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    1. Ask Tildes: are any of you living kidney donors?

      I want to donate my kidney (not to anyone in particular, which would make the process far more straightforward), but I need help navigating the bureaucracy. Here are things I have seen about...

      I want to donate my kidney (not to anyone in particular, which would make the process far more straightforward), but I need help navigating the bureaucracy. Here are things I have seen about living kidney donation online:

      • You can select five people to get priority access to kidneys if they need it (e.g., parents, spouse, kids)
      • They will fly you to where you need to go for screening
      • They will cover lost wages during recovery

      Now I don't know who "they" is, or how to go about getting answers to these questions. Since I'm not tethered to a particular recipient, I can choose wherever to sign up, and I want to make the optimal choice both for myself and the recipient.

      If you are a donor, especially an anonymous donor who's navigated this stuff, please reach out.

      19 votes
    2. For those who deal with hypoglycemia, do you have any advice for dealing with fatigue after a bad low?

      My hypoglycemia issues are not related to diabetes fwiw. That said, I tend to get hypoglycemia a few times a day. If I catch it quick enough and treat, it's usually not a big deal, but if I get...

      My hypoglycemia issues are not related to diabetes fwiw. That said, I tend to get hypoglycemia a few times a day. If I catch it quick enough and treat, it's usually not a big deal, but if I get too low (maybe once I get into the 50s mg/dl), then after treating (usually about 15 minutes later), I get so. freaking. tired. Like, barely able to stand up exhausted. Currently dealing with this as we speak, and it's very frustrating. My endocrinologist told me it's normal to get tired like this while recovering. I'm curious if anyone else deals with this? If so, do you have any advice for dealing with the fatigue?

      Tildes might be too small of a platform for this. If no one deals with hypoglycemia here, please feel free to remove it. I thought with the prevalence of diabetes, it would be likely there are folks who encounter this.

      EDIT: In case anyone ever stumbles on this, turns out it was an insulinoma. I finally had surgery. Don't give up hope, answers can be out there, even if you feel like there's no where left to look.

      13 votes
    3. My father died suddenly

      In a few days my dad will have been gone for 2 months. I'm his only biological child and he has 2 stepsons. I've been feeling like I'm grieving 'the wrong way' but that in itself is not a source...

      In a few days my dad will have been gone for 2 months. I'm his only biological child and he has 2 stepsons. I've been feeling like I'm grieving 'the wrong way' but that in itself is not a source of stress or anything. I've been spending so much time doing other things that I've been distracted from having enough quiet moments to reflect on his passing and remember all that I can about him. I'm also not the type of person that can cry easily (not a sociopath lol). We weren't super close but I believe we had an understanding; this is a common father-son dynamic I think. Although, I do feel terrible that he won't be around to see me hit all the milestones of adulthood that I know he would be proud of. But I do know that he was proud of me for some things because he made sure to tell me. I also feel like I don't know how to fully be there for my mother who just lost her partner of 30+ years; I can't imagine the scale of her grief. Any words of wisdom are appreciated.

      It might be worth mentioning that he was an alcoholic, as am I (sober 1 year next month). This of course was a factor in his death but not the only thing. I'm very grounded in the reality of what happened and why it happened which I think makes others surprised by my 'tough exterior' or whatever. I feel like I can go on forever but I'll leave this post short.

      Others are welcome to share cool stories about their dads :^)

      48 votes
    4. I'm going on vacation

      Hey all, My family and I are leaving for a vacation tomorrow, and I won't be back until Jun 11th. I likely won't have very consistent internet access while gone since we're going on a cruise which...

      Hey all,

      My family and I are leaving for a vacation tomorrow, and I won't be back until Jun 11th. I likely won't have very consistent internet access while gone since we're going on a cruise which only has rather expensive and slow satellite internet, so I just wanted to leave a message here on Tildes somewhere so nobody worries about my absence. :P

      I removed the latest /r/tildes invite thread but will make a new one when I get back. And I also likely won't be able to post the remainder of the Taskmaster episodes as they are released, so if someone wants to take over posting those while I'm gone I would appreciate it. Thanks and see you all again in a few weeks. :)

      66 votes
    5. Save Point: A game deal roundup for the week of June 7

      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...

      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.

      8 votes
    6. Fitness Weekly Discussion

      What have you been doing lately for your own fitness? Try out any new programs or exercises? Have any questions for others about your training? Want to vent about poor behavior in the gym? Started...

      What have you been doing lately for your own fitness? Try out any new programs or exercises? Have any questions for others about your training? Want to vent about poor behavior in the gym? Started a new diet or have a new recipe you want to share? Anything else health and wellness related?

      2 votes
    7. Caught the cycling bug. Anyone else?

      Title says most of it. Something has clicked for me in the past new months and I've unlocked a level of enjoyment cycling I never had before. I've always ridden by bike since I was young, but only...

      Title says most of it. Something has clicked for me in the past new months and I've unlocked a level of enjoyment cycling I never had before. I've always ridden by bike since I was young, but only recently have I started doing it for health and fitness, and pure enjoyment. I'm addicted to seeing just how far (and how high) I'm able to go! What really did it for me was my first ride with decent elevation. I've always driven past cyclists chugging their way up in the hills and never understood how they did it, and never thought I'd be able to. Well, all it took was trying it one day to realize that while difficult, it was totally attainable, and since then I've been hooked. This has prompted me to also start following pro cycling, which I've done on and off before, but this year I'm very much looking forward to the Tour de France.

      Anyone else into this as a hobby (either doing or watching)? Anyone training for big upcoming rides, and if so what? I mostly just want to chat about what people's weekly rides look like!

      24 votes
    8. Why emoji picker default on?

