Have you watched any movies recently you want to discuss? Any films 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.

Hello Tildutes!

I have an elderly relative (91) who spends a lot of time alone in her house. I was thinking it would be nice to do an offbeat bonding activity in town somewhere to relax her.

I’m looking for suggestions on things she might enjoy, ideally something interactive but low-stakes.

Requirements/notes:

• Something one can do in a place like Newark, Wilmington, or maybe Philadelphia.
• She can walk and stand (her cane helps), but not too fast or for too long. She would need to sit.
• She can see alright with her glasses and can hear you with hearing aids, but not from a distance.
• She is astute and can follow conversations just fine, thought it can take a moment for her to put together her thoughts.
• I’d like to get her out of the house—managing her own living space is stressful and she is more relaxed when she does not feel obliged to be hostly.
• I would like this to be calming or relaxing or refreshing for her. She has some obsessive/compulsive habits and I kind of want her to zen out more. Or just have fun—she’s often worrying.

Some ideas I had (input/feedback/additional suggestions welcome):

• Some sort of guided meditative or zen garden-type relaxation thing, but suitable for a kinda tired senior with OCD. I don’t know what to look for exactly. Maybe even something a little New Age. She is nominally Quaker and I would say a good-natured and open-minded person.
• She mentioned once that her dream job was to be an artist. I was thinking about an abstract painting session at a studio where they provide all the materials. Some way for her to let out her inner Jackson Pollock?
• I thought about a spa day. Do they have specialists who work with seniors? She has some aches and pains but is obviously fragile and extremely unused to being “treated.” She might have to overcome some… guilt (?) for being attended to.
• Some sort of guided cultural experience—but maybe more engaging than walking around a museum? She is well-traveled and remains interested in world cultures. She used to be a teacher of English and French, spent a considerable amount of time volunteering in Mexico (before it was developed), and seems to often appreciate learning about cultural things on Wikipedia or in magazines.
• She seems to be quite pleased with animals, at least cats and dogs. I considered going to a cat cafe but, having been in those before, I know the animals are not always accessible. Are puppy cafes a thing? Indoor petting zoos?

In contrast it would be unsuitable for us to play any sort of competitive game, or to do something requiring a lot of physical strength or dexterity, or anything that would be emotionally overwhelming.

If you have experiences of activities or programs that might be fulfilling to my relative, I would love to hear them!

My goal is mostly just for her to have a nice time for that day. If I can get her to be more relaxed generally, that’s great too.

Thank you!

I didn't "get" the horse thing

Like some (most?) people, I looked at horse people and wondered "why". My Mum is a horse person, she'd rave about how much she loved her horse, but the words never really meant much to me. I always empathised with my Dad who, like me, found things like motorbikes and tractors more interesting and fun.
I thought, why would you want to invest time, energy and money into this 500+ kg animal which, as far as I could tell, didn't do much other than stand completely still all day and eat grass?
And then there's the actual riding, horses are animals, they are famous for getting scared of things such as a puddle, a plastic bag and the wind. Why would I not just use a reliable thing like a bike or car and master that? I honestly couldn't think of anything worse than wanting to go on a trek somewhere and your dumbass horse going "nah I don't like that brush" and you having to take a detour. It sounds frustrating!

So I tried horse riding

I started dating someone who was also a horse person, my Mum is a horse person and I felt like I was both missing something and also maybe it would be good for my relationship. So I thought, fuck it, why not let's give it a go. A new hobby is always a good thing.
My initial thoughts were luke warm. It was difficult as hell, which probably was the main thing that kept my interest. I feel confident getting on any machine and learning the controls in an afternoon, but a horse was like learning to drive again, but worse because each time I went to learn the car had a different opinion that day.
I felt like I struggled. I got laughed at and I laughed with the people at the stables as kids the age of 10 or 12 were running circles around me.
I could go one day and feel like I had it, the horse would listen and I knew what I was doing only to go back the day later and struggle to get the thing to go forward.
It took a year, minimum because it's hard to really put a finger on when it clicked, to actually sit on a horse and consistently get basic forward, stop and turn, never mind everything else. And I swear to god there is a lot of everything else.

Horse riding is really complicated

A horse, as mentioned, is a real living breathing animal. What that guy had for breakfast today is going to effect your ride today. You don't get that on a motorbike.
I'm writing this section before I even get as far as owning a horse too, so bare in mind these are all riding school horses, not my own.
So you sit on a horse and you know the mechanical signals to move the animal the way you want. I won't go into detail. As a rider, you have to both read the animal, as you would a person in a social setting, and also set the tone on the horse too. By sitting on that horse and giving clear, no nonsense instructions, the animal also builds trust with you too. Both on a momentary and a long term basis.
This means that, you could sit on a horse and give it the right mechanical cues, but the horse will go "nah" or it half ass it. As a rider, it take so, so much practice to learn how to pick up on these cues and also correct them and, even better, avoid them in the first place! And it's obviously even harder when you are learning at a stable and you aren't sure you are going to get the same horse every lesson.
OK, still with me? Because so far we've sat on a horse.
The horse can spook, the horse can be lazy, the horse can be really energetic, the horse can be stronger on one "rein" (the direction of travel around a riding school) than the other, the horses tackle may be uncomfortable for the horse, the horse may have sore feet, the horse might have a really boucy trot or a slow canter or goes straight into gallop from walk. The variables are impossible to list. As a software engineer, the thought of trying to ride a horse programaticially sounds nigh on impossible. It's all vibes.
And that's part one of this massive post, it's all vibes.
It's the vibes. You spend years learning how to vibe check a half ton dog so you know ahead of time it's probably not to pleased about the upcoming bush which is a slightly different colour and you can do something about it.

