American Thanksgiving was yesterday, so I get a nice long weekend. My husband and I spent yesterday with family, while today has been us chilling with our dog while enjoying canned cocktails and delicious leftovers.

In the spirit of the holiday (and speaking on behalf of the drinks I’ve consumed) I want to let everyone know that I’m happy this place exists and is filled with kind, thoughtful people. Tildes is marked by a coziness that, I believe, is largely missing across the modern internet.

I like recognizing people’s usernames and getting to know them. I like the slower pace of things here. I like that people put in effort. It feels good.

I know we’re all random internet nobodies inhabiting a tiny, niche corner of the web, but I’m happy I get to share this space with y’all. What luck that we ended up here, together.

Cheers, everyone. 🍻 Thanks for being awesome.

Schedule

There was a three-way tie for 5th, so instead of scheduling the next 6 months, I scheduled 7. Bonus month!

@CannibalisticApple will be hosting her nomination, The Last Express, for our first month. If you're interested in hosting a month, see the Hosting section below.

Also, I selfishly scheduled PlayStation WHAT? during the Backlog Burner so I can use those games in my Bingo Card. :D

For the rest, I tried to create variety in the schedule so that we weren't playing the same systems or genres back-to-back.

Discussion Topics

Each month will have two discussion topics:

• "Insert Cartridge" - 1st of the month
• "Remove Cartridge" - 20th of the month

Insert Cartridge topics are primarily for getting the game set up and running. Remove Cartridge topics are primarily for reflecting on the game once you've played it. However, the game itself and anything else related to it can be discussed in either one.

Hosting

Each month, the discussion topics will be posted by a different "host" who will act as the emcee for that month.

Hosting is not required, but it is encouraged that people host months for games that they are either already very familiar with or that they are strongly interested in playing.

People who nominated a game will be given preference for hosting, otherwise it will be given to whomever claims it first.

If you would like to host a month, let me know which one and I will add you to the schedule.

Before your month begins, I will send you a "Hosting Package" featuring templates that you can edit to your liking.

If no one claims a month, I will host it as a fallback.

Voting Results

The top 6 games from the voting round were chosen to be played.

Of the remaining games:

• The top 50% will advance to the next round. They will start the next round with a base score of 70% of their vote totals.
• The bottom 50% will be removed from the list.

Removed games will be able to be re-nominated in future rounds if someone chooses to do so.

Around half of the articles I click here are hidden behind cookie walls where you have to accept all cookies, or you won't be able to read them at all. And it's getting extremely annoying. Like, no. I do not want to click that, and the stupid websites are not even giving me a real alternative.

Example: the guardian made this change around a month back. Now, you accept all cookies etc. or pay.

Can we please try to avoid that in the future by posting from other sources, if other sources are available for the same topic?

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

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

Rules:

• No grey market sales
• No affiliate links

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

All previous Save Point topics

If you don’t want to see threads in this series, add save point to your personal tag filters.

Every once in awhile I have one of these ideas, but this one I think would be incredibly fun and interesting to have: ~electronics or (~tech.electronics || ~engineering.electronics), , programming || ~tech.programming. forgot momentarily that ~comp was a thing.

Not as a community for tech news or product discussions (we have ~tech for that) but for electronics research, electronic hobbies/diy, ideas, Q&A, etc etc. With our seemingly higher than average hard tech professional community on here I think this would be great and really bring a new type of content into our fold that could be interesting and and exciting.

I've brought up ~hardware before, but I think ~electronics is more widespread, could include anything to do with electronics: PCBs, computers/desktops, sound/audio, lighting, robotics, electrical work, etc.

While I was writing this I realized, and was quite surprised that we don't have something like ~tech.programming on here either, maybe that should be one as well to consider. ~comp is a thing, I post there.

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 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.

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 the twentieth of an ongoing series of book discussions here on Tildes. We are discussing We are Legion (We are Bob) by Dennis Taylor. This is the final book discussion for the year. We will start again in January with Fire on the Mountain by Terry Bissen.

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.

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?

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.

I'm looking for a digital watch with a step counter that ideally resets every day. I've had a few smartwatches and my latest Garmin is nearing the end of its life. I've decided that time and step counting is really all I need out of a watch. Can anyone reccomend a watch like this?