Ever since I was a kid, the kitchen TV has been on in the morning while we eat breakfast and get ready for school. I remember Flipper and Rocky and Bullwinkle being on when we were younger and then Katie Couric and Matt Lauer on The Today Show later on.

As an adult, I've been looking for something linear to watch in the morning while I eat breakfast to put a stop to my bad habit of doom scrolling. I have about 30-45 minutes between walking my dog and logging onto my work computer where I eat breakfast and sit at the kitchen table. This is kind of "me time" to get ready for the day and try to get my brain to ramp up into work mode that has taken the place of my morning commute ever since COVID now that I work remote. Here's what I've tried and why I don't like them:

• The Today Show (and other mass-market morning news): honestly these have some "real" news in them but I feel like there's too much time wasted on filler & fluff & pop culture that I don't really care about.
• CNBC, usually Squawk on the Street: I like that this is more straight to the point but it's more heavily financial than I really need it to be. I'm not an active investor so, while I like getting business/market news, I don't need 45 minutes dedicated to it.
• Bloomberg's Bloomberg Brief on YT: this is a bit broader than the previous option, but still more heavily focused on financial markets than I really need to be.

I'm mostly interested in major world events, economics, tech, and business. I specifically do not care to hear about pop culture and sports (that's for after work) and I'm so tired of hearing about American political theater (although I'd like to know when something concrete happens).

So yeah. What do you watch in the morning? Do you have any suggestions?

I have a Starlabs Labtop in great shape that I would like to sell. Problem is, I can't garner much interest on Craigslist/Facebook Marketplace. Are there any computer Buy/Sell sites in Canada such as Pinkbike.com for used bicycles?

I use a Mac for work, Linux for my personal machine, and the same mouse between the two. I’m accustomed to the dpi/acceleration on Mac, so when I switch to my PC at the end of the day there are slight inaccuracies with the pointer. My wrist compensates to cover the gaps and I develop wrist strain after short periods of use.

Does anyone know how to make the Linux mouse dpi/acceleration as close to identical as possible with my Mac?

chimera linux w/ gnome btw

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've been learning Godot for the past few months and I'm happy to report that it's been going well. Little by little, things are clicking into place. (I hugely, highly, undoubtedly, recommend GDQuest courses)

I'm ready to start working on a small project to test out my skills, and it's going to be a top down pixel art game.

But to be completely honest, I suck at drawing. I suck at drawing as in, I can make stick figures at best. So forget any fancy software for drawing in general like gimp or photoshop.

What I'm looking for is a software meant for pixel art and that makes my life easy, in both drawing and animating. Bonus points if it allows me to trace (I'm not planning to copy/steal art, but I do need reference points, at least for now)

Do you guys have any recommendations? It can be free or paid. I don't mind paying as long the software is worth it.

Now that it is finally fall weather in the Midwest, I have been back to making stews/soups.

My current go-to’s are Zuppa Toscona, Pozole Rojo, and I just made some Kartoffelsuppe (German Potato Soup with Sausage), but I’m looking for more! Any stew-like meal that’s hearty and warm - I like to make a big batch Monday night & eat it for lunches throughout the week, so preferably ones that reheat OK.

I love the Dapanji I’ve had from a local place with hand-pulled noodles, but that seems a bit out of my skill level or comfort-zone to try to make.

What are some of your favorite stews (preferably with recipes)?

Recipes

I've been trying to get a more rounded understanding of the impacts that "AI" has had since ChatGPT went viral back in 2022.

I've found it easy to gather a list of negative impacts, but have struggled to point to many positives.

I was curious if there were folks who have used any of these AI tools, and would willing to share any positive impacts those tools have had in their lives. I'm particularly interested in the text, audio, image, and video generation tools that have appeared since ChatGPT went viral, but please share anything else that you think fits.

I have resubscribed to Netflix after cancelling about 6 months ago and I think there's been a change to the GUI which I really don't care for. I could be wrong but didn't the TV app use to work in the following way: after selecting a movie or television show, the first click would open a menu that would then allow further options including playing the movie or an episode of the TV show? I miss this. Currently, they're is one option at the to of my screen when I open the app that has a selectable 'More Info' option but everything else does not and the media just starts playing immediately upon selection.

I miss the 'menu on first click' behavior. Is there a way to get back to that?

