I enjoy Tildes a lot for its thoughtful discussion and well curated links. It's a site you can enjoy casually and not get addicted to.

But sometimes you're dealing with a cold, or laying in a hotel room after a long flight, or just feeling lousy, and you start to long for that infinite scroll, dopamine hit, image / video cornucopia. Or really, there are just times I want to laugh at memes, people's drama, etc., until I'm ready to get out of bed and back to the world.

In the old days, we had things like memebase, or early reddit to scratch that itch. But these days social media algorithms have gone nuts. For example, I can't spend five minutes on reddit without finding myself in a racially charged discussion. Platforms like TikTok likewise seem appealing (an endless scroll of silly videos would be great), but again the algorithms are there to highlight conflict and make you miserable. I feel like even if you work hard to curate on these platforms, you're not safe.

So for anyone who feels like me: is there a solution to this? Perhaps a fedeverse instance still small enough to avoid astroturfing. Or non social-media options with a huge amount of content (something like thedailywtf, or hitting random on a quality web comic). I would love to hear about what you enjoy when you're looking for internet junk food.

I'm building a fun bit of code that uses public APIs to track the location of unusual orbital objects. Including the Tesla Roadster still drifting somewhere between us and Mars, the "Trash Bag object" orbiting Earth, Oumuamua, and some famous satellites like the Voyager probes.

What would you include in a highlight reel of random stuff moving around in our solar system? I leave the scope as broad as possible: an observable object in our solar system of any size or mass.

Next week we will be discussing the City We Became. Our next book discussion after that will be at the end of January.

I've organized this schedule so that longer books are followed by shorter ones. I look forward to reading with you.

Last week in January : Kim Stanley Robinson Ministry for the Future,

Last week in February: Trevor Noah Born a Crime,

Last week in March: Dan Simmons Hyperion,

Last week in April: Adrian Tchaikovsky Elder Race,

Last week in May: Victor LaValle a People's Future of the United States,

Last week in June: T Kingfisher A House with Good Bones,

Last week in July: James McBride the Heaven and Earth grocery Store,

Last week in August: Cats Cradle by Kurt Vonnegut

Last week in September: Ted Chiang Stories of Your Life and Others

I have a Moto G 5G 2023 and 2025 Chevy Trax that I'm trying to troubleshoot why Android Auto cannot last more than 10 minutes without crashing out and needing to either wait for the connection to be available again, or unplug and replug the USB cord to get it to reconnect. Sometimes it goes for an extended period of time, and sometimes it won't last for longer than a minute before it crashes with no visible error on the phone. I think it might be something in RAM, but more often than not it's when Google Maps is up, with Audible in the background and I'm not sure if it's one of those or possibly my Launcher or having the three buttons turned on for my phone, or some weird esoteric thing.

I’m finally making the plunge to getting a bread maker, now that the price of bread has gone up to a stupid amount and I finally realized four months of buying bread every other day will pay for the machine itself. (Flour is cheap, yeast is cheap.) There are only really three machines available where I live, so I’m pretty set on the machine itself.

Since I’ve never had a bread maker, do y’all have any advice, favorite recipes, suggestions?

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!

Back in January I was tasked by my brother in law to create a murder mystery parlor game during our family reunion in an Irish castle. Well we just got back last night, and it ended up being one of the most fun vacations of my life.

This is a family of social over-achievers. Super engaged professionals and executives and teachers. A dozen of them would stay up every night drinking and laughing til 2am, sleep 5 hours, then do it all over again. I have trouble keeping up, so I'm glad the game I designed happened on one of the first nights. At first, the mastermind behind this whole trip only gave me 90 minutes for the middle of the day but he lost control of the schedule and I got my three hours in the dark as is proper for a game like this.

All 21 players absolutely committed, bringing vintage costumes and props across the Atlantic for this one night. I created a deck of character cards for each of them, as well as a number of other special prop and event cards, and as they were all getting dressed I texted them their roles.