      I'm running a nixos linux machine with Hyperland as my window manager and a few month back (likely after an update) I noticed that firefox started showing a emoji picker when I pressed ctrl+.....

      I'm running a nixos linux machine with Hyperland as my window manager and a few month back (likely after an update) I noticed that firefox started showing a emoji picker when I pressed ctrl+.. This was a bit annoying since the firefox extension for my password manager is activated by that key shortcut. I figured this was some update for firefox, but now that I dug into it to fix it it turns out that it is a gtk thing that apparently each app has to opt out of! I could disable it by flipping widget.gtk.native-emoji-dialog in about:config, but this seems like a really bad choice by gtk. Two gripes with this:

      1. Them adding a global keyboard shortcut for all gtk apps that is ON by default (for a kind of niche usecase).
      2. Overriding shortcuts on a desktop wide basis with no meaningful (afaict) way to disable it.

      Anyone knows if this is intentional? Maybe it's already been reverted upstream and I just need to update... anyway end rant!

      17 votes
    9. What have you been watching / reading this week? (Anime/Manga)

      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...

      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!

      11 votes
    10. The "go fix a minor annoyance" togetherness topic

      There's something small that you've been meaning to do but, for whatever reason, you haven't done it. Rather than just forgetting about it, however, your brain has decided to make it take up a...

      There's something small that you've been meaning to do but, for whatever reason, you haven't done it. Rather than just forgetting about it, however, your brain has decided to make it take up a minor amount of space in your awareness -- not enough to make it an immediate concern or something you plan to act on, but still just enough to be annoying.

      Well, this is your call to address the issue head on! Pull that mental splinter out and get rid of it for good!

      Maybe you need to...

      • change an air filter
      • tighten your showerhead
      • go through that stack of mail
      • box up a return
      • put more air in your bike tires
      • rearrange a bookshelf
      • throw out some expired cans
      • vacuum behind the couch
      • clean the dust out of your computer fan
      • etc.

      Whatever it is, this topic is your call to GO DO THE THING.

      And then, come back here and tell us what you did.

      One minor annoyance solved for only one person? Not a big deal.

      LOTS of minor annoyances solved for LOTS of different people? GIGANTIC DEAL!

      This topic is our space to communally revel in the glorious shared feeling of being slightly more annoyance-free, together.


      IMPORTANT: Clearing up multiple annoyances is explicitly allowed!

      49 votes
    11. AI is bringing my friend out of retirement

      I have a friend that is lucky enough to have retired at 40. A year ago he was adamant he'd never work again, having been burnt out from his time at big tech. Back then he was also an absolute AI...

      I have a friend that is lucky enough to have retired at 40. A year ago he was adamant he'd never work again, having been burnt out from his time at big tech. Back then he was also an absolute AI hater and wouldn't listen to anyone who claimed LLMs were useful for programming.

      He finally tried LLMs when Claude Opus 4.6 released and immediately changed his mind in the face of the overwhelming evidence that LLMs can in fact program pretty well. And now with the release of Fable 5 he's giddily creating all sorts of things that would have taken far too long to make prior to AI-accelerated software development. He actually plans to try and found his own business now. He's a very smart guy, so I hope he can make something interesting that people want.

      There are a lot of AI doomers and haters. In person I mostly see people doing the same thing they've always done, but now saving time on various tasks. But this is the first time I've seen someone go from grumpy and checked out to giddy and optimistic thanks to LLMs.

      38 votes
    12. What about having an LLM teach you to code?

      My daughter (11) is doing a week long Python class, which is not using LLMs. It got me thinking about how I learned to program in the pre-internet days (laboriously, from books), and then what a...

      My daughter (11) is doing a week long Python class, which is not using LLMs.

      It got me thinking about how I learned to program in the pre-internet days (laboriously, from books), and then what a marvel it was when you could just search for information, especially for troubleshooting. But for her, the first answer in the Google search is going to be the AI summary, and most of her search tools are going to be AI tools.

      I wonder if it would be possible to make an LLM that has a didactic/socratic mode. So if you said, "help me write a program to do madlibs" maybe it would give you a skeleton of a function, then prompt you to come to with a plan, then critique that plan. Or if you said, "I'm getting this error", it wouldn't just fix it, it would explain what the error means and nudge you towards the answer.

      Thinking in a larger sense, it could have a rubric of important concepts, even tiers of understanding. It could be using the interactions to track the user's understanding, which could let it then tune how it answers future questions, or even be used to customize assignments.

      I recognize that this is potentially replacing a teacher with a machine, which wouldn't be my goal. Good teachers are more holistic in their teaching than a machine is ever likely to be. But for people who don't have access to good teachers, or need more directed support than is available from a teacher, or just want to self study, it seems like it could be a valuable addition.

      Until they solve the obsequiousness problem, it would be vulnerable to prompt hacking, so really more of a tool for someone who recognizes the value of learning over just being given the answer.

      What do folks think about using such a tool? What would you want it to do, or not do?


      Aside: I forgot until I reached the end of this post, but this is also (somewhat) the plot of The Diamond Age, or A Young Lady's Illustrates Primer by Neal Stephenson.

      25 votes
    13. What is your eleventh favorite video game?

      Now that we know everyone's favorites, I'd love to hear about games that are further down the list -- the ones that don't necessarily rise to the high heights of definitive favoritedom. So, share...

      Now that we know everyone's favorites, I'd love to hear about games that are further down the list -- the ones that don't necessarily rise to the high heights of definitive favoritedom.

      So, share your eleventh favorite game this time. You know, the one that doesn't quite make it into your top 10.

      Feel free to share your top 10 if you like as well, but lead with your 11th, as those are the ones I'm interested in seeing highlighted.

      41 votes