Horses are weird animals

So far in this post, I've been learning to ride and I've started to understand, ok, there's a lot going on there. I can trot, I can move the horse but I can't really do much with that beyond go for a nice walk really. There's a lot more to do.
Around this point, thanks to the aforementioned partner, I was gifted a horse. He's a handsome quarter horse named Brego (yes, named after that Brego).
I was told "Brego is lazy, he'd rather stand there than throw you off, perfect for learning" I was dubious.
I met this horse, he didn't say much, or do much. I can read dogs, but this man was giving me nothing.
Needless to say, I started riding him and it was a rocky start. He lived up to expectations and he refused to go out of sight of the house, and I didn't have the skillset to know what to do with him.
I got a horse trainer over and she gave me the tools, which springboarded Brego and I off into the woods for some adventures together.
It's taken another year, a lot of questions, getting thrown off (not Brego as promised) and many, many neck scratches but I'm getting it now.
They don't really communicate like other animals, a lot of it is silent and very subtle. Posture, ears, eyes, jaws and being tense are all little signs of horse language.
Nowadays Brego will see me across the field and push all the other horses out the way to see me, then just stand there. He just likes to hang out with the boys, you know?
So that's part two, the animal bond and it's a great feeling! It is like a big, weird dog. They all are full of this bizzare personality that horse people keep trying to put into buckets, but it doesn't really seem to always work.

Putting it together

Having an animal you love and trust, who also loves and trusts you, through hard work ontop of the honestly rediculous amount of skill and patience required to vibe check a horse and ride it is a huge payoff.
Riding a bike or car feels to me like refining a process. I can learn it reasonably quickly and then it's years of practice to get various experience and learn various niches.
Horse riding it seems like there is always more to learn, I don't know how to format it in this post without it going on for thousands of lines.
Just consider learning to ride, learning to jump and learning dressage on one horse, then having to apply that to another with a different temperament. There's obviously a lot of crossover, and you can learn how to ride a horse with a similar personality but every horse is unique, so you're learning how to adapt and thrive with each different animal.

Everything else

I didn't know where to put this but I wanted to call out the sheer volume of knowledge in the hobby/sport. I was so unaware of this before I started to learn.
I already mentioned sitting on a horse, going forward and the intricacies there. But there is so. Much. More.
The basics, like walking, trotting, canter, gallop, turning. Multiply that by the horse itself, riding a lazy horse is a different skillset to riding a wild beast with no stop peddle. I've seen people try to bucket horses in around 6 to 10 different types. Like I said above, I'm not sure about the buckets but these are by people who have more experience than me so maybe there's something there.
Then you've got more advanced riding sports, jumping, dressage, cross coutry, racing. Obviously not everyone is going to learn and get into all of these but they are their own sports which I haven't even touched yet.
Then on top of that you have non-riding skills. That is the community is very keen you understand and you are comfortable with horse care.
We're talking stable care with mucking out, water and food, brushing before and after, tacking up and down, taking care of the tack, hoove care. To some extent there's other stuff like teeth, vaccinations, quality of life, etc etc.
I'm listing stuff and these all have depth I don't understand, there's stuff I don't know about because I keep getting told in a matter of a fact way "oh did you not know about blah?"

Horses are cool

They are massive dummies but they are cool. I used to think horse riding was a sport for lazy people.
But lord, I feel like I have to apologise! It's so damn hard and uses so much of my brain that I realize it was me on my motorbike that was the lazy one all along!
I love learning and I feel like I learn all the time riding. The fact the fatty I'm sitting on likes me too is a good feeling too.

Feel free to ask any questions and please share your thoughts and experiences with horses!
Are/were you also like me?
Are you a horse person?
Do you think you'd ever try horse riding?

I might be a little early in posting this thread but I am personally beginning to stress a lot about the holidays - have been for like a month, even, to some degree.

So I wanted to make this thread as a safe venting space.

Is there anything specific about the holidays that might affect or trigger you?

How are you?

Feel very free to vent!

Hey folks,

Since we're not reading a book this month, I thought it might be nice to have a short retrospective of the last year instead.

As some of you may know, the book club originally started back in 2023 with a "pop-up event" hosted by @cfabbro. We read Roadside Picnic after a few users expressed interest in the title. The discussion had some great comments, and that helped lay the groundwork for making the book club a regular feature.

A few months later, @boxer_dogs_dance kicked the book club off proper in January 2024 with the first nomination thread. Cloud Atlas was selected based on voter interest and ideal library wait times. Despite being a difficult first book, participation was still high and has remained so for each month thereafter.

Boxer has since organized numerous nomination and voting threads, helped establish our format and rules, and has created many discussion prompts for each book. Huge thanks to you for the efforts, @boxer_dogs_dance!

Onto some stats for 2024:

• Books Read: 9
• Total Pages: 3,277 (average of 364 per book)
• Unique Contributors: 59 (or 140 total, when counting returning participants)
• Total Comments: 476 (across 121 top-level threads)
• Nominations Submitted: 102
• Votes Cast: 508
• Repeat Nominations: 11 titles were nominated twice, and 6 were eventually chosen. Perseverance pays off!

