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 may be in the minority on Tildes who still watches cable news. My mom is the one who puts it on and I'll usually ignore/forget about it when I'm home alone, but I find it's a good way to keep track of major headlines. Also, our usual choice of national news, ABC with David Muir, tends to end every broadcast with some feel-good story which is just... really appreciated in these times. (Though tonight they played a soundbite of Martin Luther King Jr.'s final Sunday sermon, and the choice of that particular soundbite feels very pointed.)
A couple months ago YoutubeTV and Disney got into a contract disagreement though, so ABC was removed from the lineup for a bit. For a while we watched CBS News, and... Something about it just genuinely stressed me out. Of course the news is very stressful lately, but usually I can deal with it. At worst, I leave the room for certain stories that make me particularly angry.
Something about CBS just left me really agitated and stressed though. I can't say what it was exactly, maybe the delivery, or a heavy focus on the worst parts of US politics? All I know is every night I was getting increasingly worked up, the way I only ever did with the most absolutely infuriating news stories, until we switched to NBC until ABC returned to air.
This came to mind again after my mom put on CBS last night since ABC was starting late due to some sports program. It agitated me until I just snapped.
So my question: does anyone else find CBS particularly stressful compared to other cable news? If so, does anyone have any ideas on why that is? And are there any regular watchers who've noticed a shift in tone? I never really watched CBS before, but I'm wondering if maybe it's somehow tied to Bari Weiss's influence given the stuff with 60 Minutes.
Welcome to the 2025 NFL Post Season Weekly Discussion Thread! 🏈 Share your thoughts on the second round of the playoffs — wins, losses, predictions, or anything else football-related.
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With CES 2026 coming to a close, I figured that like last year, I should make a thread to see what people are excited (or not excited) for.
I honestly wasn't that excited (see recent state of US economy) but I want to your thoughts!
Dell's CES 2026 chat was the most pleasingly un-AI briefing I've had in maybe five years
I didn't post in the thread as I didn't have much to add, the top post by @Oxalis basically sums up my thoughts
Nice to see them be honest about how this isn't really panning out. Everyone wants AI except the consumer.
Clicks Communicator: the ultimate communication companion
Again didn't post in here but I'm glad there is a still a market for niche phone.
The first ep. got its own thread on Tildes and a decent discussion, I figured I'd try to get one going for whole season. Since it finished airing like 2 weeks ago.
I binged S1 yesterday, and am very happy that I waited till all episodes were out, as the pace of the show is glacial and I would've likely lost interest were I not able to skip around a bit. That's one of my two major issues. The other being that I found Carol insufferable at moments in the show. I think it does a good job at humanizing her and explaining why she is the way she is. It's also important to note that a majority of the show plays out days after Carol's wife Helen dies and she's reeling from that loss, as well as losing everyone else too. For me this culminated in ep 6, when she has a conversation with another survivor after having uncovered that they process human corpses into protein powder, and she thinks it's a big reveal that everyone else already knows. She just wasn't told because she's made everyone not like her.
That being said, the premise of this show is excellent and I love the questions it makes me ask and think about. The way it's shot is also fantastic. Yes, all of humanity is in a blissful state, but most of us would also die due to starvation, but there's no murder, no robbings, but it's also clear that this blissful state is more akin to being happy because you're on drugs, not "true happiness". I think this was most evident in the scene when the Peruvian girl turned willingly. Just before she does, she's shown with a lamb on her lap, which she likes and pets. The moment she turns, she just walks off, leaving the lamb behind. Obviously also all expressions of individualism are gone, this means all art, plus the question hasn't been properly answered on what exactly the Others do when they don't have someone around to make happy. I guess work together as a collective on sending the signal onto the next planet.
I think the big answer is going to be when they hopefully break someone out of the hivemind in S2. I just hope that it won't be the season finale, but sooner. I dislike the trend of prestige television being at such a slow pace.
