It appears obvious by now that freedom of the press and freedom of speech is under attack in the EU and the US both.

In the EU, critics of Israels genocide in Gaza are being met with sanctions, closing bank accounts and imposing extra-legal status of civil death, under the odd pretext of this criticism of Israel is weakening the EU's war efforts in Ukraine. Blatant repression of political expression.
https://chrishedges.substack.com/p/weaponizing-civil-death-to-crush

In the US, well we got Orange Man and with Microsoft willing to close the accounts of the International Criminal Court in the Hague, account and data safety is beholden to state and corporate interests:
https://apnews.com/article/icc-trump-sanctions-karim-khan-court-a4b4c02751ab84c09718b1b95cbd5db3

These developments have me considering a contingency plan for my email and webhosting needs. I was wondering what would be the least fragile, long-term choice of DNS and hosting outside EU and US. For a website with political content critical of the EU-US, Russia would be an obvious hedge against political repression. Any recommendations/experiences for providers in Russia? Other locations to consider?

Recent website closures appear to have been targeting DNS resolvers, to make website unavailable. How to protect against this?

The one semi-viable option I know of - that would still be beholden to EU sanctions, I think - is 1984.is based in Iceland. They have a history of fighting spurious take-down claims. https://litigation.1984.hosting

It might sound like I'm some sort of hosting wizard. I'm not. Please consider this if giving a technical response. Thanks for any input and thoughts.

I just opened YouTube on my iPhone and realized there was no UI at all for seeing my subscriptions. I had to relaunch the app and notice right when it opens they show a subscriptions link at the top but it auto-hides. So what you need to do is tap on the screen and then tap on the subscriptions link. There’s no other reference to subscriptions anywhere. It’s almost completely hidden now.

I have “watch history” disabled, which turns YouTube from a wannabe TikTok into its former self. You get no algorithmic suggestions and you can’t watch shorts (unless linked to them directly or through subscriptions). So now the YouTube app essentially has no content unless you dig through hidden UI. This is crazy.

Introduction

There are some people who, when you mention the title Mother 3, feel a warmth in their heart and a stirring in their soul.

And then there is everyone else who, when you mention the same title, go "huh?"

The Mother series holds a cult-classic status: strongly beloved by those familiar with it, but often completely unknown otherwise. Part of the reason it's somewhat unknown is that the series itself has a somewhat storied and scattered pattern of releases, while the other is that it's known by completely different names depending on where you are in the world: Mother for some, EarthBound for others.

Stay with me for a moment as we break down the series' release history:

• 1989: Mother releases in Japan for the Famicom
• 1989: English localization of Mother is completed but never released
• 1994: Mother 2: Gīgu no Gyakushū releases in Japan for the Super Famicom
• 1995: English localization of Mother 2 releases as EarthBound
• 2003: Mother 1+2 compilation releases in Japan for the Game Boy Advance
• 2006: Mother 3 releases in Japan for the Game Boy Advance
• 2008: Unofficial English localization of Mother 3 releases
• 2015: English localization of Mother releases for Wii U Virtual Console as EarthBound Beginnings

So, for Japanese audiences, the game had 3 releases spanning 17 years:

• Mother (1989)
• Mother 2: Gīgu no Gyakushū (1994)
• Mother 3 (2006)

For the rest of the world, the game has only had two releases, out of order, spanning 20 years:

• EarthBound (Mother 2) (1995)
• EarthBound Beginnings (Mother) (2015)

To date, there is no official non-Japanese release of Mother 3. English-speaking audiences have been using this fan translation.

I have never played any of the Mother/EarthBound games and don't actually know very much about them myself. As our default host this month, I wish I had more to offer, but I hope to learn more as I play. If anyone else wants to chime in with background info, tips, or stories about the series, I'm sure it would be worthwhile as we settle in to explore this month's much-beloved yet still under-appreciated game.

Mother 3

Versions: JP, EN Fan Translation

Platforms: Game Boy Advance

Genre(s): RPG

Links: Mobygames, Wikipedia

Stores: eBay, Nintendo Switch Online JP

Game Setup

The main purpose of this topic is to get people up and running with the game. As such, it's recommended that you:

• Share which version of the game you're playing
• Share what hardware you're playing it on
• Share if there are any tools/mods that you recommend
• Share anything you think is important for people to know before they start the game
• Ask questions if you need help

Another purpose of this topic is to revisit the game and its time period:

• Do you have any memories or associations with this game itself?
• What about its system or era?
• What aspects of retro gaming were common at the time?
• What other games from the same time period are you familiar with?
• What are you expecting from this game in particular?

