This is your place to share any and all thoughts on your TV watching for 2025.

What you talk about does NOT have to be limited to this year’s releases.

Feel free to share:

• Favorites
• Disappointments
• Surprises
• Memorable moments
• Self-reflections
• Anything else!

Let us know how your 2025 went.

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!

EDIT: As one user pointed out, this is not about Apple Music the streaming platform, this is about basically itunes but itunes no longer technically exists as an application.

So a little background: my father just died and a big part of his life was listening to music, for most of his life he's been building themed compilations of songs he liked using whatever medium was available, magnetic reel tapes in the '60s and '70s, then cassette tapes, then CDs, and of course playlists for the last 20 or so years. Now my mother and I would like to back up and save a lot of that work as those compilations have a lot of sentimental value and are pretty unique. There's lots of old obscure rhythm and blues and soul songs that you aren't really going to come across anywhere else. However, it's pretty much all locked into Apple Music, which isn't really a problem in the here and now, because we all have tended to use macs since my mother adopted them in the '80s or '90s. However, we don't really want that data just locked into a private ecosystem that has been getting more and more restricted and where we have less and less control.

So I'm looking for a way to keep those playlists intact and export them out of Apple Music in a playable format and into a less locked in system to then back them up. Most of the music should be DRM free as a lot of it would have been taken off of CDs probably as MP3 files, though a lot of that would've happened 15+ years ago.

Does anyone have any ideas about the best way to do that? I seem to be able to manually export each one into a .txt file but of course it's not really playable sound files. My tech skills are pretty limited, I have about an average amount of knowledge or even slightly more for someone my age (30s) who grew up around computers and the internet but I grew up after it necessary to have basic coding skills to use computers so my experience doing even basic coding or running scripts is pretty much nil. Any ideas would be appreciated.

Edit: it’s version 1.0.6.10

This is your place to share any and all thoughts on your movie viewing for 2025.

Movies you talk about do NOT have to be limited to this year’s releases.

Feel free to share:

• Favorites
• Disappointments
• Surprises
• Memorable moments
• Self-reflections
• Anything else!

Let us know how your movie watching for 2025 went.

My wife and I are potentially adopting a cat.

The cat is an adult, not sure the exact age (but will see if that’s known when we get it).

The long story short is, a close friend had 3 cats (I think strays as kittens but not 100% sure, I think they were acquired at different times - they do not appear to be related to each other), but due to the current political state of the US ended up moving abroad on a visa for this past year, and is planning on staying away for longer. Initially, the cats were staying with another friend but that has recently fallen through (I think they did not expect the 3 cats to be as much to handle as they are, they keep getting onto counters, eating food that is left out/left unattended, and scratching furniture, and at this point they’re getting fed up with them), and we were asked if we could take any of them

We have met the cats quite a few times, and they do seem friendly towards us.

My wife seems very allergic to one of them, but only mildly allergic or significantly less allergic to the other two.

We currently live in an apartment that does allow pets, but this would be the first time either of us have owned a cat, so unfortunately I think we could only take one of them.

I’m thinking we could probably use some advice on things to consider and best practices.

Preliminary research has said to get 1 or 2 litter boxes, feed at regular times, running water bowls are preferred, and get lidded trash cans. We plan on keeping the cat on the same food and litter type, at least initially. I know there are other things, and we will take the cat for a check-up and establish a vet. Due to my wife’s allergies, we are planning on keeping the cat out of the bedroom and running an air purifier there, and hopefully visiting an allergist before we adopt the cat if time permits.

But I’m wondering what others’ experiences have been with a cat in an apartment and what advice you may have? (How to keep them off of counters? Keep them from getting bored while at work or while working from home?)

Does Tildes have any way for me to logout of a device I'm not currently using?

• I don't see any session management or "logout of all devices" in the settings.
• Would resetting my password invalidate all active sessions?
• Do I need to email someone?

My oldest zygote is 5 years old. Up until now, I've been able to keep a good lid on what he's allowed to watch. We have Roku with a handful of streaming services, and he's comfortable navigating it himself to watch shows. I'm big on teaching agency and responsibility, and he's responded well to that: he watches shows we've okayed, asks about other shows he's interested in, and respects us if we tell him no. He's a smart kid and I'd like to keep him that way.

It's starting to get harder. Originally I could say on on grounds of age appropriateness, or I could point to things about a show that I outright didn't approve of for him. This is important to me because I want to teach him to think about these things and make good choices for himself in the future. So instead of telling him "No, you can't watch that", I want to tell him "No, you can't watch this because _________."