The list of past discussions can be found here:

• March: Cloud Atlas
• April: Piranesi
• May: The Dispossessed
• June: Project Hail Mary
• July: Ocean at the End of the Lane
• Aug: Small Gods
• Sep: This is How You Lose the Time War
• Oct: Kindred
• Nov: The City We Became

A big thank you to all who have participated, helped organize, commented, or quietly read along! You folks are what make the Tildes community so great.

So just to be clear, this isn't a nomination thread or an official post. I just thought it might be nice to look back, recap our progress, and maybe touch on some of the best picks from the last year.

What were your favourite reads from this past year? What are you looking forward to most in 2025?

See you all in January when we kick off 2025 with Kim Stanley Robinson's Ministry for the Future!

Hello, my friend recently lost their laptop (long story) and has kindly asked me to help them out to find a replacement.

I've had success asking here before, so I would be very grateful for any help or direction.

Here are the main criteria, based on what we've discussed.

• Can compile LaTeX.
• Can run Jupyter notebooks, Python, and the like.
• Can play non-AAA games like Binding of Isaac, Balatro, Dofus.
• Can play YouTube videos, and Twitch streams. (Not picky about screen quality.)
• Maximum 13" screen, can be smaller I think?
• As light as possible (a tablet + keyboard combo might be worth it).
• USB port for transferring files (to their institution's ancient printers)
• Ports to connect a mouse, gamepad, etc.
• Bluetooth, wifi, webcam
• Lasts at least four hours on battery (if not gaming)
• Under 1000 euros preferably (willing to make exceptions if you think it is worth it)

Here are the nice-to-haves:

• HDMI slot
• Long-lasting battery
• Nice mic and webcam
• Nice screen quality
• Repairable

Don't care about:

• Stylus
• SD card reader

My friend is mostly used to Windows but I think if I could make a strong case for Ubuntu then they might be open to it if that's relevant.

Thanks for reading!

—

Edit: Thanks everyone. We ultimately settled for an IdeaPad 2-in-1. Fingers crossed that they’re happy with that.

I don't know how appropriate this topic will be or how uncomfortable some users will be addressing it. But I noticed a switch online in the usage of previously determined slurs.

When I was a child in the '00s, it was pretty common for people to say the "r-word" as well as refer to things as "gay" whenever they meant stupid or bad. I remember ad campaigns to stop the latter from occurring (one commercial featuring Hillary Duff and another featuring Wanda Sykes). But both of those things went away as we got deeper into the 2010s.

The Obama and, especially, the Trump years were marked by increased progressive language. I do think the turn was in 2016 when using these terms became widely unacceptable. Even two years earlier the hit song Fancy by Iggy Azalea featuring Charli XCX contained the lyric: "That my flow r***** each beat dear, departed."

I think a lot of the hyper-political correctness of 2016 and onwards was a response to the Trump presidency. I think people on the progressive left felt the need to be hyper-vigilant about that. Once the Biden administration happened these rigid beliefs began to relax.

I'll use a few examples of this shift involving a network TV show, to take this conversation into a more concrete real world. Saturday Night Live.

Shane Gillis, a very non politically correct comedian was hired as part of the cast of SNL in 2019. Lorne Michaels hired him to appeal to a more conservative crowd or to at least not be so catering to its liberal demographic. Gillis, who is largely not a conservative, was caught in a scandal following his casting news. Clips from his podcast surfaced of him making fun of Asians and mocking their accents. Gillis was shortly fired.

Fast forward to this year: Shane Gillis hosts SNL. Not only that, in his opening monologue he says the r-word.

Another SNL adjacent example. Matt Healy, lead singer of the 1975, appeared on The Adam Friedland Show podcast. The podcast, originally called Cumtown, is known for its non-PC humor. Healy participated in jokes making fun of Ice Spice and laughed at the host's more racy humor. Scandal surrounded Healy, who was dating Swift at the time, and he was essentially "canceled." Except, he was immediately the musical guest on SNL not long after the scandal (they were the musical spot for Jenna Ortega's episode). If this was 2019, The 1975 likely would not have been invited to be the musical guests, and/or the host of the episode (in this case Ortega) would have been pressured by her PR team to make some sort of post disavowing their inclusion. This didn't happen. In fact this year Jenna Ortega criticized political correctness herself

The last SNL example I wanted to give was in Ariana Grande's recent episode a joke was included where Grande calls someone a pathetic little gay guy, followed by her saying "I meant gay as in stupid and bad" which was very well received on all corners of the internet.

So what happened here? My perception might be warped since in late 2022 I began using the subreddits r/redscarepod and r/theadamfriedlandshow where this type of humor and the usage of these terms was already normal. So it was a little odd to me when these began gaining steam in the outside world.

If it really was just a response to Biden's presidency I feel like we would now be returning to the hyper-political correctness of the 2010s during Trump's administration. But that doesn't seem to be happening.