What do you guys think? Both the smart writing and the pacing issues seem to be the main two things i see mentioned online. Anything else you liked or disliked? Any theories on where it'll go?
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.
In this edition of the Good News thread, I'd love it if folks shared not just a positive news story, but perhaps a video, article, story, something that can function as a happy moment, a chill vibe, a memory that makes you smile. We're all just trying to deal with the world, so if you cannot find joy in current events, consider sharing something else joyful.
For this thread, even if something happy also reveals the sadness at the heart of the world, we're going to focus on the joy here. (Posting in misc due to the extended ask this time)
Welcome to the 2025 NFL Post Season Weekly Discussion Thread! 🏈 Share your thoughts on the first round of the playoffs — wins, losses, predictions, or anything else football-related.
So what did everyone think of the finale?
Personally I'm a little torn. Overall I would say the finale was just okay. This whole season has felt a little bit mid for me, but I've watched it since the beginning and wanted to see it end. I felt like they could have done a whole lot more with some characters, Dr. Kay, for example, just didn't really seem to do anything and she just kind of packed everything up and let all the kids go at the end. She was a pretty important character in El's backstory and she seemed to do nothing the whole season except drive around trying to chase them. It seemed like she was going to finally do something meaningful in the finale but nothing really materialized.
Vecna's death was satisfying to me, with Will helping out in the end with his new "sorcerer" powers. The backstory we got for Vecna too, was interesting, and the fact he "chose" to cooperate with the Mind Flayer. I'm still not sure if he was actually corrupted and is made to believe it was his choice, or if he was as powerful as he claimed and truly chose to work with it. Either way, watching Joyce tell him that he "fucked with the wrong family" and then decapitate him was chefs kiss.
As for El's "death", I'm not sure I am convinced she is actually alive. I looked back at the scene at the end after I had finished and didn't see any flickering on her, or any doors opening in the background. Maybe the sonic devices just don't pierce the veil between worlds. That being said though, it is interesting that some people have pointed out she doesn't have a nosebleed after talking with Mike or pushing him back.
I still think Season 4 was probably my favorite season. I was on the edge of my seat, literally, through some parts of that season which shows don't often do for me. This season did have some moments, but it just didn't seem to capture the same feeling Season 4 did for me.
I'm curious what everyone else thinks though.
Tildes is a very serious site, where we discuss very serious matters like venezuela.caracas, usa.mn.minneapolis and uber.eats. Tags culled from the highest voted topics from the last seven days, if anyone was nosy.
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!
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.
Hello,
I just rewatched the final boss fight of the spectacularly amazing 2010 movie Kickass, and I remembered something I've been meaning to float by movie-knowers...
As I see it, this boss fight is the reason this movie exists. The way I picture how "hollywood"-movies are made is that there is a writers room or producers meeting where nothing happens until someone brings out the weed, schrooms and/or coke which lets real brainstorming take place. And suddenly BAM! You have a single amazing thing happen: the Event.
Once that is settled they work backwards to building a believable story that leads up to that event.
The Event for Kickass is having a grown man beat the pulp out of a young girl without anyone really noticing or making a big deal out if it.
This creates some constraints (remember its 2008/9 at the time of writing), for example:
From those premises they created a a scenario that would make it possible and wrote out a whole film.
I often find myself having an A-ha!-moment when I find the Event in movies, it's one of the reasons I watch them.
This is in my view one of the biggest reason why sequels are bad: the Event has already been had in the first movie so there isn't really anything of value left to the story.
I'm up for talking about things like:
Welcome to the 2025 NFL Season Weekly Discussion Thread! 🏈 Share your thoughts on Week 18 — wins, losses, fantasy fumbles, predictions, or anything else football-related.
Happy New Year everyone! For January, Tildes Book Club will be reading Fire on the Mountain by Terry Bissen. It's short at 167 pages. I'm looking forward to discussing with everyone who participates. Lurkers, you are absolutely welcome to read along and follow the discussion at the end of the month.