Thanks.

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!

I keep seeing this term but I have no idea what it means ?

and what does it actually mean in practice. for example, what it can actually do, it seems to only be used for algorithms and such. not personal computing. I assume I don't understand because I'm unfamiliar with Quantum mechanics

Sao Paulo Grand Prix
Autódromo José Carlos Pace
November 7-9, 2025

Next race:

Las Vegas Grand Prix
Las Vegas Strip Circuit
November 20-22, 2025

I've been working through my read list and for a while everything was either phenomenal or good enough to entertain.

Then this one. My goodness. I don't like the author. I don't like the narrator. I don't like the other of two characters in the story (so far). I'm piqued by the central mystery, but I can just tell that this is one of those stories where the mystery is going to remain an abstract MacGuffin around which the characters and their flaws are explored. I can't imagine any of this will turn around, but I'm on chapter 3 and about a third of the way through.

So now I'm faced with the choice to finish or abandon. I've been trying to finish it because a friend of mine mentioned having a personal policy of finishing every book she starts, and I am inspired by that. But so far it's just lead to reader's block.

I'm going to get through it, because I'm stubborn, but I don't think I'll enjoy it. Has anyone else ever hate-read a story? What was it? I'm happy to share the one that spawned this thread but only if people want to hear about a book that I've judged in the first third.

(this is all light-hearted, I wouldn't read it if I really hated it that much)

Hello!

I recently reworked my setup such that I have my drive which holds the operating systems (dual boot of Windows 11 and Linux Mint Cinnamon) and another drive which holds all my actual data. This is my first dive into trying to move to Linux as my daily driver but I'm noticing some performance issues.

The first thing I noticed is that transfer speeds are much less than expected. Copying a large file within my data drive I get about 300MB/s on Linux, which is pretty slow for M.2 drives- I get about 10x that speed doing the exact same operation on Windows. I could be okay with this but I also noticed that some video files, like the 4K mp4s off my phone, are virtually unplayable. They'll run at maybe 1fps and/or bog down the UI so much I cant even use the seek. This is the case in both the default media player and VLC. These same files play with no issue on Windows.

I suspect the reason for all this stems from my data drive being NTFS, though my file system and Linux knowledge is pretty weak so this is just a theory. Any ideas / best practices that might help me here?

Hi Tildenauts,

There's a custom at Tildes, that sort of grew organically out of "what should we call ourselves?" threads, to refer to fellow Tilderians in ever changing ways. This happened because there was no obvious, non-cringy answer and anyway who cares? That's my read on it anyway, I didn't follow closely. Plus the idea of online in-groups is kinda cringy itself, but also inevitable because we're humans. The whole concept begs for ironic resignation.

Anyway, fellow Tildinites, it occured to me that I've been coming here on and off for a long time. Since not too long after it launched I think. And it's been great. I consider Tildes a huge success in its mission, or my interpretation of it: be a comparitively intimate forum where people are thoughtful and less reactionary than elsewhere online. Throw in a (just) large enough userbase to include a wide variety of life experience and perspectives and you've got an oasis in an ever more polarized and reactionary internet.

Tildes reminds me of earlier internet forums, when the tone, pace and motivations for online communication were less capitalized, in various senses of the word. Niche subreddits during Reddit's golden era are another example. It's a better vibe. I'm guessing that, during the various Reddit exodii, a fair amount of people who share that nostalgia ended up here.

I even have some nostalgia for the early days of the platforms. MySpace! Early instagram was gorgeous. Even Facebook had its moments. My social media participation has always been below average, unless you count the years where any online socializing was unusual in the general population, but it's been a semi-consistent part of essentially my whole adult life both personally and professionally. Thinking about online socializing, it's funny how it's sort of its own thing. Kind of in its own social category, a new one that we recently invented. Maybe, in part, it's because the internet is a sort of buffer, and in those buffered interactions we're all a little different. In both good and bad ways. Lately it feels unbalanced towards bad, but perhaps it will swing back.

It feels like the Tildian moderation strategy, and guidelines, have successfully created a culture that's now self sustaining to some degree. And I think that culture is pretty great. It's not perfect, in the way that nothing people do can ever be perfect, especially where communication is concerned, but it's beautiful and I'm grateful it exists.

So, cheers to Tildes! I'd love to hear what other Tilderianites think about Tildes.