Maybe political correctness fell out of style, and that will be the case for another five to ten years when it becomes fashionable again.

like anyone, I use a calendar app, (my choice of app is ProtonCalendar as I will install only open-source apps)

anyways, I will make a reminder even for myself, let's say 2:00 PM tomorrow, I want to pay a specific bill.

so 2 pm tomorrow comes around, and I am not at home, so what I will do when I get the notification is to not swipe it away but leave it in the notification section of my Google Pixel and I will only swipe it away once I have actually done it. and if I dont get to it that day, I will go to my computer and schedule that event for another day so I don't lose track of it.

problem is, more than 1, I have accidentally swiped away a notification without meaning to and sometimes I had like 3-4 different ones and I had to go through the history of what notifications I had swiped to make sure I didnt swipe away anything too urgent. but I'd much rather just not be able to swipe away a to-do I haven't completed yet until I could check a box indicating I had completed it.

I have considered getting a to-do notes app, but I really like seeing these sorts of reminders on a graphical calendar interface.

any suggestion for what I should do or do I just need to be really careful to not swipe away notification and there's no other option for me?

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 is more of an incoherent chain of consciousness from a lot of the thoughts I've had about being online over the past 20~ years. I welcome discussion and thoughts about the points I make in this post, optimism is appreciated as I've almost none left for this. (For context for the older folks on this forum, I'm not going to be getting into pre-2006 internet as I wasn't around to experience much of it. I know the internet has a very rich and storied past from before that period of time, but the vast vast vast majority of people didn't "get online" until after this period of time)

As we hurtle headlong into 1/4th of the way through the century, I've been looking back on the earlier years of the internet and missing a lot of it. Sure there were a lot of rough edges and problems, but I'd argue that would be true of any period of time for any large group of people. One thing that always stuck out to me in the past was how much the used to reward innovation, creativity, and hard work. Youtube, Twitch, Reddit, even platforms like Twitter and Facebook; they all felt a lot smaller and a lot more approachable for the amateur with some ambition. So many of the success stories you heard from around that era were just seemingly normal guys and gals who had some talent and drive and put in effort and made it big. Obviously there's some confirmation bias there, you don't hear the 1000 stories from the people who tried and failed, but I don't think you can deny that the "barrier to entry" was a lot lower back then in pretty much every field. I've gotten to know the founder of the company I work for, and he started it out of his house with a few friends from college and created what would be considered today to be a pretty basic product, and they managed to turn it into a 200~+ million dollar business in just over 10 years. Most of the stories I've heard are like that, just a guy or a couple guys sitting down and working on something over the course of a few months and striking it big off of it.

Now let's get to the point of this post, to me it feels like those success stories have slowed to a trickle, if not stopped completely. The amount of competition there is in every field is insane. Are you a fairly talented digital artist looking to make a little extra cash on the side? 10-15 years ago, you could easily get commissions for things like Twitch emotes, personal portraits, (drawing furry OCs), etc. Nowadays I don't know a single amateur artist who can find a reliable source of clients who are willing to pay any reasonable amount of money, and this was before AI took over the low hanging fruit for pennies on the dollar.

I'm going to continue to draw on personal experience because that's the only field I feel like I can speak with some authority on. In the Youtube/Twitch scene, being a reasonably skilled video editor used to mean that you could make a decent (if meager) living and build up your reputation by editing for large creators. Editors became known for their styles and even became mini-celebrities in the communities that they were a part of. Now it feels like every large Youtuber/Streamer has a team of faceless, nameless production staff that handle all of the video management, thumbnails, analytics, etc. There's no personality anymore, there's no individuality; you're part of the business, a cog in the machine. The .00001% of people who manage to crawl their way to the top of creating videos or streaming content have hyper-optimized the process so finely that there is quite literally no room for a newcomer to enter the space and attract a crowd.

I'll expand on that last paragraph a bit because I know that its not really 100% true, I see Youtubers and streamers every single day that I've quite literally never heard of before, and they have millions of subscribers; the platforms have never been more diverse. But one thing they all seem to have in common is that the production value and effort required to make their content is 100x the amount it was 10 years ago. You can't just put a handycam on a 10 dollar tripod in your bedroom and make it big on the internet anymore note: this is explicitly ignoring Tik Tok because I have no interest/experience with that platform, and from everything that I've heard, "tik tok fame" is so incredibly fleeting and transient that someone can go from being a celebrity to a nobody literally overnight. It's the tabloid magazines of internet content, just a flash in the pan for the vapid and dopamine-starved. It also seems like one of the most toxic and manipulated platforms out there, quite literally millions of people putting out actual trash into the ecosystem, throwing anything at the wall to see if it will stick. (for anyone who thinks I'm being too harsh on TikTok, I'm referring to the part of the platform that's all astroturfed sponsored trash like "omg check out this new water bottle I found that filters out negative energy in your water before you drink it" and the 1,000s of other scams that infest that godforsaken app. That TikTok rant got a little off-track but it just makes me so frustrated to see how hyper-consumerism, low effort, and morally bankrupt the "creators" of that platform are. It's all about the "grindset" and "hustling to make a quick buck." As long as you get your bag, who gives a fuck right?