This was the first hangup. The castle had very poor cell and wifi reception so the texts didn't go through. But all 22 of us had iPhones so I ended up AirDropping everyone's character and gave them personal, private notes. I wouldn't mention the tech glitch otherwise, but this absolutely changed my own strategy as the dead victim, Lord Reginald Springfield. I thought I would be in a kind of control room with my laptop receiving texts from the butler or others when they found certain props. But because they couldn't communicate like that, I had to shadow them through the rooms and sprint like the devil in anticipation of their next moves to certain parts of the castle and its grounds.

Having never done this, and certainly not at this scale, I was surprised by several of their own strategies. At the outset, the butler convened (most of) the group and announced the reading of the will. Then the cops showed up to tell everyone the will was missing, Lord Springfield was poisoned and dead in bed, and that they were all suspects. The Inspector and Constable then began interviewing the subjects one by one.

I'm aware that normal police procedure is to isolate suspects for interviews, specifically to compare notes and find the lies afterward. But I didn't think these two players were aware of that. Turned out I was wrong. Instead of interviewing everyone in front of each other, they squirreled each suspect away and gave them the business, taking copious notes that they shared with no one.

Taking their own cues from this, when the suspects began making their own conjectures and discovering clues, they shared them with absolutely no one unless forced. It was perfect game theory. I just didn't expect these competitive bastards to be so very competitive. It was fantastic. The chaos agents played their parts beautifully, muddying the waters, and the spiritualists spent all their time trying to find all seven of their number to convene a seance. Once they did, I raced into my room and put on a long white nightgown and drew a kind of kabuki corpse makeup on my face. They were racing around in the courtyard outside in the last of the sun and I tap...tap...tapped on the window until one of them saw me, an apparition in a castle window. Classic imagery. She pointed and screamed.

All seven spiritualists (except for the devilish Colonel, who only pretended to be one so he could eavesdrop on the seance) piled into the parlor and held hands. I started walking down the upstairs hall toward them moaning a very haunting melody line from an early Frank Zappa album over and over, then entered the parlor. They said their hair stood on end lol. I whispered my answers then disappeared and later, my widow Lady Eleanor found the burned note in the fireplace of that room.

Tremendous dramatic moment here: That's the note that revealed I wrote them all out of the will and left the entire estate to Madame DuBois. But Eleanor of all people found it and you could see her internal torment. Then she turned away from them all and didn't share it. For nearly another hour they labored to puzzle out the clues while she acted out very well the utter destruction of her life. Absolutely choice stuff.

The twist I had planned is that most of the clues pointed toward Vicar Atkinson and he himself only knew that he blacked out after an argument with the victim. So his card tells him that he is almost certainly guilty and if they accused him, to flee. The line of his card at the end is my personal favorite: But if they actually do accuse you, your only chance is to run. That Inspector is old and the Constable is a woman. How fast can she be? I don't think that Tyler (the vicar) knew that his west coast cousin Lena (Constable Wright) was a huge track star, 100 meters champion, crowned fastest girl in San Francisco two years in a row. I wanted to see her run his ass down like The Flash.

But alas, the real murderer, Hanne (Ingrid) is from Hamburg, Germany and although her card told her she had poisoned the victim while leaving no clues, and that all she had to do was keep a poker face and she was in the clear, she simply couldn't do it. Asking a proper German hausfrau to lie to the police, even in a FUCKING GAME, was too stressful for her and she broke down and confessed the entire thing. I'd hoped to finish this neat and tidy Agatha Christie affair with an accusation and arrest of the vicar, delighted by the idea that justice was NOT served and the wrong man was convicted. Very post-modern take on the whole thing. Two days later I shared all my notes as planned and that was when I'd expected them to realize they'd let the real killer slip away... But never count on duplicity from a Teutonic mind.

We took antique photos of everyone's insane costumes which I can't share for privacy. But they were perfect. It was an absolute smash hit, with people spending the rest of the week recounting the plots and sub-plots and attacking each other in character. The next night was a family trivia night. The following night was a filming of two musical scenes from Rocky Horror. The following night we rented a traditional Irish band and they gave us a concert in the 15th century hall. We took day trips to Dingle and Limerick and Cork and I hiked and biked and two days ago I was swimming in the Shannon River outside Killaloe.

