I'm in the planning stages of a custom setting for a new campaign I'm aiming to start next year with my current table. We're doing PF2's Kingmaker and AD&D's Temple of Elemental Evil in the meantime.

The game is to be Viking themed, in that the starting locale and civilization will be structured in similar ways to the coastal Scandinavian settlements and there will be an on/off season. During the on season, they will board boats and sail many hundreds of miles across water to distant lands to find dungeons and ruins to loot, with a clock they have to keep an eye on; the expedition can only afford to be out for so long, and they need to ultimately make a profit. During the off season, they will be home and can spend time locally engaging in low-tier politics, explore the untamed parts of the continent, or both.

I'm intending for gods to play a more concrete and available part in this game and have been chewing on how best to represent that mechanically. I discovered that one of D&D 5e's supplements for a Magic: The Gathering setting, Mythic Odysseys of Theros, does something similar and has mechanics for tracking Piety with a given deity, which comes with boons at specific breakpoints. I liked the idea, though I'd be making my own boons for my pantheon rather than use these as-is, especially since I wouldn't be running this game in 5e, but rather in AD&D 1e.

I have a group chat with a few of my players that I can trust for this kind of thing to bounce ideas off of for various things, so I put this forth to them and got their thoughts. They universally thought the example boons from 5e were too personal and individual for the kind of stuff Norse gods would get up to, and there wasn't really a way to track a given deity's disdain of you in a similar manner. They also didn't like that you could track the Piety with a discrete score and could reliably measure when your next boon would be.

What we settled on doing is utilizing my custom tarot effects we're already doing in my regular AD&D campaign, but having it apply in certain regions or during certain stretches of adventure. This would allow for randomly coming across an avatar of a god and earning a minor boon or bane for assisting or denying them.

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?

Tildes is a very serious site, where we discuss very serious matters like forums, stardew valley and whatever. Tags culled from the highest voted topics from the last seven days, if anyone was boggled of the mind.

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!

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 don't have a lot to say myself, yet. I signed up for the beta mostly because people talk so positively of what Digg was like in the past. I never experienced that, as Digg was already on it's way out when I discovered it.

I'd love to hear from those who remember the golden age of Digg, as well as those just curious about the reboot themselves... What are you thoughts, expectations, hopes and concerns?

Have you watched any TV shows recently you want to discuss? Any shows you want to recommend or are hyped about? Feel free to discuss anything here.

Please just try to provide fair warning of spoilers if you can.

As part of a weekly series, these topics are a place for users to casually discuss the things they did — or didn't do — during their week. Did you accomplish any goals? Suffer a failure? Do nothing at all? Tell us about it!

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?

My last dashcam was a total dud and wasn't even operational for 6 hours. I'm hoping to get some community recommendations on reliable units with good image quality. If you would also share the approx. length of time you've had/used it that would be a huge help as well. Thanks in advance!

My best friend is getting married soon and it’s a black tie event. I’m in a privileged position, I want to spend a little extra to dress well (some friendly fashion competition between the men, and my own vanity).

What I know: I want a tuxedo that will fit & look nicer than a rental from Men’s Wearhouse. I really like a tailored suit I bought from Suit Supply, but I’d rather not buy a tuxedo I’ll likely only wear once.

What I don’t know: Anything about businesses other than Men’s Wearhouse that do tuxedo rentals.

Does anyone have suggestions for businesses they’ve personally rented tuxedos from?

Some of the tuxedos at Suit Supply sell for around $750 USD. How much do non-Men’s Wearhouse tuxedo rentals cost?

Does a tailored tuxedo look that much better than a rental to justify buying instead of renting?

It could be a novelization of a movie, game, television show, etc. Or any of the other combinations (e.g. a movie based on a game, television show, novel, etc.).

It doesn't solely have to be an adaptation either. Tie-ins are often universe extensions, such as when books are written in a pre-existing movie/show/game universe.

Often, media tie-ins are seen as soulless marketing cash-ins (which is sometimes accurate), but others are legitimately great in their own right.

What are the ones that you like and would recommend? What makes them noteworthy?

Meta note: Feel free to interpret this criteria as broadly as possible. This isn't about splitting hairs about what "counts" as a tie-in, but more about exploring things that have done a good job at jumping between media types. If you've got a Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles watch that you love, that counts! Same for that Death Stranding fanfic you can't get enough of.

Friendly debate.

String cheese is meant to be strung.
Eating it without stringing it is just plain wrong and there are many ways to eat it incorrectly. ¹ ₂ ³
But what is the correct minimum number of strings that string cheese must be strung into in order for it to be string cheese?
Is splitting it into two mostly even pieces enough?
Or is three a minimum?
Perhaps you have high strung opinions on the number of strings a string cheese must be strung for it to qualify as more than a mere stick of mozzarella and require say nine as a minimum.

