I'm deciding between home/condo ownership. A good condo/house cost roughly the same in my area. But I'm single and don't need a lot of space, so a condo makes sense. However, noise from neighbors is puts me off (a lot). Constantly hearing noise (parties, stomping, pets, etc.) would have a serious negative impact on what's supposed to be a home where you can relax and not deal with the world.

What are/were your experiences? Did the HOA do their diligence when things break or need maintenance? Are their costs reasonable considering how much is needed (time+money) to maintain a house? Was the heated parking garage worth the costs?

Howdy Tildes wizards.

I decided to have a looksy at Stable Diffusion on my local computer (Manjaro, AMD 7500x CPU, 32GB) using Easy Diffusion. I've gotten my head around the basics and grabbed MidJourney V4 LLM, and now I'm learning how to prompt.

So far I've generated some cool cyberpunk cyborg things, landscapes, etc. One of the things I wanted to use Stable Diffusion for is generating silhouettes. Sounds weird, I know, but they're great to use with decal and vinyl printing for my wife's business.

Any ideas on ways to do silhouette generation?

Next is, what's good to read to learn about model types and what all of the settings really do?

I'm ordering a GPU (3060) to improve the horrendous render times, so don't worry about the under powered rig, I'm still in toy mode.

With a lot of parades and parties behind us, I think now is as good a time as ever to discuss 2023 Pride. What did you do? Was it different than last year, and if so, was it more or less fun?

Having experienced pride both in Israel and in Europe, I can say that this year in Tel Aviv was a very strange vibe for me. There were a lot of talks about potential terror attacks, to the point where the side streets were absolutely full of police and military. I remember walking back home from work and being unsure if I should even go.

Contrast it with Berlin, where there was such a carefree attitude and such a strong sense of unity. I experienced it as a tourist mind you, but I still wish we could have a less stressful atmosphere next year back home.

There is something to be said about the monetization of pride, but to me, just the fact that we have something to unite around is enough. When I look around and see thousands of queer people smiling, I couldn't care less about capitalism, and I only hope that next year it'll be even bigger.

This spring my wife and I started growing some herbs in containers on our (quite large) balcony. I got some nice big pots bc I know a lot of these like some space, and I planted a bunch of staples. On a whim, I planted some spearmint bc I figured it would be nice to have some fresh mint on hand for cocktails.

I knew mint was hardy and tends to grow out of control, but I didn't think much about it since it's in its own large standalone pot, away from my other plants. But Y'ALL. My other plants are dong okay but there is SO MUCH MINT. I'm barely doing anything and it's THRIVING. I don't even drink that many cocktails.

Other than cocktails and mint tea, I have no idea what to with the sheer quantity of mint I have. Even just ocassionally pruning the bits that stick out or have flower buds results in massive handfuls of mint that I don't have any idea how to use up.

Please give me advice on how to use up my mint!

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!

My lease is ending within the next two-three months and I have been trying to plan my next steps. My goal has been to buy a house (and hopefully coincide with my lease ending) but the more I have been looking at inventory, the more I have been hesitating about that commitment. I currently am a full time remote worker who can live in any US state at any given point.

I found that I can find a short term rental (60-90 days) in downtown Honolulu and am finding myself increasingly interested in the prospect. I have never visited Hawaii, and while I was recently married, we never actually went on a honeymoon because we are saving for a house. The rental I would choose would be ~$2300 a month, fully furnished and utilities included. I of course would have additional cost to consider, such as needing to put all my furniture in storage and paying rent on the locker. In addition, I would not have my car so I would need to find a decent place that is walking distance to life necessities.

This option would not make me broke, but it would cost me additional money. If I bought a house now, I would probably have to hold off on any big vacations for awhile, and Hawaii was on our list to go to in the next 5 years.

So just curious, what are your thoughts? Would this be a good way to spend my winter or would the burden of not having a car be difficult in Hawaii? Any other things I need to think about?

The legal discussion is not exactly the same as US politics. I would imagine that we have people who would like to follow it and people who prefer strongly to avoid it.