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!

I get the feeling that, outside its own communities, Overwatch has mostly slipped out of the wider conversation.

We've had:

• Blizzard’s various incidents/controversies

• The shift to OW2 and all the confusion/anger around that

• The battle pass / shop pricing / F2P monetization complaints

• Cancellation of PVE mode

• General live-service fatigue

Most of that hasn’t really been “fixed”, but I'm not seeing nearly as much noise about it anymore, good or bad.

My own (slightly biased) view as someone still playing:

As a now free-to-play, live-service game with ongoing updates and "events", I feel like OW2's cosmetic pricing is (unfortunately) pretty standard compared to similar big titles. I'm not saying that's good, I think aggressive monetization is a wider industry problem, but within that landscape, the model itself doesn't feel uniquely outrageous to me if the goal is keeping a big, polished game running long-term.

I also doubt the actual dev team has much control over pricing, so that part lands more on Blizzard/ABK as a company (shocker).

Setting that aside: purely in terms of gameplay, the game currently feels the best it ever has to me. There's a good variety of modes, and things like the new Stadium mode feel very different from the usual Quick Play/Comp loop while still keeping the core of what makes Overwatch fun: the heroes, the readability, how smooth and well-designed everything feels.

What I'd like to hear from you:

Especially if you're not deep in the OW ecosystem anymore (or never were):

• Do you think about Overwatch at all these days?

• Did you drop it because of Blizzard, OW2’s launch, monetization, balance, something else?

• From the outside, does it feel “fine now”, “permanently tainted”, “kind of irrelevant”, or just background noise?

• If you never really played it: is there anything that would actually make you try Overwatch 2 in its current state?

And if you are still playing or following it closely, I'm also interested in how you feel about the state of the game vs peak OW1 / early OW2, especially whether it's earned back any trust or enthusiasm.

Not trying to rehash every incident in detail, just curious how the game and its reputation land for people who aren’t immersed in it every day.

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.

I have a decent sized library of probably around 2-300 books, and it has been on my list of projects to-do to make a catalog/database for my library to quickly reference what I have. Do any of you catalog your libraries and if so what do you use for it?

I know Libid and LibraryThing are two of the big website/app ones, and it could be done with a Google Sheet or similar, but I was wondering if anyone here has any experience before I really get started.

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!

I have been working on adapting the Mul from AD&D 2e's Dark Sun into my general AD&D 1e campaign to coincide with the deletion of gnomes (they deserve it). I chose to not simply take them 1:1 since even the dwarf has different mechanics in Dark Sun. I took into consideration what the dwarf is good at, as well as how the half-elf and elf relate, and tried to model it in the same way.

What I'd like is opinions from people with experience in the pre-WotC editions of D&D that are pre-disposed to picking demi-humans on whether the mul is something they'd pick.

Note that the Runecaster is a Fighter subclass from a 2e supplement that I've ported back and the Occultist is a personal creation that combines the cleric and magic-user with additional abilities in the way that the 1e bard does with the fighter and thief.

• Requires Strength 8 and Constitution 6
• Gains +1 to Strength and -1 to Charisma
• Gains +1 to poison saves per 4 points of Constitution
• Can detect certain aspects of stonework within 10'
  • At 30%, detects grade/slope, new construction/passage, moving walls/rooms
  • At 25%, detects traps relating to pits, falling blocks, etc. as well as approximate depth underground
• Thief adjustments as follows
  • -5 to Open Locks and Read Languages
  • +5 to Move Silently and Climb Walls
• Infravision 60'
• May qualify and check for psionic ability per the PHB Appendix 1
• Classes Allowed (Level Limit), with dwarf for comparison
  • Cleric (U), 6* for dwarf
    • Druid (6), NA for dwarf
  • Fighter (8), 7* for dwarf
    • Runecaster (9*), U for dwarf
  • Thief (U), 10 for dwarf
  • Can qualify for Occultist, NA for dwarf
    * Having a prime requisite of 17 or 18 will increase this limit by 1 or 2 levels, respectively.

I have a friend who plays in my regular D&D game and has a pretty significant stutter. The rest of the party are great about this and are very patient and understanding, so I'm not looking for advice in that area, but this friend has also expressed a desire to create and run a campaign. I would love to play in his game, but I know he worries that his stutter would severely restrict his ability to be an effective DM. Unfortunately, at least as far as traditional DM-ing is concerned, I think he's just objectively correct. But that got me wondering - are there ways to work around his impediment or rearrange the typical flow of a D&D session that could allow him to do it?

