I am wondering what people are listening to this holiday season and hoping to build a playlist BEFORE Christmas Day. I have no particular allegiance to Christmas or any other specific holiday, but it’s fun to have a certain category of songs I only really listen to for one month of a year.

To start, I’m a big fan of the band BROS and they have a few small Christmas albums. Their artist page on Apple Music: https://music.apple.com/us/artist/bros/1151563604

Their actual website: https://dinealonerecords.com/artists/bros/

Recently I've been watching the show Jet Lag on Nebula. It's an entertaining little reality show where people compete in contests which require a lot of travel, especially in commercial aircraft.

I've noticed that they are really really traveling a lot for a frivolous reason and having a huge carbon footprint. (Yes I understand that the flights they go on are booked anyway and would fly if they weren't on them, sort of).

During the show they sometimes use a graphic to show the travel distance and then also mention that they are using Gold Standard carbon offsets (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gold_Standard_(carbon_offset_standard)

I've read a bit about carbon credits and carbon offsets before. I think it seems like a bit of a boondoggle to let people with money greenwash their activities. Has anyone here researched this and come up with a different conclusion?

I think maybe this is a very newbie question to ask on this Tildes group.

The November 2024 Backlog Burner event is officially over!

Over the course of the month of November, 17 participants moved 136 games out of their backlogs.

There were 9 bingo wins from:

• u/aphoenix
• u/AugustusFerdinand
• u/CannibalisticApple
• u/CrazyProfessor02
• u/Eidolon
• u/Evie
• u/kfwyre
• u/SingedFrostLantern
• u/Wes

Also, a big thank you to ALL who participated in the event, whether that was by playing games or joining in conversations.

It has been an absolute blast doing this with everyone. Thank you all for participating.

Use this topic to post your final bingo cards, give recaps of your games, and share any thoughts you have on the event itself.

See you again for the next Backlog Burner in May 2025!

Statistics

• We averaged 8.0 games per person and 31.7 games per week.
• There were 245 comments posted across 5 different topics.
• Two games were played twice: Hades and Monster Hunter Wilds
• We played games that started with every letter of the alphabet except Q.

Highlights

The following highlights were aggregated from participants. Thank you to those of you who wrote in! I'm sharing these as written, though I did make some minor edits to maintain anonymity.

• u/Wes made a great bingo site that works really well for this event.

• It's touching that u/Wes took the time to respond to nearly everyone. He really made this feel like a community.

• A special mention for @Wes, who seems to have read and thoughtfully replied to every single writeup this month, which was very kind (and I really liked their writeup of Praey for the Gods).

• I love the evolution of the Bingo card over the past several events, and I really liked this form.

• There were so many great entries that I enjoyed reading this time around, actually, and I really wanted to keep trying games that other people tried.

• @SingedFrostLantern for their hole-in-one golf

• The highlight for the whole event to me was @SingedFrostLantern's hole-in-one and the wonderful writeup that went with the game.

• My favourite writeup had to be @SingedFrostLantern with their Keylocker Hole in One, a fun little exercise that put me onto a new game that (regrettably) went straight back into the backlog.

• @JCPhoenix for creating full video reviews for many of his entries

• @Eidolon's Neverwinter Nights for bringing the classics back

• @kfwyre for Journey to the Savage Planet, and finally getting to be the dog

• u/kfwyre completely missing the joke

• @Evie, with basically every write-up she did. Dead Space, Prey, and Outer Wilds were all very good.

• @CannibalisticApple with Lost in Blue, finally tackling the game cartridge lost somewhere in a closet

• @J-Chiptunator with four unique console selections

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.

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!

There was a thread about shows with a great beginning and a comment in the thread made me want to ask, what about the opposite? Shows with a really satisfying ending that feels like they wrapping things up in a satisfying way?

A pretty quick work trip has been planned. I will fly into Heathrow Saturday morning. I'll have until Sunday evening to get to Warwick. I'll be in Warwick for 5 days before flying back out the next Saturday.