For example, today we had these two events and I didn't even look hard.

https://www.thedailybeast.com/barricades-go-up-around-fulton-county-courthouse-as-trump-indictment-looms

Superceding indictment filed in Florida documents case
chrome-extension://efaidnbmnnnibpcajpcglclefindmkaj/https://storage.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.uscourts.flsd.648653/gov.uscourts.flsd.648653.85.0_1.pdf

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

I’ve just heard of the new BBS style forum for Gemini space and wondered if the properties of Tildes could adequately translate to Gemini space. In other words; could Tildes become accessible in Gemini space?

gemini://bbs.geminispace.org/

I’m also curious if there are other Gemini users here but that might be better off as a separate post on a different section of the site.

My upholstery hobby is a fulfilling and creative outlet that allows me to revive old furniture and give it a fresh, stylish look. My favorite fabric to use is velvet. Its luxurious texture and rich colors add a touch of elegance and sophistication to any piece. Velvet not only looks stunning but also feels incredibly soft and comfortable

The rules are you have a magic remote, and you are immediately transported to a location of your choice. You can use it as many times you want, but it will only go to the one location. Where do you put it?

It seems that this thread has sparked a lot of interest from the gamers of Tildes, but the forum just isn't a great place to actually get things going. To remedy this, I've created the Tildes Game Nights discord server where people who like the format of Discord can get together and play games :). I hope to foster the same sort of civility we have here, so the rules are pretty much identical to Tildes' (with a bunch of the rules being taken directly from the code of conduct). I already have some channels set up for the games that got a lot of votes in the linked thread, but I can add more if there's popular demand.

Here is the invite link :)

ChatGPT got all of its information from these websites, but these websites still use advertising to gain revenue. When a user asks ChatGPT a question, instead of going to the site, it's using the information stored on the site without giving the site any revenue.

That's why they're being sued. (Also why Reddit is doing what it's doing with the API)

What do we do? How can we keep these sites alive, and still make use of ChatGPT? I can write code and solve problems days faster than I used to now, but it seems kind of morally bankrupt of me to use this service which is so clearly putting the foundations it was built on out of business.

We have the weekly fitness check-in but I thought it would be valuable to have a thread to discuss more specific lifting topics and resources.

• What type of programs do you gravitate towards?
• Do you compete in Powerlifting/Weightlifting/Strongman or some other discipline? Any upcoming meets worth watching?
• Have you found any resources that others might be interested in?

The final three episodes have dropped from the third season of Netflix' The Witcher adaptation - also marking the final appearance of series lead Henry Cavill. So I reckon it may be ripe for some discussion (assuming sufficient interest exists amongst the community here).

So, despite previous misgivings after a baffling second season and disappointingly bland third seasons thus far, I jumped straight into this finale out of respect for the very fine turn by Mr Cavill throughout. For context, earlier in the day I finished off the third book, Baptism of Fire, during my current re-read so I'm well ahead on plot and had text fresh in head. In S3's favour, indeed, the show runner's claims of hewing closer to the books is actually quite fair. In broad strokes, they have captured every major plot point, and generally in the correct order. But that's also the problem in some respects - the writers are evidently only focused on doing a pure plot adaptation. The book chapters, for reference, are quite long - roughly 50 pages apiece - with only 7-10 of them per novel, and often feature a juxtaposition of several perspectives throughout (a feat Sapkowski becomes ever more skillful at over time). But the key thing that's lost in translation is that each chapter generally has a clear idea or thematic element that ties everything together, i.e., Sapkowski always has something he wants to say, an idea he wants to get across, some comment on war, family, human nature, etc., and this gives an extra richness that underpins the plot elements driving everything forward. Not only that, Sapkowski quite enjoys playing off traditional Fantasy / mythological tropes and conventions and this humour has been completely shed by the show writers - likely an intentional move given what has emerged about their purported disdain for the source material.

In short, I feel the writers are adapting the plot without an understanding of what makes the Witcher stand apart from the sea of other fantasy fiction, and, as a consequence, all of their original additions only wind up a detriment to the storytelling. Nevertheless, it was genuinely nice to see a few certain scenes on screen.

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.