Now that Baldur's Gate 3 is releasing on PS5, I got to thinking about a pet peeve I have as a gamer: no matter how many choices and freedom a game gives me, I can hardly get myself to replay it after I finish it once.

There are only ever a handful of exceptions - mostly when I want to show my partner some games I loved when growing up.

The best example I have is Skyrim: I absolutely loved the game on launch date, and I was glued to my PC for several weeks. But after I finished it, I could never get back into it.

I guess my question is less about games that are designed to be replayable (strategy, sims, management, multiplayer) and more about titles such as The Witcher, Grand Theft Auto, Red Ded Redemption, Metal Gear Solid, etc.

So, do you replay such "replayable" titles? Why or why not?

Tildes is a very serious site, where we discuss very serious matters like misinformation, lightbulbs.led and pilots. Tags culled from the highest voted topics from the last seven days, if anyone was interested.

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!

How old were they and how long did it take you to get to a place where you were confident enough in their recall to let your dog(s) run around off-leash at the park or in a field?

My boy is 6 months old now and we've had him with us for 3 months. He's loose/ off-leash at home and his recall/ general engagement at home is very good but obviously there are still lots of exciting distractions out in the wider world. We still do plenty of recall games with him every week to build on it.

At the park we switch to a 15m long leash clipped to his harness and let him trot out in front of us and have a good sniff around. When we find a clear space to have a game of fetch, we'll let go of the leash but leave it attached to the harness just in case we need to stomp on it and retrieve him quickly.

Recall still seems decent at the park but I don't trust him enough to take that leash off completely yet - I don't think he'd come back straight away if there was a football or another dog that he could run to and play with. What have your experiences been like?

Edit: starting to realise this might be a very Europe-centric question, the laws for keeping dogs on a leash/ lead are very different in the UK

Said to my friend while we were minding our own business yesterday when walking from A to B in the city. For this old bigoted man that we happened to walk past, simply (gasp) looking at a trans person was too much for him. How dare she go outside while being transgender? Nope, gotta call that out! Gotta tell this stranger that I find her disgusting! That's super important and I am doing the right thing..!

At least, that's what I imagine his train of thought was like. Who knows.

Blows my mind that people can't just keep homophobia/transphobia to themselves. For reference, there was no pride event or anything, like we weren't dressed in kinky outfits, we weren't waving dildos around or something. Not that being dressed a certain way would have excused his behavior, but it's just to say we were wearing very normal clothing and looked decidedly ordinary and neutral. The only thing that revealed to this guy that my friend is trans is that she hasn't done voice training. She passes perfectly fine outside of that, and so do I - we've both been on hormones and transitioning for 3-4 years.

So perhaps the crime we committed was to make him think we weren't transgender? And then he heard her voice, and felt fooled? I suppose to him, it's the end of the world if he was accidentally attracted to a trans woman if even for a second.

My friend thankfully doesn't let this kind of stuff get to her. She grew up extremely conservative (her family still has a "don't ask, don't tell" policy for example) so she's always had nerves of steel to deal with everything, and I'm glad for her that she can shut this kind of stuff out. I really admire her for how strong she is and how she's able to always persevere. She's probably already forgotten about it but for me, I need to work on similarly not letting this stuff get to me. The man wasn't even talking to/about me but I think the reason I'm so upset about it is that it may just as well have been said to me.

I'm trying to focus on the good, and to not let one vile person ruin it. Because me and my friend had such a nice day together.

I've never really been much of an artist myself, but one of my kids (11m) really likes drawing, painting and making small animations on his ipad. I'd like to give him some gentle encouragement, if that's likely to help him enjoy creating artwork more, but I'm not sure what would be a good approach. Does anyone have some suggestions? He told me that he likes drawing objects and landscapes, but I think that's only because he's not confident in drawing live subjects.

Some ideas I had, but I'm not certain of:

• Sketchpad?
• Guide or drawing techniques book?
• Finding and recommending a good youtube channel?

If there's something that helped you at this time of life please let me know, thank you!