Finally, this topic is the beginning discussion for people starting to play it:

• Post updates sharing your thoughts as you play.
• Ask for help if you get stuck.
• Offer help to others.

It is recommended that you reply to your own posts if you are making consecutive updates so that they are in the same thread.

Important

• Any links to the game should be legal distributions of the game only. Please do NOT link to any unauthorized copies.

• Put any spoilers in a dropdown block. Copy/paste the block below if needed.

<details>
<summary>Spoilers</summary>
 
Spoiler text goes here.
</details>

FAQ

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?

This topic is part of a series. It is meant to be a place for users to discuss creative projects they have been working on.

Projects can be personal, professional, physical, digital, or even just ideas.

If you have any creative projects that you have been working on or want to eventually work on, this is a place for discussing those.

More or less an year ago I decided to learn japanese for various reasons.

It mostly boils down to the desire I want to challenge myself but also because i have grown up reading manga, watching anime (before they were called anime in the mainstream so this reveals a bit of my age i suppose...) and I thought "how cool would it be to just pick a manga and read it in the language it was originally written? and wouldn't it be even cooler one day to go to Japan and speak with them in their language?"
That's more or less... it. That's the reason i have decided to take this "hobby".

Actually a couple of months after learning the first grammar rules i also thought "how hard could that be?" and i just got crushed by a little doraemon story. I understood the word "Nobita" :\

Anyway, so here i am now... In a month I'll try to pass the JLPT N5, the very super basic exam I'd like to pass just to prove myself that I can do it and I can move on to the next level.
I know that i could just skip it and keep on studying but after an year i feel i need a sort of... I dunno... a sort of token given from others. And if doraemon has proved something is that my mind alone cannot be trusted :)

I have seen that some of you know this language and I suppose, some of you have already tried and passed this exam.
So... any suggestion?
Is there anything i need to pay attention in particular? Anything i need to consider? Some hidden rule i do not have to break?
Something i should focus on in the last few weeks?

I'm open to suggestions because i keep on studying after dinner for an hour or so but, honestly, i am starting to feel a bit of tension.

p.s. I suppose my Achilles heel is the listening and comprehension. While i can read at a normal speed, I understand them only when they speak slow and sometimes, when a word is not immediately recognized boom... i just lose the flow trying to remember what that word meant and if i have ever heard it before.

As someone with ADHD (PI) and hence quite broken executive functioning, this year I'm very proud of myself for setting a (modest) goal and then completing it. My Timasomo goal was to make embroidery kits to sell at the local (extremely small rural) craft fair

My half table with some of the kits -- each of them contains items made in japan: 100% cotton sashiko special woven thread in 10m or 22m, embroidery needle x 1 (longer ones for easier straighter patterns), momen woven cloth with pattern I pre-drew. And instructions with full colour photos of the finished products, the names of the traditional pattern if they want to look up further info or colour inspiration, and my email if they run into trouble. I also sold additional small bundles of other colours for $1 if they want to do their own design.

The goal wasn't to make money, it was meant to be an easy way for people to try a new hobby that, for me, had a high initial startup cost: all the Japanese items not easily found on Amazon had to be ordered from Japan with duties at the border. And a few things I tried to get from Amazon were fake drop ship nonsense and the quality really poor.

Anyway this was a show off piece: light grey thicker border, light blue edges, white center, and a red accent. The pattern I bought from Olympus had all the lines drawn, but someone doing one still get to decide what colour or thicknesses and how they want to join or not join intersections.

This is the traditional kasumi (mist) pattern embroidered onto an airplane tossaway cotton napkin I decided to re-use as a handkerchief. It has two different blues, red, and a very very faint white wisp that you can feel rather than see.

This is the easier package template, the traditional Asa-no-Ha Hemp Leaf pattern. So many colour and pattern variations can be highlighted in these simple geometric lines. When I have time I might make a little fabric booklet of the exact pattern done in wider or narrower stitches, in different colour combinations.

