Found a few threads on buying cars and I'm reading though them. Looking for advice on how to sell one.

1. Should I?

I've got a GM vehicle that's just under 10 years ago, but I don't like it. It's got so many more tiny things wrong with it than my previous cars (20 year old corolla, driven into the ground; 15 year old caravan, totalled; 30 years old Buick that gave up the ghost).....I feel like I already got the "best" years out of this GM vehicle and it's all going to be downhills from here. Am I being irrational and should I just keep driving it until it's irreparable, even if the repairs feel more and more frequent and surprising? Essentially I don't have any confidence in this vehicle and I would like to get rid of it and try again with a Honda or Toyota.

2. How?

If I'm selling it, how do I lose less money doing so? Dealerships feel like snake pits to me. Craigslist/Kijiji/Facebook? Do locations matter? Can I sell a car to a dealership in a different province?

Surprised there's not really a thread yet, so I'll start it. What plans have you made for today's eclipse? I know people have traveled from all over the world to see it.

We happen to live in the path of totality so no travel needed. Actually even less travel than we thought. We were going to go to a parking garage at a nearby mall, but it turns out we have a pretty good view of the sun from our backyard! We also went to grab fast food as a treat and saw a bunch of people walking to the nearby park.

How about everyone else?

My wooden privacy fence was blown over in a storm (Houston, TX), any recommendations for the best way to rebuild?

Currently thinking of Shadowbox, fence hanger brackets, three rails, with a rot/kick board.

It's been fun! See you all this summer for the server's 1.21 revival!

Here are the downloads by dimension (use a torrent client):

• Overworld: magnet:?xt=urn:btih:0b285293d2cddba1b90ba14cae88d2d2eaa43505&dn=tildes.zip - 1.46 GB
• Nether: magnet:?xt=urn:btih:112ca439b384dd4e6029d205edac8bdd8681e2ca&dn=tildes_nether.zip - 76 MB
• The End: magnet:?xt=urn:btih:5cec4b31fe351681c85de4866cd21819fbd1c092&dn=tildes_the_end.zip - 44 MB

This is a recurring post to discuss programming or other technical projects that we've been working on. Tell us about one of your recent projects, either at work or personal projects. What's interesting about it? Are you having trouble with anything?

Thanks to everyone who discussed Cloud Atlas and to those who attempted to read it and to those who read along at home.

Piranesi is significantly shorter than Cloud Atlas. I hope you will join us in reading and discussing in a month.

I'm used to browsing places like reddit, mastodon, kbin.social and midnight.pub. If I'm lucky I can find something lighthearted, witty or interesting. But there's a lot of outrageous posts as well as personal ramblings that make the effort feel like a slog.

I was slow to get into Tildes because I didn't find much "quick hit" posts, such as a good topical quip. I also wasn't as sure how to navigate to places I might want to post. But I did find it very easy to engage with existing posts.

It's in these existing posts that the transformative stuff happened for me. On other sites, long-form posts were often not in my interest or self-indulgent. But I found myself taking my time here, perhaps guided by the thoughtful comments that I saw already beneath the posts. Looking back, it's like a tone was set that I respected and didn't want to diminish.

The result is that I find the other sites under-stimulating, in spite of their design. Tildes has been really good for helping me reform my internet habits. I don't have that regret of excessive internet use as much now. Thanks to deimos and everyone on the site that makes it what it is.

If I miss one thing, it's using my native language. But at the same time, my gut says that things are good just as they are.

It seems like Tildes is not going to ever get a block user function.

But it would be really handy if I could get a filter to auto-ignore any topics started by certain users. Would this be something that Tildes would ever implement?

Hi Tildeans,

Today I accepted an offer in New Jersey situated in New Brunswick. My partner and I will be moving out there likely late July/early August. We will be bringing two dogs, one cat, and one snake with us. For those that live around the area, is there anything I should know about finding places to rent (e.g. places to avoid)? We are willing to be a little bit away from New Brunswick, but I would like to have easy access to the rail line that goes through the city so I can commute in without the use of a car.

Also, what are some recommendations for places to check out when we get there? We have pretty broad tastes when it comes to art, food, outdoor activities, and all of that. Lastly, if there is anything else you think I should know about the broader East coast area please feel free to share!

I've been looking around online at compatibility for HTML5 browser streaming. It looks like straight up AV1 in a MP4 container is becoming absolutely fine for browser playback on devices.

Is anyone using this on webpages yet? The sooner we move to AV1, the sooner we can have high quality video stored at smaller file sizes, which is a massive bonus.

Right now my company video hosting is purely in MP4 with H264, moov atom to the front as per the requirement, and it plays back on everything with no fallback in a straight HTML5 video container. What's the chance of switching to AV1 and not having to worry about the fallback for the most part?