Things we've considered:

• Asynchronous play by text (in Discord): This technically would work just fine, but it obviously doesn't feel the same as real-time play where everyone is in the moment together. IIRC, the last time we talked about this, he didn't really sound interested in pursuing it.
• Him doing the writing and prep and me actually running the game: This also would technically work, and I told him I'd be honored to do it, but I'm sure he'd prefer to not have to filter his ideas through someone else and trust that person to execute them faithfully. I know I would feel bad every time I failed to deliver something the way he intended. I also wouldn't be able to be a player for him if we did this.

Things I've wondered about but not suggested yet:

• Is there some sort of text-to-speech (TTS) engine that he could use to help him run the game in near real time? I'm thinking like a Stephen Hawking situation. This would relieve the social pressure of having to overcome the stutter, and it would also allow him to write chunks of speech ahead of time and just paste them in at game time. There would of course be delays as he types out improvised parts, but it would still be closer to a traditional experience than something like asynchronous play.
• Is there a way we could pull off a kind of co-DM arrangement where he's more involved in the moment, rather than simply writing and planning? This would still take me out of his pool of potential players, but it would be better than me just running the game by myself. What could this look like?

Are there possibilities I'm not considering? What tools and strategies could he/we use to mitigate this and help him be successful as a DM? Is there a way to dramatically reimagine what a D&D session looks like that might still be fulfilling for him and everyone involved?

Edit: Should have mentioned we play online, so computer-based tools would be excellent options. They'd fit in very naturally.

Obviously the solution will be highly specific to him personally, and I'm not trying to solve all his problems for him without taking into consideration what he wants. We've talked several times over the years about his stutter and his attempts to eliminate it, and it's a conversation we return to every so often. I'd just like to have some ideas to suggest next time this comes up.

Thanks in advance, everyone!

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!

Hello. I usually talk about trains, except today, I just want to vent on my finances and my wishes for a less expensive world.

I have found myself in financial straits,as I had amassed debt last year, lost work for months and amassed more debt. It’s in the low tens of thousands. of course I also lost my healthcare because I live in a rich country run by morally destitute anti-intellectuals.

On paper, I will pay off the debt in 18-24 months, if god allows. I have work now.

This city’s transit system has been hobbled in bad faith and will be destroyed come January….Fares have already risen, service cut. My train to work will be cut because the state refuses to provide services for its most productive citizens. It is twice as long by bus, suicide by bicycle on roads built for tanks, so I will have to sacrifice time or life.

It seems the price of electricity has increased. I would generate my own, but it is impractical.

Sadly my possessions are breaking too. This is the way of things, it’s just miserable timing, and each discovery of a failing mechanism or dilapidated object piles onto the defeat. The window frame has rotted and the glass fallen -- the house is frozen. Not a single plant survives. (The landlord will fix it, but not hurriedly…..) Bulbs burnt out, rooms dark. My bicycle needs new brakes, a new chain, my helmet has been destroyed and should be replaced, but for now I have been riding without. The computer has broken after 14 years, admittedly about time…. An expensive thing to replace, so now I only have my phone, whose battery has degraded quite a lot and will not be usable for too much longer, and a small laptop on death’s door too. I had worn my single pair of walking shoes for 5 years until, yesterday, the sole fell off. (Thankfully, I have one more, but it is formal and uncomfortable) A new pair is more costly than I remember… I know a cheap one will disintegrate in a season and do nothing for the snow, and a quality one is beyond financial prudence. My jacket is worn and torn by years and embers, beyond my ability to sew, and I must darn and darn and darn all the socks and gloves with holes, which I hate to do, and i am not good at. The denim jeans are ripped, in a place difficult to patch, and the pockets torn. I cannot bear the cold the same anymore, so I also need an overcoat, which I cannot afford. The fitted sheets are inexplicably torn by some punitive act of god, probably irreparably. The pillows are compressed, worthless, and causing me pain. Even the tent, which I might use to regain some sanity in the woods, has had its elastic poles dried solid and is basically unusable. At least I have a few books.

