This can be contentious, so feel free to self-categorize as "fresh twist on" as well if you wish 😅

(edit) moved my pick to the comment section ...

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!

I really don't know where to put this, so feel free to move, but I have this issue. I carry a LOT of shit on my keychain. Two sets of keys of four each, a SIM removal tool, a tiny retractable box cutter, a USB drive full of installer ISOs (you never know), an AirTag, a CPU with a hole punched through, a 3D printed whistle, and that may very well grow.

Now the problem I have is that the lanyard that I currently have has, over time, widened the gap on the karabiner to the point that I'll regularly lose a key ring in my pocket when pulling it out. Nothing major's happened yet, but it's a matter of time.

So, clearly, I need a better one. A higher quality one. But going on the eTailers of today I really only get garbage. A pack of 20! For ten bucks! Well, thanks, but we all know they'll suck. And frankly, I really don't know how to get my hands on a high quality one. I bet they're out there, I'm sure, but where do I look? What's good, what's bad? I really don't need the high-end climbing gear, or do I? Is my key lanyard a candidate for buy it for life, and if so, am I ready for that commitment?

Looking for any and all advice on this.

PS: I don't wear the lanyard. I'm one of those assholes that puts the active end in my pocket and lets the lanyard itself dangle out.

Finale of season 4 spoilers here. You have been warned that people will discuss spoilers here. Don't blame me if you are spoiled of things that happen all the way to the end of season 4, which premiered today.

Anybody else watch the Season 4 Finale and just blown away by how it ended? I was NOT expecting a full PTSD Mark episode to end with him agreeing to let Thragg use the planet as a breeding planet. Its such a smart, awful way to have him make a morally compromised decision and come to terms with Thragg. Also the mid credits scene of Allan being told to use the Scourge virus! Amazing television and i can't wait to see what they do next.

Edit: thank you to whomever added the tags for me. I am usually just a lurker and appreciate someone flagging this post appropriately! I was too excited to get my post up and see what people had to say!

With all of the identity verification laws in the pipeline, data breaches, and government overreach (mandated monitoring in new cars in the US), what steps can the average person take to secure their anonymity and data and device privacy?

I’m a tech-savvy person but nowhere near the level of a great many. It seems like in the face of overwhelming odds, making small changes is only a drop in the bucket. I have all the data encryption settings enabled on my phone, but I use services like Dropbox and rely on it heavily. I’ve always thought that if the product is free, you’re the product…but I pay for Dropbox, so they shouldn’t use my data for training AI (but they likely are). Setting up a personal cloud seems like a daunting task, as is getting involved in any of the small projects that people have going (decentralized networks, mesh…things, P2P, etc). I’ve focused more on securing my home networks recently so my Ubiquiti devices are restricted in what they can access, but I haven’t actually pen-tested my network yet. I have PopOS! installed on my home desktop because I got tired of Windows’ invasive…everything, but ultimately I don’t know what I’m doing.

There’s probably a great many people out there that feel like it’s hopeless to try to do anything because it won’t matter as there’s such a heavy push to invade, restrict, and monetize our digital lives. What can the average person do to take control of our devices and data?

Hello,

I have quite some technical question and my DuckDuckGo-fu seems very weak on this one. I hope it is ok to post questions on Tildes, as it is not really discussion material... but someone can still learn and use whatever come from this.

I have Live Aid concert that I ripped from my DVDs and I wanted to merge the individual video files (there are four) into one long video. I'm on Linux and I'm used to ffmpeg in command line, though I do not know it that much. Each of the input videos has its own chapters and I would like to transfer those chapters into the final video as well. Preferably adding a chapter in between every input video.

I was unable to find if ffmpeg allows for something like that in a single inline command. I may have to export chapters from each input video and add them into one "chapter" file and redo times by hand on them and then use this file as "chapter" input when merging the videos, but all this is just a theory on my part.

Is there some FFmpeg expert here who has done something like that?

EDIT: I made my own solution, see it in a comment a bit lower.

A few months ago someone posted an article on the male loneliness epidemic. I had shared my thoughts in the comments on that post. But I think that article and a lot of comments are under the impression that "redpill" content/ideology is still in vogue or relevant in today's world. It still has its followers and influencers for sure, but it's not at the forefront of cultural discussions anymore. To think otherwise is outdated, the redpill era died around 2022/2023 and was replaced by a more incel-derived "blackpill" era.