Edit: I should have used a better title. I used FFMpeg for MP4 and AV1 creation/encoding. This is more about HTML5 video container code and direct AV1 file playback.

I think my son is the cutest six-month-old that has ever lived, but damn, this month has been so hard.

We all had COVID in the beginning of March, so my wife and I burned a bunch of sick days while being very ill, exhausted, and awake all night with a screaming baby. Screaming.

He got better for about 2 days and then immediately got a nasty cold which he kindly passed to us. More sick days, more screaming, less sleep than we got with COVID.

The cold turned into an ear infection after two weeks of horrible congestion, so his doctor put him on Amoxicillin. Except the Amoxicillin didn't work on the ear infection after 9 days of treatment. Oh, and he started having bloody diarrhea.

We went to the doctor immediately and they said, "Oh, yeah, that's definitely blood and that's not great. We're going to try a different antibiotic now and send his stool to get tested."

Then, my washing machine, which was full of diarrhea pajamas, broke down. After several hours of tear down, I was able to drain it and replace the drain pump.

Washing machine was working great, except the gasket/seal on the door is old and didn't go back on properly during the repair. Water on the floor (minor leak, no big) and now have to deal with replacing that.

Meanwhile, the kid still doesn't sleep at night and seems to communicate mainly through crying, whining, and grunting. The fact that he isn't babbling, squealing, or mimicking us is honestly a little stressful. He's six months old and I'm seeing him "become conscious" in a lot of really amazing ways. His laugh is absolutely incredible, he plays with toys in what seems like a pretty advanced way, he is crushing his physical and cognitive milestones way ahead of schedule, but he has a handful of social milestones he hasn't hit yet. My wife has autism in her family and I have ADHD, so any developmental delays are obviously pretty concerning to me. He is making eye contact and laughing though, so I guess that's good.

I really shouldn't complain. I'm a teacher and we just had a week off. Most people don't get that. But I'm so exhausted and work tomorrow just sounds daunting. We can't send the kiddo to daycare with bloody diarrhea and I seriously cannot take any more sick days this year. I guess one silver lining is that my mother-in-law came up from out of state when my wife told her she was losing her sanity over all of this. So, we do have a couple days of childcare covered this week.

Tl;Dr: Month from hell.

Edit: I'll add a positive. He was super funny and full of laughs today and yesterday during the day time (night time still isn't fun). He also seemed to get a little scared during the eclipse today during totality, and I think that's adorable in a way. He did a pouty whine and only stopped when I put him closer to me and let him see my face.

Anyone else want to share some war stories?

A couple of years ago I heard a knock, went to the door, saw the FedEx guy walking away, called out to him, then again and again, louder and louder. He just walked into his truck and drove off. And my front door was right on the street, so there's no way he didn't hear me.

Today my mother opens the door after a knock, and the driver's driving off. And he waves at her as he goes.

I have lots of other complaints about FedEx, and I wonder if these stories are symptoms of a dysfunctional company, mistreating workers, etc. Or maybe we're just on the beat of a dude with a 'tude.

The debate is coming back up because of new talks around student loan forgiveness in the US. I was on the fence about it until I did some extra research for a comment I posted last week.

I am including the comment I posted last week that was from a discussion about whether general education classes should be required for a college degree, but the part about the societal value of a college graduate to the US is relevant.

Higher education is an interesting thing to put a price on because while some classes can provide economic benefits to people who get a higher education, many classes provide more of a societal benefit.

A history class doesn't help an engineer make a jet turbine, but it can help them be an informed voter. College campuses mix people of different races, genders, origins, and socioeconomic classes with each other. The general education courses expose students to different concepts that can help them in their civic lives.

College graduates also have many economic benefits to society. On average, college graduates pay much more in taxes than they take in government benefits over their lifetimes. High school graduates also contribute, but only a modest gain where college graduates contribute 4-5x what they take. Governments invest $28,000 per college student on average but gain $335,000 in net monetary benefit over their lifetime.

I get that many people are opposed to courses that don't directly apply to a career because they have to pay a lot of money out of pocket when the course may only provide a benefit to society. Why can't the government provide loan forgiveness to anyone who graduates? It would take pressure off students and still provide a net benefit to society over having them not graduate.

I've recently finished Mary Oliver's A Poetry Handbook and have begun writing my own poems (just for fun). I feel though that I may be limited by my having read little poetry. So, I'm searching for anthology recommendations to get some inspiration.

I'm not really looking for collections of "classics," just a large collection of poems generally considered to be "very good," and maybe leaning more towards contemporary (late 19th century onwards?). But I'd welcome recommendations outside of these guidelines too if anyone feels particularly strongly about some collection.