We have books lined up monthly through September. I haven't read most of the books and I'm excited to see how the discussion goes.
I’ll try to keep this post as brief as possible.
I spend a lot of time on the internet. Twitter and TikTok mainly. And I’ve been extremely online since I gained unlimited access to it in the early 2010s. I would say that the biggest shifts in attitudes and styles on the internet occurred throughout the 2010s, with 2016 marking a clear-cut turning point.
We transitioned from the hipster aestheticisms and YOLO branding of 2010-2012 to the more “baddie” Instagram aesthetic popularized by celebrities like Kylie Jenner, Selena Gomez, and Ariana Grande.
Now, some people have confused that early 2010s aesthetic for what we actually saw during 2016. Which was a cleaner, less quirky idea of what “style” was. Music also showed this as we went from Party Rock Anthem by LMFAO being a chart topper to One Dance by Drake and Sorry by Justin Bieber being the club-friendly radio hits. Things were less ironic; in order to be cool, you had to be calm (if you listen to the 2016 songs, they don’t feel as aggressive as LMFAO’s songs).
I was 16 during most of 2016. Old enough to remember everything and young enough to still be “hip” with the culture (although I’ve always been kind of an old man mentally). Most of my internet use around this time was on Reddit. Specifically, the meme subreddits such as dank_memes and me_irl. The tone back then was super depressing. Saying you were gonna kill yourself was a common punchline. Everyone circle jerked about how sad they were. These are common on the internet now, but were relatively new for the mainstream back then. The running joke was that 2016 was the worst year in history. Many high-profile celebrities died during this year (Prince, David Bowie, George Michael, Carrie Fisher), which led to people saying “DAMN YOU 2016!” every single time. That saying “damn you [year]” became normal for every subsequent year.
Reflecting on this period, I will say, I do not recall much nostalgia for say 2006 back then on the internet. I saw more nostalgia for the 00s from Zillennials and older Zoomers throughout these past four years than I ever did back then.
So what is it? Why have we been seeing so many people longing for the days of 2016? I’ve seen videos like this for the past two years, and they’ve only accelerated now that we’re exactly 10 years removed. Videos, such as this, are making the rounds, glorifying the aesthetics of the time.
My first instinct has always been: these are people around my age who miss being a teenager. This is still the likeliest explanation. A time before you worried about bills or felt like you were behind in life. I also miss that time period for that reason, and I also wish I could wake up exactly that year and do everything over and better this time.
But, this general analysis of the human condition doesn’t explain why this specifically. Why 2016, why not 2010, why didn’t this happen ten years ago for 2006? In which case, I don’t really know.
I suppose 2016 felt less cringe. The aforementioned millennialisms of the early 2010s weren’t as prevalent, so the time period doesn’t feel as dated. Speaking of things feeling “dated,” many of the interfaces we use now are not so far off from what we were using in 2016. I remember watching the 2014 film Whiplash and being shocked at how old the cell phones looked there, but if you put on Popstar: Never Stop Never Stopping (2016) the technology doesn’t really stand out that much. Many of the social media apps we use are the same as they were in 2016. You could realistically have had the same Instagram and Twitter accounts for nearly 20 years now. With the exception of TikTok, the way in which we use the internet today is about the same as we used it then.
Which is why 2016 is this comforting year. Where everything is the same, except you’re younger. It was right before politics got really weird. It was before we lived through a global pandemic. Clubbing still felt like a thing that people did. Youth had a defined image that we currently lack. It felt like a party compared to the way we experience life now.
Just curious
In PST I’m a little late but here it is. What’s up? Any resolutions?
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.
Just a passing thought, came up in conversation. I'm not talking about warehouses-full, nor even "retirement savings" quantities, but like, all the RAM you and your friends and family could possibly need for the next 3-4 years.
Pros, cons? Too late? Too volatile? Too ___?
I am really not sure if this topic belongs in ~tech or ~society or ~talk but I trust the moderators to re-assign accordingly.
