So I recently put out a custom map for Beat Saber that I had started work on when the internet was cut for 14 days 20 days in Iran to pass the time.

Gameplay video of the map, Odysseus from Epic The Musical

Everyone I sent it to enjoyed it a lot and I got the happiness that I needed.
One of them recommended to send it over to some twitch streamers as well because some of them have a bot that lets you recommend maps.

I've never used twitch, I found a steamer, made an account, sent it in the chat and had my chat at messages tts'd in the stream. It was absolutely lovely seeing their reaction and it had made my night.

Then I noticed that my 'thank you!' messages didn't tts, huh weird. After watching them for a bit longer I thought maybe I'll send some other stuff I've made their way too. Aaand it didn't send, the chat message sent but the bot response didn't come, a bunch of testing later I found i was shadow banned.

A bit more searching and I found that VPNs are the cause. So changed from TOR to Express and tried again, no dice.
Made a new account with Express and tried and success! But only for 4 messages total, then shadow banned again.

I got a friend's dedicated v2ray server and tried with a new account and my messages were sent again. So I went to a bigger streamer who was also doing the map requests and sent my map... Only to see I'm shadow banned again.

At this point the joy I had felt from seeing others enjoy what I made was gone, replaced by a familiar sadness, the same type of sadness I had gotten when the internet was cut and essentially a one way communication not too long ago.

It's a pain. these sites don't load without VPNs, I had already spent a whole hour trying different VPNs to get the 7mb map to upload to the site (and experienced like 30 errors in the process), then had to try out a bunch more to get the file to upload in Discord (with a bunch of VPNs I can only send messages, files don't upload), and then I experienced the happiness that came from seeing a live reaction and wanting to experience it more, only to have it wiped away.

I want to start work on the next project, i have so much in my mind that i want to put out into the world, but it takes time to switch back to the mentality of "I'm making this for myself and others may never see it" that I had to adopt to get back to creating.

Edit: seems a whole week has been removed from my memory, the outage wasn't two weeks

Hey everyone,

I’m currently running Schwalbe G-One Bite 40mm and I’m thinking about moving up to 50mm for a bit more confidence off-road. Where I ride it’s not groomed gravel or proper official well-kept MTB trails, just typical unmaintained forest trails: holes, roots, loose rocks everywhere, some of them golf-ball sized. On descents, it feels pretty sketchy with the 40s.

The problem is, I don’t have long stretches of continuous/unbroken nature. It’s more like short nature pockets in between civilization so, I still need to transverse a few roads (tarmac and cobbles). So I’m trying to find something that’s still reasonably fast rolling on road. I was hoping to find something up to 20 watts of rolling resistance. I think I saw somewhere that my tires are around 25 watts, so some improvement in this area would also be nice.

I started investigating tires on bicyclerollingresistance.com website and started looking at measured knob height (center and edge), trying to pick something with more bite than what I have now. But the more I read, the more I see people saying knob height alone doesn’t mean much and tread pattern matters more. At this point I’m not even sure what I should be looking for.

These are the ones I’ve selected for the moment:

• Schwalbe G-One R Pro 50
• Schwalbe G-One RX Pro 50
• Schwalbe G-One Overland Super Ground SpeedGrip 50

Alternatives slightly above 20 watts:

• Continental Race King Performance ShieldWall 50
• Pirelli Gravel M (tested in 45mm, but there’s a 50mm version too; hopefully they perform similarly)

Maybe other brands or models I should be considering that aren’t on BRR?

But honestly… I don’t really know what I’m doing. I started by filtering by wattage and knob height, but it seems the tread design or compounds are even more important.

So, in conclusion, what I’m after is:

• More confidence on rough, loose forest descents (I'm not doing jumps. Let's say, more like XC)
• 50mm volume
• Still decent on road sections
• Not feeling like I’m dragging an anchor on pavement

If anyone has experience with these in real, messy forest conditions (not nice smooth gravel), I’d appreciate some advice and recommendations. What should I actually be looking at when choosing?

Thanks in advance!

The full podcast episode is worth watching, but I was absolutely blown away by all the tracks they played together and so wanted to share them here for any other QotSA or Norah Jones fans:
Make It Wit Chu @2:51
This Lullaby @15:13
Kalopsia @27:21
Somethin' Stupid (Frank & Nancy Sinatra cover) @51:16

I'm up for both a new phone and a new laptop, I have an Iphone 8 and a Macbook pro (2020) that was a freebie from an old job.

I wanted a new Iphone, but if I did that, only a Macbook can put music on it and that's half what I use my phone for. I don't really need a new laptop, but all of my other devices are Linux and can't put music on an Iphone. So seems like it's either all or nothing here. Either I switch to Android, or I go buy two expensive Apple products soon.

Iphones have always been great to me, the only reason I need a new phone right now is because Apple refuses to support mine any more. The Macbook though, I had that for only a year before the logic board gave out and bricked it. Is that just something that happens with Macbooks? Are all Apple products actually trash and I've just gotten lucky with both Iphone 4s and Iphone 8 being built for war?

Am I dumb for avoiding Android like the plague? Every Android phone I've ever met is loaded with tons of bloatware and insecure as hell, seems like the Windows of the phone world.

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.

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.

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

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

Rules:

• No grey market sales
• No affiliate links

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

All previous Save Point topics

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

Tildes is a very serious site, where we discuss very serious matters like discord, mastercard and captcha. Tags culled from the highest voted topics from the last seven days, if anyone was scratching their noggin.

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!

So I've been out of the loop on camping and, more generally, outdoorsy stuff beyond day hikes for a good couple of years now. In my absence, it seems like a large chunk of the manufacturers I used to rely on for flashlights and headlamps (Black Diamond, Petzl, Fenix, etc.) have switched over to lithium batteries, many to USB chargeable internal batteries.

That feels weird to me, coming from the era of "carry a couple of spare double and triple A's with you", since you only needed a few of one or the other to keep all your lights going, even on a longer trip. Given that everyone's doing it now, though, I'm assuming it works out fine.

Anyone have recs on what brands are good these days, what models, and how to buy to maximize the "keep all your lights going with the least backup energy sources" factor?