One of the major differences from Western embroidery is that in sashiko you load up a few stitches to inspect for evenness before pulling all the way through, like this (Edit: typo. And also little tips like how knots are done differently or how to do curves or how to set it all up in the beginning and how to make both sides beautiful by hiding the stitches etc. hopefully folks can jump right in and have a cozy fireside craft they can finish and be proud of)

This is the other kit option, a gradient from half of shippo-tsunagi (Seven Linked Treasures) to a full pattern in the middle with the interlocking circles, and Hana-zashi (flower stitch) with yellow added. The more traditional colouring would be two layers of circles instead of having the flowers be highlighted like this.

Anyway I got compliments and the people who bought the kits seemed excited to try!

It was quite popular last time so I figure we could use another round of it.

This topic is a casual chat space and link drop for literally ANYTHING besides US politics for those of us that want to occupy our time with something other than scrolling feeds and checking the news.

This will be a noisy topic. Please use the ignore feature if you do not want to see it in your feed.

Hello! This is my Timasomo 2026 showcase post. It’s a fantasy short story that evolved out of playing the Creation Myths solo journaling RPG.

Bookworm’s Journey Short Story

Creation Myths Solo RPG

You roll dice to get writing prompts as you go through the solo RPG doc. I stuck to my original rolls for all 12 sections, tweaking only one of them as it just didn’t fit at all with how the story was evolving. I use these solo RPGs as a fun writing tool, often exchanging the results with a friend who is also into similar games. This one was getting pretty detailed, so I chose to turn it into a short story.

I added some artwork drawn on my iPad with a software similar to Procreate and an Apple Pencil. If you read it, and would like to provide feedback, I’d appreciate it. Outside these solo RPGs I don’t write any fiction, so I’m curious how this attempt comes across. I personally have mixed feelings about the final product, but I did enjoy the process a lot. I tend to be my own worse critic, so I appreciate an unbiased candid opinion.

In the spirit of "what are you reading?", "what are you playing?" etc. threads I see regularly posted in other groups, come tell us about your campaign! Whether you're a GM or a player, share with us what you're playing and how its going.

What game system are you using and what do you think of it? How many sessions has your current game been running? How's your group doing? Did something cool or funny happen in the last session? What are you looking forward to in the next session?

November 2026's Humble Choice is now available with 1 Battle.net game and 7 Steam games.

Does anyone have experience with any of the games and, if so, would you recommend them? Is there anything in here that you're particularly excited to play?

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!

after the latest round of reporting from 404 media on Andy Chen's very un-leader-like and hostile attitude, I would like to start exploring my options for a way to have an email service that is not to beholden to other services.

my current mindset is:

1. I have to either be OK with the fact that a service I use starts out with good aspirations but that can all change in the blink of an eye depending entirely upon the current moods of the C-level executives of the company
   OR
2. I have to be OK with changing my email address every-time a service I use goes a bit nuts. In my view, this is unsustainable and will confuse the fuck out of anyone who likes to keep in contact with me.

so I view "better" the third option as:

3. get my own email FQDN [probably something like everyone_is_beautiful.net or something] and that way, I can solve 2 birds with 1 stone
   1. I can make my inbox even more organized, i.e. connect amazon account to amazon@everyone_is_beautiful.net and counseling services to counselling@everyone_is_beautiful.net AND
   2. even setup joint accounts that forward to any number of people and my personal email [which would be joe@everyone_is_beautiful.net for example] (thereby solving this issue too) and everything can be very organized.

However, it's not like I am going to host my own email hosting service, or at least I imagine that's not advisable probably and I will need to hook my FQDN to some other service that manages all that for me.

Which gets me back to square 1 of being stuck on some external services, but I imagine, it's better to be dependent at that level cause switching email hosting service is much easier to maintain cause the my email address itself wont change

But I don't pretend to know what's full involved and was wondering if

1. if there's faulty logic in my mindset AND
2. what are the common irritants/nuances of getting down my FQDN and connecting it to an email hosting service and ensure everything works as expected and any emails I send don't wind up going to people's spam
3. if I do wind up going the third route, I imagine it wont be possible to migrate all my emails with me when I have to do a migration cause a service is starting to go down the drain? Is there a way around that? I'd like to have access to all my emails in 1 places.