My lifestyle is structurally cheap. Affordable city, relatively low rent, multiple housemates, no car, only occasional commute, no dog, no wife, no children. Not too much to pay for. I eat simply. I am content with it.

Yet somehow I find myself with hundreds of dollars of credit card purchases this month, more than an entire paycheck, and last was also more. Qualifying for a healthcare plan has reduced my medical costs, but the difference is withheld, and I’m realizing that often it costs more than it would cost out of pocket, so at best it makes no difference. The dental and vision are exorbitant, so I just hope I don’t get a cavity.

I suspect I need glasses, or will soon. I can tell my eyesight is beginning to worsen. But it’ll have to wait a couple years.

The fear of a worse medical emergency persists. The deductible is rather high for a plan that offers no HSA and the co-pay is unremarkable, the coverage limited. Perhaps the least useful healthcare plan I’ve ever had.

I do not gamble. I like to drink beer but have abstained recently. My hobbies are inspecting train and street infrastructure, studying the Holy Bible, moralizing on the internet and persuading the government to institute a better society. I lapse sometimes and make impulsive purchases, but not frequently. I have not even gone to see a game in two years.

It’s a great pain to review your statements and recognize that almost none of the purchases were wasteful, only a few technically unnecessary. There were just too many overall.

What upsets me most is the social distance I have gained from my condition of functional poverty. the agony of refusing visits, trips, games, concerts, shows, dinners, coffees, drinks grinds on me daily. Yes it is still nice to say hello, it is just not the same. The pity, or disgust, the symbolic offers of charity received. Mostly the confusion—the awkwardness, the unsolicited advice (which I don’t normally mind, but it gets old). I prefer to socialize with bourgeois progressives, academics and professionals who care about engineering and mathematics and government policy and theory. It’s what I care about. I do not really resent them, but everything they do costs more money than I possess, so it is difficult to see friends and I cannot hope to keep up with colleagues after work.

I don’t object to work but I resent the fact that I must pay for my own healthcare. I also resent that my government neglects my transportation and my safety. I resent the pollution of the air, the NIMBYism driving up rents and leaving the addicted even more hopeless. I acknowledge the mistakes I’ve made that have led me here. I can’t undo the past, but Congress could socialize all medicine in the next budget if it wanted to…. repeatedly chooses not to.

That’s all. I just wanted to complain. You can give me advice if you want. I’m relatively financially literate, just poor and human.

Tildes is a very serious site, where we discuss very serious matters like dick cheney, zohran mamdani and cellebrite. Tags culled from the highest voted topics from the last seven days, if anyone was perplexed.

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 friend of mine in Britain recently had to replace a headlight on her Honda. It was hit by a rock and there was no choice but to replace it. Her description of the headlight was "an LED Matrix" unit, and since I don't keep up with terminology in modern cars, this was something new to me. The cost of the light was £729.99 and to make matters worse, it had to be aligned and linked to the computer in the car, which could only be done at the Honda dealership. Their labor charge was £350. That comes to over $1400 US dollars to replace a damn headlight.

I want nothing to do with modern vehicles. I own an old Toyota Tacoma, and I can replace any part on it by myself. Shoot, if you've got 10 and 12mm wrenches, you can virtually disassemble the truck.

For those who like to tinker with their cars, I suspect there is a cut-off point in time, where it is no longer easily done, and it may be ten years past by now.

Anyone have any stories about absurd costs with their vehicles these days?

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.

TL;DR: NASA's public Planetary Data System is at risk of being shut down. Anyone have any ideas for backing it up?

Hi everyone,

Bit of a long-shot here, but I wanted to try on high-quality tildes before jumping back into the cesspool of reddit. I'm posting it in ~science rather than ~space as I figure interest in backing up public data is broader than just the space community.

I work regularly with NASA's Planetary Data System, or PDS. It's a massive (~3.5petabytes!!) archive of off-world scientific data (largely but not all imaging data). PDS is integral for scientific research - public and private - around the world, and is maintained, for free, by NASA (with support of a number of Academic institutions).

