I'm traveling with my wife to Italy (Rome, Florence) for our Honeymoon. We're American and looking for any suggestions on what to bring/wear, tips/tricks we might need to know, or anything you feel would be relevant. We have a basic itinerary with some guided tours through the "main" tourist attractions like the Vatican, Colosseum, The Pantheon, The Accademia Gallery, the Uffizi Gallery, and a few day trips. But we know not everything is going to take all day.

Do you have recommendations for things to do to "fill" the day? Anything to avoid? Things to bring that we might not think of? Any general tips/thoughts would be appreciated.

We got our first silent movie (almost) with Charlie Chaplin's City Lights from 1931.

IMDb
Letterboxd
Wikipedia

How familiar are you with silent films and Charlie Chaplin? Is a movie that is more than 90 years old still worth watching today? Feel free to add any thoughts, opinions, reflections, analysis or whatever comments related to this film.

Rest of the schedule for January is:

• 22nd: Marcel The Shell With Shoes On
• 29th: The Iron Giant

Hi all,

I'm looking for some advice as a first time visitor to SE Asia. I'm an experienced traveller I've just not made it to that part of the world yet. To give some context on my trip, I recently lost somebody very close to me, it was very sudden and painful and I'm just coming around to sitting with it after the surreality of being in it. Planning funerals, scattering ashes etc.

I don't suspect I'll find any answers travelling but I do have a strong desire to be as far away from where I am currently as possible and to just press pause for a while. I will be working while I'm away (unfortunately I cannot afford the time off) so I guess that is a factor too.

I am not interested in partying or the noise of major cities so where possible I guess I would like to avoid that.

My trip is planned for April and May. All I have so far is starting in Hanoi and ending in Singapore.

Any advice on routes/places to visit on the way are appreciated. As ever thanks to this wonderful community.

My weekly D&D group has been running for a number of years now and unfortunately our current DM is suffering from some pretty severe burnout at the moment (both in life and D&D in general). I think ultimately we're going to end up shuttering our D&D campaign, and may well never pick the game up again as we've almost all soured on WotC/Hasbro after the OGL debacle.

This week we entertained ourselves by messing around with image generation (velociraptor nun was a favorite result and became a bit of a running theme through the evening) but the fun in that can only last so long. We've also had some nights playing games like Dead by Daylight and Midnight Ghost Haunt but those are typically games we reserve for around Halloween. We also play some of the Jackbox Party Pack games, but they're only moderately fun to be honest.

We're usually a group of 7, and this particular formation of the friend group has been meeting almost exclusively online and will probably want to continue that way for the foreseeable future. I'd like some suggestions for games we could play together (either video game or TTRPG that works well online) that are: mostly cooperative or at least team based (we're not very competitive), something that won't become repetitive and dry after a couple of sessions (goal-oriented I guess), and something that we don't have to pay a subscription for. The ability to drop in or out as life dictates would be a plus too. Any thoughts?

There was a brief mention of the Amish and their self-sufficiency in the Capitalism topic that got me thinking, so I thought that I'd share my thoughts and start another discussion.

My understanding of the Amish way of life - as someone who is probably thousands of miles away from them - is that they are not really self-sufficient insomuch as they are insular. They don't like to rely on the government, but they heavily rely on their community.

A lot of us here are leftists - some might even go so far as to call themselves socialists or communists. But for the most part we are advocating for government to provide support, and often it's the federal government rather than their local governments. For those of you who do, my question for you is this: why aren't you trying to help out the locals. And I don't just mean your city, I mean your neighborhood or even just your block.

I'm not talking about things like homeless shelters or nonprofits, I'm talking about mutual aid societies. People are complex; they don't just need things, they need people. They need assurance, motivation, and love. These are things that the government does not provide. The US Surgeon General state we are having a lonliness epidemic right now, and that it's majorly affecting people's health. We've had conversations about the lack of a third place but an even bigger problem is the death of our community hubs. It might be a good thing that people are getting less religious, but losing the church was a much bigger hit than people give credit.

We've had many comments in the past deriding "slacktivism". When you throw your voice into the void, you have no real power. But if you put your voice into your town hall, you have tremendous power. Giving money to the government is like having one billionth of a difference to a great many people, but helping out a person in your community is a huge impact in their life which might be the one thing they need to stop them from falling off a cliff. I don't think you'll find anything more socially gratifying.

I titled this "why don't you", but I'm also very much interested in hearing from people who do community work why they do and how they manage to fit it into their lives.

Kinda curious how many furries we have on Tildes. Personally I just got started with sewing and plushie making so I can make custom plushies of peoples fursonas. It's going well so far but it's convinced me to drop an absolute fortune on an embroidery machine so I can make better looking eyes and paws x.x

This is Album of the Week #16 ~ This week's album is Coil - Love's Secret Domain

Year of Release: 1991
Genre(s): Industrial
Country: United Kingdom
Length: 61 minutes
RYM | Listen! (Album.Link)

Excerpt from The Quietus:

... the combined musical impact of Love's Secret Domain remains undiminished: a sonic world erupting with mind-spinning ingenuity, that beneath its surface strangeness, holds more hooks and grooves than a Cenobite's playroom. As always with Coil, however, Love's Secret Domain is about more than music; it's an exploration of what it meant, in 1991, to be a deeply inquisitive consciousness, all channels on, all bandwidths open, trapped in a human body and surrounded by the joy, anger and madness of existence. It's a palimpsest of an incredibly potent time for London's underground cultures, a mindmap of spaces, now largely lost ...

