I think some of you will react very poorly to this post; I understand that. I’d ask you to assume noble intent - I am not blasé about the implications of the election for transgender folks. Please know that I don’t blame you if you need to vent… or even catastrophize a bit. Trust me, I get it.

I get it because I am writing this, in large part, for myself. I had a pretty hard time this morning, and I’m very nervous about the implications of a second round of a Trump presidency. But the more calculating, rational part of me is saying this: ultimately, it’s mostly going to be okay.

I have spent much of my adult life living in the poorest countries in the world. Two of those countries were actively engaged in civil war when I was in them. It is hard to really convey how horrible the most desperate parts of the world can be. But more than anything, what I have taken from those experiences is hope.

For almost everybody - even people in those horrible places, going through horrible times - life goes on. People plan expensive (it’s all relative) weddings, get married, go shopping, gossip. They laugh and they cry. Mostly, life is normal.

A lot of things are about to get worse in America, and a few things will probably get better - accidentally, if nothing else. But mostly, day-to-day life is going to be okay. And so are you.

I am planning on switching to Linux Mint as my first Linux daily driver. I know someone who's used Cinnamon (the default) and it works fine, but I was wondering if the other options officially provided (Xfce and MATE) are any better? I have a little bit of (pretty trivial) GNOME experience on Ubuntu, but I don't really understand the pros and cons of different DEs. I've used KDE on the Steam Deck, and I hear that's a popular one, but can I get that on Mint?

Hey, I'm trying to pull back a bit from the present news cycle, so I'm looking for some alternatives. My brain often is looking for some stimulation that isn't something huge and meaty, so I figured short stories and novellas could be helpful in particular. If you have something long that's great, feel free to toss that in as well.

I like short stories that depict interesting and different worlds, though they don't need to be particularly detailed. Stories with positive (or at least not miserable) endings would probably be better for my mood. For some examples, I liked the I, Robot stories, particularly the first one with Grace and Robbie, They're Made out of Meat, Flatland, The Year Without Sunshine. I'm realizing that is kind of Sci fi heavy, but that might just be because there are more Sci fi short stories I've bumped into, a lot from links elsewhere on the internet.

For some examples of novels and series that I've liked, Cradle by Will Wight, Anne McCaffrey's Pern novels, Scholomance by Naomi Novik, Ender's Game. Recently, I liked Tomorrow and Tommorow and Tomorrow, and Elsewhere by Gabrielle Zevin, but I don't know if I could handle that level of sad right now. For historical fiction,the only examplez I can think of right now are A Woman of Independent Means, and a Tree Grows in Brooklyn, but I used to read a lot of it when I was younger.

Books I didn't like, but loved aspects of are Babel (I absolutely loved the setting, the book itself felt like it was beating you up with a cudgel), The School for Good mothers (I enjoyed the exploration of what Good motherhood is, and how mothers are judged by society, I disliked how disjointed the actual plot was).

I tend not to like stories where most or all characters are hard to have empathy for -- I hated A Catcher in the Rye, and loathed the Arthur Miller plays I had to read in school. I can get impatient with stories that keep the world vague for a very long time, like Never Let Me Go.

So, any recommendations?

Add awesome game deals to this topic as they come up over the course of the week!

Alternately, ask about a given game deal if you want the community’s opinions: e.g. “What games from this bundle are most worth my attention?”

Rules:

• No grey market sales
• No affiliate links

If posting a sale, it is strongly encouraged that you share why you think the available game/games are worthwhile.

All previous Save Point topics

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This was my first time trying working with a laser cutter! I wanted to make a house warming gift, and thought that this could be a nice way to get familiar with the laser cutter. The house warming gift was the mistborn wheel. But after I made that I kinda of caught the itch and wanted to make something for myself as well, which ended up being the surgebinding chart (second design).

https://www.designfind.com/designs/21814
https://www.designfind.com/designs/21815

Cosmere: The cosmere is a fictional shared universe where many of Brandon Sanderson's books take place.
I made this a separate post so that it could be searchable when people look for other Cosmere stuff on Tildes.

So I've been playing a lot of Helldivers 2 recently, and was wondering if there would be much interest in the community for a Tildes LFG / Discord situation to find pick up games.

Anyone else have an interest in the game still?

This is a first attempt at a nomination thread for books targeting this group's stated desire to read books representing minority, or diverse or disadvantaged perspectives and experiences.