To circle back to some more context for why I'm making this post, I'm very active in the freelance/contractor space. A lot of my friends are/were creatives, freelancers, contractors from all sorts of fields; artists, sound designers, voice actors, video editors, website developers, app programmers, audio engineers, etc. I was talking to one of my friends about some of the projects they have been working on recently, and one of them was editing down a podcast for these two hustle-culture bros. The type of people who offer those $5,000 paid online courses on how to make "passive income" online; you know the type, I know you do. And the surprising thing to me was that these guys were actually "successful" they had suckers enrolling in their courses, they were making good money. You want to know what the one of the "hot tips for passive income" that they were using? They made AI generated "product review" videos on Youtube that would scrape Amazon product listings, and put together thousands of automated useless garbage videos a day and pump them onto any platform they could monetize. You ever try to look up a review for a fairly niche product to see if its any good, and all you can find is AI generated trash? Yeah, these are the types of people responsible. They have absolutely no morals, no respect for their audience, they will do anything it takes to make .0001 cents and completely flood the platforms they're on with worthless garbage making it unusable. It's the online equivalent of an industrial factory discharging thousands of gallons of toxic waste into the ocean a day to make a few hundred bucks from some boomers who can't tell that a video is worthless.

I use this as an example because this is happening everywhere, in every field. It's not always AI, its not always worthless trash; but the almost universal truth everywhere I see is that every possible niche online is absolutely packed to the brim with a million other people and bots who will do whatever you do for much less money and time. Competition for human attention and money has completely exponentially skyrocketed and there is quite simply not enough to even begin to go around.

If you stuck around through this rant and it resonated with you in any way, feel free to share your thoughts and opinions below. I ask that you don't just solely comment based on the title without reading at least some of the post. This is definitely coming from a negative headspace and I'm well aware that my personal experience may be skewed, but its so hard not to be cynical and jaded.

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!

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!

Hello friends, and thank you in advance for any help on this topic.

I am looking for an android keyboard that does not have emoji, stickers or gifs, but also has long press options for special characters like dashes, slashes and colons etc.

Searching online for variants of "no emoji keyboard," only floods my results with the opposite and it's beyond frustrating!

I realize that the answer is likely right under my nose and I'm just missing it for whatever reason.

I would glady pay money for such an option if only I could find one.

I'm sorry if this question is silly or posted in the wrong thread, but I'm at my wits end.

Again, thank you for any help or redirection to my query!

Cheers!

This is the fourth of an ongoing series of book discussions here on Tildes. We are discussing Project Hail Mary. Our next book will be Ocean at the End of the Lane around the end of July.

I don't have a particular format in mind for this discussion, but I will post some prompts and questions as comments to get things started. You're not obligated to respond to them or vote on them though. So feel free to make your own top-level comment for whatever you wish to discuss, questions you have of others, or even just to post a review of the book you have written yourself.

For latecomers, don't worry if you didn't read the book in time for this Discussion topic. You can always join in once you finish it. Tildes Activity sort, and "Collapse old comments" feature should keep the topic going for as long as people are still replying.
And for anyone uninterested in this topic please use the Ignore Topic feature on this so it doesn't keep popping up in your Activity sort, since it's likely to keep doing that while I set this discussion up, and once people start joining in.

Maybe you ended up on an email chain you weren’t supposed to. Maybe you stumbled across a gift from your partner in its hiding place. Maybe you heard a friend talking about you without them realizing you were there?

This can be about something serious, funny, sad, lighthearted, etc. Anything goes.

Tell us the story: What did you see/hear? How did it impact you/others? How did you feel about it?

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?

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?

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.

I remember this one from the 80's which was viral some time ago for being non-offensive (for its time). There is some outdated language of course.

After years of regular meetings at a local bar, one of a trio of friends stunned his companions by announcing that he was really a woman trapped in a man's body and had finally decided to have a sex-change operation.

Months later, she reappeared at the old haunt and greeted her friends. Both men congratulated her on her appearance and began questioning her about the most painful aspect of the grueling operation.

"Lopping off your dick must have been the worst part," one said, wincing.

"Ummm," she pondered. "No, not really."

"Cutting off your balls, then, decided the other.

"No," she said. "That was bad, but not the worst."

"What was worse than that?"

"Getting my salary cut in half."

Have you watched any movies recently you want to discuss? Any films 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.

The lecturer was Sarah C. M. Paine (works at the US Naval War College)
I believe the lecture host was The Heritage Foundation.
The lecture was focused on national strategies and motivations.
It touched on the differences between nations she described as maritime powers vs. geographic powers.
The part I'm most interested in watching again was her explanation of the compounding effects of economic sanctions over years/decades.

I believe this interview with Dwarkesh Patel touches on a lot of similar material

However I am 99% certain she delivered a very similar talk to The Heritage Foundation and the person I want to watch the video puts a lot more intellectual value into The Heritage Foundation than they do Dwarkesh Patel...

I'm also pretty sure I saved the heritage foundation video in one of my youtube playlists, but ... it's gone without a trace, and I'm finding no mention of it on The Heritage Foundation website now either.

Thanks and please let me know if I should post this under a more suitable topic.

Hey everyone,

Growing up, I loved playing board games with friends and family—it was a big part of my life. Now, I’ve moved away, and my girlfriend and some of her family (who live with us) have zero interest in board games.

I’ve tried classics like Catan, Ticket to Ride, and Codenames, but they’re not into them at all. I’m really craving some board game time, so I’m thinking about branching out to more approachable games.

Does anyone have suggestions for games that are fun and easy to ease non-gamers into without scaring them off? Or maybe I’m just not starting with the right type of games? Any advice is appreciated, thanks!

Edit: I have sent my link to three different people and I am out. Assuming they sign up. However, a lot of people also have invite links that commented. I guess a system would be for the invite-giver to reply to the comment of the invite-receiver to keep track?

