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?

The concept of song of the summer is something I’ve only recently learned about but looking back I can definitely see how that concept influenced radio play when I was younger.

Even as the radio started declining songs were still being deemed “song of the summer.”

2024: Espresso - Sabrina Carpenter

2023: Flowers - Miley Cyrus

2022: As it Was - Harry Styles

2021: Butter - BTS

2020: Levitating - Dua Lipa

There’s for sure secondary songs you can choose (Good Luck Babe by Chappelle Roan for 2024 and Watermelon Sugar by Harry Styles for 2020 as examples). But generally something broke out and became cultural moments.

It appears that Alex Warren’s Ordinary and three Morgan Wallen’s songs topped the charts this summer. Not the pop infused dance music “song of the summer” is usually referring to. It did seem like people were looking at Just Keep Watching by Tate McRae or Fame is a Gun by Addison Rae but they never really took off. It seems like Manchild by Sabrina Carpenter was the highest charting pop song but did not reach the heights of Espresso last year.

Looking at music subreddits people seem in agreement that the charts this year have been a mess, muted, with new music not breaking through. Also appears that Americans are leaning into country and/or Christian music.

Ive been losing friends over the years from moving away, settling down with my partner, and just being terrible at staying in touch. And i've realized i haven't been making any new ones either. So my social circle is shrinking. I meet people, but the social connections haven't really lasted.

I wonder how other folks are finding new friends that have been meaningful and lasted in adulthood.

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?

Hi everyone,

I was never so lucky as a kid to have a gaming console (forbidden by my parents) so I could only be jealous of my school friends getting gameboys and super nintendos. But I’m an adult now, so I got myself a RG35XX H to try all these games out, and enjoying myself.

So I was thinking why not create something like a book club but for these old games? We’d play (and attempt to beat) one game per month or something along these lines and then discuss the game itself, the story, context around how and when it was made, etc.

I’m looking to share this hobby with others (as it is rather solitary otherwise), and create a social aspect around it.

What do you think? Would anyone be interested?

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!

I moved across the world from my friends, and as a dad I don't have much time for gaming. I really enjoy the idea of play by email (PBEM) or cloud format games, and got into playing ranked Advance Wars by Web for a little while that goes in that format. I then stopped playing as much due to spending more time than I had set aside for gaming thinking through my turns to try and improve my ELO.

Sadly, I haven't been able to get my friends to buy into playing a game in this format yet, but I'm holding out hope that when my kids are older, and I have a bit more time to game regularly, I can start up a game in this format with some internet strangers.

What got me thinking of this topic was remembering that I had bought Shadow Empires for my birthday with a Steam Gift card my brother gave me after my oldest was born, and it has been sitting in my library with 8 minutes of gameplay since then. I know it support PBEM, and I think my friends would enjoy it if I could get them to give it a try.

I'd thought I'd see what my fellow Tilders think about this style of game.

Do you have a favorite game you play in this format?
Any long-running games that you've had going on with a group? I know games in this format can take years to finish.
Are there any games that you wish would adopt this format?
Anything else/stories you felt like sharing about this kind of games?

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.

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.

So I know we have the biweekly "what are you reading" thread, but sometimes a book will stick with you for a while beyond reading it. I'm curious what those sticky books might be for those who would like to share. Feel free to include an honorable mention if you wish!

For example, I finished reading The Buffalo Hunter Hunter by Stephen Graham Jones pretty recently, and I have a feeling it's going to stick with me for a while. It has a particularly unique flavor of an often-seen paranormal/mythological creature that I appreciated, and the characters developed so much over time that I find myself thinking about it. This book wasn't at all like what I normally read (though I am trying to branch out) and I benefitted from the reading experience more than I expected to. The blurb I got for the book also tells you nothing about the story - it's basically just the hook - and I think that technique worked very well. Interestingly, most of the books I find myself thinking about for a while after I read them are horror books, but I'm not usually thinking about them for their scarier elements.

Honorable mention - Sand by Hugh Howey. I read this a year ago and often find myself recommending it to people who enjoy sci fi. I found the technology (decrepit though it is shown to be) super interesting.