So, this is the layout of the "development" team of my companies.
there are 4 "development" teams which reports to the development manager who also occasionally codes.
There is one team, that's the one I am on. 7 people, 6 males.
there is another team, 4 people, 3 males.
there is another team, 5 people, 4 males.
The last team, I don't really consider "development" team. its a team of 4 females. What they are best suited for is QA in the sense of manually testing the product to ensure the experience is sufficient for push to PROD, But because of budget restrictions, they are being forced to learn code and testing suites so they can be the people to develop our testing structure. They are great people and excellent Manual QAers but they really are not developers.
All our tech managers and team leads are men with the exception of the team lead for QA (obviously).
And just to be clear, the culture is friendly and respectful and no complaints. It's just the gender ratio is pathetic.
So our tech gender ratio is really 17 people and 3 women which is 17%.
If you want to consider the QA team a dev team to bump up the numbers, you get 21 with 7, that's still only 33%.
At a recent company meeting, they were talking about how diverse our workforce is and blah blah blah (I tune out most of that stuff as we are fully remote and I spend most of my time coding), but then they showed a slide that claimed our gender ratio for tech roles was like 50% or something.....
I message a colleague at work, being like "where on earth did they get that number??", he was like ":shrug: maybe they are counting the people who use the product we are making?"
To clarify that, the product we work on is rarely used by external customers. Instead we have employees who know how to use our product and correspond on our behalf with external customers. So all these employees are doing is using a webapp the real tech employees develop.
So long story short, my company pulled a number out of nowhere to claim we have gender equity in the tech roles and now I dont know how to trust any stats a company puts out about how equal the gender roles are in their "tech" departments.
This is one of those posts that make me wish we could tag multiple tildes. Because this would apply to ~tv, ~movies, ~comics, ~games, ~books, and ~anime, with possibly even more.
A long time ago I read an article about weird crossovers, and it made the point that thanks to unrelated crossovers and six degrees of separation, the Archie comics Sonic technically existed in the same universe as... Some popular live action shows, because that show had a crossover with some other show that crossed over with Sonic. Obviously not really, but it was a funny thought.
I failed to find the article I remember, but my brief search did bring up the Tommy Westphall Shared Universe, which comprises 400+ shows thanks to various crossovers, cameos and in-universe references. There is a whole fandom wiki dedicated to it. There's also this site that lets you search for connections between TV shows. The site's description from DuckDuckGo is "Easily search and find the relationship between shows in the Tommy Westphall Universe and beyond." It's silly, but fun!
Thing is, most of my cursory searching into it has people focus on live-action TV and movies. And... Well, like I said at the start: the article I remember reading made a connection between Archie comics Sonic and some live-action show thanks to some crossover.
Since that first article, I've wondered off and on about the weirdest crossovers out there, and just how weird of a shared universe could exist. I don't want to limit it to one or two mediums, I want to find crossovers that can transcend mediums! Comics, TV, games and more!
So: what are the weirdest crossovers, cameos and in-universe connections you know of? What are the wildest connections we can make? And, for bonus fun, what are the ramifications of shoving all these wildly different series into one ridiculous universe?? how many different apocalypses can we shove into it
Tildes is a very serious site, where we discuss very serious matters like bragging.humble, social media and proselytism. Tags culled from the highest voted topics from the last seven days, if anyone was able to keep up.
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!
Welcome to the 2025 NFL Season Weekly Discussion Thread! Share your thoughts on Week 17 — wins, losses, fantasy fumbles, predictions, or anything else football-related.
As we finish out 2025, it's been a minute since we had a question like this and with apologies to @kfwyre for stealing their MO.
What's something you're proud of? Maybe from this year, maybe not, but especially something you don't get to talk about a lot, for whatever reason.
I don't know if you know Destin Sandlin. He has a youtube channel named "SmarterEveryDay." I believe he would self-describe his channel as "a red-neck doing sciencey stuff."