—-

I received a link during Thanksgiving that lets me invite several people to a free trial of Kagi.

I tried convincing friends to try it out but most of them were not even interested in a free trial to a paid search engine.

If any of you are interested, please let me know.

I'll give you my link in private and you can register yourself to the free trial.

Posting just in case people are on the same boat as me.

--

Also, I hope it's appropriate to start a topic on this?
Let me know if this is frowned upon.

I find myself very bored at work. I have nothing on my plate to do, and I have exhausted everything I can think of doing on my phone. Browsing Tildes, and a little reddit though I hate Reddit now, making spreadsheets on Google drive for hobbies, catching up on any news, playing a dumb phone game, watching YouTube (though this is much harder and I can only do something audio based when I sneak away to a private corner which I can only do for limited amounts of time), browsing LinkedIn for other jobs/career path.

I'm at a loss for what else to do. I'm at the point where I have many hours in my day with nothing to do, and boss doesn't care I'm on my phone as long as my shit is done, which it is.

Obviously can't do much video watching or actual video game playing or anything requiring audio.
Also phone games have to be vertical so it isn't obvious I'm playing a game if a client walks in. Any suggestions?

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.

Hey all, I have a root canal shortly, and I thought I'd distract myself from that stress with some things to ponder.

What are your best topics that you can regularly discuss or debate but have little real life concerns? Someone whose name I forget shared wondering what sort of food/rations aliens would bring with them.

Help me lower my anxiety and/or distract me from my pain. Or just ponder yourself.

EDIT: root canal successful, but I still would love a lighthearted "what could you discuss at Christmas that isn't politics" thread so thanks y'all

We are halfway to Christmas, so I want to hear about peoples movie related Christmas traditions and favorites. I know many people have a certain movie or movies they have to watch every Christmas, or maybe just a favorite Christmas themed movie that means something special. Perhaps something completely non-Christmasy but just something you happen to enjoy rewatching every December.

Do you like the classics such as It's a Wonderful Life or Miracle on 34th Street?

Do you laugh at the burglars in Home Alone every Christmas?

Action movies with a Christmas element like Lethal Weapon and Die Hard?

Or perhaps completely new favorites like The Holdovers?

Perhaps just whatever is being rerun for the 100th time on tv? Which apparently is Love Actually here...

I’m looking to explore a bit so i’d love to hear your thoughts. These are the items that make my kitchen special. I mainly cook Asian style food (Chinese, Japanese), so my ingredients trend in that direction. This is a combination of ingredients, condiments, and even snacks that bring joy to me.

If there’s a particular special brand that you think is extra special, i’d love to hear it too!

• Mirin (in Toronto there is a small store that makes homemade mirin)
• Yuzu ponzu sauce (same supplier)
• Furikake / shichimi
• Korean seasoned salt
• Perilla Oil (an amazing nuttier substitute to sesame oil) - great on subtle dishes like zaru soba
• Szechuan peppercorns - amazing to put into the mortar with other aromatics
• Chinese cured pork belly - wow how immensely flavorful - I like the five spice one. Small cubes makes fried rice sing
• Oyster sauce (two ladies LKK not panda LKK)
• Nem Chua
• Good butter (Kerrygold or St Brigid)
• Sambal Oelek
• Pandan leaves and frozen chopped lemongrass
• Maldon salt
• Frozen cheap chocolate squares (Swiss Delice)
• Lao Gan Ma black bean chili crisp
• Salted yolk potato chips, Honey Butter chips
• Korean seaweed sheets for stock along with the little anchovies
• Frozen unshelled clam meat - just throw a handful into anything like pasta or stir fries. So cheap and so good!
• Chinese cooking wine
• Perilla leaves (gganib)
• when I can find them, Alphonso, Kesar, or Colombian Sugar Mangos
• Concord or Muscat grapes
• fatty Biltong (Florence meats is best)
• wavy soba (for some reason I like the mouth feel)
• frozen special handmade ramen
• Calabrian peppers
• Peperoncinos (I like the ones from Terroni)
• Peruvian sweety drop peppers
• Thai kefir leaves (frozen)
• Thai birdseye peppers
• Vietnamese veggies (rau ram) and Thai basil mmm
• fermented tofu bricks - kinda smelly but adds a slickness and sourness when stir frying Chinese veggies
• Korean coque d’asses (Japanese ones are a bit dry for me). Great frozen as well.
• mango gummy candy from cocoa land lot 100
• Chinese snow pear
• kewpie mayo (creepy baby)
• kozlik triple crunch mustard
• Vietnamese fried onions (need to figure out what brand is best)
• affordable soy sauce (made in Japan ones - yamasa or kikkoman)
• fermented black pepper (I like the Trader Joe’s ones - I put it into ramen broth)
• kecap manis (abc brand) for making Indonesian stuff
• Hungarian Hunters sausages - great snacks that last

I've been having intermittent problems with selecting text. I'm not sure which software it is in, but it is certainly in Slack and IntelliJ. The text I select will often/sometimes not stay selected once I lift my finger up. It will take several times to make the selection last, sometimes swiping in a different direction.

Is it my mouse or the software?

My mouse in made by Inland, model RTM098( J10 ). Probably very old.

Hello Tildes! I often find myself intimidated by authors of great sagas, trilogies upon trilogies, and dozens of standalone novels. How do I know which book (or series) to read first?