Other books that are feeling memorable for me right now are part of series I'm actively working toward finishing, so I'm not really counting those, as they're called up by their universes every time I dive back in.

The internet is starting to feel smaller and smaller, or at least the content I find is less interesting or created with the goal to be sponsored.

Nowadays, I basically consume downloaded content, books, shows, mainly old stuff found on the internet archive

Which other sites do you find interesting and worth it?

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?

I recently found myself on the other side of what might be a generational divide:

I was talking with two younger family members, and they were talking about being mildly annoyed at sharing their location with the friends via their phones -- as in they could mutually see where everyone was at any given time.

My husband and I were utterly baffled. Giving friends permanent access to our current locations felt unbelievably invasive.

They felt that way a bit, but they also mentioned that it was a way of keeping up with one another and seeing what people are up to. They'd often see they were at a bar and send the other a text telling them to "enjoy the drinks!" or "have a good time!"

I can kind of understand the appeal of this, especially as a step away from the pressures of social media. Instead of having to take pictures at the bar to put up on Instagram, you can just be at the bar, and if someone thinks that's interesting they can let you know. In a weird way, that does actually feel healthier?

They also said that not sharing your location can be seen kind of negatively -- as being aloof or closed off. This gave me even further ick, because it made it seem like there was a strong social pressure to share (similar to the "if you have nothing to hide..." argument).

So, my question is basically: what's the social landscape of location-sharing like these days? Is what my family members do common, or is that an oddity specific to their friend group? Is it actually a generational thing, or am I overgeneralizing based on my one conversation?

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!

For the past year, I've finally been able to have a strong, lasting, cleaning routine. It took me my whole life, but I was never able to go past my own argument of "who cares"? Who cares if the dishes aren't done? If the laundry isn't folded? Only I can judge me. It doesn't matter, ultimately.

But silently, I wasn't happy with that, and I've known I wasn't happy for years, kinda like an addict saying he'll stop but he never does.

One day earlier this year, during winter, while on a good cleaning day, I took some time to look at my old notebooks from college. I remembered a page I had written during some off-time on an internship. I had written a full page of the same line: "I like it when...". I had wanted to just do some introspection and list every thing I liked that came to mind. Stuff like "I like it when I eat pizza", "I like it when I play boardgames with my friend", etc.

Those notes were five years old, you know what was the very first thing on the page? That's right: "I like it when my apartment is clean"

It hit me like a fucking brick. I almost cried right there.

From then on, it was over. The cleaning me had won over the lazy me and I've since been able to keep a clean apartment :)

So, what's your story? How did you overcome a challenge in your life?

I’m curious to get a read of where people’s heads are at regarding defence - be it innovation, funding or working in it in general (in particular in Europe but please contextualise with your country if you’re commenting).

Still five years ago, most people’s view was rather negative on it. I’ve seen attitude change significantly but I’d love hear opinions.

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 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!

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?

I'm a big fan of IMDB's Advanced TItle Search but it is kinda useless for finding movies that are primarily comedies. By which I mean films with a main focus on producing laughter or comedic amusement. The problem is that the genre/tag "comedy", while often present, rarely means that a movie is a comedy first and foremost. For example: technically Marvel movies are comedies, but they are really more like action with jokes. There are also many comedy dramas and "dramedies" and that is not what I am look for at all.

It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia is maybe one of the few "almost pure" comedies on TV today.

I miss watching movies that put comedy first even if they are a mix of different genres.

Any suggestions?

The concept of achievements in games has existed for quite a while now. According to Wikipedia's article on video game achievements, they were first programmed into some games in the 90s, and perhaps first made it big with the Xbox 360 in 2005. Steam achievements shortly followed in 2007.

Some of them are very easy - "Complete the tutorial" is a comment achievement. Some of them are silly - "Pet all the dogs in the game" has become a bit of a meme. But some require an incredible amount of patience, luck, and/or skill.

What are some achievements that you or others you know have put time into that felt significant? Or perhaps even ones that stand out for being a clever addition by the game developers.

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.

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?