An excellent trip all around. Thanks for reading. Happy to answer any and all questions and yeah now I guess I have a side hustle as a murder mystery game designer if anyone needs me.

Hello tilderers, I have a dilemma I'm having that I'd like perspective on.

I often find myself doing things not because I want to, but because I have to. I feel obligated to. It is better if I do X than if I don't do X, so I should do X, even if I don't want to.

Though overall I don't consider "feeling obligated" a positive nor sustainable emotion to have.

These are often tied to social etiquette and maintaining a status quo at the sacrifice? of your own comfort.

Examples:

You're an introverted so tend to not desire social activity as much, but understand socializing is good for maintaining relationships so you accept invites regardless of whether you have true desire to be out for the person/occasion/event.

You should get a gift for Y because it's their birthday/Christmas because it's an expected, nice gesture but you don't really have a gift in mind or tendency of gift giving.

Z does something nice for you, pays for your dinner/got a gift/done a favor, but was not something you wanted Z to do or asked them to do. Yet now you feel indebted to give back.

General occasions where social and emotional reciprocation is expected and you're not entuned to reciprocate necessarily. And the general consequence of not reciprocating is weakening relationships/negativity from others etc.

Where is the line between doing whatever you feel/comfortable with (selfishness/self centered?) and doing things because you are socially obligated to (caring about what other people think/feel about you).

What is the resolution to negative feelings of obligation?

How can obligation turn to desire?

How does one perspective shift in this way?
You do this not because you have to, because you want to do this.

Follow-up to my one gallon post here.

And technically, it's 5 gallons and 3 pints after this morning's platelet donation. I'd hit the five gallon milestone with my last one but didn't realize it. Never too late to celebrate though!

One of my co-workers is also a regular donor, and we've bonded over it. One time we were at lunch, eating in the teachers' lounge with a bunch of our colleagues. We were having a group conversation about blood donation, the pain of sticks, the fears of something going wrong, etc. It was kind of a downer conversation about the whole thing. After the group moved on to a different topic, she quietly leaned toward me and whispered "this is going to sound weird, but I actually like doing it."

She couldn't have found a better person to confide in! I feel exactly the same way.

It sounds weird that I like having someone stick needles in my arm and withdrawing my life force. It sounds even weirder when I say that I like donating platelets, in which I can't move my arms for two hours, and also the tape they use rips out my arm hair (this genuinely is worse than the needle sticks, by the way).

I think that's framing it the wrong way though.

I like doing it because it's something I can easily do, it doesn't cost me anything, and I know I'm helping people out. I read a comment online once about donating that stuck with me. It said something to the effect of:

The person who will be getting your donation is undergoing much worse, and they also don't have a choice in the matter.

I think about this in those times where I am a little anxious or nervous that things might hurt.

Yes, the sticks are painful sometimes. Yes, my arm hair getting ripped out is uncomfortable. Yes, sometimes I need to scratch my nose and I simply can't and I want to crawl out of my skin for a few minutes until the feeling subsides.

But that's nothing compared to the person with cancer who's getting my platelets. Or the car-crash victim who gets my blood.

I also think about it in terms of the bystander effect. It's easy to just assume that blood or platelets will be there for people who need it, but that only happens if people deliberately choose to donate.

I want to be one of those people who does it deliberately.

And so far I have: to the tune of FIVE GALLONS!

The last thing I'll say is that part of why I like doing it is because I really like my donation center. The staff there are excellent. I prefer doing it at a place like that than one of the closer, more convenient pop-up options because I feel like if something were to go wrong (god forbid), then a designated site is likely to have the supplies, preparation, and expertise in dealing with the issue.

For example: I have had a few times where the phlebotomist has whiffed one of the sticks for my arm. Each time, they've immediately called over the manager (who you can tell is esteemed by ALL of the staff for being VERY good at getting sticks right -- one time I heard a phlebotomist audibly "ooh" in amazement as she fixed their stick in my arm). She's been able to fix the issue each time.

