Telling “scary ghost stories” at the holidays isn’t just a seemingly out-of-place line in the song “It’s the Most Wonderful Time of the Year” or the plot of A Christmas Carol - it’s actually a very old tradition stretching back to pagan Yule festivals and Winter Solstice celebrations. So please share yours with us: true or false, but preferably true.

Time to try something new!

Remember the human. It's the golden rule, and knowing your neighbour helps a lot.

This post is an opportunity to meet your fellow humans behind the screen/username, in a format somewhere between the "introduction" posts and the "casual AMA" one.

Format: One top-level post per participant. Talk a bit about yourself (what you want Tildes to know about you), and pick one particular thing (hobby, passion, subject you studied) you really want to talk about.

My engagement: I won't leave any top-level post unanswered for too long. But the goal is for others to interact so hopefully everyone's involved, not just me :)

I had a conversation with someone who teaches research skills at the university level. They said that incoming new students seem to start with the assumption that .org and .edu domain names can be trusted for accurate information and .com domain names will be unreliable.

I didn't find it hard to find dodgy nonprofits and sketchy colleges but do you know of any extremely reputable corporate sites that they could use as counter examples to this misinformed theory about how to find reliable sources online? I'm thinking maybe Bloomberg but would love to hear more.

I just posted this as a comment to someone who mentioned Horizon Zero Dawn, but figured there might be more discussion if I made a new post for it, so here goes:


Are there any games that you have enjoyed playing without the HUD or mini-map? If so, which ones and why?


One of my favorite gaming experiences was playing Zelda BOTW in its entirety without any HUD elements, just using the game's scenery and story to guide me. I loved it so much that I tried doing the same in other massive open-world games like Skyrim, Fallout 4, The Witcher 3, and Assassin's Creed Origins, but found that they relied too much on small details or markers in the minimap. So instead of feeling more immersed and in-tune with the game world, I just felt more frustrated at not knowing exactly where to go or which specific person or item to click on without the game explicitly telling me. I'm sure it can be done, but I found it nowhere near as pleasing as BOTW.

I just recently picked up Horizon Zero Dawn and wondered if it could be played in a similar manner, without the map or other HUD elements, or if I'll end up needing some of them to know where to go or who to talk to.

I'd love to hear any other recommendations or thoughts on this matter.

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?

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!

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?

What have you been watching and reading this week? 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!

What is a relatively minor trope that is in way more movies than it should be that just bugs the crap out of you?

For me it is knowing that the driver/pilot AND copilot of any vehicle will get killed when the antagonist and protagonist are in a vehicle together. No pilot ever uses autopilot either so the plane just goes into an instant death spin immediately afterwards.

Family member was recently diagnosed, and I’m trying to manage our menu, activities, and expectations to help them. I know every body is different and food intolerances vary, but I’m curious what helped you?

This is kind of silly. I've been tild'ing a lot recently and have come to recognize some other users, and am wondering how accurate my simple reactions are, or whether they're shared by anyone else.

• deimos - Moon of Mars, and also a character in either one of the early Unreal Tournament games or Quake 3 Arena. Uh, also a figure from Greek or Roman mythology or whatever 😅
• cfabbro - "C fab bro" - Identifies as a "bro", and does something involving fabrication?
• douchebag - Expects to get hated on maybe?
• akir - For some reason makes me think of Admiral Akbar from OG Star Wars.
• algernon_asimov - Has been explained. I too love Flowers for Algernon and Isaac Asmiov.
• boxer_dogs_dance - I picture three dogs on their hind legs "holding" each other's forepaws, merrily dancing in a circle. It makes me happy 😅

Sorry if I've forgotten your username! Reply and I'll tell you what yours makes me think, I'm feeling associative.

What have you been watching and reading this week? 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!

Throughout our lives we make tons of pivotal decisions. Some of these are significant enough that we give them lots of thought and it’s not a surprise when they greatly affect our life path - things like beginning or ending a relationship, or moving to a new area, or changing our lifestyle.

Lately though I’ve been contemplating which thoughtless, inane decisions I made have had the largest butterfly effects in my life.

One example: when I was entering middle school I was, for the first time, allowed to choose which elective courses I wanted to take by filling out a paper slip. I thought playing a brass or percussion instrument seemed pretty badass so I signed up for band. Before I turned it in, though, my older sister saw it, said “band is dumb, do chorus instead,” erased my selection and marked choir instead. Being 11 years old at the time I had no strong feelings about it so I said whatever and went on with my life.