Everyone knows about the big stuff we're good at, which are sometimes linked to our personal projects and professional activities. That is not what this post is about.

Here, I am asking about the little things that distinguish you. Your quirky superpower that impresses no one (or maybe just a few). Maybe this is something odd you never really made any effort to learn.

Some people just have this ability to whistle really loudly, or make the largest bubble gum bubbles.

What is your silly talent?

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.

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 don't have many friends who have dogs, so I thought I'd post here.

I like dog walks. It's a great daily activity for me that helps me decompress after work. A bit of "me time", outside, fresh air, mild exercise.

When I walk my dogs, I often listen to music using earbuds. Lately, I've been feeling like this is too distracting and transports me too much to my own imagination. I would then take out the earbuds and listen to the world around me. This is nice in the park where I hear birds, the wind, etc. Sometimes I will call a family member as the dog walk is long and I might not have time after or before. This also distracts me from "the now" so I try not to do it too often.

When I don't distract myself with these things, I do feel more at ease, more present, more mindful, and - most importantly - more connected with my dogs. I watch them closer, I interact with them more. It becomes less of a daily task, and more of an intentional meaningful activity. I'm thinking of just ditching the music altogether. I already do leave my phone at home most of the time (unless I plan to call a relative, as stated above).

Curious what other people do or think on this topic. What's your inner monologue during dog walks? Are they a chore to you, or do you love them?

I saw that @Deimos had made a post about the history of Chex Quest about this game in 2019, and since it has been over 6 years since then, and I felt the urge to play it again, I figured I'd see if anyone else had any memories of this game.
Note: The video that was included in the original link appears to have been taken down, I found a re-upload here: https://youtu.be/pxu1cq_vRUw

My dad brought a copy of this home with him one day from work that he got from a coworker whose kids enjoyed it. My brother and I played it a solid amount and it was an awesome game, and also my first exposure to a game that ran in the Doom engine. I also had a distinct memory of seeing the game play of the original Doom for the first time and thinking "hey that looks like Chex Quest!".

Chex Quest is a shareware title so you're able to download the files and play the game for free. I can't remember where I got them, but I have the first three Chex Quest games as .wad files that I was playing with Chocolate Doom. There are also fan made .wad files in the Chex Quest style that I've yet to play, but maybe one day! I even remember there being a Doom randomizer that included the ability to generate random Chex Quest levels, but I can't seem to find it while doing some quick searching online.
Edit: I found the random level generator a few minutes after posting this: https://github.com/obsidian-level-maker/Obsidian

They also released a Chex Quest HD on Steam that I remember got me to go back and play the original game 5 years ago.

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!

A break up
A loss
A blindside
A disappointment
Or anything else that broke your heart

Tell us the story, and how you are doing with it.

Also, for anyone reading people’s comments, remember that these are difficult stories for people to share. Please be empathetic and kind in your responses. Treat these as opportunities to commiserate and support, rather than as problems to solve.

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.

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?

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 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!

So I bought my SP3 in '17 as an old-ass student attempting to graduate. It was amazing as I was able to disable most cloudy things (nothing like today with 365 and the general cloud storage), but still use it as a laptop, and finish up my degree. Since then, I've swapped to Linux and wanted to do it too (did it briefly with Ubuntu, but it was still pretty rudimentary back around '19... no touch screen, not even bloaty, was a bit too small of a UI -- can't remember which DM I used, though I know it wasn't xfce which I prefer when I use a DM, though I use i3 on my desktop).
That being said, it seems like there are great options for the Surfaces now, but for newer options. So I wanted to ping y'all and see... have you used Linux on any Surface, and preferably, would like to know for the older version.

I hear Manjaro has gotten a decent option, as I know they have the PinePhone (which I own one but... I haven't had time to mess around with, sadly). I'm not really looking for the touch screen but as it seems the blutooth is dying on the Surface (possibly unrelated or due to the latest Windows update that has borked so much - I have a firewall that prevents/shuts down a lot of Windows "protections" so I may be the culprit but I prefer to think that if I can't do what I want with what I own, the software is the problem), whatever will make it rejuvenate would be appreciated.