Now that he's getting older, he's asking more and more to watch things. And in some cases, I find myself saying "No. It's hard to explain why, but this isn't good." I hate saying that because I know that's not satisfying at his age, and it doesn't teach him anything about how to make good choices about what to watch.

YouTube is rife with examples. If my son is watching a branded show about Spiderman, I know what to expect. There are brand standards that I don't always agree with, but I know what the damage is, and the problems I have with those shows are problems I can talk through with him.

But when YouTube recommends videos that are low production quality videos of people in their living rooms playing with Spiderman figures, I don't want him watching it. Some of it feels Elsagate-adjacent (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elsagate) in that it seems harmless but you are just waiting for it to veer into weird or inappropriate territory. There's no trust between me and the content creator. Sometimes they're just harmlessly dumb. But in any case it's hard to explain why I don't want him to watch something that appears harmless to him.

Does anyone have similar experiences? Advice? Commiseration? Perspectives?

Hey there! I'm trying to repurpose a Raspberry Pi that's been collecting dust for a few years, and I'm a bit out of my depth with systems/networking, so I'm hoping for some guidance on what I did wrong (or what I could've done better).

The story is: I upgraded my PC and had an old SSD lying around, and I also had a Raspberry Pi that I never really had time to toy with. I figured I could combine both and make a small family “drive” where everyone can upload photos/videos/documents and keep them in one place at home.

Then I realized the Pi sits right behind the TV, next to the router since the Ethernet cable is short. So I thought: if it's already there, maybe it could also be a media player. The idea was: upload videos and store them on the SSD then play them on the TV via Kodi.

What’s going wrong is that Nextcloud uploads are painfully slow, even short videos take ages, and movies are basically impossible. On top of that, once files are there, Kodi playback is choppy/laggy.

I'm not sure what the real bottleneck is. Nextcloud was already "kinda slow" before Kodi. I don't know if this is Docker overhead/volume configuration, the Pi just being overloaded, Nextcloud background work (previews/scanning/etc.), or the SSD adapter to USB C limiting speeds.

If you have ideas, I'd really appreciate pointers on where to start diagnosing, and what the "sane" architecture is here (even if the answer is "don't do both on one Pi").

TL;DR: Tried to reuse an old SSD and a Raspberry Pi to make a family Nextcloud drive, then added Kodi because the Pi is behind the TV. Nextcloud uploads are extremely slow and Kodi playback is laggy. Not sure if it's Docker, Nextcloud tuning, USB/SSD adapter, or just too much for a small device. Looking for beginner-friendly troubleshooting steps and/or a better setup plan.

Here we are at the end of another year. This was our first full year of the Tildes Book Club, so congratulations are in order for reaching this milestone. Currently we're taking a well-earned December break, until we return in January for more.

This year saw us reading more variety across both fiction and non-fiction, covering scifi, history, autobiographies, and short stories.

Here are some stats for 2025:

• Books Read: 11 (18 if counting short stories)
• Total Pages: 3,919
• Participants: 50 unique users (134 total participations)
• Total Comments: 456
• Nominations Submitted: 55
• Nomination Votes Cast: 233

The superlative awards:

• Most Discussed: Hyperion (68 comments)
• Deepest Discussion: The Heaven and Earth Grocery Store (averaged 5 comments per person)
• Longest Read: The Ministry for the Future (563 pages)
• Shortest Read: Elder Race (199 pages)
• Oldest Read: Cat's Cradle (published 1963)

The full list of 2025's discussions can be found here:

• Jan: The Ministry for the Future
• Feb: Born a Crime
• March: Hyperion
• April: Elder Race
• May: A People's Future of the United States
• June: A House with Good Bones
• July: The Heaven and Earth Grocery Store
• Aug: Cat's Cradle
• Sep: Stories of Your Life and Others
• Oct: The Poisoner's Handbook
• Nov: We are Legion (We are Bob)

Much thanks as always to @boxer_dogs_dance for organizing this club for us. We have a great lineup for 2026, including renowned authors like Kafka, Nabokov, and Pratchett.

Feel free to share your favourite Book Club reads from 2025, or what you're looking forward to in 2026.

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.

This is your place to share any and all thoughts on your reading for 2025.

Books you talk about do NOT have to be limited to this year’s releases.

Feel free to share:

• Favorites
• Disappointments
• Surprises
• Memorable moments
• Self-reflections
• Anything else!

Let us know how your reading for 2025 went.

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 picked up Fairy Tale because I like fantasy. I'm really enjoying it. Also in the time I have spent on the book suggestions and book discussions subreddits, I have noticed that he is still a much loved author.

