I really enjoyed Peele's new Twilight Zone. It's a bit hit and miss - but most anthology shows have this. Some episodes are great, most are good enough, a couple are forgettable.

The critic reviews (based on the first four episodes) are all over the place, with scoring ranging from 100 to 10. The user reviews are the usual tyre-fire of awfulness. https://www.metacritic.com/tv/the-twilight-zone-2019

I found Replay to be genuinely upsetting and it was the episode that stayed with me longest. I get the impression that this episode split the audience and a bunch of people dislike the social commentary. (Or something, I dunno, I can't understand the mindset that criticises a show for something like this).

So I'm interested in your opinions. Have you watched it? Did you enjoy it?

Project Gutenberg is a great resource for free books, but its 50,000+ titles are intimidating in number (if not outright impenetrable). The same goes for other free ebook aggregators/feeds, of which there are many. There are also lots of authors who offer up their books for free. And, of course, there are tons of free options available in, say, the Kindle store. While it's nice to have so many choices, it hinders discoverability. Individual books get lost in all the noise.

As such, I'd like to know: what are some standout, recommended books that are available to readers for free?

Obvious disclaimer: I am not interested in pirated content.

I was reading up on information theory today, and I managed to keep track of everything for a while. But then the information got slippery, and I could feel the muscles in my head tighten. I kept reading, and I lost track of everything. My forehead was so tense I felt it would collapse on itself. By the end of the page, I was exhausted and I closed the book and took a breath. This happens to me every time things get hard. It's like I am lifting weights but I can only do a few reps before I completely crash. If I keep crashing, eventually I'll get a headache that will put me out of commission for the day.

I'm sharing this because I am curious how others feel when they reach their mental limit, either short term or long term. Does anyone else have a similar physical reaction or any physical reaction?

I'd put this series on hold, because of lack of activity. Now I'll give it another go, with French, one of the languages with huge amounts of influential literature.

So, without further ado, please share your favourite French books and authors!

I apologize if this is the wrong topic for this post, and if this feature already exists, I apologize for that too. I looked around and couldn't find it (it's possible I could have missed it). But I thought a dark mode for Tildes would be most excellent. Right now, there's a lot of white space and combined with my 24" monitor, this site lights up my whole room like it's in the middle of the day. Anyways, thanks for reading. :)

~movies.horror?
~life.parenting?
~creative.poetry.limericks?
~comp.dev.games.godot?
~tildes.taxonomy? ;)

The possibilities are, of course, endless. Right now, with few users, we're all still living in top-level land, but I think it would be interesting to see what everyone's more specific interests are, as well as how some people would tackle defining a hierarchy. (e.g. ~games.overwatch vs. ~games.fps.overwatch vs. ~games.multiplayer.fps.overwatch etc.).

Furthermore, what content would you like to see in your specific subgroups? What types of posts would make having them worthwhile?

I've never really been that into video games. When I was young, I played a lot of RPGs on the SNES and PS1. Within the last couple of years, I dipped my toes back in the water and tried a few out. I tried Skyrim on a friend's recommendation, but it was just a little too involved and open-world for me. I got Cities:Skylines, which I love because I love city builder sims, but that game just does not run well on any of my underpowered computers. And I loved Ori and the Blind Forest, a beautiful platformer, and I'd play it again right now if it wasn't Windows-only.

Here are my requirements. First, it needs to run well on a low-powered machine without making the fan go insane. I've got a MacBook Air 2012 and a ThinkPad x250 (Linux). Neither of these are the ideal gaming experience, I know, but I'm not looking for amazing graphics or bleeding edge technology or something super immersive. Pixel graphics are fine with me. It reminds me of my youth, anyway. I played both Skylines and Ori on my Intel NUC 4th Gen and while it worked, they both really taxed that little machine. I was able to finish Ori, but once a city reaches a certain size in Skylines, it gets unplayable.

I'm not looking for stress. I like RPGs and sims. But it doesn't have to be really hard or frustrating. I don't want to feel chased in a game. I prefer to feel that I'm driving the action and I can go at my pace. I want to feel like if I look away for a moment, I'm not going to lose everything. I'm a casual. I also don't mind if there's no defined ending of a game. For me, I'm more looking for a diversion and a slow build over some kind of constant progression/achievement type scenario.

If it has full controller support, that would be ideal. I've got a Steam controller, and I prefer using a controller to play a game. I've never liked using the keyboard to play. I'm not totally against it, but I guess I just never got into computer gaming. I pretty much always played on consoles in the past.