The current state of affairs for NASA is grim:

• NASA Lays Off ISS Workers at Marshall Space Flight Center
• More layoffs at JPL
• NASA is sinking its flagship science center during the government shutdown — and may be breaking the law in the process, critics say

And as a result, I (and many of my industry friends) have become increasingly concerned that PDS will be taken down as NASA is increasingly torn down for spare parts and irreparably damaged. This administration seems bent on destroying all forms of recording-keeping and public science, so who knows how long PDS will be kept up. Once it's down, it'll be a nightmare to try and collect it all again from various sources. I suspect we'll permanently lose decades worth of data - PDS includes information going all the way back to the Apollo missions!

As such, we've been pushing to back-up as much of PDS as we can, but have absolutely no hope of downloading it all within the next year or two, nevermind in a few months if the current cuts impact us soon.

If you or someone you know would be interested in helping figure out how we can back-up PDS before it's too late, please let me know here or in a DM. I've already tried reaching out to the Internet Archive, but did not hear anything back from them.

Edit: to clarify, the larger problem is download speeds - we've topped out at 20mb/s with 8 connections.

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?

The other day I realised I should have used a disclaimer on a comment.

It is a comment that is supposed to be light hearted and fun so I started to amuse myself in a way that I haven't done in quite some time.

I've "always" enjoyed breaking down words (preferably in the "wrong" place), finding synonyms or sound-a-likes or second meanings and their synonyms or sound-a-likes or second meanings, etc, etc...

So I would like to invite you to build on my example below, bring your own examples or tell us about ways that you play with words.

Example:

I decided to spin off this topic based on the discussion in the Leaker reveals which Pixels are vulnerable to Cellebrite phone hacking.

Since I kinda by chance got rid of my dependency on Google Photos (as I installed Immich on my server which does the same but on my own hardware) I decided I want to try and de-Google my life more.

I was thinking about using my own domain to send e-mail from, but since I don't run e-mail server myself and I don't even want to - because of security reasons from multiple directions - I would like to use some paid e-mail service provider that would host the e-mail for me and I would append my domain to it.

I probably know technicalities on how to do that - through setting DNS MX record on my domain provider and pointing it to my e-mail provider. But I don't know which provider to choose.

I would like to sync my contacts (not through import/export feature via .vcf file, rather automatic synchronization like Google/Microsoft/Apple accounts do), I would like to sync calendar and have the ability to share it with other people (can be another account on the service if not outsiders) and of course e-mail, preferably one that doesn't rely on their own app so I can use ie. Thunderbird.

I would like to kindly ask anyone here in audience to share their experience with their providers, if you use some. It would be great if you used the service as I would do or if you could try my proposed usage on your account.

Thank you all who respond to me. I may have questions if you do :-)

I know about Fastmail which is appealing for not being US (things are kinda unsettling there right now), for having contacts, calendar and plenty space, but isn't exactly cheap - not expensive though. I know about Tuta, which is cheaper for 1-3 accounts but not for 4 and above, it has less space (still enough) but I don't know about contacts there at the moment. I found this Wikipedia comparison page and had a look there, but I would like to hear personal experiences and thoughts.

A new entry to go with my previous two posts in the same vein NYC and Denver, but this time in...

TOKYO!

The "Going on a trip and have zero idea what to do as a non-tourist..." isn't entirely true like it was in my post about NYC as anyone that has seen me talk about sumo can imagine, but everyone was extremely helpful and threw out suggestions I wouldn't have even thought about looking for in previous posts. So here I am again to bug you wonderful people for Tildes Travel Guide III: Tokyo Trilogy Part Minus One

The overarching details:

• 7 days in Tokyo from Friday, January 9th to Friday, January 16th.
• Except for Jan 9, I am completely solo for the entire trip.
• There are two specific events I will be attending, one is Friday the 9th, the other is TBD but can be nearly any day during the trip.
• I don't know where I'm staying yet. Where is kinda dependent on what I decide to do/be regularly near, am open for accommodation recommendations. I would prefer to stay in one place the entire trip, not real interested in packing up all of my things to move to another part of Tokyo (or another city) unless I can be convinced to do so.
• I'm not the sightseeing tourist-y type so there's little interest in the things that are on every "Tokyo Top 10" list.

And so I beseech you fellow Tilderinos, as someone that doesn't care about being a tourist and doesn't have a social media presence to feed I'm-here-and-you're-not selfies to, what should someone with nearly a week entirely alone with nothing but free time in Tokyo actually do?

I've tried a LOT of Personal Knowledge Management software in the journey for the perfect way to record all knowledge I want to save.