Thankfully, those issues have been infrequent. Most of the time they do everything great and I barely feel a thing.

They also follow cleanliness and administrative protocols to a well-crossed, perfectly symmetrical T. It's comical, but I'll get asked my name and date of birth probably four different times during a platelet donation, because at each new step of the process they make sure that they've got the right paperwork, vials, and patient. It's always funny to me that they ask me this before they take the needles out of my arms, after I've been stuck in the chair unable to move for two hours. Do they think I somehow snuck out and someone else took my place when they weren't looking?

Of course, they're doing it not for me but to make sure everything gets properly labeled, but I genuinely appreciate the thoroughness. I feel very safe with them because they consistently operate with such a high level of care. If you've been turned off of donating due to bad experiences in the past, I recommend finding a good permanent donation center near you if you're willing to revisit it.

Anyway, that's all I have to say. I wanted to share my personal milestone. Again, as a gay guy who wasn't allowed to donate blood for DECADES, it feels really, REALLY good to be able to finally give back in this way.

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 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.

I gotta admit, I grew up with a thrifty father who definitely taught me to watch my pennies. So now its second nature. I very rarely buy anything brand new because I just cant stomach the price of new things.
eg. Our little EV, some poor soul paid 34k USD brand new. We bought it 3 years old with only 20,000 miles on it for 8k. Thats a heckuva lot of money saved for a car thats still barely used. This week I was shopping for a wake surf board for one of my grandkids and picked up a new looking board for $200. New price is over $700. WHY would you want to pay full price on stuff thats barely used when you can get it for a fraction of the price and let someone else take the hit? Take the saved money and invest it and you're miles ahead of the 'gotta be new and the latest and greatest' buyers. It's all gonna be dust some day anyway.

I'm one of those mythical Linux users who has been using it for years but has little to no idea what's going on behind the scenes or under the hood.

In my time using it, I've sort of passively gleaned that certain things are controversial, but I don't necessarily know why. It's also hard for me to know if these are just general intra-community drama/bikeshedding, or if these are actually big, meaningful issues.

If you're someone who's in the know, here's your chance to lay out a Linux controversy in a way that's understandable by someone like me, who can't tell you why people always make "GNU/Linux" jokes for some reason whenever people mention "Linux."

Here are some things that have pinged for me as controversial in my time using Linux:

• Unity
• Canonical
• Deepin
• systemd
• Arch
• GNOME
• Manjaro
• Kali
• Rust in the kernel
• elementaryOS
• Linus Torvalds
• Snaps
• Wayland
• Something about a university being banned from contributing to Linux
• NVIDIA drivers
• Package managers vs. Snaps/Flatpaks

There are certainly more -- these are just the ones I can remember off the top of my head.

Replies don't have to be limited to the above topics. I'm interested in getting the lay of the land about any Linux controversy.

IMPORTANT

This topic is intended for learning, not bickering.

• Please try to explain a controversy as fairly as you can.
• Please try to not re-ignite a flame war about a specific controversy.

It's fine to discuss these in good faith, but I do not want this topic to become yet another Linux battleground online. There are plenty of those already!

Optional sentence stems in the comments- feel free to add your own.

I will know if you cheat or use AI because I know how you write. Graphic organizers are available but not required. I don't care if you're texting your mom, put it away. Also, my name isn't bruh, but lately I find myself responding to it anyway.

Disclaimer: I do not like LLMs. I am not going to fight you on if you say LLMs are shit.

One of the things I find interesting about conversations on LLMs is when have a critique about them, and someone says, "Well, it's no different than people." People are only as good as their training data, people misremember / misspeak / make mistakes all the time, people will listen to you and affirm you as you think terrible things. My thought is that not being reliably consistent is a verifiable issue for automation. Still, I think it's excellent food for thought.

I was looking for new music venues the other day. I happened upon several, and as I looked at their menu and layout, it occurred to me that I had eaten there before. Not there, but in my city, and in others. The Stylish-Expensive-Small-Plates-Record-Bar was an international phenomenon. And more than that, I couldn't help but shake that it was a perversion of the original, alluring concept-- to be in a somewhat secretive record bar in Tokyo where you'll be glared into the ground if you speak over the music.