Linux or macOS only, please. I did have Windows installed once so that I could play games, but I'm not bothering with that anymore. I don't want to have to boot into another operating system just to play a game. I want to be able to hop in and out of a game while using my daily driver computer.

So in my research, I've looked into Terraria and Stardew Valley. These might be what I'm looking for. But I really don't know. Do either of these scratch my itch? Is there another game that I would enjoy based on what I've told you? Thanks in advance for any advice you can offer.

EDIT: Thank you everybody for your awesome suggestions. I'm still happy to hear more, as I plan to add the ones that really interest me to my wishlist and revisit later. I ended up getting Hollow Knight yesterday and I spent the whole day playing it. It's very engrossing, and it's the perfect game for me. It's so much like Ori, and that game blew me away. Chilled out, go at your own pace, exploring dungeons, challenging but not impossible (though the first Hornet fight was pretty tough for me). The game runs fine on my ThinkPad x250 (i5-5300U) in Pop!_OS Linux, apart from the initial movie scene stuttering--I just had to skip past it, unfortunately. It's such an awesome game, and I'm glad to see they've already announced a sequel. If you know of any other games that are like Ori and Hollow Knight, let me know.

it's time for another one of these threads. the last one racked up an impressive 100 comments in its run, by far the most of any of these threads so far, so that seems like a good sign for this thread. anyways, here you can share/provide updates on some of the projects that you're working on. they can be of any kind--digital, physical, work related, passion project, whatever. pretty straightforward, i think.

november thread • february thread • march thread • april thread • may thread

There doesn't appear to be an app for tildes unless I'm not looking using the right name, how would users here feel about an app similar to what reddit has like reddit is fun or Joey? I'm mainly on my phone and while it's still easy to navigate by browser would love a similarly structured app for tildes. What do you guys think?

This is something I was thinking about. When I read about the end of the second world war, the thing which surprises me the most is how easily the German population accepted that their government really committed such atrocities (Yes, I used Holocaust in the title, but I mean any genocide commited).

I was wondering how it might go down in our current culture with the emergence of Fake News and alternative "facts"; our post-fact culture. Would they more readily dismiss it as a photoshopped image? Would the impact be mitigated by the meme-ification of genocide?

(To a mod: The title should say « more or less »)

I used Bullet Journal for a year, then went back to Org mode with Orgzly on mobile. I find I'm more productive with pen and paper b/c when I see a rabbit hole I can't do nothing but jump into it and go right down, and trying to conform to ways app devs' workflows and hack them to behave the way I want cause friction which is for me greater than that of dealing with a meatspace physical notebook. Bullet Journal was nice, but I wonder if Strikethru could be even nicer. I never fully conform to these methods, but they are generally nice starting points to build a custom one, so I generally like starting out with them.

My use case is, I have four types of tasks: projects, like "study statistics" or "transcribe scans" which can take weeks or months to complete, and sometimes have deadlines; todos which have no specific completion time (e.g. long time shopping lists, books to buy, stuff to check back on later, things to research); tasks that are scheduled for a certain date/time or a range thereof; and lastly tasks that recur on varying intervals, like posting the thread to ~books every other week or completing a particular task that pertains to a project, say reading pages from a book that is relevant to the "study statistics" project. Bullet Journal provided a means for all of this, but the amount of rescheduling and rewriting was inconvenient, and inconvenient is the evil enemy of making habits and getting things done for a fucked up procrastinator like me. When I look at Strikethru, I am not sure if it can handle this, if it's too simple for more complex stuff. So I wonder what you guys do with it. I'd be glad if you could share your workflows and/or advice me on how I could make use of this particular system, or anything else out there!

Edit: prior art:

• https://tildes.net/~talk/9jl/do_you_use_a_todo_manager_or_something_like_a_bullet_journal_my_story_of_trying_different_planners
• https://tildes.net/~life/7yk/note_taking_bookmarks_reminders_and_todos_what_do_you_use_to_organize_your_life

I've commented on both of these talking about how I use a modified Bullet Journal method.

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.

There are, sadly, far too many people and companies out there more than willing to take advantage of people. Fortunately, awareness is usually a good defense. What are some scams that we should all know about so that we don't fall for them?

I personally usually heavily mod my games, due to finding the process of modding itself fun, along with me preferring to spend a LONG time at one run through.

