Which Substacks do you subscribe to/follow?
Im dabbling in substack and starting with this one food writer.. but who else should i follow? I see a lot of people post these interesting essays from Substack - any general recs?
Im dabbling in substack and starting with this one food writer.. but who else should i follow? I see a lot of people post these interesting essays from Substack - any general recs?
I'm curious to see how many have as strong opinions as me about Tildes. I'll go first. I'd quit if the site shifted away from a text-only philosophy.
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.
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.
A little less than a year ago, I asked for your recommendations on bread maker tips, tricks, and recipes, and thought I’d give a small update.
The bread maker I bought is functionally the Breville Custom Loaf, rebranded for the local market (“Tramontina by Breville”). I paid R$3069 for it. It was on sale: the same machine now sells for anywhere between R$2991 to R$3690. (These equate to about 565USD then and 594USD to 732USD now, considering contemporaneous exchange rates.)
My +/- weekly recipe eventually settled upon via much trial and many errors comes from an amalgamation of various sources, by now mostly lost. In the summer, I have to halve the recipe and make bread twice as often, or the maresia / damp sea air makes it mould before we can eat the whole thing!
I have also not tried to make anything but this exact bread since I started. My dreams of raisin buns are as of yet unrealised. Next year for the end of the year, I plan to make panettone in it, as we don’t plan to travel.
My unhalved recipe is:
Cost wise, this breaks down to:
I didn’t include the yeast in the breakdown because I have yet to buy any. The 1kg package of yeast I purchased four years ago to make pizza and kept in the freezer since is still going strong. At present, a kilo of yeast costs ~R$23.
Without nuts, my cost per loaf is R$3,99, while with nuts, it’s R$16,49. My local supermarket sells a (frankly inferior) and much smaller (350g) “100% whole wheat” loaf for R$25.
Having kept incomplete records, I believe for most of the year we have made a loaf about every five days: let’s pretend means over the past year, I’ve made 70 loaves at about a 50/50 split of nuts or no-nuts, so let’s put my total cost of making bread as R$716,80. If we buy bread, it’s an every-other-day occurance, so R$4562,50 spent on bread in a year. Adding the cost of the bread maker to the mix, if these were real figures, we would have saved R$776,70 so far, just in this year alone.
And it has served us well, with some slight oddities!
The first is based on the machine: never once in the usage of the machine has the “automatic” dispenser of nuts automatically added the nuts at the proper stage. I have read the documentation, and I can find no explanation. At present, if I want nuts added, I have to remain at home when the maker is going, as it screams something awful (buzzer) when it’s “going to” add the nuts, and then I run along and poke open the dispenser door with my finger until the latch opens and the nuts dispense into the awaiting dough. If I know I won’t be home, I don’t add nuts, because otherwise, I will come home to a nice loaf of bread and a small dispenser of lightly warmed nuts. (Heh.)
The second is that my recipe is not as good when I have to halve it! In the damp season, I had to throw away a few half-loaves, as mold loves my poor little bread, and the bread does not survive well in the fridge. But splitting the recipe (and altering the settings on the bread maker to reflect, which is itself an imprecise science) has yet to lead to a smaller version of my usual recipe: what comes out is a biscotti-shaped, flat, dense, but still edible loaf. I’m still figuring it out!
All in all, thanks to everyone who encouraged me in the previous thread, and let this be encouragement to anyone else on the fence to try out a breadmaker!
About every six weeks, I go on a "stock the pantry" shopping trip to buy long-keeping items and non-perishables in quantity - cat food and litter, Costco, etc. After two hours of shopping yesterday, I was a little shocked to realize I'd spent half of my take-home pay on a trip that previously was about 25% less expensive. No one item had drastically increased in price - everything had just gone up that much.
[I'm also smarting because my primary care physician announced she was switching to a concierge care model, and I just made the first quarterly payment. U.S. healthcare sucks so badly that I can't take a chance on the two-year waitlists for in-network primary care M.D.s who provide 10-minute "annual exam" visits in my area.]
I'm dropping subscription services, buying cheaper conventional food instead of organic, getting generic personal care products instead of brand names and using less of them, cooking even more at home, thinking about making my own cat food, skipping buying pretty flowers for outdoors this year... and still feeling like the budget isn't going to keep stretching.
I know a great many aspects of Western lifestyles aren't sustainable, and I've tried to do my part to minimize material consumption. But there are so many expectations that you'll pay for perhaps excessive shelter (we didn't need a house the size we have, but it was what was available and affordable), have a car for work, be able to pay for services for things you don't have time, skill, or physical capacity to do yourself, and other monetary drains. I'm losing some sleep.
What are you doing to cope with exorbitant rents/mortgages, skyrocketing utility and grocery bills, extravagant medical costs, unaffordable childcare and services?
Do you feel like your quality of life has declined, due to missing luxuries, anxiety, fewer opportunities to connect with friends and family, or anything else?
Open rant here.
Both are filing for IPOs. Are y'all buying at launch? I think I will.
Over the month of May, 14 participants moved 176 games out of their backlogs.
Congratulations to the following Bingo winners:
Special congratulations:
To everyone who played games, shared their thoughts, or even just read through the comments for the event:
This event is amazing because y'all all make it amazing. Thank you for playing.
Use this topic to post your final bingo cards, give recaps of your games, and share any thoughts you have on the event itself.
The question on everyone's mind.
The feud between the Motivateds and the Mellows was a (possibly one-sided?) rivalry for the ages.
Who came out on top?
Well, I'm happy to report that the final numbers are in, and the Grand Winners are:
We are all one team! There's no actual rivalry. We've actually been gaming together as one wonderful little group this whole time! (Now everybody saw "AWWWWWW" and get all sappy)
Also, the jury has returned a verdict in u/Wes's trial:
He has been found guilty of being awesome. His sentence is that he is required to feel immensely proud of his community service in making the amazing Backlog Bingo site and responding thoughtfully to everyone all month long.