So if I want to explore his work, where should I start?

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?

Looking at movies and books like a sleuth, looking for correlations, is not my thing. That is a very cerebral way to look at stories. I prefer letting them take over me with all they got, symbolism included but mixed with everything else. When it comes to fiction and magic, I wanna watch the trick, not figure it out. Much like magic tricks, I firmly believe that, when dissected, fiction tends to die.

By that I mean that it becomes less appealing.

I'm a little annoyed by the view that, if you don't look for "hidden meanings", your engagement with art is of a lesser quality. As if there was only one acceptable and elevated way to read things.

Much to my delight, people have built interesting symbolism from my writing that I never intended to create. I don't write symbolism, but I tend to use elements that are universal, well-known, and easy to interpret as symbols.

I'm not sure why I wrote this. I just wanted to organize my thoughts about this subject in a place where people are nice.

I guess that is it.

What do you think of symbolism?

Hey there, going to keep this short: I used to love camping and hiking, but now can't quite bring myself to do it, this is partially due to the fact that I am single, and none of my (very few) local friends would ever be interested in joining.

So, does anyone around here have any tips or ideas on how to get into hiking or camping again?

Definitely a well deserved GOTY. I haven't gotten around to it yet, but my friends have been raving about it!

Lots of indie games nominated this year. Really feels like we're in a golden age of indies.

News items come and go fast these days, which means we often see something as its happening, in the thick of things. So much of what we see stops there, and we don't get the full story later, once the dust has settled, because resolution is a lot less newsworthy.

This is a chance to ask about old news items (or other events) and get updates on how things have panned out from people in the know. Also, interpret "news" very loosely here. This topic is open to, well, ANYTHING people want updates about. It could be about headline stuff, or something in, I don't know, the Stardew Valley modding scene, for example.

For organization's sake, please limit each top-level comment to ONE topic. If you'd like to ask about multiple things, feel free! Just please make them as separate comments so that individual threads aren't a mix of different answers to different prompts.

These days, it's been difficult for me to figure out what to make for dinner. I scroll through recipes on TikTok and various other recipe pages that I've come across, but I can never seem to figure out what exactly I want to make. It gets to a point where I just give up and eat out somewhere... which is a convenient option but not very cost-effective especially for someone who's going on one year post-grad and trying to make more home-cooked meals.

Do you plan your meals throughout the week? How far ahead do you plan out what you're going to make? Do you meal prep and, I guess as an extension of this topic, how does one start getting into the habit of meal prepping? Would love some help trying to get back into the rhythm of cooking.

I tried a quick search here and just wanted to see if anyone uses and recommends Ground News.

Since I got my new phone I realized that I haven't really installed any news apps yet, I used to use Boston Globe, AP News, and the BBC for just general goings on, but I don't live in Boston anymore, AP News gives SO many notifications about sports and random topics, and I think(?) BBC is in some hot water right now.

So I've been looking for a new news digest so I can keep current events in mind again. I've been getting a lot of ads for Ground News and some creators that I like have done ads for them.

I'm definitely left leaning and in the US and would primary like to keep up with news around home if that helps!

I recently set up some public computers with Ubuntu at a hackerspace. People kept logging into their Gmail etc. and forgetting to log out. For their own benefit I changed the computers to use overlayfs so on reboot all changes from the base filesystem (Ubuntu 24.04 + packages + updates) are lost. I'm looking for tips on configuration. Keep in mind that because our users tend to be fairly technical I am not attempting to outright prevent changes, just prevent them by default.

Here are the current details:

• The machines have a wallpaper warning users that all changes are wiped on reboot
• The normal automatic update system is disabled (updates through it won't persist)
• I install updates and reboot on a cronjob at 5am every day (this uses overlayroot-chroot)
• The overlay is implemented as an encrypted filesystem on a separate partition, with the key generated on boot and held in memory
• Documentation is taped to the desktop computer itself educating users on how to make persistent changes

I've started to look into getting a 3D printer mainly for printing minis and terrain for TTRPGs. For the aficionado and print quality the best printer type seem to be resin based printers, but I don't think I'd be able to deal with the toxic fumes in a safe manner. As such I've settled on looking at filament based printers and I don't really need super high fidelity prints.

I need one that works well with Linux and preferably OSS. I am willing to pay for closed source software (or OSS) if it runs on well on Linux. So if you know of any software that is easy to get started with I'd be happy to hear about it. If you know of any models or makes that I should avoid I'd also appreciate a heads up!