It's not a bad idea. And what's wrong with evoking a good idea, especially if the similarity is just unintentional? Isn't it helpful to be able to signal to people that you're like-that-thing instead of having to explain to people how you're different? Still, the idea of going just made me assume it'd be not simply like something I had experienced before, but played out and "fake." We're not in Tokyo, and people do talk over the music. And even if they didn't, they have silverware and such clanging. It makes me wonder if this permutation is a lossy estimation of the original concept, just chewed up, spat out, slurped, regurgitated, and expensively funded.

other forms of conceptual perversion:

• Matters of Body Image - is it a sort of collapse when we go from wanting 'conventional beauty' to frankensteining features onto ourselves? Think fox eye surgeries, buccal fat removal, etc. Rather than wanting to be conventionally attractive, we aim for the related concept of looking like people who are famous.
• (still thinking)

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.

Find yourself watching tons of great videos on [insert chosen video sharing platform], but also find yourself reluctant to flood the Tildes front page with them? Then this thread is for you.

It could be one quirky video that you feel deserves some eyeballs on it, or perhaps you've got a curated list of videos that you'd love to talk us through...

Share some of the best video content you've watched this past week/fortnight with us!

Last year I went through a phase of strange fatigue. I constantly felt sick. Like I was physically, not emotionally, depressed. But also slightly brain fogged. Eventually this cleared up and I assumed it had resolved itself for good so I did not investigate it further.

Half a year later and I felt the way again. I’d just gotten an order of magic spoon cereal (which is sweetened by allulose, a sugar-like molecule that has a fraction of the calories but tastes almost identical). I have a sweet tooth so I felt eating the cereal was something of a life hack. Infinite sweetness without any downsides!

I realized that before when I felt off I’d also gotten a delivery of magic spoon. I assumed the correlation was meaningful and stopped eating it and felt better.

Recently I’ve been drinking these stevia and monk fruit sweetened yogurt drinks. They seem to be making me feel the same way, so I guess I need to stop having those as well. It’s kind of a shame because I don’t think they even need to be so sweet - and I’d happily accept some added sugar or a sweet fruit puree mixed in.

Am I crazy or is this a common occurrence?

Full Weekend Race Schedule

Main event - Saturday June 21st:
CEST/GMT+2

• 14:00 Gridwalk
• 15:40 Formation Lap
• 16:00 Race Start

Track Information: 25.378 km combined circuit located in Nürburg, Germany

Track Map

Race Website

Official Entry List

Track Weather

Spotters Guide

Streaming/Radio

ADAC RAVENOL 24h Nürburgring (YouTube) - Official ADAC race streams and many on-board streams available.

Nürburgring (YouTube) - More official race streams/24h Classic race stream.

GTWorld (YouTube)

AutoAddiction (YouTube)

Radio LeMans (English)

Radio Nürburgring (German)

Live Timing

Azure Websites - Live Timing

wige SOLUTIONS - Live Timing

Will try to update info/links as the race goes on.

Tildes is a very serious site, where we discuss very serious matters like linux, rockets.reusable and louvre. Tags culled from the highest voted topics from the last seven days, if anyone was keenly observing.

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!

In short: the prospect of generative AI becoming increasingly prevalent has been gnawing away at me for a long time now. It's looking like there are no limits that will matter in the near future. But interfacing with generative AI in basically any capacity instills in me a kind of existential horror and revulsion that I don't think I can live with in my day-to-day life. Unfortunately, it seems that generative AI will soon become unavoidable in any white-collar career path, to say nothing of casual exposure in everyday life. I try as hard as possible to shield myself, but I doubt that will be realistically possible for much longer.

I'm in a graduate program, but I'm not confident that my field will still be relevant in five years. Even if it is, I'll almost certainly spend a lot of time interfacing with generative AI, the thought of which makes me nauseous.

Frankly, I'm so disgusted with what the world has become and what it is becoming that it's turning me into kind of a nasty person IRL.