S accounted for a full 12% of what we played.This is a monthly thread for those who need it. Vent, share your experiences, ask for advice, talk about how you are doing. Let's make this a compassionate space for all who may need one.
I was talking with a friend about recent events that seemed eerily suspicious to me, and was wondering if all of you might have any similar experiences.
(Preemptively tagging this as politics. If anything in this thread is deemed malicious or inflammatory, let me know and I'll delete the thread)
Post your current bingo cards.
Continue updating us on your games!
Quick links:
11 participants played 9 bingo cards and moved 43 games out of their backlogs!
There were three bingo wins. Congratulations to u/CannibalisticApple, u/kfwyre, and u/Wes! 🎉
There was one ✨⭐️ HONORARY BINGO ⭐️✨ for u/aphoenix.
There was one betrayal. u/Wes will go on trial following the conclusion of this event
Y'all are going to have to wait on the game list. I got my allergy shots today and they wreck me, so I don't have the energy to link up everything right now. I'll get to it tomorrow. Sorry!
Game list:
11 participants played 10 bingo cards and moved 37 games out of their backlogs!
There was one bingo win. Congratulations to u/ShroudedScribe! 🎉
Game list:
11 participants played 9 bingo cards and moved 28 games out of their backlogs!
All but one are listed above.
Is he still Mellow? Or did he join the Motivateds?
He played three different games, which seems very motivated...
...but Mellow is also a state of mind, a pace, a vibe.
With whom will he stand?
Game list:
⚔️🛡️ Battle lines have been drawn. 🛡️⚔️
Calm, easygoing, relaxed (<3 games played this week)
Driven, energized, results-oriented (≥3 games played this week, or, like, only one game played but for a LONG time)
Who will come out on top? Which team will reign supreme? What metric will we even use to determine what counts as a win? STAY TUNED.
11 participants played 10 bingo cards and moved 24 games out of their backlogs!
Game list:
What are you reading currently? Fiction or non-fiction or poetry, any genre, any language! Tell us what you're reading, and talk about it a bit.
Server host: tildes.nore.gg (Running Java 26.1.2)
Verification site: https://tildes.nore.gg
BlueMap: https://tildes.nore.gg/map/
Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/TildesMC
Plugins:
/co inspect)The server operates on a soft whitelist. Anyone can log in and walk around, but you need a Tildes account to gain build access.
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.
The current plans for questions that will be asked in the coming weeks are as follows:
| Question | Survey opens | Survey closes |
|---|---|---|
| How old are you? | ||
| What country do you live in? | ||
| What country were you born in? | ||
| What languages can you speak? | ||
| Pineapple on pizza? | ||
| Vote for the next 4 surveys | 2026-05-24 18:00 UTC | 2026-05-31 10:00 UTC |
For this week's survey I went over the list of questions you submitted and picked a number of them that would be interesting (and easy to visualize). Now you get to choose which 4 you'd like to see next!
You may also notice this week's survey doesn't look quite like the others from the past. That's because I've reworked the frontend of the surveys so I can make it look and work however I want. :P No longer bound by what n8n's Form funtionality provides!
For now I've chosen to get "close enough" to the look of the past surveys however in the coming weeks I will likely start changing it to look and feel more like how Tildes itself does.
This change also makes it so there's 0 JavaScript involved in the form page, woo! Hopefully that will help those who've had issues submitting their responses (like the submit button infinitely spinning). If anyone encounters issues do let me know! I'll try to fix them. :)
Please submit your ideas for questions here! Even if they've been submitted already by someone else. All input is valuable! You can view all submitted questions on this dashboard.
Thank you all for participating!
Thank you to all the 115 people that responded! Check out the dashboard for the full results! And the next four surveys we will do are:
Thank you all again for participating! Hope to see you in the next survey! :)
Question for those interested, what would be a good way to pose the next question "What is your gender identity?"
I have some ideas but I'd like to hear other people's thoughts too since I think historically this has been one of the more debated questions in the demographics surveys. And I think this one's an important one not to mess up. Let me know!
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:
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.
The current plans for questions that will be asked in the coming weeks are as follows:
| Question | Survey opens | Survey closes |
|---|---|---|
| Vote for the next 4 surveys | ||
| What is your gender identity? | 2026-05-31 18:00 UTC | 2026-06-07 10:00 UTC |
| What's your favorite video game? | 2026-06-07 18:00 UTC | 2026-06-14 10:00 UTC |
| How optimistic are you about the future? | 2026-06-14 18:00 UTC | 2026-06-21 10:00 UTC |
| How often do you visit/read Tildes? | 2026-06-21 18:00 UTC | 2026-06-28 10:00 UTC |
Another week, another survey! Now that the next four weeks have been voted on and we know what's on the docket, we start off with the top voted question: What is your gender identity?
Special thanks to @TaylorSwiftsPickles and @DefinitelyNotAFae for helping with figuring out the survey! I could not have done it without them! <3
Please submit your ideas for questions here! Even if they've been submitted already by someone else. All input is valuable! You can view all submitted questions on this dashboard.
Thank you all for participating!
What food and drinks have you been enjoying (or not enjoying) recently? Have you cooked or created anything interesting? Tell us about it!
I am looking for a Buy-It-For-Life pen. I've had the Parker Jotters for years and love them, but I am in need of something with a little longer life expectancy on the barrel.
My first thought was James Brand The Burwell, however I am just now really diving into the BIFL Pen world and curious on what you guys suggestion / use.
Assume the money cap of $100 for now, unless you have some out of this world amazing option over that cap.