I'm drawing the boundaries of the category as broadly as I can and feel free to include a book (within the length limit of 600 pages) that you think fits within these parameters. Also, diverse or minority or disadvantaged can apply to either or both of author or main character.

Here is my attempt to find examples of what we might choose. This is not meant to be a set of hard boundaries, just a descriptive exploration.

Books that qualify include but are not limited to: being from a poor or formerly colonized country, being an immigrant or refugee, being a political/ethnic minority such as basque, tibetan, romani or catalan or kurdish, being indigenous, being poor or ethnic minority in a dominant country, being a sexual/gender minority, being disabled etc.

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?

Hi Folks

I've been working on an autoconversion Bash script to pick up videos and convert them to AV1. Yes, I know converting a source to another source means degradation and yada yada yada, but it's something I can live with as most of my sources are of very high quality to begin with, and I'm going for space-saving. Plus, my eyes aren't what they once were.

The conversion into AV1 I'm mostly happy with. I'm currently going through some old 90s shows which are of lesser quality, so they would need a little help to look better with AV1 by adding some natural film grain, else AV1 makes them look a little bit too clean.

I can easily pop into the script and enable film grain in the variables, or add in a simple option, but that's boring and tedious. Why do that when we can automate the world :)

Where I have got to is using the signalstats filter. The issue I have is I don't know how to analyse it's output enough to work out whether I should or shouldn't enable film grain or not. I know it's subjective either way.

Does anyone have experience with this? The output per frame looks like:

frame:1438 pts:59977 pts_time:59.977
lavfi.signalstats.YMIN=0
lavfi.signalstats.YLOW=0
lavfi.signalstats.YAVG=60.6913
lavfi.signalstats.YHIGH=149
lavfi.signalstats.YMAX=239
lavfi.signalstats.UMIN=91
lavfi.signalstats.ULOW=108
lavfi.signalstats.UAVG=121.955
lavfi.signalstats.UHIGH=131
lavfi.signalstats.UMAX=148
lavfi.signalstats.VMIN=124
lavfi.signalstats.VLOW=128
lavfi.signalstats.VAVG=134.535
lavfi.signalstats.VHIGH=146
lavfi.signalstats.VMAX=154
lavfi.signalstats.SATMIN=0
lavfi.signalstats.SATLOW=0
lavfi.signalstats.SATAVG=9.74682
lavfi.signalstats.SATHIGH=27
lavfi.signalstats.SATMAX=43
lavfi.signalstats.HUEMED=147
lavfi.signalstats.HUEAVG=162.949
lavfi.signalstats.YDIF=0.737433
lavfi.signalstats.UDIF=0.642897
lavfi.signalstats.VDIF=0.162755
lavfi.signalstats.YBITDEPTH=8
lavfi.signalstats.UBITDEPTH=8
lavfi.signalstats.VBITDEPTH=8

I'm happy to analyse a random 60-second segment and then grab an average from a couple of these outputs, but I'm not sure if this is a good method or not. I'm asked a couple of the biggest LLMs, they have come back with older ways that no longer exist in ffmpeg 7.1.

I'm trying not to use too many other pieces of software in this script. The dependencies are fairly simple with ffmpeg, awk, grep, etc., the kind of thing you get on nearly every distro of Linux. Any thoughts and/or ideas?

I created an Omnivore account recently and I started to love it. I thought to self-host it but I didn't have enough time and thought I'd host it later.

I (along with everyone else presumably) got this email today:

We’re excited to share that Omnivore is joining forces with ElevenLabs, the leading AI audio research and technology company. Our team is joining ElevenLabs to help drive the future of accessible reading and listening with their new ElevenReader app.

Next, all Omnivore users will be able to export their information from the service through November 15 2024, after which all information will be deleted.

Though it is quite frustrating, I will not go further in my opinion of this move.

I would just like to let the community know that I'm in the market for an alternative for this... or maybe some help how to self-host it. I don't even know if it will be easy to self-host or if it will be worth it, presumably without updates...

November 2024's Humble Choice is now available with the following eight Steam games.

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 read thinking in systems a primer by Donella Meadows and really found it interesting. I have been struggling to find a follow up book about systems aimed at a reader with intermediate but non specialist Knowledge of systems thinking. They are all either to basic, too advanced, or so dry it’s impossible to concentrate. Has anyone found a good follow on book for this book?
I appreciate this might be a bit of a niche topic!