Thanks to TikTok, what was once relegated to niche internet forums became mainstream. The biggest influencer from this internet phenomenon is Clavicular, who is currently getting articles written about him in press outlets such as The Hollywood Reporter and People.

I am no stranger to talking about looks (side note: I would have taken more time to write that out and discuss broader topics, such as "types," if I had known it would have gotten as much attention as it did). And I have been around looksmaxxxing spaces on the internet since about 2022. I'll try to make this as brief and simple as I can.

What is the blackpill?

The blackpill is a deterministic outlook on life. It states that your genetics determines the quality of your life, and if you were not born with advantageous bone structure and height, then "it was over before it even started." You won't be successful in life, you won't find love, and you will end up a lonely, pathetic person wishing you'd been born looking better.

How does this differ from the redpill?

The redpill has some overlap with the blackpill. Both believe that men are the true victims of society. That feminism has been detrimental, this and that, and the other. The redpill, however, insinuates that you can self-improve. There's almost zero focus on improving looks, and it's almost entirely focused on making money and increasing your status.

A core belief of the redpill is that all women are gold diggers, and in order to get laid, you need to make a ton of money. The blackpill does not entirely dispute this, but it does say that if a woman chooses you for money, she will never actually love you. And that you are paying a lot of money for affection and attention that an attractive man gets for free.

I think that explanation in and of itself should show you the difference between the two.

What's looksmaxxxing? Are looksmaxxxing and the blackpill interchangeable terms?

They are not.

Looksmaxxxing is what guys do to look better, to increase their rankings on the looks scale. So that they can start getting laid (primarily) or start to "mog" (i.e., outshine everyone in a room).

In certain blackpill spaces looksmaxxxing is seen as cope, since, again, your life was determined by genetics and there's nothing you can do to fix this.

You might think looksmaxxxing consists of losing body fat, getting a skin care routine, dressing nicely, hygiene, and cologne. And that is part of it, all of that stuff is considered "softmaxxxing" but there's also "hardmaxxxing" as in surgeries and other more serious treatments such as steroids and peptides (which technically occupy a grey area between soft and hard maxxxing). An example of a popular surgery is double jaw surgery, here's the subreddit for it so you can see examples. If your jaw was not properly developed and you have a recessed chin (or a pushed-in chin), then a double jaw surgery is something you can do that would greatly increase your attractiveness. Although it does carry quite a bit of risk. There are other surgeries that people do on their eyes, their noses, ear pinning, there's a lot.

It is essentially a belief that your best investment is going to be in how you look. It's a bit of a running joke that instead of going to college, you should invest in plastic surgery, and that will do more to make your life better than a degree.

How do they view women? How do they view themselves?

The belief is that women are hypergamous. That they will only want to date up, and it's significantly easier for women to date and get laid, even if they are below average looking. And that even an above average looking man will have trouble since they aren't the holy grail of attractiveness.

Here's a brief explanation of their rating system.

• Sub-5

5 is considered average; sub-5 means below average. Not even that you don't get attention but that you get negative attention from the people around you.

• Low-Tier Normie / Low-Tier Becky
• Mid-Tier Normie / Mid-Tier Becky
• High-Tier Normie / High-Tier Becky

The "normie" categories are all average categories. Ranging from on the low side of average (LTN) to above average (HTN). The High Tier categories are where a lot of attractive actors sit, think romcom leads, the boy/girl next door types.

• Chad/Stacy

Essentially unobtainable beauty. Taylor Hill or Henry Cavill.

Depending on who you're talking to, someone would say that "life starts at HTN" or that life doesn't exist unless you're "Chad." And that if you're anything below that, you might as well not even exist.

How did it get popular?

The first instance most people probably heard of it was likely in 2014 when Elliot Rodger committed a mass shooting at a University. He was a member of a looksmaxxxing forum (the original looksmaxxxing forum, I believe), which led to the site being shut down and thus delaying any chance of its popularity. If you go back and watch and read what Elliot Rodger believed, it makes more sense in today's context now that this thought process has been more normalized.

In 2023, TikTok started promoting this content. Primarily from "edits" here's an example and coinciding with that were also the rise of a few influencers. All leading up to Clavicular, and how dominant he is on social media (thanks in part to funding from Peter Thiel). He was a kid posting on looksmaxxxing forums, was a micro celebrity in the niche, became a slightly bigger internet celebrity on TikTok before streamers started bringing him on leading to his insane fame.

