21st century version of the Jules Verne classic.

No new carbon added to the atmosphere.

Piece of cake? Impossible? Doable?

Discuss...

Sadly, I think I need to reduce my coffee intake. I only ever had a cup a day, but I've always been in to light roasts... roasted within walking distance of my house*... super fancy shit. Anyway, I'm trying to nail down some health things, so coffee has to go for a time.

I am now a tea person. I don't really like it, but I need something like that in the morning. I've started with Lapsang Souchong. This is pretty much the only tea I've ever had. I don't have any dairy in my diet, either, which seems to be a big part of tea-life.

Any top tips for getting into tea? I was just mocked for weighing tea... I guess that isn't as important in this scene.

* not joking about this :)

edit: thanks everybody! the first round of teas are:

• Lapsang Souchong
• Hojicha
• Irish Breakfast
• Margaret's Hope

so far so good!

I'd say that on Tildes as on other platforms, you see a lot more posts responding to a topic than you see comments on existing posts.

I get it. Responding to a prompt with a thoughtful, top-level comment is expressive, can often be therapeutic and comes with the bonus of possible comments by others on your entry.

Comments on existing thoughts are less sexy and possibly less fulfilling because you're riffing off of another person's idea, but as a reader and a community member, seeing user to user interaction is the best part of a social network.

I'm a perennial commenter - at best because I love conversation, at worst, with the hope that I can digress from the mainline conversation.

Where do you fall?

*Edit: I've just learned the difference in terminology between a top level comment and a comment. Edited to avoid confusion.

Have you had a fulfilling mentorship, whether as mentor or mentee? How does one gain a mentor? Are there professional associations that one pays a fee to join?

Advice on career development wanted. Especially advice for introverted, neurodivergent women in business.

I want to hear a variety of stories, of how you became good at "career", beyond becoming competent at "work", and how you learned to be good not only at what you do but how you go about doing what you do.

Thank you for your time.

I had an interesting experience this week. Not all union meetings are interesting, even if they are useful. Yesterday was a pleasant exception where it was both useful and interesting. For the first time, I witnessed AI coming up as a topic of conversation. There is no secret that people fear losing their jobs due to AI automation, and sure enough I saw proof of it to the extent that the union may consider adding some clauses around protecting jobs from AI.

How is it at your workplace? Where I work, this year I witnessed a very strong push to use AI. Messaging around using AI at town halls, messaging around using AI in team meetings, articles on the intranet site, IT events around how to craft good prompts, etc. I would not be surprised if they tied some leaders' bonuses to how much they can get their teams to use AI. This part is quite annoying to me, not to mention deceitful. If I were a leader I'd straight up tell my team about it. I am not a leader - leaders are not part of the union to begin with.

The whole thing made me also think about how my colleagues use AI. It really is a mixed bag. I see everything from the person who runs a 2-line email through AI five times to finetune every word, to myself who only reach for AI when I am stuck and it's just much faster than a search engine/forums/videos to solve my issues (for example needing a script in a programming language I am not familiar with).

I am hopefully starting a new job soon, and their health and vision insurance is UHC. We can also choose a regional plan (UPMC for anyone in the western PA area) through my wife's job.

All my previous employers have been local, so we've always had UPMC coverage. This is my first time dealing with a national insurance company.

Likely my new plan will be be less expensive and have lower deductibles than my wife's.

Pittsburgh is split between UPMC (a hospital system that grew an insurance arm) and AHN (an insurance provider who grew a hospital system). Ironically, UHC may offer me more options since they seem to have most of the UPMC and AHN providers in their network.

I've checked all my doctors and the major hospitals, and they are all listed as in-network. I'm already getting my maintenance medications through CostPlus, so I'm not that worried about prescriptions.

My wife and I are in our 40s and relatively healthy, but I know we are reaching the point where (statistically, and looking at friends the same age) we're likely to have some big health events in the next five years.