As an example, I'd give minecraft where I usually play so-called expert packs, which are basically taking a lot of mods and making them depend on each other for progression.

I just moved into a new apartment, and am using a 32" tv in the living room. The TV is already way too small, but I'd rather prioritize spending on the speakers first.

I thought I could live with the TV speakers, but have quickly realized that they have made watching movies impossible. The dialogue is impossible to hear without cranking up the volume. And then if there is anything other than dialogue, it's way too loud.

The walls in the apartment are fairly thin, so I'm pretty sure a subwoofer is out of the question. So I was looking at soundbars but keep seeing conflicting advice. There are articles like this that make them sound fine, yet when you go to place like /r/hometheater, everyone despises them.

So my next step was to look at powered bookshelf speakers. They seemed like a pretty good option, until I went to best buy to listen to them. I'm not sure if they just weren't set up properly or what, but none of them sounded that great. Especially when compared to the tower speakers they had.

So now I'm at a loss. Should I go with a soundbar, bookshelf, or tower speakers? My budget is under $500.

So, I am far from the most experienced, or the most knowledgeable, or the most active amateur radio operator out there, but it is something that has piqued my interest none the less. Before I got into the hobby, I always assumed that the FCC just game amateurs a small bucket of useless spectrum and that was it. Maybe you could fly an RC plane, but surely that is about as cool as it gets.

It turns out I was dead wrong. Amateurs are allocated bands all across the RF spectrum - more or less. Bands from way below the AM broadcast frequency to way above the microwave frequencies used by our cell phones and wireless routers. Also, you are allowed to legally transmit at up to 1.5 kilowatts of power! That's 3,000 times as much power as your average walkie talkie! :) Also, importantly, the license exam only costs $15.

At many of the lower frequencies, the signals bounce off the ionosphere and you can make contact with people all over the world (propagation gods permitting). At the higher frequencies, you lose that "skip propagation," but more bandwidth is available. There are analog voice repeater networks, digital packet networks, mesh networks running on modified commercial WiFi gear, and even a handful of old school packet BBSes. There are some LEO satellites which run voice repeaters which allow you make international contacts, and sometimes even the International Space Station will participate in events. Lots of cool stuff going on. This hobby is kind of a bottomless rabbit hole of possibilities.

I got my technician license about a year ago, and I have been most interested in the data networking end of the hobby. Despite being a pile of hacks, APRS is still very cool, and sometime soon I hope to set up an AREDN node of my own. Every once in a while I'll call into the local repeaters and shoot the breeze.

So there's my story. Are there any other hams out there?

My laptop is showing sings of death, and I know I will need a new one soon. Also, I am planning to get a tablet and ditch my smartphone, and to stop using the laptop for browsing content: I'll do most of that to the phone/tablet, and use the laptop as an authoring tool: writing and coding.

So I am looking for a laptop that is cheap, light, and can keep running for at least 3-5hrs under mild Debian+Emacs load. Ideally around 11"-13".

Does anyone have a business subscriber Internet connection? Is it worth it?

I just spoke with my ISP, and for an extra $40/mo I can get a static IP address with 100mbps that I can host my own website on. I have a virtualization server, and I've been thinking about hosting my own hobby-scale website for a while. I haven't had any luck finding rack hosting space that I'd feel comfortable using so I'm thinking about just going rogue, and operating solo. If I had a static IP address with a pipe that would allow me to host then all I'd need to do is stand up a server, register a domain, and point it at my IP address.

Other than the typical security risks, what do I need to worry about? Would the experience be worth it?

Long story, but I've ended up becoming the admin of a group on Facebook (the previous admin stepped down in a rush, and added me as he left). And the group has an existing group chat associated with it.

Is it possible to "moderate" this group chat? Specifically, as an admin of the group, can I remove unsavoury/unwanted messages from the chat associated with the group? It looks like I can't.

Can even the creator of a group chat do this? If I close the group chat and create a new one, will I (as its creator) be able to remove unsavoury/unwanted messages from that new chat?

I've done some searching via Google, and I'm not finding anything to indicate that this is possible. If someone posts something unsavoury in a group chat, it looks like the only option is to remove the person from the chat - but the unsavoury messages can't be deleted.

Please tell me that's wrong!

Hey Tildes!

I've got a static, basic website, HTML and CSS. It's one page only. But I'd like to create a second page with some more private content that is password protected.