Honestly, it's had an awesome battery life (it can be in standby for a week and lose about 1/3 of the battery), and overall, I feel it's the last best thing Windows ever did. That being said... does anyone have a Surface and would you have recommendations (for any Surface)? If so, why, what distro, and what might you want to share?

Thanks in advance!

Edit - Nominations are closed

This is the fourth nominations thread for Tildes book club.

If you think you might be interested to read with us, please name between one and five books you find intriguing and think others might enjoy. We will later have a voting thread so that each nomination gets an equal shot to win votes with no early nomination advantage. Our next book in August is Cat's Cradle by Kurt Vonnegut, Followed by Ted Chiang Stories of your life and Others in September.

Please feel free to nominate both fiction and nonfiction. Books should be 600 pages or shorter. The first books in series are fair game for nominations if they tell a complete story.

Sometimes I feel like there's something wrong with how I use technology, or I'm just incredibly biased and predisposed to cynicism or something, so I wanted to get a pulse on how everyone else feels about AI, specifically LLMs, and how you use them in your professional and personal lives.

I've been messing with LLMs since GPT-3, being initially very impressed by the technology, to that view sort of evolving to a more nuanced one. I think they're very good at a specific thing and not great at anything else.

I feel like, increasingly, I'm becoming a rarity among tech people, especially executives. I run cybersecurity for a medium sized agency, and my boss is the CIO. Any time I, or any of her direct reports write a proposal, a policy, a report, or basically anything meant to distribute to a wide audience, they insist on us "running it through copilot", which to them, just means pasting the whole document into copilot chat, then taking the output.

It inevitably takes a document I worked hard on to balance tone, information, brevity, professional voice, and technical details and turns it into a bland, wordy mess. It's unusable crap that I then have to spend more time with to have it sound normal. My boss almost always comes up with "suggestions" or "ideas" that are very obviously just copy pasted answers from copilot chat too.

I see people online that talk about how LLMs have made them so much faster at development, but every time I've ever used it that field, it can toss together a quick prototype for something I likely could have googled, but there will frequently be little hidden bugs in the code. If I try to use the LLM to fix those bugs, it inevitably just makes it worse. Every time I've tried to use AI in a coding workflow, I spend less time thinking about the control flow of the software, and more time chasing down weird esoteric bugs. Overall it's never saved me any time at all.

I've used them as a quick web search, and while they do save me from having to trawl through a lot of the hellhole that is the modern internet, with blogspam, ads, and nonsense people write online, a lot of times, it will just hallucinate answers. I've noticed it's decent at providing me results when results exist, but if results don't exist, or I'm asking something that doesn't make sense, it falls flat on its face because it will just make things up in order to sound convincing and helpful.

I do see some niches where the stuff has been useful. Summarizing large swathes of documents, where the accuracy of that summary doesn't matter much is a little useful. Like if I were tasked to look through 300 documents and decide which ones were most relevant to a project, and I only had an hour to do it, I think that would be a task it would do well with. I can't review or even skim 300 documents in an hour, and even though an LLM would very likely be wrong about a lot of it, at least that's something.

The thing is, I don't frequently run into tasks where accuracy doesn't matter. I doubt most people do. Usually when someone asks for an answer to something, or you want to actually do something useful, the hidden assumption is that the output will be correct, and LLMs are just really bad at being correct.

The thing is, the internet is full of AI evangelists that talk about their AI stack made up of SaaS products I've never even heard of chained together. They talk about how insanely productive it's made them and how it's like being superhuman and without it they'd be left behind.

I'm 99% sure that most of this is influencer clickbait capitalizing on FOMO to keep the shared delusion of LLM's usefulness going, usually because they have stake in the game. They either run an AI startup, are involved in a company that profits off of AI being popular, they're an influencer that makes AI content, or they just have Nvidia in their stock portfolio like so much of us do.

Is there anyone out there that feels this technology is actually super useful that doesn't fall into one of those categories?

If so, let me know. Also, let me know what I'm doing wrong. Am I just a Luddite? A crotchety old man? Out of touch? I'm fine if I am, I just want to know once and for all.