Outside the very obvious news story that comes to mind when thinking about UHC, what are your experiences with them? Things to watch out for? Things you wish you knew going in?

Edit: thanks everyone for your input. This largely confirms my expectations, but I appreciate people taking the time to share.

We'll be discussing We are Legion at the end of November.

This month, I've been busy and also trying to finish Orbital by Harvey before my loan period finishes. (It's an e-book loan on Libby and I can't get an extension.) So I haven't started quite yet.

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 ran the dead horse ultra today! It went well, I had to work through some foot discomfort and crashing physically from going out too hard.

Ran the first half in almost exactly 3 hours and finished up the second half in just over 3 1/2. It was my first ultra (and actually my first official race longer than 5 miles) and I am very quite happy with how it went.

I am tentatively planning on running a 50 mile race sometime next year and depending on how that goes shooting for a 100 mile at some point in the next couple years. Anyone who has any questions (or advice) please let me know!

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!

Hey all I own a pixel 8a if that's relevant and am looking for a controller that is Bluetooth and costs 50 dollars or less on Amazon. I'm not too picky as long as it can hold the phone and is of good quality. Thank you!

I was trying to find out why Lidarr wasn't matching my copy of The Cure's Greatest Hits. Found out I've got some bootleg Russian release that's catalogued on discogs (I eventually found the musicbrainz release and updated my profile to include bootlegs). So I search "Lidarr use specific discogs release" and the duck duck go search assist spat out some text about Lidarr not using discogs and cited this Tildes post.

It's curious because that post is 3yrs old and doesn't talk about discogs integration in Lidarr, just one mention of discogs in the post and some folks talking about Lidarr in the comments (It did cite a relevant GitHub issue about it though). The AI response mentioned that some users track new releases with Lidarr and downloads disabled, while covered in the post, it seems fairly tangential to my query.

I'm curious why it decided to check or cite a tildes post. No tildes posts came up in the first couple pages of search results. I use tildes from the same location, though on my phone where this query was on my desktop, and have done a couple DDG queries using "site:tildes.net" on my phone.

Has anyone else seen a search assist cite an unexpected site? Not unexpected as in irrelevant, that's all too common, but small and specific sources.

Something more lighthearted:

My wife has been doing a project that requires her to get people's information over the phone much more than usual. This leads to her and them using unofficial phonetic alphabet terms ("A as in aardvark" instead of "A as in alpha"). This is usually fine except when they choose a word that is ambiguous or just a word not known to the other party. Someone said "V as in Veya" to her, and we still don't know what a Veya is.

This got me thinking about what inappropriate words you could use. I suggested "V as in Vasectomy".

So how about it, Tilderists? What are your "wrong answers only" suggestions for a NOGO phonetic alphabet?

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.

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.

My current phone is about 6 years old and has a lot of signal problems and I replaced the battery about 6 months ago and the new battery is even worse than the original one was and I think it's time to get a new phone.

Things I want in my phone:

• Android
• I would love to have a microSD card but that seems impossible
  • if there's not microSD then I need min 512GB of internal storage and I would prefer 1TB if that's not like +1k to the cost
• Headphone jack
• If there's AI, then I can disable it
• Excellent battery life
• On the smaller end

Things I don't really care about:

• Camera quality (I'm a shitty photographer, the camera wont help)

Things that might be nice:

• Having a stylus but not at the cost of the phone being enormous. Reason I want this is because it gets cold in the winter in Chicago

I hope this phone lasts another 6 years and will be pissed if it lasts under 4 years; at that lifespan and amount of use I get out of it I'm pretty price-agnostic. I live in the USA but expect to travel to Europe a few times next year so it should do decently well when traveling. Network is T-Mobile.

This is not SUPER urgent right now so if your advice is "wait til January because the XYZ phone releasing then is probably better than anything available right now" I would be willing to do that. But my current phone is really not doing great.

Happy to answer any other followup questions if anyone has any!

Thanks!

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.