I'm looking for any general advice but also if there is anything specific to the following:

• I'm going to book my own hotel in London the Saturday night I fly in. Saturday and Sunday are essentially my "tourist" days. Where is good to stay? Not too concerned with price.
• I'm taking a train to Warwick and mostly have that figured out but is there an app or pass that I should add to my Apple wallet for transit around London?
• I like museums of all types. Are there any in particular I should check out?
• Any classic pubs or restaurants I should try to get to?
• Once the week starts I don't think I'll have much time to do touristy stuff and I won't have a car. Any recommendations on things around Warwick/Birmingham that I can get to some evenings via train or bus?

I've made a strong effort toward intentional news exposure by trying to limit the times I run across news articles. This has "minimized" my exposure to the times when I specifically look to read news sources.

I'd be curious to know if anyone here is accomplishing something similar by filtering out Tildes tags and, if so, what does your list look like? Seems to be a hard balance between quieting the unwanted news posts and not limiting exposure to posts and articles I'd like to see.

With the recent news about Synapse, I am a little on edge with the safety of my money. I am currently living in France for school, and am hoping to immigrate here permanently. All of my savings is in USD, so I need a way to easily and cheaply convert between USD and EUR, and be able to spend EUR locally. After a ton of research, I decided to move almost all of my banking to Wise. They don't offer traditional banking features like in-person branches or checks, but I didn't use those anyway. I can get a local bank number in any of the many countries they support. The savings account APY is insanely high (higher than I have seen from even the best high yield savings accounts. I have a debit card that allows me to spend directly from any one of my bank account currencies, and auto convert to other supported currencies. And the USD account is insured by FDIC passthrough insurance.

In the thread about the Synapse collapse, people were saying that passthrough FDIC insurance doesn't always mean that the customer's money is actually insured. And apparently some fintech services will just lie about what is covered by FDIC insurance. I am not a lawyer, and I have no idea how to validate Wise's claims about passthrough FDIC insurance.

I was recently able to open a France bank account, which was surprisingly difficult. (To open a bank account you need proof of address, like a cell phone or electricity bill. I don't pay for utilities in my school apartment, and to get a cell phone plan I need a bank account. That was fun to try and navigate.) I have these bank accounts currently: my Wise account with US USD, Belgium EUR, and UK GBP, a US Credit Union account, and a French EUR bank account. My US credit union and French banks give a very low or zero APY, so keeping my money in my Wise accounts is preferable for that reason. But I also can't afford to loose all my savings if Wise collapses. My question is this: Is Wise safe enough for general money storage, or should I use it just for converting between currencies and keeping a small amount for spending? If Wise isn't safe, what about another similar product? I have heard of Revolut, but I didn't do much research since Wise seemed better for my use case.

Tildes is a very serious site, where we discuss very serious matters like chrome, users and wicked. Tags culled from the highest voted topics from the last seven days, if anyone was researching.

But one of my favourite tags happens to be offbeat! Taking its original inspiration from Sir Nils Olav III, this thread is looking for any far-fetched offbeat stories lurking in the newspapers. It may not deserve its own post, but it deserves a wider audience!

Only a few days left!

Post your current bingo cards.
Continue updating us on your games!
Finish your Backlog Burning by December 1st!

Quick links:

• Backlog Bingo Site
• Week 1 Discussion and Event Guidelines
• Week 2 Discussion
• Week 3 Discussion
• Week 4 Discussion

Week 4 Recap

10 participants played 9 bingo cards and moved 27 games out of their backlogs!

• 4 people played Flow bingo cards
• 5 people played Flux bingo cards
• 1 person played free choice

There were FIVE bingo wins.

Congratulations to:

• u/aphoenix
• u/CrazyProfessor02
• u/Evie
• u/kfwyre
• u/Wes

Thus far, a total of 114 games have been played for the November 2024 Backlog Burner.

Week 4 Game List:

• Assemble With Care
• Between Horizons
• Card Shark
• Crying Suns
• Duskers
• Encased
• Europa Universalis IV
• Gearshifters
• Girls Like Robots
• Hardspace: Shipbreaker
• Hourglass
• Keylocker
• Lara Croft and the Guardian of Light
• METAL GEAR SOLID V: THE PHANTOM PAIN
• Mighty Switch Force! Collection
• Outer Wilds
• Pattern
• Pistol Whip
• Ragnarock
• Spiritfarer
• Star Citizen
• Sticky Business
• Tank Team
• The Stanley Parable: Ultra Deluxe
• UpGun
• Warhammer: Vermintide 2
• Xenoblade Chronicles X