So I'm musing on ways to get out. On finding a way to make enough money to stay alive while having as little contact with the digital world as possible.

Anyone have any experience/ideas?

Disclaimer: I don't quite know how to address the topic, so I want to state I'm trying to approach this with sensitivity; I hope this might lead to a helpful and insightful conversation on a potentially difficult issue. Apologies if I don't quite get it right!

I noticed the absence of a name I'd become familiar with on Tildes and wanted to start a discussion on how the community should handle situations where a person of community renowned abruptly departs.

The user in question is @daychilde, who is one of the users I'd seen around quite a bit. I've been on Tildes for quite a while now, and would like to think I've had a positive - if not vast - contribution. Overall, I probably read more than I respond; I bring this up because I am aware that I probably represent the voice of a significant portion of the userbase here: I'm figuring stuff out as I go and probably am not in the loop on the majority of stuff going on on Tildes. All in all, I don't recognise a lot of names on Tildes, but @daychilde is/was a character who stuck out and seemed to have a significant impact on the community.

From what I deduce, @daychilde has been banned some time in the past week, and I thought it worth discussing given there are at least a couple of things left in the lurch as a result that people might seek information on. The ones that have crossed my vision are the following:

https://tildes.net/~tech/1od9/personal_offer_do_you_have_a_website_based_project_youve_been_wanting_to_do_but_worried_about_cost
and
https://tildes.net/~life/1n7e/daychildes_walking_thread

At the risk of broaching a difficult topic - I'm not looking to cause drama or speculate - we should probably discuss the fallout of a situation like this. Hopefully at the very least this topic might be something others can find if they also become aware of the departure of a notable person and are looking for confirmation or where might be appropriate to discuss any fallout that might occur.

For @daychilde in particular, this website seemed to be a resource that helped him manage his life. I wonder if we should consider whether there is some duty of care to users to depend on Tildes in some capacity?

There are also people who might be looking to discuss the hosting that he had offered/agreed, and might now be left in the lurch.

Unfortunately I don't have solutions, but I didn't see any discussion or information on this kind of a topic, nor any precedent for this kind of a situation!

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!

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?

Tildes is a very serious site, where we discuss very serious matters like dsa, marine corps and chainmail. Tags culled from the highest voted topics from the last seven days, if anyone gave two hoots.

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!

A while ago some of the keys on my Dell XPS laptop started working poorly, they were only registering the presses half of the time or if I pushed them really hard. I tried removing the keycaps and cleaning the keys on the inside, but to no avail. Well, I thought, that means it's time to get a new laptop. So I was choosing the next laptop to get. One of the options I considered was the Framework laptop, which is supposed to be super repairable - I mean, if only I could just replace my laptop keyboard, I wouldn't have to buy a whole new laptop just because of a few broken keys!

Then I thought about it again. I realized that a repairable laptop is only useful if you actually try to repair your laptop, which I've never done. So, I looked it up, and turns out Dell, while obviously not as easily repairable as Framework, has very well-detailed official service manuals as well!

Two weeks of waiting for a Chinese copycat keyboard from AliExpress and three hours of work later, I finally have a fully working laptop! Turns out it isn't hard at all to replace a broken keyboard - but I'm still very proud of myself for doing it, mostly for even deciding to do it instead of just turning a fully functional laptop into e-waste as I would've done otherwise. I was also really surprised that Dell laptops are that easy to fix (though they don't officially sell replacement parts to consumers), since it's known to be a company that makes a ton of money on expensive support offerings.

I don't really know what the lesson of this post is, I just wanted to share this small achievement with y'all.

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.

As some of you on here may know, I was made redundant from my Assistant Commercial Reporting Analyst job three months ago and have been struggling to find permanent work since. Many of my interactions with recruiters and hiring managers have been negative and have felt like they were wasting my time, but one particular (ongoing) experience has taken the cake.

In mid-April, I applied for an Assistant Client Accountant position through LinkedIn. The role was with a large property management and building consultancy firm (offices based in the UK & France), who have some pretty big-name clients. Fully office-based, advertised pay between £25k - £29k (already similar payscales to what credit control and purchase ledger roles near me are offering), and the position ideally asked for fully AAT qualified or ACCA part-qualified candidates (I have full AAT membership, am 3 exams into my ACCA, and have over 6 years experience in previous accounting and financial reporting roles.)