I know that I can accomplish this via .htaccess but what I don't like about this method is that when the user navigates to the page, they get a pop up asking for a username and password. What I would like is having the user navigate to the page, and then they are met with a simple form asking for just a password (no username). After they enter the password, the "veil" lifts or the page forwards and they get the private content.

Here's the thing... the content really only needs to seem private. It's not super secret, personal information. I don't want it indexed by search engines (nofollow), and I want it basically hidden, but the password is only there to make the user feel exclusive. If some tech-minded person encountered this page and jumped through a bunch of hoops to get in without the password, it's not a big deal to me. In reality, 99.9% of people accessing this page will not be able to bypass the password.

I'm guessing this can be accomplished easily in Javascript, but I don't really know much Javascript apart from finding code snippets and plunking them in. I also want to be able to fully design the password entry page so that it looks branded, so a code snippet plunked down into my HTML doc would be great for this.

If there is an easy way to actually protect the content behind the password, that would be excellent. In this case, I imagine it would be much like a news site with an ad-blocker-blocker. Just some kind of pop-up that blocks all the content. Enter the password, and you're in.

Anyhow, I hope I've described what I'm looking for accurately enough. Anybody have any easy and quick ways to accomplish this?

I try to be privacy focused. I don't use social media, I use Firefox with adblock and tracker protection, with duck duck go as my search engine. I also pay for proton vpn. My question is, when should I use it? I use it when I'm on open networks on my phone, but that's about it. Do you guys run it 24/7 on your computer?

I hope this is the right place to post my question.
About me: I am 23, currently studying computer science in a university and failing it hard. I have finished school with pretty good grades, found school easy and didn't really put any effort into learning. After getting my fancy sheet of paper with my grades I applied to compsci studies. Fast forward to now, I am in my last semester with only 30% of credits I need to graduate. It is really hard, I have zero friends to work with at unversity, I make plans and detailed lists of work I have to do but always fail to follow them. I feel like I cannot control myself, one week I will do my work, next week I will struggle to get out of bed and do anything, I can spend whole day laying in bed and doing nothing. My personal life did not progress upwards too, I do not feel any joy in reading, communicating with people or doing basically anything. Everything feels like one big boring game of get a degree, work, make kids and die. My parents are disappointed, since I am failing uni, got fat and basically became a complete opposite of who I was at school. If I dont have anything to do I will just sit at home and stare at my computer, I dont even play games or watch movies, just mindlesly browse reddit or some forum without posting or commenting.

Maybe someone out here has faced a similar situation and give me a hint/tip to start with, I feel hopeless and useless. This situation seems like an endless void to me, maybe there is a way out that I cannot see?

I'm having some problems with a notebook I want to set up for a friend. And its the first time in a long time I'm not able to solve it just by myself. So I tried asking at #manjaro and #archlinux-newbies but I got no answer at all. It just seems that IRC changed a lot in the last 15 years. Or maybe my IRC manners are not up to date?
Anyway, do you know a place where there is a nice Linux-crowd? What are your favourite Places to get help? (besides the archwiki) ;-) I'm out of the loop for 10-15 years now because most places got pretty toxic.

Has anybody had much experience playing DnD or other tabletops with children? I've been toying with the idea of making a fairly straightforward and simplified RPG using Story Cubes and GURPS that kids can get involved with easily and have fun playing. I'm specifically aiming to play with my daughter (8) and my niece (5) on a big family holiday in August, though I see no real reason that this couldn't work with adults as well.
Essentially, the conceit would go along the lines of each player rolling a limited number of story dice to help with character creation and such. I'd ask the players a few simple questions about their powers (for example, are you more of a wizard or more of a warrior?) to get some basic stats stats together (STR, DEX, INT, CON), and then use story dice myself to quickly improvise a short one-shot session.

Does anyone have experience playing with kids, and if so - any pointers? Am I being too ambitious about children's ability to imagine stuff in this way? If so, are there any good systems out there that are good for young people to pick up and get stuck into roleplaying with?

What are you reading currently? Fiction or non-fiction, any genre, any language! Tell us what you're reading, and talk a bit about it.

Notes: I am aiming to make a list of all the books mentioned in toplevel comments in these threads, see this wiki page. If you want to help with that, that'd really be appreciated, PM me please.