Discussion points:
Have you heard this artist/album before? Is this your first time hearing?
Do you enjoy this genre? Is this an album you would have chosen?
Does this album remind you of something you've heard before?
What were the album's strengths or weaknesses?
Was there a standout track for you?
How did you hear the album? Where were you? What was your setup?

--

Album of the week is currently chosen randomly (via random.org) from the top 5000 albums from a custom all-time RYM chart, with a 4/5 popularity weighting. The chart is recalculated weekly.

Missed last week? It can be found here.

Any feedback on the format is welcome ~~

I'm returning home from a trip and am on my 4th layover in a nightmarish series of delayed flights and last minute changes; when I get home it will be 5 degrees (F) which was not the forecasted temp when I left, so I did not make any kind of preparations and left my car in uncovered long term parking, a 5-ish minute walk from the airport. It dipped into negative temps while I was gone and I'm terrified that I'll get back to a car with frozen locks and no lighter, lock de-freezer, hair dryer, etc, anything to help me get in. I've searched for advice but everything I've read seems to assume you're at home, not at a airport. I'm already so drained and exhausted and it will be late when I get there so I'm just trying to find something, anything that might be helpful in advance before I'm stuck standing outside in unexpectedly, dangerously frigid weather with no plan in jeans, sneakers, and a hoodie. Apologies if something like this has been posted, I couldn't find anything and feel like I'm about to collapse. Any advice is appreciated, even obvious things, I'm sure I may have overlooked something that would be clear to someone else. Posting this before I board my next flight in the hopes there may be some replies by the time I get home. Thank you for reading

Update: made it back, took an Uber home and will pick up my car either tomorrow or the day after during the day. I should have thought of it myself and feel silly that I didn't. Thank you all so much for the feedback, really saved me some stress, I probably shouldn't have driven home even had it not been so cold out with how tired I was. Will definitely use all the advice here to be more prepared when leaving during the winter in the future, no matter the forecast.

When I was reading a Psmith novel, I couldn't help but notice that Psmith had a certain similarity with Douglas Addams character Dirk Gently. I can't say for sure if it has any validity, or if it is just make-believe patterns in random chaos. But regardless, these are my observations.

Svlad Cjelli. Popularly known as Dirk, though, again, ‘popular’ was hardly right.
Notorious, certainly; sought after, endlessly speculated about, those too were true. But popular? Only in the sense that a serious accident on the motorway might be popular -- everyone slows down to have a good look, but no one will get too close to the flames. Infamous was more like it. Svlad Cjelli, infamously known as Dirk.

—Dirk Gently’s Holistic Detective Agency by Douglas Addams

Thus were Dirk Gently introduced. But who is this Psmith fellow anyways? He is the titular character in a series of novels by P. G. Wodehouse, a great humorist who happens to be Douglas Adams favorite author. Douglas Addams writing, I’ve noticed, share the same whimsical mastery of language:

Deep in the rain forest it was doing what it usually does in rain forests, which was raining: hence the name.

and

Richard stood transfixed for a moment or two, wiped his forehead again, and gently replaced the phone as if it were an injured hamster.

—Dirk Gently’s Holistic Detective Agency by Douglas Addams

While both characters have changed their name to something much more fancyful, their motivation contrasts greatly. Psmith wanted a fancier name, simple as that; Dirk Gently, on the other hand, changed his name repeatedly to avoid being held accountable for a lifetime of blatant hustling and has finally ended up with Dirk Gently:

'My dear Svlad.'
'Dirk, please, if you would,' said Dirk, grasping his hand warmly, 'I prefer it. It has more of a sort of Scottish dagger feel to it, I think. Dirk Gently is the name under which I now trade. There are certain events in the past, I'm afraid, from which I would wish to disassociate myself.
—Dirk Gently’s Holistic Detective Agency by Douglas Addams

Enter Psmith:

A small maid-of-all-work appeared in answer to the bell, and stood transfixed as the visitor, producing a monocle, placed it in his right eye and inspected her through it.
“A warm afternoon,” he said cordially.
“Yes, sir.”
“But pleasant,” urged the young man. “Tell me, is Mrs. Jackson at home?”
“No, sir.”
“Not at home?”
“No, sir.”
The young man sighed.
“Ah well,” he said, “we must always remember that these disappointments are sent to us for some good purpose. No doubt they make us more spiritual. Will you inform her that I called? The name is Psmith. P-smith.”
“Peasmith, sir?”
“No, no. P-s-m-i-t-h. I should explain to you that I started life without the initial letter, and my father always clung ruggedly to the plain Smith. But it seemed to me that there were so many Smiths in the world that a little variety might well be introduced. Smythe I look on as a cowardly evasion, nor do I approve of the too prevalent custom of tacking another name on in front by means of a hyphen. So I decided to adopt the Psmith. The p, I should add for your guidance, is silent, as in phthisis, psychic, and ptarmigan. You follow me?”
“Y-yes, sir.”
“You don’t think,” he said anxiously, “that I did wrong in pursuing this course?”
“N-no, sir.”
“Splendid!” said the young man, flicking a speck of dust from his coat-sleeve. “Splendid! Splendid!”

