What have you been eating, drinking, and cooking?
What food and drinks have you been enjoying (or not enjoying) recently? Have you cooked or created anything interesting? Tell us about it!
What food and drinks have you been enjoying (or not enjoying) recently? Have you cooked or created anything interesting? Tell us about it!
Spent yesterday afternoon re-potting my little collection of succulents, and it got me wondering whether other people on here might have some. Curious if people want to share their favorites or tips/tricks, etc.
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!
Ok, not utopia per se but a post-scarcity-ish economy where people have their basic needs—food, shelter, healthcare—met virtually automatically. A world where, sure, maybe you have to earn money for certain very scarce luxuries like a tropical island trip, jewelry, nightly wagyu steak dinners, or a penthouse overlooking Central Park, but you get enough basic income to eat healthily and decently every day, have a modest but comfortable home, and not stress out about going to the hospital — and then you can choose if you want to work to earn money to buy additional luxuries or just spend your time to do sports, make art or music, pursue an academic interest, counsel or mentor others in your community, or devote yourself to nature conservation.
I want to get this conversation rolling regularly because it's evident that we're on a cusp of a new economic era — one where AI and automation could free us from a lot of menial physical and intellectual labor and the pretense that everyone has to work to earn their continued existence. It's evident that not everyone has to work. If anything, our economy could be more efficient if incompetent or unmotivated folks just stayed at home and got out of other people's way. I think we all know someone who stays in a job because they need it but are actually a net negative on the organization.
It's an open-ended topic, and there's a lot to talk about in this series—like, how would we distribute the fruits of automation? How would we politically achieve those mechanisms of distribution? What does partially automated healthcare look like?—but I think it'd be good to first talk about current economic inefficiencies that should and could be automated away.
May 2024's Humble Choice is now available with the following eight Steam games.
Steam Page | Opencritic | Steam Recent/All | Operating Systems | Steam Deck | ProtonDB |
---|---|---|---|---|---|
Yakuza: Like a Dragon | 86 | 94/94 | Win | ✅ Verified | 🟨 Gold |
Hi-Fi RUSH | 89 | 93/97 | Win | ✅ Verified | 🎖️ Platinum |
Steelrising | 71 | 66/73 | Win, Mac | 🟨 Playable | ⬜ Silver |
Loddlenaut | 75 | 97/97 | Win | ✅ Verified | 🕙 Awaiting Reports |
King of the Castle | N/A | 94/91 | Win | 🟨 Playable | ⬜ Silver |
Bravery and Greed | 78 | 78 | Win | 🟨 Playable | 🟨 Gold |
Amanda the Adventurer | 73 | 91/95 | Win | 🟨 Playable | 🎖️ Platinum |
Mediterranea Inferno | 79 | 97 | Win, Mac | ✅ Verified | 🕙 Awaiting Reports |
Does anyone have experience with any of the games and, if so, would you recommend them? Is there anything in here that you're particularly excited to play?
I was wondering how people are currently dealing with inflation in everyday life. Since quite a while now, I found that I have fallen into a habit of excessively looking for discount deals for pretty much everything I buy. I feel pressured every day because prices have ballooned so much.
At first, I only refrained from buying "unnecessary" goods like unhealthy snacks, and instead just go for basic staples and vitamin-rich vegetables. Then I started to cut down on meat consumption due to the high prices, and forced myself to only buy meat that is put on discount at the end of the day as it's about to spoil. And now, I even do the same thing for regular staples like rice or potatoes. It feels imprisoning, distracting and depressing.
So I'm wondering, how are you dealing with inflation? Are you affected in a different way? Or not at all? Any advice on how I could realistically get out of this seemingly endlessly depressing spiral?
In case anyone's interested why I decided to post today: I saw McDonald's popping up in the news these days, as apparently customers don't go there anyone due to their price increases far beyond inflation since 2019. Then, I passed a McDonald's billboard today thst advertised 2 Big Mac Menus + a happy meal for a whopping 30 EUR. The regular prices used to be a fraction of that... Now it's apparently a good deal...
I have been looking forward to this month, since I think it is the first time I haven't seen any of the movies before. The theme is Cannes and we start with Guillermo del Toro's Pan's Labyrinth which premiered at Cannes in 2006 and received a 22 minute standing ovation.
Besides any thoughts on this movie, are you familiar with other of the Guillermo del Toro's filmography?
The rest of the schedule for May is:
Congrats to Lando Norris for finally breaking his record of most podiums without a win...by winning! Much deserved.