TL;DR: I've tried a bunch of apps to try and replace a combination of Todoist and Obsidian. What software and system do you use to keep track of personal knowledge and tasks?

What I'm looking for
There are three different attributes I am looking for in a PKM, in the following order:

1. Ease of use. I need whatever I use to be really easy and frictionless to record information with. If there's too much resistance to getting information into the application than I probably won't end up saving it and I'll just forget about it.
2. It needs to be easy to surface relevant information but also browse through less relevant information. This one is sort of a few sub categories. On one hand, I need reminders, due dates, and the UX to make sure that I don't miss certain tasks. On the other hand I need to be able to categorize and view all recorded entities - tasks, as well as pieces of information unrelated to tasks. This means I want to be able to categorize the information in a way that allows me to filter down from a larger list or from completed tasks - the best way to do this is usually tags.
3. I like to use software that doesn't allow the developers to access my information; usually this is done through end to end encryption. This is especially important in a PKM because of the volume and sensitivity of the information being recorded. However, this is last on the list because I use multiple devices which introduces additional surface vectors if someone were to try and get my information. End to end encryption is just a nice to have.
4. A bonus, being able to share tasks in a secure and easy way with my significant other.

Where I've been
Todoist
I won't make you read the whole post to find out my favorite... it's Todoist. I've used it for years! It really locks down that first attribute, ease of storing tasks. Todoist makes it really easy to add tasks, move tasks, and reschedule tasks. It's a simple and functional task manager that really works for me. I basically use it to keep track of everything across several projects. I roll over most of the tasks from day to day until I'm able to complete them. For tasks that need a reminder I add a due date - the reminder system is pretty basic but it works. It's the app I keep coming back to after trying all the others. But being primarily a task manager it lacks the ability to store information not related to tasks. Like information about people, places or things. So I searched for another app.

Obsidian
I'm trying this out on Obsidian right now! It's a wonderful piece of software that has full end to end encryption. I use it as a sort of digital "safe" for information I definitely don't want to lose. Unfortunately Obsidian lacks some critical functionality:

• Tasks are just checkboxes. There are plugins that can help you handle them better but the native UX for managing them is just copy, paste, and delete.
• There's tagging and folders but there's no real way to move through lots of semi-related pieces of information. I like a big list of stuff that can be filtered down, not lots of scattered documents. All of the linking and tagging happens in the middle of the rest of the text and a list of backlinks at the bottom of the UI.
• Maybe this sounds silly to you the reader - but basically it's all just too manual. If Obsidian had a sort of "parent note" at the top of each folder - like Notion which I'll cover next - it would make Obsidian a lot easier to use. Instead I always have to choose between a new block in a note, a whole new note or a folder. I'd love to be able to write out stuff as I think of it and then move stuff into sub folders - or lists - more easily.
• It's expensive for a journaling app with a relatively basic feature set. Note to note linking and cloud sync are just expected features at this point for an application like this.

Between Todoist and Obsidian I am able to meet all of those listed attributes:

1. Todoist makes it easy to enter information and make sure I remember it when I need to. I can write a reminder in Todoist to make sure I record information in Obsidian.
2. It's pretty easy to keep track of a lot of relevant tasks and other pieces of information in Todoist. For information that I need longer term or isn't related to a current task, it goes in Obsidian
3. Obsidian is end to end encrypted. Anything related to sensitive stuff goes in Obsidian.
4. Todoist allows setting sharing at a project level. So this makes it pretty easy to share tasks.

After using this system for awhile I started to see cracks forming. Todoist makes it easy to keep track of tasks but complex projects are often hard to manage. It's easy to lose track of tasks that are further out then a few days without using obtuse filters. Obsidian is difficult to use on mobile and having to transfer information from Todoist to Obsidian is frustrating. There are probably Obsidian plugins I could use to manage some of this but then I'd have to evaluate each one for data privacy concerns. And paying so much for Obsidian it's a little frustrating to have to rely on community plugins.
So I began looking for a new application, one that could do it all.

