Despite that, he was great in this movie.

It also has ‘Nature Boy’ as its theme song, which I know from ‘Moulin Rouge’.

The movie itself is a powerful anti-war message. The central character is Peter, a war orphan (the aforementioned Stockwell). After being placed with a number of different relatives, he ends up with a kindly old ex-Vaudeville performer he calls “Gramp” (who he’s not actually related to). Gramp’s a sweet old man, played very sympathetically by an actor called Pat O’Brien.

Peter doesn’t know he’s a war orphan. He thinks his parents are still on a trip. (A very long trip!) His school holds a charity drive to collect clothes for war orphans, and one of Peter’s classmates tells him, quite matter-of-factly, that Peter is a war orphan: their teacher said so. Peter rejects this, and they get into a fight. Gramp is there, and he confirms the news.

Later that evening, Gramp is reminiscing to Peter about his old flame Eileen, who loved having “a spot o’ green” around the place (a plant) to remind her of Spring and hope. To cheer Peter up, he promises him a surprise in the morning.

The next morning, after taking a bath, Peter’s hair has turned green. He assumes this is Gramp’s surprise, and it cheers him up. It’s not. Gramp knows nothing about it. In fact, the cause of the green hair is never revealed.

When Peter finds out the green hair is not from Gramp, he hates it and wants to get rid of it. However, they’re unable to figure out a cause, and Peter’s unwilling to “paint” his hair (dye it) or cut it off, so he’s stuck with it.

It’s hard to explain why this movie moved me, without giving away certain important plot points. If you don’t want too many spoilers, watch this trailer and stop reading now, until you’ve watched the movie for yourself.

If, like me, you’re not fussed about spoilers, read on. (Spoiler alert: spoilers make you enjoy stories more)

I have to say there were some plotholes in this movie. It’s far from perfect.

Reading the backstory, it’s based on a short story which doesn’t mention war: it’s originally an allegory for racism, which is reflected in one scene in the movie where Peter’s teacher takes a roll call of students by hair colour. The adaptations to make it an anti-war message were inserted by the director, which makes it a bit clunky and obvious.

And, supposedly, the progressive movie studio executive who signed off on the movie was replaced by a conservative executive during production, who tried to change it into a pro-war movie. The movie is therefore a bit patchy and disconnected at points.

But it has heart. The two central actors, playing Peter and Gramp, carry most of the movie. The actor playing the teacher is also sympathetic and warm.

It's not a great movie, but the central performances are strong and the messages are powerful.

Some sources I found tell of Stockwell talking back to the conservative executive when the executive lectured him in favour of war, so Stockwell supported the message of the movie, even as a 12-year-old boy.

This was just supposed to be an old movie to distract me for an hour and a half on a boring afternoon. Instead, it grabbed my attention for the whole 90 minutes, and moved me deeply. So deeply that I just had to share it with someone. I considered putting this in @kfwyre’s Tildes Pop-Up Movie Event thread, but the 1940s slot is already taken. Not that I’m upset by that. I’m very glad I watched this movie, for its own sake.