And because the F1 racing gods giveth and taketh away, I saw an unfortunate racing record for Kevin Magnussen: Most penalty points in a single weekend, with 6 points. He now has 10 out of 12 points before a race ban. And the earliest any of these points expire? March 2025. Yikes.
Though we'll see if he actually gets more points and/or a race ban.
Next race:
Emilia Romagna Grand Prix
Autodromo Enzo e Dino Ferrari (Imola)
Sunday, May 19, 2024
POS | NO | DRIVER | CAR | LAPS | TIME/RETIRED | PTS |
---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
1 | 4 | Lando Norris | MCLAREN MERCEDES | 57 | 1:30:49.876 | 25 |
2 | 1 | Max Verstappen | RED BULL RACING HONDA RBPT | 57 | +7.612s | 18 |
3 | 16 | Charles Leclerc | FERRARI | 57 | +9.920s | 15 |
4 | 11 | Sergio Perez | RED BULL RACING HONDA RBPT | 57 | +14.650s | 0 |
5 | 55 | Carlos Sainz | FERRARI | 57 | +16.407s | 0 |
6 | 44 | Lewis Hamilton | MERCEDES | 57 | +16.585s | 8 |
7 | 22 | Yuki Tsunoda | RB HONDA RBPT | 57 | +26.185s | 6 |
8 | 63 | George Russell | MERCEDES | 57 | +34.789s | 4 |
9 | 14 | Fernando Alonso | ASTON MARTIN ARAMCO MERCEDES | 57 | +37.107s | 2 |
10 | 31 | Esteban Ocon | ALPINE RENAULT | 57 | +39.746s | 1 |
11 | 27 | Nico Hulkenberg | HAAS FERRARI | 57 | +40.789s | 0 |
12 | 10 | Pierre Gasly | ALPINE RENAULT | 57 | +44.958s | 0 |
13 | 81 | Oscar Piastri | MCLAREN MERCEDES | 57 | +49.756s | 0 |
14 | 24 | Zhou Guanyu | KICK SAUBER FERRARI | 57 | +49.979s | 0 |
15 | 3 | Daniel Ricciardo | RB HONDA RBPT | 57 | +50.956s | 0 |
16 | 77 | Valtteri Bottas | KICK SAUBER FERRARI | 57 | +52.356s | 0 |
17 | 18 | Lance Stroll | ASTON MARTIN ARAMCO MERCEDES | 57 | +55.173s | 0 |
18 | 23 | Alexander Albon | WILLIAMS MERCEDES | 57 | +76.091s | 0 |
19 | 20 | Kevin Magnussen | HAAS FERRARI | 57 | +84.683s | 0 |
NC | 2 | Logan Sargeant | WILLIAMS MERCEDES | 27 | DNF | 0 |
Magnussen received a 10-second time penalty for causing a collision and a 20-second time penalty for entering the pits during a Safety Car period and not changing tyres. Stroll received a 10-second time penalty for leaving the track and gaining an advantage. Sainz received a five-second time penalty for causing a collision.
Source: F1.com
Thanks for your participation. We got three solid winners from this voting thread, Terry Pratchett Small Gods, Neil Gaiman Ocean at the End of the Lane, Amal El Mohtar and Max Gladstone This is How you Lose the Time War.
Library users please check availability and reply to this thread if any of these three should be sorted to the end of the schedule. We still have the Dispossessed and Project Hail Mary to read in May and June before starting these new books. After receiving feedback I will set a schedule for the summer.
Somehow Anathem made it through the screening process and is unfortunately nearly a thousand pages which does not fit a monthly book club structure. We will vote again in the Fall.
I aspire to better equip myself as a researcher and writer. As part of this, for me at least, I think that developing a note-taking (or marginalia) system would be useful. I read a ton of nonfiction and have especially been into history, economics, and geopolitics lately…but my “system” tends to just “highlight” insightful stuff in my Kindle and then…everything kinda falls off the map for me. I should probably start going back, reviewing the highlights, and making notes in a separate notebook/app/document for later research and writing purposes.
I thought it might be interesting to learn more about everyone’s reading/studying routine and specifically note-taking processes. I’m especially curious about those who blog/publish writings, and how they work to gather their thoughts and information as they are reading.
If you don’t mind sharing a bit about your note taking process or systems, here are some questions for discussion:
What is your process, generally? (Do you read print/digital/audio? Does your note taking change depending on different formats? Do you highlight with specific colors for certain reasons? What do you find yourself notating most frequently?)
Do you use pen/paper or is there a specific app you like to use for note-taking/research purposes?