The guy has everything, from the southern accent to videos about seemingly-dumb red-neck things that involve a significant amount of engineering and the opportunity to teach about science. If you don't know him, some (not all) of what I consider his best videos are:
The large part of his content is like this. Maybe not of this quality, but the theme is often some, what he calls, "redneck" thing turned into an engineering challenge. And overall, the quality of his videos is quite high.
Sometimes he will just tag along with some expert explaining their fields. These are also entertaining and IMHO educational pieces of content. If you want examples, there are:
And more rarely, he will post weird, life advice or motivational content. Usually this is wholesome or harmless, but it feels disconnected from the rest. Examples are:
I've always like Destin. This is not a university class, and in the past he has taken some shortcuts with safety. But overall, I think he is an honest content creator, and he is entertaining and educational. He also has increase the safety of his experiments, and been educational about (see the video linked above about bullets hitting bullets) I feel that he has kept the clickbait as low as he could get away with Youtube's algorithm, and that's rare in this day and age, therefore I respect him for that. Overall his content is, IMHO, humble and wholesome.
I think this contrasts with Veritasium which has become way too clickbaity, and Mark Rober who reminds you every 5 minutes that he quit his job at NASA to do Youtube. By the way, did you know Mark Rober used to work at NASA?
Of course, Destin is not perfect. He has taken, what I consider to be, bad sponsorship in the past, such as NordVPN which is just a shady VPN (just use Mullvad or Mozilla VPN if you want to circumvent geoblocking), HelloFresh which is overpriced food delivered by a Roach Motel company, or Casper Mattress which AFAIK is a dropshipping company selling products with some health concerns. But many other Youtubers took these sponsorship, so I won't criticise him too much for that. Also his quest to make something 100% in the USA is very laudable, at least to me.
There are some weird stuff though. I'm trying to not be too much parasocial, but most of his content that is not science related feels... weird. It's often about family, helping the poor, being a good member of the community, which I think are good values to have, but it has this weird religious semi-conservative undertone that I can't really pinpoint, it's more like an uncomfortable feeling.
Most of his videos used to finishes with a reference to a bible verse in gray over a black screen. This has disappeared most likely as the Youtube algorithm started asking him to link to his other videos at the end of his videos. I also always find weird the videos with his kids because they address him as "sir". I don't know if it's cultural, but in France (where I'm from and where I live) this is usually associated with radical Catholics (aka "traditionalists")
I've pro-actively tried to avoid judging him on the last part, because I believe people can live their life as they wish as long as they don't hurt anybody.
But now, I'm torn... He has recently made more and more references to the bible for historical and biological facts. The two videos, I have in mind are:
And this is starting to bother me. I don't mind the past "I have some belief I want you to know, but unrelated to that, I put it aside, here is some engineering/science video." However, I do mind the recent "I'm talking about science, and let me tell you how it matches my made up beliefs based on a book made up by people 1000s of years ago."
I know that Destin owes me nothing. And the counter point should be "hey... if you're not happy just stop watching him." But I just feel that I'm watching a guy who spend more than a decades building his brand and audience just tearing it appart, and it was a good brand and audience. I'm just sad about it, but maybe I'm overreacting.
What's your opinion?
post contains spoilers for Dream Scenario:
I've become a big fan of the resurgence that Nic Cage is having, especially after watching Mandy, it was so wacky and surreal and just quite the mind trip.
Saw the trailer for Dream Scenario and picked up on that same vibe.
However, that movie really pissed me off. that story was pretty interesting and I really would have liked it but I kept thinking that they would find a way to wrap up the plot in a typical happy go lucky fashion that Hollywood typically demands. The closer and closer the movie got to the end, the more I was expecting the shoe to drop and for the writers to somehow find a way to end the movie on a happy note that makes everything OK.
It does not, the movie ends on quite a weird and sad note, which I would have loved, if I hadn't expected it to end in a typical Hollywood fashion. Makes me wish there was a way to get a warning when watching a movie to not expect it to end in a typical "safe" fashion. Cause if I had gotten that warning, I think I would've love it.
