This thread is posted weekly - please try to post all relevant Middle East war content in here, such as news, updates, opinion articles, etc. Extremely significant events may warrant a separate topic, but almost all should be posted in here.

Please try to avoid antagonistic arguments and bickering matches. Comment threads that devolve into unproductive arguments may be removed so that the overall topic is able to continue.

Can you even call it microtransactions anymore?

Here's the link to the store page.

I have never bought a cosmetic in any game, ever, but this is absolutely insane to me, especially for World of Warcraft which usually had somewhat measured pricing on their real-money cosmetics (everything has always been below €25 to my knowledge) - that it's fully cosmetic is debatable though, seeing as you now have an auction house and mailbox wherever you are. Not all that game changing to be sure, but it's definitely a small advantage over those that are not rich in money or in-game currency.

There is an argument to be made that it's a way to influence the economy in the game - another gold-sink to reduce the huge wealth gap between players (it will cost nearly two million gold to reach the Battle.net balance required). However, two million gold is not that much.

I'm not quite dusting off my pitchfork over it, mind you, but still. And I just wanted to share to maybe foster some quality discussion on tildes about microtransactions maybe?

Thanks for the tags @mycketforvirrad, didn't really know what to put.

Yeah, I bought an ebike from Costco. It was a pretty good deal and it exceeded my expectation in just about every way, at least so far. The only thing that's bugging me right now is that the seat is supposedly super comfortable but my butt is sore after relatively short rides, but I've read that that will go away after a while.

I haven't owned a bike for decades and I was wondering if there was any less obvious things I should look out for. I already figured out that I put on the front wheel off-center because the disc was rubbing against the brake pad, but that was an easy fix. The manual for my bike is painfully lacking in details; half of covers how to use the controller, and the other half is assembly, and even that part wasn't terribly detailed. There were two parts that came in the box that it didn't even mention (a reflector for the handlebars and the derailleur protector - the latter of which I only figured out what it was after I did a reverse image search for it). It appears that it was written for people who already know a lot about bikes. The fork has shocks on it that appear to be adjustable but I don't know how or even why you would want to adjust them. Is there a website or a book that I can find with more detailed info on bikes generally?

Finally, accessories. I already bought two simple things just on impulse: a simple cheap cable lock and a bell (which seems like a strange omission for a bike, but what do I know?). I figure that I should have probably invested in a better lock, though, since it's a fairly expensive machine, so I thought I'd ask what people would recommend. Also are there any other accessories I might consider? I want to get a bottle holder, but I'm looking for a design to 3D print if anyone has any recommendations. It'd be nice to finally bust out my roll of ASA for it.

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.

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Tildes is a very serious site, where we discuss very serious matters like tariffs, electoral college and elder scrolls.oblivion. Tags culled from the highest voted topics from the last seven days, if anyone was researching.

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!

I love the labels feature of Tildes and use it fairly regularly where I feel appropriate. But recently I wanted to label a post (rather than a comment) and realized that there is no option for that.

Is this something that has been discussed before? I did a cursory search but was not able to find anything specific to labels on posts. I'm not even saying that I'd be 100% for the feature, just wondering if it's been discussed before. Questions like 'would it provide a benefit?' or 'if so, should those labels be the same as the ones for comments?' were along the lines of what I was thinking.

Might be a terrible idea, or difficult to implement for some reason or another, but sometimes I feel like a post could use a label (like 'exemplary' for a well-thought-out post, or 'malice' for one where the article posted feels deceptive and/or misleading) and right now there does not appear to be a way of doing that. Wondering what others think.

This is the third nominations thread for Tildes book club.

If you think you might be interested to read with us, please name between one and five books you find intriguing and think others might enjoy. We will later have a voting thread so that each nomination gets an equal shot to win votes with no early nomination advantage. After we finish discussing Kindred this month and the City We Became at the end of November, we will move on to read the new titles.

Please feel free to nominate both fiction and nonfiction and consider nominating a diverse selection of books and authors. Books should be 600 pages or shorter. The first books in series are fair game for nominations if they tell a complete story.

This thread is posted weekly - please try to post all relevant US political content in here, such as news, updates, opinion articles, etc. Extremely significant events may warrant a separate topic, but almost all should be posted in here.

This is an inherently political thread; please try to avoid antagonistic arguments and bickering matches. Comment threads that devolve into unproductive arguments may be removed so that the overall topic is able to continue.