Past weeks: Week #1 · Week #2 · Week #3 · Week #4 · Week #5 · Week #6 · Week #7 · Week #8 · Week #9 · Week #10 · Week #11 · Week #12 · Week #13 · Week #14 · Week #15 · Week #16 · Week #17 · Week #18 · Week #19 · Week #20

I was thinking about how I can get caught in negative/critical thought patterns and fail to give gratitude to the people and things in my life that I love and spend time with. I end up taking a lot for granted or spending too much of my mental energy critiquing small flaws instead of appreciating the bigger, better picture.

As such, I'm curious to hear about stuff in your life. It can be big or small. It can be a person or a thing, or a person behind a thing (e.g. I'm grateful to the people that grow and roast the beans in my favorite coffee). What deserves more love and admiration in your life?

I have had a varied work history for the last decade but it has all been W-2. I now find myself doing consulting engagements and I am wondering if I should setup an LLC for this work. My main concern is actually limiting liability, and of course I am interested in possible tax advantages.

Has anyone else done this? If so, what’s the best way to set this up? Stripe has a program, I imagine legalzoom does as well..

I should start by saying that I, generally, hate animes. However, for some reason, One Punch Man (OPM) is fucking awesome! I like everything about it. I find myself laughing while watching it, Saitama is hilarious.

Can you suggest me animes similar to OPM, or animes that you think I would enjoy watching?

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.

I was thinking about this question recently because I finished watching Game of Thrones and it made me want to play a game where I get to be a badass dragon. Unfortunately, it turns out there are surprisingly few games that tackle that experience.

I also recently played a game called 1979 Revolution: Black Friday, which attempts to inform the player about a real event in history through Telltale-style adventure gameplay. Though it's fictionalized, I realized while playing that it's as close to a documentary as I've come in gaming, which I would argue is another unexplored area.

That said, I'm curious to see what people here think.

• What are some ideas/experiences that games haven't tackled, or have hardly scratched the surface of?
• Why do you think this area has gone untouched for so long? Oversight? Tough to design around? Unfeasible? Unfun?
• Are there any games that do fit your bill? Are they any good?
• If you had to design a game to fill the niche you identified, what might it be like?

For example:
I remember that I had a really short fuse when I was in highschool. One day, I was having a bad day anyway, and a friend of mine made a comment about my appearance. I slapped him. I don't know why I thought it was a good idea. We then got into a fight which ended our friendship. I didn't apologize and haven't had the chance to do so since.

I am still thinking what the friend feels about the situation today and I am ashamed that this happened.

I'm in too much of a left-wing echo chamber, to the point where anything conservative or right wing appears to be 'evil' or not necessarily purely right-wing. For example, conservatives generally promote family values and the family as the foundational unit of a society. But this too often gets grouped together with same/opposite sex marriage arguments. Another point is small government, but that often manifests in deregulation in areas where regulation is now necessary (e.g. environment).

So, what does it mean to be an ethical right-winger today and in the next decade?

This very impressive video for Weval's Someday, done by Páraic Mc Gloughlin (warning, possible seizure-inducing imagery), got me thinking. It's a great track in and of itself, but the sheer quality of the work on the video just wowed me. It came from a totally different angle than I envisioned in my mind when just listening to the song... yet when I read his take on it, it made perfect sense.

Otherwise, the White Stripes' I Fell In Love With A Girl and Alt-J's NSFW-ish vids for Every Other Freckle also come to mind, both the male and female versions. Also, This Is America by Childish Gambino. I'm struggling to think of other videos that really struck me, but that might just be my poor memory. Any suggestions?

Edit: Forgot some classics!

The Spike Jonze-directed Drop from The Pharcyde, with a nice peek behind the curtain here. A (Canadian?) rapper named Shad did a really cool tribute to that video with his own Rose Garden that put a nice spin on it.
Jamiroquai's Virtual Insanity (and another peek behind the curtain here)
Hype Williams + Busta Rhymes was always a gold combination, and their best collab was probably Gimme Some More
A-ha - Take On Me
Another NSFW one, D'Angelo's Untitled.

I also just remembered coming across Sour's Hibi no Neiro a few years ago and thinking it was such a really cool concept to essentially crowdsource a music video... reminds me of what Youtube used to be like.

One of my favorites from the new school is A$AP Mob - Yamborghini High, so trippy.
Another is Vince Staples - Señorita.

I Am Mother is a sci fi movie centered in a dystopian future with a novel twist.

If you prefer neat, predictable endings, then this movie is probably not for you.

What is particularly interesting, is the movie is almost deliberately ambiguous, and it constantly challenges the usual assumptions you might make.