I was never one to subscribe to new year's resolutions, but I do believe in using the new year to set a mindset for defining the past year and a goal for the new year's theme. How do you want to describe your 2026 this time next year?
I want mine to be a year of sowing. I want to make roots in a new job which I love and extend myself out to new people to create relationships I'm proud to have.
Another big focus this year for me will be physical change. I'm the heaviest I've ever been and last time I was close to this weight, I dropped 70lbs in under 6 months. It's time for me to find a sustainable way to reach and maintain that target weight again.
The last couple of years have been a wild ride. The biggest parts of the conversation around AI for most of that time have been dominated by absurd levels of hype. To go along with the cringe levels of hype, a lot of people have felt the pain of dealing with the results of rushed and forced AI implementation.
As a result the pushback against AI is loud and passionate. A lot of people are pissed, for good reasons.
Because of that it would be understandable for people casually watching from a distance to get the impression that AI is mostly an investor fueled shitshow with very little real value.
The first part of the sentiment is true, it's definitely a shitshow. Big companies are FOMOing hard, everyone is shoehorning AI into everything they can in hopes of capturing some of that hype money. It feels like crypto, or Web 3.0. The result is a mess and we're nowhere near peak mess yet.
Meanwhile in software engineering the conversation is extremely polarized. There is a large, but shrinking, contingent of people who are absolutely sure that AI is something like a scam. It only looks like a valid tool and in reality it creates more problems than it solves. And until recently that was largely true. The reason that contingent is shrinking, though, is that the latest generation of SOTA models are an undeniable step change. Every day countless developers try using AI for something that it's actually good at and they have the, as yet nameless but novel, realization that "holy shit this changes everything". It's just like every other revolutionary tech tool, you have to know how to use it, and when not to use it.
The reason I bring up software engineering is that code is deterministic. You can objectively measure the results. The incredible language fluency of LLMs can't gloss over code issues. It either identified the bug or it didn't. It either wrote a thorough, valid test or it didn't. It's either good code or it isn't. And here's the thing: It is. Not automatically, or in all cases, and definitely not without careful management and scaffolding. But used well it is undeniably a game changing tool.
But it's not just game changing in software. As in software if it's used badly, or for the wrong things, it's more trouble than it's worth. But used well it's remarkable. I'll give you an example:
A friend was recently using AI to help create the necessary documents for a state government certification process for his business. If you've ever worked with government you've already imagined the mountain of forms, policies and other documentation that were required. I got involved because he ran into some issues getting the AI to deliver.
Going through his session the thing that blew my mind was how little prompting it took to get most of the way there. He essentially said "I need help with X application process for X certification" and then he pasted in a block of relevant requirements from the state. The LLM agent then immediately knew what to do, which documents would be required and which regulations were relevant. It then proceeded to run him through a short Q and A to get the necessary specifics for his business and then it just did it. The entire stack of required documentation was done in under an hour versus the days it would have taken him to do it himself. It didn't require detailed instructions or .md files or MCP servers or artifacts, it just did it.
And he's familiar with this process, he has the expertise to look at the resulting documents and say "yeah this is exactly what the state is looking for". It's not surprising that the model had a lot of government documentation in its training data, it shouldn't even really be mind blowing at this point how effective it was, but it blew my mind anyway. Probably because not having to deal with boring, repetitive paperwork is a miraculous thing from my perspective.
This kind of win is now available in a lot of areas of work and business. It's not hype, it's objectively verifiable utility.
This is not to say that it's not still a mess. I could write an overly long essay on the dangers of AI in software, business and to society at large. We thought social media was bad, that the digital revolution happened too fast for society to adapt... AI is a whole new category of problematic. One that's happening far faster than anything else has. There's no precedent.