And now, several decades later, I have sang in choirs since then, the vast majority of my friends are those I met in choirs (or theater, which is choir adjacent), and I have spent most of my adult life making money working either in or around choirs in some capacity. It’s my life.

I often wonder how my life would be different if she hadn’t changed my registration sheet. (She didn’t even enjoy choir that much and quit two years later). Would I be living a parallel path of loving and working in music, but with bands instead of choirs? Would I have switched sometime during middle school and then reverted to the same life path I’m on now? Or would I have simply been less hooked to music and instead lived and worked in the field of one of my other interests that are mere hobbies right now?

I’ll never know, of course. But it sure is interesting to think about. Probably the vast majority of the tiny inane decisions we make don’t end up having much of an effect on our lives. But every now and then there’s one that randomly changes a lot.

You ever been there, Tildes?

Has anyone tried it out? There's currently a preventative healthcare initiative going on in my country where they start screening people over 40 for chronic or potentially chronic conditions.

I went for my initial checkup with the doc today and, being juuuuust below morbid obesity with a BMI of 34, asked her about semaglutide as an adjunct to exercise controlling calorie intake. She's referring me to a weight loss clinic at my local public hospital where I can be assessed for suitability (If I'm not mistaken the clinic has hepatologists and endocrinologists on staff along with allied healthcare workers such as physios and nutritionists). This is great because it costs a bomb if I have to go private. The only wrinkle is that I'm oddly enough not diabetic or pre-diabetic so whether or not I'll qualify for socialised semaglutide is unclear but we live in hope.

I was wondering if any of you had tried any of the variants of semaglutide for obesity and what your experiences have been like.

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.

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 would've gotten the Proton Black Friday offer, but it's only valid for upgrades, not for renewing my current account type. Aside from that I'm looking at:

• Affinity 2 (graphic design software)
• Asesprite (graphic design software)
• Curiosity Stream (streaming service for documentaries)
• Kindle Scribe (I'm particularly intrigued by the pen/notebook functionality on this e-reader)

How about you?

Edit 2023-11-27 - I ended up getting the Affinity deal because it was an additional discount on top of the V1 upgrade discount! So I was able to get the entire V2 package for about 67 USD. The Black Friday discount is 40% and then the upgrade discount is 25% on top of that.

I also would've wanted to get the hydroxyapatite toothpaste from my fave floss brand, Cocofloss (25% off the entire site for Black Friday) but it was out of stock.

This is actually two questions in one:

1. How do you counter pessimism in yourself?

How do you keep yourself from sliding into cynicism? Seeing the worst in things? Finding fault everywhere? Losing hope?

2. How do you counter pessimism in others?

When someone’s sharing their pessimism with you, it can feel dismissive or even hostile to go against it. It can feel unempathetic to do anything but corroborate or validate their feelings, even if you feel they’re inaccurate or misguided. How do you respond without sliding into pessimism yourself?

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.

This topic is part of a series. It is meant to be a place for users to discuss creative projects they have been working on.

Projects can be personal, professional, physical, digital, or even just ideas.

If you have any creative projects that you have been working on or want to eventually work on, this is a place for discussing those.

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'm interested in domain names that are remarkable in the sense that they are short or easy-to-remember.

This idea for a topic started because I find myself window shopping for domain names. Thing is, the only use I have for a domain is for my personal website. That's why I hesitate picking up these fun quirky domains.

What are some interesting domain names you've encountered?

Do you think it's worth it (in terms of utility and/or entertainment value) to have a more remarkable domain name for a personal website?

I am preparing to make beef bourguignon for my Thanksgiving dinner tomorrow (Kyiv cake for dessert) so I am watching Julia Child's take on it.

She mentioned that if you want the dish to be really French than you could buy imported bay leaves from France because they have a different flavor than American bay leaves. It made me start thinking about where my spices were grown and if all of them have specific regional variances that can take specific dishes to the next level. I knew honey can taste wildly different based on the region's flora that was available to make the honey, but never thought too much about spices.

Have you found that using spices from their region of origin significantly enhances a dish?

I have something I need to vent about, that I've tried to vent to friends about as well, but where nobody has been on the same page as me before.

In short, I despise gambling (casinos, sports betting, loot boxes in games, etc.), I think it destroys lives, often slowly and discreetly, and I think advertisements for it should be as taboo as tobacco advertisements and should even be illegal.

In long:

I've seen a trend in the last few years of sports betting becoming advertised to an unbearable degree. I can't watch any sport without a commercial for draft kings or fan duel. I can't even watch youtube without content creators being sponsored by draft kings. Advertisements for sports betting, specifically, are literally everywhere. I'm even in a basketball chat and there are several people there that DON'T EVEN WATCH BASKETBALL, they're specifically there to talk about the bets they make for a sport they don't watch.