Conclusion

Going back to the initial tildes post that I linked to. That whole thing was essentially saying, if you're just a good person, then someone will want to date you or fall in love with you or want to have sex with you or whatever. And I think part of the reason why looksmaxxxing stuff has taken off is that it feels more honest. It's not coddling you, and if you do improve your looks, you're going to see better results in dating than if you read feminist literature or something. So the takeaway ends up being that one of these places was telling me the truth.

Like, on a broader scale, it's a response to the body positivity stuff from the 2010s. When everyone was being told that it's okay if you're obese, it's healthy, it's beautiful. And there was just kind of a sense of performance to all of it.
The effort to change what people are attracted to, or to shame people for not being attracted to a certain thing. Has it gone too far? Probably, but I think that's why it took off initially and why it grew so quickly.

I obviously have my own personal experience about this, and so I very obviously know that it's not just what's inside that counts. Normal everyday people will make assumptions about you based on the way that you look. And I don't think it's a morally wrong thing to acknowledge that it happens, nor do I think it's a morally righteous thing to pretend like it doesn't.

This is the fourth Tildes Book Club Discussion for 2026 and the twenty-fourth overall. We are discussing The Tea Girl of Hummingbird Lane by Lisa See. For May, we will discuss Pnin by Vladimir Nabokov.

I don't have a particular format in mind for this discussion, but I will post some prompts and questions as comments to get things started. You're not obligated to respond to them or vote on them though. So feel free to make your own top-level comment for whatever you wish to discuss, questions you have of others, or even just to post a review of the book you have written yourself.

For latecomers, don't worry if you didn't read the book in time for this Discussion topic. You can always join in once you finish it. Tildes Activity sort, and "Collapse old comments" feature should keep the topic going for as long as people are still replying.

And for anyone uninterested in this topic please use the Ignore Topic feature on this so it doesn't keep popping up in your Activity sort, since it's likely to keep doing that while I set this discussion up, and once people start joining in.

The survey has been closed and the results are in!

Thank you to all the 324 people that responded! It was honestly a bigger number than I was expecting so I'm really happy with how it turned out. :D Here are some stats that I can put in Markdown:

• 34 years old is the median age
• We have lived a combined 11615 years
• And the generational breakdown with:
  • Millennials at 59.0%
  • Gen Z at 26.9%
  • Gen X at 12.3%
  • Baby Boomer at 1.5%
  • Greatest Generation at 0.3% not sure if this one is legit ;)

View the full results here

• Tip: You can set a custom age range using the "Set age range" filter to get a better view of results! All the graphs update along with that filter.
• Or get a ZIP download here of the data

Let me know your thoughts about the survey, what you liked, what you didn't like, if you'd like something different about them, you name it!

Thank you all again for participating! I hope to see you in the next survey. :)

I don’t know if anyone is interest in mesh networks like MeshCore. I have been dabbling in it, and it’s an interesting concept of distributed LoRa radios making a community network.
There has been some recent drama with MeshCore where in a nutshell there has been a disagreement over control of the project and probably ultimately money.

If anyone else uses MeshCore (or meshtastic), what has your experience of it been? What are your thoughts about the future of the project with the drama? I don’t think it will be a big deal, I suspect it will blow over without a large fracture but it’s very much a guess rather than considered view.

Hello all, long time listener, first time poster. First time poster because this is a throwaway account as it will have more personal info included than I'd like linked to my main account. The point of this post is to request guidance/advice/ideas from the always incredible, intelligent, and helpful people of Tildes.

The high level points:

1. I am a female 40 year old, for lack of a better phrase, starving artist living in the US. I am single, live alone with my cat in an apartment, and have no debt.
2. I have not held a steady/normal job in over a decade (mental health being a primary reason), my personal income has come from a couple of very small business ventures where I make things by hand, some freelance graphic design, the generosity of friends, and pet sitting. The latter is dead in the water as all my pets were in another state and I just moved in the last 30 days to a place that is much smaller and simply will not have the customer base to do the same, nor am I all that interested in pursuing it here.
3. My primary method of financial support over the last decade was being the homemaker to my now-ex husband up until about two years ago when he informed me he no longer wished to be my husband. Since then my primary financial support was from my now-deceased father, who generously provided me with $2,500 per month to subsist on, with my previously mentioned ventures closing the finances gap as much as possible.
4. Over the decade of being in a single income household and for the last two years subsisting off a "guaranteed" income of $30,000 per year I managed to learn to be extremely frugal wherever possible so as to not spend above my means and keep a roof over my head. I eat once per day, my overall health isn't great but I am attempting to address that, and thus far my "retail therapy" budget to give me a little boost of dopamine has been $50 per month that is generally spent in thrift stores. I wouldn't call it living so much as I'd call it surviving and am often unsure why I bother.