Any other advice for someone just getting started with 3D printing?

Could you recommend a make of vehicle whose spy tech is easy to disable? This is the highest hurdle and single most important factor in my search for a car, so my other preferences and needs fall far second. I would like an electric vehicle or hybrid model with no less cargo room than a Prius, and not larger than a mid-sized station wagon, with a track record of low repairs. Correct me if I'm misinformed, but applying those criteria seems premature until I can identify something I can make private.

I have only ever bought used cars, and have lived the same story many times: I will construct elaborate spreadsheets, research models until I could host a video walk-through of trouble spots to watch for, then will shop and cavil until I make a purchase I'm proud of. Sure, it ends up 25% over my initial budget, but I pat myself on the back for a full 18 months afterwards. Nice work, careful consumer. But it's then the repairs begin, and soon I'm spending $3-4,000 a year maintaining my certified reliable used car.

So, I am searching for a newer used car or a new car whose telematics can be disabled. I have read through discussion boards, but weary quickly at the comments defending the cozy convenience of the corporate surveillance net or chiding people like me for even trying. I don't care. If lacking or disabling spy features means I can't use my car as a phone, that sounds like a win to me. I know a little about cars and have alright technical know-how. Most importantly, I am resolute. I will not drive a car that listens to me or transmits video of my travels. Has anyone had success here?

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!

Tildes is a very serious site, where we discuss very serious matters like coordinates, consumer electronics and dictionaries. Tags culled from the highest voted topics from the last seven days, if anyone was befuddled.

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!

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!

A few years ago I started shopping at Lidl and came to really like their bakery.

I noticed over time that their bagels became smaller.

Smaller than the bagels at Giant supermarket, and two real bagel shops I eventually found. Currently "everything" bagels at Lidl are 79 cents each. At the real bagel shops "everything" bagels are $2 each.

The Lidl bagels are smaller, the "everything" bagels don't have salt or nearly as much. I like them better than the bagels from one of those two "real" bagel shops.

Thankfully, the smaller Lidl bagels have fewer calories!

I remember a few years ago I saw several articles about bagel places scooping out some of the bread for people watching their weight.

Duh, they should have just made them smaller.

The Lidl bagels are still large enough to make decent sandwiches.

I was recently talking to a group of people about a random plot point in a video game, wherein a character reveals some coordinates written down on a sheet of paper and says something to the effect of "I think that's nearby, I will check it out." Nearly everyone in the group was thrown back by that, saying that there is no way that the character would know their coordinates off hand.

Later on, through entirely unrelated circumstances (some SciFi show where a human told aliens to drop him at specific coordinates), coordinates came up in a discussion with my family. Half of the family knew, half the family didn't know, and both halves were surprised by the other half.

I would be able to tell you if some random coordinate were within a reasonable drive of my city or not. I am curious about the ratio of people on Tildes that would know.

(I have absolutely no idea how to tag this)

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?

Scenario: I am frequently playing video games with my partner, and we have our PCs side-by-side. I am looking for a comfortable set of headphones or earbuds that will also make it easy to hear each other so we can talk while gaming.

Main priorities:

• Openness / Ability to hear physical surroundings
• Comfort for long wear duration (I wear glasses, which rules out most over-the-ear)
• Budget

Nice to haves:

• Audio quality decent enough for gaming (doesn't have to be 3D positional or anything)
• Audio quality acceptable for listening to music while playing some games (but nowhere near audiophile level, not expecting much bass from something light)
• Wireless (but not against a wired option - can be USB or 3.5mm since this will be used exclusively with my PC)

I've really only ruled out one thing: I'm not interested in bone induction headphones. I tried out a pair of JLab JBuds Frames that sit on your glasses, and while they aren't bone induction, the pressure against that area of my head, combined with nothing in my ears, would give me a headache after an hour or two. I suspect I'd have a similar issue with bone induction.

In a world that seems to prioritize noise cancelling, my search for other options has been inconclusive. There's a lot of negative reviews about comfort in options like the Cleer ARC series and Baseus clip-on styles. I found some of the suggestions in a previous thread on bone induction headphones to be interesting, but nothing seems to meet all of my criteria perfectly.

I first started getting into Podcasts in 2017 after hearing about them for years. I finally had a regular, medium length commute to an internship and was tired of the radio and listening to music in the morning. I did a quick search for "Best Android Podcast app" and saw that Pocket Casts was highly reviewed. Since I had enough credit in my account to purchase it, I went ahead and installed it and never ended up looking for another app. Since then, I've become hooked as my form of audio entertainment/information gathering over the years, and Pocket Casts has become an app that I use every day.