Notion
I still use Notion for a few different very specific things. I could probably use Obsidian or some of the other apps I'm about to talk about for these things. But I really like Notion - when it first came out it blew me away! It did so much stuff! It's great for keeping lists of well categorized pieces of information. It has great support for tagging, and the aforementioned folder / page hybrid. It's basically a wiki software combined with a task manager. A few issues keep me from using it as my main application:

• Like Obsidian it's hard to use on mobile. Especially for complicated stuff like moving through lots of different pieces of unrelated information.
• The reminder system is clunky. Since everything in Notion is a "block", reminders are tied to them. I think if I put a lot of time and effort into building a process for keeping track of my tasks it could work. But again, I don't really want to spend that much effort when I have system that already mostly works.
• There's no end to end encryption and nothing but a true / false value assigned to your user keeps employees from accessing your information easily.

A great piece of software but ultimately one I moved away from after a bit and back to Todoist.

Workflowy
This was the first time I felt a real paradigm shift. Workflowy is basically a really big list. Every bullet on the list is a "node" and you can zoom into nodes endlessly. So you can go from seeing all of your information to seeing very specific pieces of information very quickly and easily, even on mobile. And entering information is a breeze, you just add it as a bullet and then move it to where you need it. It's amazing for what I like to do, which is start with a general idea and build more and more specific information. For example, when going on trips I could create a "trip to place" bullet. Workflowy has amazing support for two way linking lists - basically you can change a list in one place and have it updated in all the other places its linked. So I could have a packing list that I link to the trip to place bullet. Or I can copy it and add to it. You can see all the possibilities and the UX makes it seamless.

The real killer here for me was the lack of reminders. The way to handle due dates in Workflowy is to literally type the date; there are UX solutions like a pop out calendar that handles this for you. And then you can filter down to bullets that contain that date. In theory it works well but it requires me to make sure I am looking at the right information when I need to be instead of the other way around. I tried using Todoist to supplement this but ended up having to constantly check both to make sure each was properly updated. If Worflowy had a way to assign reminders to bullets so a notification popped up that would make this the perfect app. In fact, I might give it another try after writing this out!

Lastly, it doesn't offer end to end encryption.

Twos App
This is the other app that got really close to being perfect. Twos App is the software that touched the sun and lost its wings. It does everything! It's sort of similar to Workflowy where you can have checkboxes (tasks) and bullets (pieces of information). You also have lists. So you can start a "shopping list" that sits outside your daily tasks, and you can fill that list with items you need. Then when you are ready to go shopping you can move that shopping list into a "day" and it's automatically a task. It also has a pretty good reminder system.
The problem with Twos App is unfortunate: the bugs. I found it doing odd things like reordering items, separating them out of lists and just generally glitching out. My theory is that the app is so feature packed that the systems start to conflict with each other. I've seen they are going to release a new major version soon so I might give it another try.

This is getting way too long! Just real quick some others I've tried:

• Capacities. A lot of protentional, like a more structured version of Notion. It shares a ton of the same features and functions similarly. But everything revolves around "objects" which are basically just... templates. There's no inheritance or ways to compose objects that would make something like that really powerful
• Amplenote: Another app that is close in theory but one big thing is it lacks the ability to tag tasks. You can only tag notes, which tasks live inside of. There are UX solutions for this but it's pretty clunky. It also supports end to end encryption but on a note by note basis? It seems like another situation where if I put a lot of time in I might be able to get something working but just doesn't seem worth it.
• Loqseq: End to end encrypted! Great support for tasks! But I think it's just still too underbaked. The sync feature is still in beta and requires you to pay in the form of donations? They basically tie your account to the donations you make and then give you access. Seems not worth it for the current set of functionality. It also lacks task level tags, like Amplenote.
• I've also tried Day One, Daycast, Standard Notes, Legend, and probably a bunch of others I'm not listing. I almost forgot about Ticktick.

So this brings me to my question: what application and system do you use?

It's that time of year again. The time where we randomly decide to delay our pets' dinner by an hour for no explicable reason.

My dog has been getting antsy and frantic for her 5 pm dinner starting at 4 pre-time change, so time change is going to be rough. Today I fed her at 4:30 EST/5:30 DT (Dog Time), but holding on that long was a challenge with how frantic she gets. We've joked about just leaving the house for an hour or so every day just to evade her. As the week goes on, I fear it may become less of a joke. (No advice needed for the record. We go through this every year, she'll adapt... Eventually.)

So how about the rest of you dealing with time change? How gracefully do your pets accept the sudden schedule change? Anyone else considering just becoming daily regulars at your nearest store?

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!