The issue/question at hand:
My father has passed away and with him my primary/only means of support, with his passing I have inherited just over $500,000 in a Traditional IRA. So my primary question is how to minimize tax burden and maximize return on his investments to make them last as long as possible while I figure out the next stage of my life.

I am not opposed to getting a normal/steady job, but this is more difficult to obtain than one would imagine with a decade long gap in employment and an unwillingness to sacrifice the mental health gains I have made and gestures broadly everything else that is going on. There is also the bit of freedom that this amount of money provides that will perhaps allow me to double down on my small business ventures, investing in them/myself at a level that I was unable to do prior and therefore enabling them to become a primary source of support. So there is a thought of setting a budget, both monetary and time, to allow myself to try to grow my businesses first.

TLDR: Single, solo, poor, woman gets $500k pre-tax, how to make the most of it?

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We recommend you install our mod web-chat so that you can chat while in your web browser. It turns the server into an old-school chat room.

<- Previous Thread

Some of you may remember me from another thread, where I hemmed and hawed and fretted my way through trying to navigate my struggling relationship. I thought I'd reached the final chapter, I moved out and established a place for my child and myself. I cut as many ties as I could with my now ex, but of course several threads still remain.

Yesterday (April Fools of course) I found out that they had been cheating on me since last May, at least. Potentially longer. Of course, I'm devastated. I knew they had found someone else already recently, but I thought it was in the last month or two. This new piece of the puzzle has solved so many unanswered questions I've had, while also creating many new ones.

I feel used, financially/emotionally abused, gaslit, and more. I'm still working on processing everything. I'm trying to remain calm for the sake of the kids (especially mine) but it's really, really hard. I know it isn't a reflection on me - I tried everything I could to fix things. It is hard however not feel that utter sense of betrayal in my gut and soul like a knife.

What resources, reading, supports, guides are there for this? I'm just trying to get through today and then I have a three day weekend to work on processing this all.

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.

So with the Paramount acquisition, all the new HP content, and the general state of both TV and Movie ownership are people returning to the high seas?

I was an eager participant of the first and second wave of piracy in the early and late 00s, and considering the re-consolidation of the entertainment industry and the seemingly nefarious acquisitions of late, I am considering hoisting the black flag once again. I guess this post has two objectives: 1. how are other people navigating our changing media landscape, and 2. for those who have stayed immersed in piracy or have returned to it how have things changed in the last decade or so. Obviously Megavideo and Putlocker are no more, so are there directions to point folks who are just getting back to it. This can be streaming, torrenting, anything really.

Caveat: Let's not even give the horrible human that is JK airtime. I mentioned HP because folks might want to indulge without supporting but if we can keep the discussion to piracy that would be awesome!

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!

Tildes is a very serious site, where we discuss very serious matters like infowars, framework.laptop 13 and web.small. Tags culled from the highest voted topics from the last seven days, if anyone was studious.

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 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.

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.

I’ve bought enough digital comic bundles now that they’re starting to take up a decent chunk of storage space.

What I’d love to do, if possible, is losslessly compress them all down to their minimum sizes, in the same way that FLAC does with music. Is this a thing? And if so, what’s the best way to do it?

If lossless compression isn’t possible, is there a lossy compression that’s effectively lossless in that I won’t be able to tell the difference anyway? Lossless compression gives me good piece of mind, but the storage savings from an invisible lossy one are honestly quite appealing too.

What are your favourite go-to songs at karaoke? Trying to steal ideas from you guys before I go next time.

Any "tradition" or customs you and your friends came up with? Example, I like ending the night with Bohemian Rhapsody because it's super late and we're too tired to be shy, there's a lot of different (non repetitive) lyrical sections, and, tradition.

Modern karaoke places are pretty affordable these days , and have a good selection of songs. If you've never been or haven't in a long time, would love to encourage you to go try and report back your thoughts.

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?