I've been recommended Terry Pratchett and Brandon Sanderson recently. I've read zero novels by either author. I've also been warned that there is a definitive best place in the canon to start, "and it's this one!" But then someone else interjects and says, "no, it's this one!" followed by passionate reasoning. Okay. If it is really worth starting somewhere in particular, where should I begin?

I'm unlikely to read an author's entire corpus. I just have too many books to read and not enough time. But I'm not opposed to reading longer series if they're really fun. I'd appreciate any input about these authors in particular and this problem in general. Thanks!

Posting for ideas/advice, if anyone has any, as I'm unsure of where else to turn.

I have a VPS (Named "Bucket") I rent and self host a few services on, along with a home server (Named "Vergil") that lives under my basement stairs and I host many more services on. At 2:01 AM today I got a notification from Bucket that my Plex (hosted on Vergil) was down/unreachable. I'm assuming that's when this issue started.

When investigating I found that Plex wasn't down, but Bucket couldn't reach/talk to Vergil. Further investigation showed that it wasn't just Bucket, but nothing can reach/talk to Vergil. At first I thought it was an issue with my router, as I have my gateway set up in IP bypass mode and manage my network via my third party router (UDM-Pro). But after digging through logs looking for any automated blocks from any misclassified intrusion attempts, I realized that none of my attempts were even reaching the router. So I checked the route, and that's where I found what I think is the problem.

Running mtr to route from Vergil to Bucket gives full resolution of the route:

    mtr -rwzbc 10 45.79.209.169
    Start: 2024-12-19T16:49:53-0500
    HOST: Vergil.goose.ws                                                    Loss%   Snt   Last   Avg  Best  Wrst StDev
      1. AS???    192.168.2.1                                                 0.0%    10    0.1   0.1   0.1   0.2   0.0
      2. AS???    192.168.99.254                                             10.0%    10    0.5   0.6   0.4   0.8   0.1
      3. AS7018   45-26-156-1.lightspeed.tukrga.sbcglobal.net (45.26.156.1)   0.0%    10    4.4   3.6   2.0   5.9   1.2
      4. AS7018   107.212.169.24                                              0.0%    10    5.2   3.7   1.6   6.1   1.5
      5. AS7018   12.242.113.31                                               0.0%    10    2.2   3.7   2.2   5.3   1.0
      6. AS7018   12.247.68.178                                               0.0%    10    2.8   3.8   2.2   5.8   1.2
      7. AS20940  ae6.r21.atl01.mag.netarch.akamai.com (23.192.0.94)          0.0%    10    3.2   4.3   2.3   5.7   1.1
      8. AS20940  ae0.r21.atl01.icn.netarch.akamai.com (23.192.0.65)          0.0%    10    3.7   4.1   1.9   6.5   1.5
      9. AS20940  ae1.r21.atl01.ien.netarch.akamai.com (23.207.235.35)        0.0%    10    4.2   3.5   1.9   5.6   1.1
     10. AS20940  ae22.gw3.atl1.netarch.akamai.com (23.203.144.39)            0.0%    10    5.2   5.0   2.4   8.8   2.0
     11. AS???    ???                                                        100.0    10    0.0   0.0   0.0   0.0   0.0
     12. AS???    ???                                                        100.0    10    0.0   0.0   0.0   0.0   0.0
     13. AS???    ???                                                        100.0    10    0.0   0.0   0.0   0.0   0.0
     14. AS63949  bucket.goose.ws (45.79.209.169)

However, routing from Bucket to Vergil does not:

    mtr -rwzbc 10 99.42.115.109
    Start: 2024-12-19T16:49:13-0500
    HOST: Bucket.goose.ws                                                Loss%   Snt   Last   Avg  Best  Wrst StDev
      1. AS???    10.204.3.155                                            0.0%    10    0.2   0.3   0.1   0.8   0.2
      2. AS???    10.204.35.16                                            0.0%    10    0.4   0.4   0.3   0.5   0.1
      3. AS???    10.204.32.2                                             0.0%    10    0.7   9.4   0.4  74.3  23.2
      4. AS63949  lo0-0.gw4.atl1.us.linode.com (74.207.239.106)           0.0%    10    0.7   0.5   0.4   0.7   0.1
      5. AS20940  ae45.r22.atl01.ien.netarch.akamai.com (23.203.144.36)   0.0%    10    0.4   0.4   0.4   0.6   0.1
      6. AS20940  ae4.r22.atl01.mag.netarch.akamai.com (23.192.0.98)      0.0%    10    0.6   0.7   0.6   0.8   0.1
      7. AS20940  ae1.r24.atl01.ien.netarch.akamai.com (23.192.0.103)     0.0%    10    0.5   0.4   0.4   0.6   0.0
      8. AS7018   12.247.68.177                                           0.0%    10    1.0   1.0   0.8   1.2   0.1
      9. AS???    ???                                                    100.0    10    0.0   0.0   0.0   0.0   0.0
     10. AS7018   107.212.169.25                                          0.0%    10    1.4   1.4   1.4   1.5   0.0
     11. AS???    ???