Nine weeks later, I am still going through this application process which has been nothing short of a shitshow:

• It has taken multiple weeks to schedule and conduct interviews for each stage, due to unanswered emails and heavily delayed responses from both the Finance and HR teams. I had emailed on nine separate occasions to schedule the the second and third stage interviews I was invited to, and only twice did I get replies. At first I was told it was due to staff sickness, but then the trend of replying in business weeks just kept going on, even after the third-stage (which I'll get to.)

• The first stage interview was a 15 - 30 minute phone interview going through my CV and salary expectations. Stages 2 and 3 involved a series of hour-long competency based interviews, one conducted via Teams and the other in-person with the Head of Finance. This is already a ridiculous number of hoops to jump through for an office-based role with this salary level.

• During the third-stage interview (3rd June) I was asked a lot of supervisory/leadership questions which I honestly didn't expect. It made me question whether I was being interviewed for the correct role, so I checked the job description of what I applied for. Only 4 of the 590 words contained within the job advert even alluded to me leading junior colleagues - so maybe it was easily missed?

• On the 5th June (two days after my third-stage interview), I received an email from HR thanking me for accepting the Client Accountant position and asking me to confirm RTW (right-to-work) details. The thing is... I never received an offer letter, and after immediately chasing this up I found out the email was sent to me by mistake. This HR rep apologized and said they'd chase feedback. I emailed twice to chase this feedback and promised it would be coming.

• Today when I emailed again to chase feedback, the HR advisor responded to raise concerns about the salary expectations I communicated in the first stage, insisted the role actually paid £26k at most and asked me to confirm a salary within their range. This is false (I know, I actually double-checked the job ad and even did a screen recording on my mobile of me going into the LinkedIn app and opening the job posting) and I get the impression that they're now trying to lowball me. I emailed again asking for clarification where I linked the job ads and I get the feeling they confused the salary bands with a Purchase Ledger role I applied for several months prior but was not considered for.

I will find out Monday (after nearly three weeks) if I was successful in my application, but even if they offer me the job at a reduced salary rather than outright reject me, I am already seeing a shitload of red flags.

At this point I've had enough. Normally I'd cut my ties and move on but with how desperate I've been for work and how much I feel like this company has taken me for a ride, I feel the need to take things further. Not sure whether I should (or even could) formally raise a complaint, drop some negative feedback on their Glassdoor page, or go public (with receipts) and openly name & shame the company on LinkedIn, Facebook or Instagram. The latter options feel like I'd be going nucelar and as cathartic as it would be, I'm worried it would be seen as unprofessional and hurt my future job prospects.

What would be the best way to proceed?

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?

MLMs = "multi-level marketing" companies, which is essentially a euphemism for "pyramid scheme." These are flat out illegal in many countries, but are, notably, quite legal in the US.

They used to be huge in the 2010s, but I don't hear much about them anymore (granted, I haven't been on social media since 2016). I know several IRL people who got into them, and I even regrettably bought products from some of them before I really understood what they were or how they worked.

I recently read Hey, Hun by Emily Lynn Paulson who was toward the top of the pyramid at Rodan + Fields.

In the book she mentions that algorithmic changes from social media companies ended up downgrading a lot of MLM postings, which cut off oxygen to the cycles of recruitment that these companies rely on. For example, Rodan + Fields moved to an affiliate model in 2024.

I'm curious about what the MLM landscape looks like right now.

• Are MLMs still common?
• For those of you on social media, do you still get recruitment and sales messages?
• Have they changed their tactics or models?

People don't have to limit responses to just those questions -- consider this a general MLM discussion topic where anything related to them is fair game.