If you use an app, what is your process for book notes? Do you take notes on paper and then transfer it to the digital app later when you’re reviewing? Do you take notes directly into the app?
Any other advice for someone looking to improve their learning/knowledge through more focused and intentional reading and note taking?
The May 2024 Backlog Burner is officially live. Use this topic to post about the games that you play.
Etiquette:
It is fine to make multiple top-level posts throughout the week.
It is also fine to respond to your own posts.
If you are playing Backlog Bingo, you can share your table either by markdown or through screenshots.
Gameplay guidelines:
Goals for this event (if any) are entirely individual and self-determined.
You do NOT need to finish games unless you want to. The point is to try out games and have fun, not force ourselves to play things we're not interested in.
Backlog Bingo is a completely optional way of participating in the Backlog Burner. You can generate a random bingo card with different gaming categories such as Has a fishing minigame
or Your friend loves it
. You then play a game that meets a given category and fill in that square.
A conventional bingo win happens when you have filled in a full row, column, or diagonal. If you complete a full bingo with time to spare, you can go for another one on the same card. You can also choose to play with the "blackout" win condition if you're feeling extra adventurous, which means that you need to fill every square on the board to win.
In order to help out with this, our amazing @Wes has singlehandedly made an open-source Backlog Bingo web app from scratch! (and here's the GitHub repo, for those interested).
The site will:
But wait, there's more!
Wes could have stopped there, but he didn't:
What's that? You thought Wes was done? Nope. He kept going:
RANDOM[2,7]
years")We've also updated the category list for this year to hopefully make it even better than the last. So, try it out! Generate a card and get gaming!
Important: All data for your Backlog Bingo card is stored on your device, not the server. Clearing your browser data will irrecoverably delete your card.
Yes! The site is coded by our very own @Wes who made it private by design. It is open source, all data is stored client-side, and the only information entered is the names of games. It does not require an account nor link to your Tildes username.
You need to whitelist data from wescook.ca
in your browser. PLEASE test this before committing to a card. Once a card is deleted it cannot be recovered.
In Standard Mode, each square on the bingo card corresponds with one single game. Duplicate games cannot be entered into different squares. A winning card would have a row of five different games that each filled in one square.
In Golf Mode, duplicates are not only allowed -- they are encouraged! The purpose of Golf mode is to try to find a single game that will fill multiple categories at the same time. For example: Stardew Valley might fulfill You got it on sale
, A solo-dev project
, and Has romanceable characters
all at the same time. A winning card would have all twenty five squares filled, but possibly only six or seven different games.
That is the "wildcard" or "free space."
In Standard Mode, there are no requirements to fill it. You can choose any game you want! Anything goes!
In Golf Mode, it does not need to be filled. Because Golf is all about stacking up categories on a single game, any game used in Golf would fill it automatically, meaning it has no real function. As such, the square will be pre-filled for you if you play in Golf mode.
Yes! The Backlog Bingo site generates its categories from a JSON file. We prepared a default one for the event that everyone can use, but you are welcome to create your own JSON file with whatever categories you want and use that instead!
If you are interested in doing this, you can find documentation in the wiki and use an example JSON category file. You can also ask for help in the topic!
Yes again! Because it will accept custom categories, you can use it for books, anime, movies, recipes -- anything!
If you are interested in doing this, you can find documentation in the wiki and use an example JSON category file. You can also ask for help in the topic!
Your "backlog" is all those games you've been meaning to play or get around to, but never have yet. This event is an attempt to get us to collectively dig into that treasure trove of experiences, scratch some long-standing itches, and knock a few titles off our to-play lists.
Once the event starts on May 1st:
That's it!
Optionally: you can play Backlog Bingo which is a fun way of cutting down the choices you have to make and playing games you might not have normally selected on your own.
No! You can choose or play games however you like.
Nope! Not at all.
There aren't really any requirements for the event so much as this is an incentive to get us to play games we've been avoiding starting up, for whatever reason. Play as much or as little as you like of a given game.
Try out dozens for ten minutes each or dive into one for 40 hours. There's no wrong way to participate!
The event begins on May 1st and runs through May 31st. I will post an update thread weekly, each Wednesday.
The next Backlog Burner event will be in November 2024.
Yes! Each discussion thread stays live for a full week, so feel free to make multiple comments in the topic as you play different games. This isn't considered noise
-- it's considered valuable participation in the event!
No. You don't have to do anything to officially join or participate in the event other than post in these threads! Participate in whatever way works for you.
Technically yes but I won't police it. The first official discussion thread will go up on Wednesday the 1st, but feel free to kick things off here if you're wanting to pre-game the month!