But my public service message is this: Don't let the passionate hatred of AI give you the wrong idea: There is real value there. I don't mean this is a FOMO way, you don't have to "use AI or get left behind". The truth is that 6 months from now the combination of new generations of models and improved tooling, scaffolding and workflows will likely make the current iteration of AI look quaint by comparison. There's no rush to figure out a technology that's advancing and changing this quickly because most of what you learn right now will be about solving problems that will be solved by default in the near future.
That being said, AI is the biggest technological leap since the beginning of the public, consumer facing, internet. And I was there for that. Like the internet it will prove to be both good and bad, corporate consolidation will make the bad worse. And, like the internet, the people who are saying it's not revolutionary are going to look silly in the context of history.
I say this from the perspective of someone who has spent the past year casually (and in recent months intensively) learning how to use AI in practical ways, with quantifiable results, both in my own projects and to help other people solve problems in various domains. If I were to distill my career into one concept, it would be: solving problems. So I feel like I'm in a position to speak about problem solving technology with expertise. If you have a use for LLM powered AI, you'll be surprised how useful it is.
Tildes is a very serious site, where we discuss very serious matters like christmas, sermons and 60 minutes. Tags culled from the highest voted topics from the last seven days, if anyone was inquisitive.
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!
Do we have any Elite Dangerous players on here? What does everyone think of the new ships? Any other recent changes you're excited about?
Like the title says! For some reason I have actually woken up before my kids and I’m the only person stirring in the house — I have nothing to do but browse Tildes while I wait for the day to get started. What’s everyone’s plan today?
My partner and I were talking about how buzzed Santa must get from his light-speed jaunt around the world, drinking up everyone's booze, but it didn't occur to me that maybe leaving him alcohol is not a typical tradition outside of the UK!
If you celebrate Christmas, and leave (or have left) a drink and/or snack for Father Christmas, where are you from, and what do you leave?
These could be active skills or techniques you've found helpful, things you've built or bought that have changed an area of your life, or just something that brings you more joy than you had before.
A few subject areas that could spark ideas (but please share things outside of these if you have them!):
Welcome to the 2025 NFL Season Weekly Discussion Thread! 🏈🎅🎄🎁 Share your thoughts on Week 16 — wins, losses, fantasy fumbles, predictions, or anything else football-related.
Tildes is a very serious site, where we discuss very serious matters like the game awards.2025, devices.smart and gift cards. Tags culled from the highest voted topics from the last seven days, if anyone was out of the loop.
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!
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 wanted to hit the gym all my life, but I never really made it until this year. Granted, I do have a sports background and have been active most of my life, but going to the gym was never really for me, until I decided to really do it this year. After years of shoulder and knee problems, I thought adding some muscle to my frame was definitely needed if I didn't want to be in pain all my life.
Since I had thought about going to the gym for years now, I feel like I gathered a good bit of information that REALLY helped me to go now. Here they are:
The routine is more important than the results; regardless of any information I give you about macros, weights, sets, proteins, whatever all that, going to the gym one more time is going to be better than not going. Results take a LONG time. You will not see progress after a month. You may not see progress after 2 months. You may start to see some progress after 3 months. Real progress takes many months, years. That's why your number one priority should simply be to go to the gym, even if your workout is the worst ever and you use two machines in 30 minutes. Going to the gym 4 times a week is better than 3, going 3 times a week is better than 2 and so on. It takes about 3 months to a year to have the routine set in your life. After that and during that, you'll have all the time in the world to think about how to optimize your training, but just going and sticking to the routine of going is more important than anything else.
Choose the easiest, most accessible gym option; the goal is to go. You should make this the easiest for you. Choose a gym that is easily accessible, before or after work. The closer, the better. Heck, your gym can even be your own home! Make some place for you to workout if you want to. You can easily do very good home workouts with maybe 100-150$ worth of equipment.
Stick to a simple workout plan; There are some easy plans: target 2 muscle groups per workout, or alternate upper lower body; try to hit the muscles two times a week (2x biceps, 2x triceps, etc.). 3-5 exercises per workout is fine. 1-2min rest, take more if you feel like it, take less if you feel like it.