I've seen at least a dozen friends sign up due to the ridiculous amount of advertising and with almost every single one, they claim they're getting "free money" since DK does give you free bets on a first deposit or something, but then every single one, after running out of the "free money" doesn't cash out and delete their account, they put five more dollars in, then put ten in, etc. until it starts to control their life and their finances. There shouldn't be a person alive that doesn't know how gambling can destroy you, but people still sign up for this bullshit. Nobody seems to understand that the only reason draft kings can give you free money on signup is because, on average, they make MORE than that per person.

On the subject of casinos, I went to Las Vegas for the first time last year. I already knew how elaborate and rich the casinos on the strip are, that part did not surprise me. What did surprise me is that if you go just a few blocks off the strip, it's almost entirely run down low income housing. You have possibly one of the richest areas in the United States in the form of the strip and seemingly none of that wealth is being shared to neighboring communities. It just goes back into the strip, getting sports teams to move to Vegas, getting F1 races, etc.

It just baffles me that so many people gamble and, even when warned about it, even after losing money, they insist that it's fun or that it's not so bad, but I truly think that gambling culture and companies running gambling schemes are some of the biggest evils out there. My parents divorced partly because of gambling. My dad permanently fucked his life up because of it. He has zero money, is now at an age and health where he can barely work, and my sister and I will likely be stuck footing the bill for his care later in life when just 15 years ago he was in a position to be set up pretty well for the rest of his life.

And yet, people still go to Vegas and lose hundreds or thousands on slots or cards, people still sign up on draft kings and lose hundreds or thousands on bets, and seemingly everyone I talk to is entirely blind on how bad of a situation this is and thinks me radical when I say that gambling advertisements should be illegal.

I value personal freedom, I don't think gambling should be banned, but I do think it can pose just as much of a danger to ruining someone's life as cigarettes can, but as a society, nobody seems to have any issue with ads for sports betting and casinos.

In addition to all of the above, we still have loot boxes in video games and collectible card games as a whole, but that would be another 2 pages of writing and I don't want to get in that deep.

If you stuck with me this whole time, thank you. I don't expect many people to agree, but I at least really needed to vent this out, even if it's into the void.

Do any of you have positive or negative experiences regarding gambling to add?

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?

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 have tried and tried to write a daily journal/diary and always gave up after a while. My longest stretch was over the course of five years. It always devolves into a litany of banality, though, and when I look back at it, invariably appears a bit cringy.

So I have decided to start keeping a commonplace book- a place to write down interesting thoughts, quotes, ideas I come across and so forth. Without the chronological format of a journal I feel less compelled to list down stuff for the sake of it and am actually listing down ideas I'd like to remember.

Do any of you do something similar?

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.

I only realized tonight that the second movie from the final season came out a couple weeks ago, and just got done watching it about 20 minutes ago. I didn't find any discussion about it on Tildes, so what's the verdict?

I'm an anime-only pleb. For those who have read the manga, was the final movie disappointing or satisfying? How faithful was the adaptation overall? Did they have to leave out a bunch of stuff to wrap the whole thing up with these last two movies?

For anime-onlies like myself, how'd you feel about how it all concluded?

I didn't foresee exactly how things would end, which is a plus, but I guess it ultimately felt sufficient rather than satisfying. It couldn't have been easy for the original author to come up with a good ending for something that became such a runaway hit in the first place, but I wonder if this was the ending he had in mind from the start... somehow I doubt it. I fully expected more of the final squad to die, honestly. I also don't feel like I got enough resolution from Mikasa. She feels like a big missed opportunity throughout the series, actually. As a character it seemed like she got rather two-dimensional after cutting her hair, and considering how her arc ends, her inner monologue would have been one of the most interesting threads to follow throughout the series but it pretty much just got some footnotes here and there.

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.

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!

What have you been watching and reading this week? 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!

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?

Looking up the Boox Palma device right now, it seems to be very handy actually. The only point where I may not be able to use it for everyday use would be that it seems to struggle with playing Spotify music. But I wouldn't mind picking up one of those 4G dumbphone devices that Nokia puts out for that usecase.

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.

I’m having a lot of fun learning the recorder (cheap and relatively easy). I have to learn to read music too, and wrap my head around how rhythm works, but I’m finding that so much is just intuitive, even though I’ve never played anything. I like singing for fun, but that’s pretty much the extent of what I can do. (I now play a mean Hot Cross Buns though.)

Anyone else doing something similar?