Calling the tier 1 support number for AT&T residential support was very less-than-helpful. They kept on wanting to send a tech out to the house claiming there's an issue with the line. I kindly thanked them for their efforts but gave up, and tried emailing the contact email address for the AT&T datacenter/core router from the WHOIS in that last successful hop of the trace from Bucket to Vergil. I doubt I'll hear anything back, but I'm unsure of who else to turn to/what else to try. I've never seen/experienced a route broken in one direction like this. But I'm unable to access any of my devices/services from outside my house, due to it. Hoping someone has an idea or suggestion?

Edit:

Well, after about 38 hours of this issue, the power went out at my house. My networking equipment is on a UPS, so it did not go down. But when the power returned, the route began resolving again, and I am connectable again. Don't know if an area power outage rebooted some AT&T equipment nearby, I would imagine their stuff is also on UPS. But who knows?

For the non-believer about my route previously being complete:

[goose@Bucket: ~ ] $ mtr -rwzbc 10 99.42.115.109
Start: 2024-12-20T15:20:23-0500                                                        HOST: Bucket.goose.ws                                                        Loss%   Snt   Last   Avg  Best  Wrst StDev
  1. AS???    10.204.3.155                                                    0.0%    10    0.1   0.2   0.1   0.2   0.0
  2. AS???    10.204.35.16                                                    0.0%    10    0.2   0.3   0.2   0.4   0.1
  3. AS???    10.204.32.2                                                     0.0%    10    0.6   1.8   0.4   9.9   2.9
  4. AS63949  lo0-0.gw4.atl1.us.linode.com (74.207.239.106)                   0.0%    10    0.4   2.0   0.3  15.6   4.8
  5. AS20940  ae45.r22.atl01.ien.netarch.akamai.com (23.203.144.36)           0.0%    10    0.4   0.4   0.3   0.5   0.1
  6. AS20940  ae4.r21.atl01.mag.netarch.akamai.com (23.192.0.90)              0.0%    10    0.8   0.7   0.6   0.9   0.1
  7. AS20940  ae0.r24.atl01.ien.netarch.akamai.com (23.192.0.95)              0.0%    10    0.4   0.5   0.4   0.5   0.0
  8. AS7018   12.247.68.177                                                   0.0%    10    0.8   0.9   0.8   1.2   0.1
  9. AS???    ???                                                            100.0    10    0.0   0.0   0.0   0.0   0.0
 10. AS7018   107.212.169.25                                                  0.0%    10    1.4   1.5   1.4   1.6   0.1
 11. AS???    ???                                                            100.0    10    0.0   0.0   0.0   0.0   0.0
 12. AS7018   99-42-115-109.lightspeed.tukrga.sbcglobal.net (99.42.115.109)   0.0%    10    3.6   3.2   2.1   4.9   0.9
[goose@Bucket: ~ ] $

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!

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!

Tildes is a very serious site, where we discuss very serious matters like mortality rates, mirror life and hedonic treadmill. Tags culled from the highest voted topics from the last seven days, if anyone was keeping score.

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!

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?

Could be a hobby, could be a new habit.

This year I started using a water flosser! My dental hygiene isn't the greatest and I could count on one hand how many times I flossed in a year, but I read a post saying how someone uses their handheld one in the shower and, yeah, that absolutely clicked for me!

I feel like I have weird sensory issues with using it over the bathroom sink. But in the shower, everything is already wet anyways. I can't believe it's a habit I've been able to keep up for more than half a year now with ease. It's something that I look forward to doing every time I shower. I've even started flossing with regular floss more now because I no longer bleed or feel gross. (I prefloss with the water one first.) Really happy.

I wish I could maintain more habits like that.

I also bought a standing desk and I really love standing and working now, too.

Your Steam Replay for 2024 is now out!

If you're on the mobile app, hit Menu > New & Noteworthy > Steam Replay

Share your link (if you want to) or summarize your results. Tell us all about your most-played games, your year of gaming, and any other thoughts or highlights.

I started playing F2P when they first released it for OSRS years ago, and played some membership when I had GP for a bond back in the day. I'd been slowly working on my account for a few years and was transitioning my account to a new 2FA method when I had something come up at work and completely forgot about it (I would log in once every few months or so to poke around with my account). I came back to my account being banned for botting, and wasn't able to recover it.

I made a new account when Mobile was released, but only played a bit here and there. I mainly would watch people on YouTube with their snowflake ironmen doing insane grinds to get my fix. After chatting with my friends about it, I finally decided to start poking around again and am mainly merching on my F2P account to slowly save up money for bonds when I get some free time to play.

I was curious how many of you play OSRS?
Are you playing an ironman (by the way)?
How long have you been playing?
General OSRS things you enjoy?

My guilty OSRS confession was that I used to sell gold to kids in my school to pay for my WoW subscription (that I played during the summers). Looking back, I would have been able to afford a RuneScape membership year round and sold way more gold since its so much easier to make GP while you're a member.

Cop shows or mysteries, snarky comedies like Golden girls or Mash, Roseanne or Barney Miller, Simpsons yes, South Park no.

Drama is fine if it's not visually problematic for a child.

All recommendations are appreciated

My parents normally give all us adult kids money for Christmas, but this year my mom said she wants to get us actual gifts and asked for wishlists from us. Problem is: I don’t know what to ask for!

So, similar to the Gift Swap topic, I thought we could come up with a list of items that are very good/useful/satifying but also less obvious, for the purposes of making a decent gift idea list.

Note: I don’t want it to be specific to me and my tastes/interests, since I want the whole community to be able to use it too. Share anything you like and think others might like!