Listen to your body for reps/weight; Going for 5 reps or going for 15 reps, it doesn't matter that much at the start, as long as you can do 2-3 series of that. Try to aim for anything from 6 to 12 reps, if you feel you can do more, do it, if you feel like you cannot, then don't. Some times I do 6, sometimes I do 12, but I try to aim for 8. The routine is more important than the results, all you need to do is go to the gym, the perfect workout can come in later.
The movement is more important than the weight; building muscle is simply your muscles tearing and healing. As long as your muscles tear, you've done a good job. But that tear must come from a movement done well, or else you'll tear something that was not supposed to. Go for slower reps if needed, less explosion in your movements. Watch a video on how to do specific exercises if needed, some are mandatory to make sure you don't injure yourself (squats, deadlifts).
Don't overdo it, progressive overload is the key; getting injured is EASY, the goal is to go to the gym, not be hurt. Go lower on the weights at first, it's not a competition. I started my dumbell press with like 10 pounds, shaking like crazy, it's normal. We've all been there. Don't ego lift. The routine is more important than the results. The big weights will take a while to reach, but it'll happen progressively.
Have some kind of goal that is not tied to a number; I guess this one is more personal, but I feel like it's way easier to stick to the routine when you don't "care" about the results as much. The true goal is to be fit or to be lean or to be muscular or to be healthy, no? I feel like those are achievable long term and are guaranteed to come from the routine. I think if you're a beginner and set some kind of arbitrary number, you're not an expert to know if that goal is realistic or not and it makes the whole working out thing to be dependent on a result that you don't have the slightest idea how difficult it is or how long it takes to reach it. I think goals with a number should come after the routine is set in, not before going to the gym, but hey, that's just my two cents.
Eat enough, drink water, get more protein; protein shakes are easy and not that costly, just having a protein shake is fine. Not having it is fine too. If you want to build muscle, you should aim for 100-150g of protein per day. Make sure you eat enough and well, but in the end, the routine is more important. Remember, getting fit happens at the gym, getting lean happens in the kitchen. Weight loss and weight gains both happen in the kitchen. Realistically, a normal genetic male will gain AT BEST 10-12 pounds of muscle the first year of working out (assuming optimal results), so you can aim for that, but just know that your weight gains might not be muscle.
Use ChatGPT to help if needed; When I started going at the gym, I followed all these tips, but I didn't really know that to do. So I asked ChatGPT to make me a 4 days a week workout plan, 5 exercises: pull, push, legs, full body. I tried what it gave me for about a month, but I used that month to just replace exercises I didn't like and I slowly started making my own program to fit what I wanted. But I was super happy that I at least had a starting program. I realize that's what's stopping a lot of people and you can use AI to help you out with that, especially if you don't have money to buy a program or pay a trainer to make one for you.
Be disciplined, but be kind to yourself; There will be days when you will not be able to workout. There will be days when you will not want to workout. There will be days when you will feel bad about working out. It's ok to miss a day, it's ok to miss a week. Remember, the routine is more important. Just make sure to go back to your routine as soon as possible. Missing one workout after going 20 times in a row feels a lot less bad than missing 2-3 every week.
Finally, if you have any questions about starting the gym, feel free to ask. I'll gladly help.
Welcome back to another edition of the good news thread. Where I challenge folks to find and post good news. Don't just link to a source of good news, pick one out and share it. Personal good news stories are also welcome!
Even if it's good in the face of bad, even if it's the sort of good that can also remind you that shit's fucked up. For this thread, we focus on the good and we don't let the fact there's still also bad in the world drag us down.
Welcome to the 2025 NFL Season Weekly Discussion Thread! 🏈 Share your thoughts on Week 15 — wins, losses, fantasy fumbles, predictions, or anything else football-related.
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:
The superlative awards:
The full list of 2025's discussions can be found here:
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.
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?
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.
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!
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)
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)
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.