— Leave it to Psmith by P. G. Wodehouse

As mentioned, Dirk Gently is a hustler. One of those enterprising characters who will push themselves tirelessly and unrelenting in order to aquire cash or commodities without labour. Earlier, he had cast himself as a psychic, something which backfired with terrible hybris. When we finally encounter him, he has ended up as a detective, seemingly specializing in searching for, but not actually finding, the lost cats of old ladies:

'Yes,' continued Dirk into the phone, 'but as I have endeavoured to explain to you, Mrs Sauskind, over the seven years of our acquaintance, I incline to the quantum mechanical view in this matter. My theory is that your cat is not lost, but that his waveform has temporarily collapsed and must be restored. Schrödinger. Planck. And so on.'
—Dirk Gently’s Holistic Detective Agency by Douglas Addams

Psmith, by contrast, is no hustler, but fall squarely into the trickster archetype. Think Loki, who tricks the blind Hodr into killing Balder. Think the Joker, whose terror is its own reasoning. Psmith, by his own admission, is bored. He may steal umbrellas and impersonate poets in order to woe a certain girl, but one suspect that the girl is merely a pretext for the means.

Both characters share the same flamboyant ignorance of the fuckedupness of their antics. Compare Dirk Gentlys quantum cat theory to Psmiths approach to being accused of umbrella thievery:

“Mr. Walderwick was in here a moment ago, sir,” said the attendant.

“Yes?” said Psmith, mildly interested. “An energetic, bustling soul, Comrade Walderwick. Always somewhere. Now here, now there.”

“Asking about his umbrella, he was,” pursued the attendant with a touch of coldness.

“Indeed? Asking about his umbrella, eh?”

“Made a great fuss about it, sir, he did.”

“And rightly,” said Psmith with approval. “The good man loves his umbrella.”

“Of course I had to tell him that you had took it, sir.”

“I would not have it otherwise,” assented Psmith heartily. “I like this spirit of candour. There must be no reservations, no subterfuges between you and Comrade Walderwick. Let all be open and above-board.”

“He seemed very put out, sir. He went off to find you.”

“I am always glad of a chat with Comrade Walderwick,” said Psmith. “Always.”

— Leave it to Psmith by P. G. Wodehouse

When the girl feel some reservations upon learning that the umbrella he so gallantly lend her was stolen gods, he casually brush it off:

“Merely practical Socialism. Other people are content to talk about the Redistribution of Property. I go out and do it.”

Psmiths outre clash of upperclass lifestyle and socialist glamour is mirrored in Dirk Gentlys clash between the private detective business and holistic new-age mumble-jumble:

'I'm very glad you asked me that, Mrs Rawlinson. The term 'holistic' refers to my conviction that what we are concerned with here is the fundamental interconnectedness of all things. I do not concern myself with such petty things as fingerprint powder, telltale pieces of pocket fluff and inane footprints. I see the solution to each problem as being detectable in the pattern and web of the whole. The connections between causes and effects are often much more subtle and complex than we with our rough and ready understanding of the physical world might naturally suppose, Mrs Rawlinson.
'Let me give you an example. If you go to an acupuncturist with toothache he sticks a needle instead into your thigh. Do you know why he does that, Mrs Rawlinson?'
'No, neither do I, Mrs Rawlinson, but we intend to find out. A pleasure talking to you, Mrs Rawlinson. Goodbye.'

Psmiths socialism bend is merely a humble joke. The quirky disrespect for property laws and insistance on calling other men "Camrade" is highly amusing, surely, but also a bit on the nose, lazy creativity which everyone else knowing nothing about socialism would come up with. On the other hand, with Dirk Gently, the holistic approach to detective work is mirrored in the novel themes and plotting. In contrast to the way Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy gleefully throws around outlandish scifi mindfuckery with absolutly no relevance to the plot, Dirk Gently's Holistic Detective Agency is a beautifully orchestrayed mystery where "everything is connected". (for another tightly plotted mystery novel in the fantastic genre, I can recommend Who Censored Roger Rabbit)

Another difference is that Dirk Gently is much more complex and deep, his casual money grapping contrasted with a moral compass of sorts. Both are clowns, but we get to see one of them after the show, devoid of pancake makeup.

This can be something you want to tell a specific person in your life, or something that you want to tell anyone but are unable to (for any reason).

Share it here instead.

Also, for everyone reading the things posted here, please be empathetic and understanding. Remember that the person posting knows their situation far better than we do.