The final reveal subtly explains away some of the elements that at first seemed a little jarring or confusing. Other aspects are not fully explained. This creates enough space to construct some very interesting back story theories, while ultimately leaving you guessing.

Whenever I search for information about something - especially about a news event - Google returns me a lot of results from Australian sites. Any foreign sites come further down the list, sometimes even on the second page of results. I've never really paid much attention to this behaviour, beyond some occasional mild frustration at not being able to find local sources.

However, this came to a head this week when I was searching for a local US-based news article about something I'd read in an Australian news site, so I could post that local US article here on Tildes (I always try to get as close to the source as possible). But, try as I might, I just could not find any good non-Australian articles about this news! It was almost like Google was deliberately blocking my attempts to read non-Australian sites. I mean, it's possible that this news wasn't reported outside Australia, but that's unlikely, seeing as it was Uber's announcement about trialling electric aircraft in Texas and Victoria. That had to get American coverage. But I struggled to find it in my searches.

I then noticed something I've never noticed before: at the bottom of my Google searches, there's a small line which tells me my current location. It's as specific as my local council area, not just my state or the country.

Is this location affecting what Google shows me in my searches? If so, how do I remove this restriction?

For context: I use Chrome, but I only sign in when I'm accessing a Google service (usually the Calendar). After I've finished with the service, I sign out. So Google isn't tracking me as a person, it's just tracking my browser's search activity.

EDIT: Thank you all. I've already set up DuckDuckGo as my default search engine, and am trying it out.

• Who are the LGBTQ individuals you look up to or admire?
• In what ways do you find them inspiring or admirable?
• Has their example and influence helped you in your own life? If so, how?

Don't feel like you have to talk about someone famous: plenty of LGBTQ heroes are the people we know personally, and I would love to hear those kinds of stories. Also, feel free to include people who don't identify as LGBTQ but who still fit the criteria of a role model/hero for the community (e.g. Judy Shepard, Jonathan Larson, a supportive straight sibling, etc.).

What is the programming language you enjoy the most, or otherwise define as your favourite? Why is that particular language your favourite?

Bonus: add just a little bit of code in it that you think exposes its beauty.

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!

I'm a pretty regular YouTube watcher but if I accidentally glance down at the comments section, I know my night is going to be ruined.

I wondered if there is any kind of YouTube app or service that lets you watch and search for videos (even access my subscribed channels) but with less of the crap, ie. the comments and related videos, which just take you down a YouTube rabbit hole that you won't get out of for hours.

Cheers!

Like the title says, every Christmas when my family gets together we play board games traditionally Monopoly. Last year I got tired of playing it and after some research I found Concordia and we had a blast playing it. I'm trying to jump the gun and researching ahead for this year, what are ~games recommendations for a good 2+ player game that isn't too convoluted to pick up and is a good time?

You know, something that, by all accounts, really shouldn't bother you that much but for some reason does. Like when the toilet paper roll is hanging the wrong way. Or when somebody doesn't use multiples of 5 on the timer for the microwave.

• What are your pet peeves?
• Why do you think they bother you so much?
• Can you get past them?
• When other people find out about them do they use them to pester you?

Also, feel free to think past IRL stuff and into online stuff and media. Maybe there's something authors do that rubs you the wrong way, or you're weirdly bothered by a particular TV trope.

Have any of you done these degrees? I'm switching disciplines for my MA, and I want to collect information on this alternative method should I fail that this summer. I'd have a more complete grasp of the field and proceed to a PhD equipped with better knowledge. The price to pay being some time, but I'll probably already have to do my MA---if I manage---in three years b/c the school might want me to take an extra preparatory year going through some undergrad classes.

So, any experiences, any comments, any links highly appreciated!

P.S.: EU information appreciated, that's been significantly harder to get at.

It can be your favorite for any reason: interesting subject, extremely in depth and well written, funny details, “branching potential” (it links to a lot of interesting topics you can branch off to), etc.

Some questions to consider:

• How do you feel about it as a whole?
• What is your experience with it like? Do you go out, celebrate, march, get involved? Does it connect you to others or affirm your identity?
• What positives does it bring to the table?
• What critiques do you have of it?

This last one can be treated as hypothetical but might apply to some real experiences as well--either are valid:

• If you chose to march in a parade to bring awareness to an issue, what cause would you represent? How would you show it, or what would your sign say? Who would you want there alongside you?