I was thinking this morning while opening my app, what would cause me to switch. I briefly considered switching when Pocket Casts moved to a subscription model, but the features that were included in that subscription are really only "nice to haves" for me and how I use the app. This got me thinking about how other people engage with podcasts and choose the app that they use.

• How did you choose your podcast app?
• Do you ever try out other podcast apps?
• Are there any features that would/did make you want to switch to a different app?
• Do you use a cross-platform podcast app or different apps on different platforms?
• What are your favorite/most used features of your current podcast app?
• What podcast(s) are you currently listening to that you'd like to recommend to others?

Welcome to the 2025 NFL Season Weekly Discussion Thread! 🦃 🏈 🥧

Share your thoughts on Week 13 — wins, losses, fantasy fumbles, predictions, or anything else football-related.

(Don't worry @hamstergeddon, I gotchu buddy)

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 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.

Changing Mullvad server at router level

Reddit is becoming increasingly more and more hostile to VPN connections to the point where I often get the "whoa pardner" error message and have to try 4-5 different VPN servers on my desktop or phone before I finally get one to work with Reddit. Same thing sometimes with Google/YT, it keeps asking me to prove I am not a bot and a bit of experimentation with the servers gets me through.

This makes me wonder, is it as easy to switch my Mullvad server on OPNsense? I get the sense from the YT videos I have watched, I have to effectively setup an entry for every Mullvad router as separate instance on my OPNsense' VPN WireGuard settings and toggle which instance is being used at the router level?
I know I can technically have Mullvad on my router to hide all my traffic and then on all my devices that I use Reddit on, I can additionally have Mullvad on them too and play with the servers I am connected to on my device specifically until I find one that works but I am curious what the workflow is if I choose to do all my Mullvad related configs at the router level.

Making custom block?

I have a love-hate relationship with Reddit. On one hand, I can't deny that certain subreddits are useful as someone in tech, but I also can't deny that certain subs are just a time-sink and some subs are just toxic (looking at you AITA). I can often prevent myself from browsing the time-sink/toxic ones but sometimes I lose myself in them and I am in search of a way to block them via Mullvad at my router. Obviously a DNS-block won't work if I want to block reddit.com (the home page) and certain specific subreddits but leave any other tech related subreddits open for me to read so the next best thing I assume is some kind of firewall? But I don't know if such a firewall exists that can basically start doing regex on a URL to see if it should be accessible from within the network? Which makes me wonder if I can create my own firewall but I don't even know the first step, as in would this be something that integrates with OPNsense, or a stand-alone program I have to create myself? I know Python, Java and have some basic knowledge of C++ but don't even know if those are the language I need to know to create such a filter or if the filter I am looking for is even possible? Any and all pointers welcome.

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've always been kinda partial to Meghan Trainor. Just in the sense that sometimes I will once in a blue moon listen to All About That Bass. I heard she released a new song (Still Don't Care).

I want to like that song but something about it feels off.

If I listen to All About that Bass, I figured it's been modified in post-production with whatever artists use to make themselves sound a bit better, but when I listen to Still Don't Care, it feels like the amount of auto-tune being used is substantially higher. Like it sounds like more fluff or fake or something. But I am also by no means a singer or someone who has any idea what goes into making a song so maybe I am completely off.

Am I imagining that Still Don't Care is using auto-tune to a higher extent?

Let me define a campaign as an episodic story with a clear hook, rising action (or actions), climax, and ending. It would ideally be a story that goes for multiple (at least 4 or 5) play sessions so as to distinguish it from a one shot.

How do you, as a DM, develop and run these?

Over the years in my group we've all taken turns running campaigns, one shots, sessions, etc and what's always fascinated me most is how everyone's planning style is so different. Some get into ridiculous detail, while others (guilty...) tend to improv.

Not really sure where this fits in terms of topic.

My wife and I live in Minnesota, and we can get some gnarly snow and cold weather. This year she had repeatedly expressed desire for a high quality, durable boot for the winter.

I've seen various recommendations but honestly most of them feel astroturfed.

Does anyone here have a good suggestion on a boot that will last, be high quality, and keep her warm in the winters in deep snow?

Abu Dhabi Grand Prix
Yas Marina Circuit
December 5-7, 2025

Next race:

Pre-Season Testing 2026 - Sakhir
Bahrain International Circuit
February 11-13 & 18-20, 2026

Australian Grand Prix
Albert Park Circuit
March 5-7, 2026

See you all next year -- Enjoy the break!

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!

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.