Canadian Grand Prix
Circuit Gilles-Villeneuve
June 13-15, 2025

Grand Prix Qualifying:
Saturday, June 14, 2025 - 20:00 UTC / 4:00p US EDT

Grand Prix:
Sunday, June 15, 2025 - 18:00 UTC / 2:00p US EDT

See your local times here

Next race:

Austrian Grand Prix
Red Bull Ring
Sunday, June 29, 2025

So since the USB-C spec came out, there are so many different cables advertising different optional capabilities.

Even if you are careful to select a cable which does what you need, there is a good chance it won't have all capabilities as advertised, you only find out when it arrives.

The situation on Amazon is particularly bad, with co-mingled stock and questionable brands like XZZTTG and EIUTOO dominating the listings.

For me, now, I'm specifically struggling to find a short replacement cable for my Samsung T7 SSD, which came with a USB 3.2 Gen 2 cable which was ~15cm and flexible. It was very nice, but they're not sold seperately!

So, where do you look these days to find a listing of decent and reliable accessories like USB cables?

UPDATE:

Great recommendations on brands to look for.
Thanks all!

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!

Listened to Craig Ferguson on his podcast "Joy" talking with Diedrich Bader, last known for playing Jethro in the Beverly Hillbillies movie (which flopped).

The most interesting part was their discussion about gaining and losing that "Hollywood aura" - they agreed it was like someone handing you a magic hat, and while you're wearing it, you're the most special person in the room and everyone wants your attention. And then the hat goes away and you're back to being very ordinary and in at lot of cases, become an actor somewhat desperately looking for more work. Which is why they attend so many parties and awards. It's not so much about the glamor, its about getting a chance to network and try to find a new gig with the producers and directors and financiers in attendance.

Bader asked Ferguson if there was anyone he interviewed that gave him that sense of awe, someone who still wore that magic hat? Nope. Ferguson said after years of doing his Late Night show they were all just people. New "star", old "star", none of them really made a big impression.

Although he DID say when Sean Connery shook his wife's hand her chest visibly blushed and Craig asked her later what that was all about. She said, "Well it doesnt do it for YOU but THAT was Sean Connery!" Pretty funny.

But it was interesting to hear some insiders talking about other insiders the way they did. They're all just actors looking to stay employed. Which makes sense when you see an A list actor in a B movie and wonder why they took that role. Probably had bills to pay, that's why.

Hey, gamer tilderinos. I've followed our Minecraft server threads but I've never participated.

Any interest in a Tildes Satisfactory server?

Do you think that game lends itself well to a shared server for this scale of people?

I've never really been one to look into publishers too much, with the extent of my interaction being that if I noticed they published some books I enjoyed I may go and look up what other authors they've published to see if I'd also enjoy their books.

Are there any publishers you actively follow or subscribe to any newsletters for, or engage with in any way?

I thought it might be fun seeing how my fellow Tilders interact with publishers.

It's that time again for the greatest race of the year.

Race Start:
Saturday, 14 June 2025 - 16:00 CET (14:00 UTC)

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.

Hi, so I've been thinking about this for several days now, and thought it might be an interesting topic for Tildes.

Earlier this week, YouTube suggested this AI Sitcom video to me. Some of the jokes are actually very cohesive "Dad jokes", and it got me wondering how much of the video was AI generated. Are the one-liners themselves AI generated? Was this script generated with AI, and then edited before passing it on to something else to generate the video and voice? Or are we at the phase where AI could generate the whole thing with a single prompt? If it's the latter I find this sort of terrifying, because the finished product is very cohesive for something with almost no editing.

I'd also be interested in discussing where this video might have come from. The channel and descriptions have almost no information, so it seems like this may be a channel that finds these elsewhere and reposts? Or maybe the channel is the original and just trying to be vague about technology used?

Also side note, I have no idea if this belongs in ~Tech, so feel free to move it around as needed.

I didn't see any mention of this board game here. I just played it with my brother and subsequently picked it up and played it with my wife, and I have to say, this is a great co-op board game. They've really nailed the fun of this where you get new things and meaningful decisions while the difficulty ratchets up nicely. It's hard for any one player to dominate because each character works differently, everyone is forced to work together.

Wondering what other fun new co-op board games people are playing these days? What have you not been able to put down?