Hi everyone - we're closing in on the end of the tournament with only 4 games left. Questions for discussion:

• Did you make a bracket with Riot's Pick'Em?
  • If you did, how's your bracket looking?
• What games have you watched?
  • Which games have surprised you most?
• Are you enjoying the Fearless Drafts? (For those curious, Riot updated how teams draft during each Best of 5. After a champ has been played, it's banned for the remaining Bo5.)
• What team(s) are you cheering for?

Tonight is

If you haven't been keeping up, now is the perfect time to jump in if you enjoy watching pro-play League of Legends. The vods from previous games are available on Youtube (and I assume Twitch but I haven't checked). I don't really play much league, but watching is very fun with friends and we've been having nightly hang-outs on Discord to watch together.

I love reading but lately I've found myself having to sit in front of my 2k monitor to read PDFs because they're technical documents and render poorly on my Kindle, even with using various tools to optimize.

I've been considering getting a tablet primarily for this purpose. My main requirement is that I really don't want Android or iOS devices, leaving me with either purpose built Linux tablets or Windows tablets that I can replace with Linux. I really don't need much -

• Fast enough that there's no significant lag between page turns/scrolls
• 8"+ screen size
• Video watching isn't necessary but a nice bonus
• Wifi isn't absolutely necessary as long as there is an easy way of getting files on the device (USB transfer, SD card, external adapter, etc)
• SD card storage would be nice but I can also make due with just internal flash
• Keyboard is also optional - I wouldn't mind being able to run an IDE and connect to my gitlab instance for some simple coding on the fly or SSH into my homelab
• Cameras are largely unnecessary
• Decent battery life or the ability to upgrade down the road
• Looking for something around 500$ CAD (362-ish USD, 312€, 269£)

I've been eyeing the PineTab2 as it meets most of the requirements but reviews seem to be mixed on its usability. So I thought I would ask here if anybody has had similar requirements and found something that works for them. Or if the PineTab2 software has significantly improved - this reddit post seems to indicate that it is in a decent state now.

If nothing like this exists, I suppose I could settle for an Android device provided it can easily take a custom ROM and be de-googled. I would just prefer Linux as I know it quite well and I much prefer the freedom of it. I've also used a touch screen monitor with Plasma on my Arch laptop and been pleasantly surprised at the experience - the hardware is just a bit too clunky to reliably read with.

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?

A fancier way is here — but either is great.

—-

For those using iOS with a bookmark on their homescreen, you may have been plagued like me with Tildes opening in a private window instead of the session where you’re logged in.

I don’t know why I didn’t think about this sooner, but it’s so easy

Shortcuts > New > Create New Tab > Open URL (remove the variable and put in https://tildes.net) > context menu next to the title of the shortcut > Add to Homescreen > Photo (left image option) > select your tildes logo that i forgot to tell you to save

… done. Now Tildes will always open Safari in an authenticated session. ezpz.

What's the skill?

How did you pick it up?

Did you intend to learn it, or was it more of a product of circumstance?

How did you go about learning it?

The skills can be anything, and they don't have to be life skills! Maybe you just learned how to, say, rocket jump in Quake? Tell us about it!

This is the fifteenth of an ongoing series of book discussions here on Tildes. We are discussing A House with Good Bones by T Kingfisher. Our next book will be the Heaven and Earth Grocery Store by James McBride at the end of July.

I don't have a particular format in mind for this discussion, but I will post some prompts and questions as comments to get things started. You're not obligated to respond to them or vote on them though. So feel free to make your own top-level comment for whatever you wish to discuss, questions you have of others, or even just to post a review of the book you have written yourself.

For latecomers, don't worry if you didn't read the book in time for this Discussion topic. You can always join in once you finish it. Tildes Activity sort, and "Collapse old comments" feature should keep the topic going for as long as people are still replying.
And for anyone uninterested in this topic please use the Ignore Topic feature on this so it doesn't keep popping up in your Activity sort, since it's likely to keep doing that while I set this discussion up, and once people start joining in.

Done in quotes because sometimes shows get cancelled or otherwise abandoned and other times it has a final season or only had one season and was properly finished. Either way, same result.

I don't have the patience or time to keep track of what series is having what new season come out at what point. I prefer to just wait for it all to be done and then watch in my own time. Even if it is one of the very few series I watch that isn't "done" I still don't do the weekly episode thing. I just wait for it all to come out and then watch as I please.

That said, I have a backlog of series that are on my to-watch list, either suggested by friends or I saw a trailer that looked good, but they sit there at present because there's so much utter shit SEO spam websites that you can't get a clear answer if a new season is coming or a series is done or not.

Do you have any go-to mobile games for those moments where you just need to kill 10-20 minutes of time, without pausing a session to resume later? I'm on iOS but I'd imagine many are available on both iOS and Android.

Preferably without ads or in app purchases. (I'll consider a one-time payment if it seems to be a great fit.)

I discovered Rogue Words from someone here and I absolutely love it and am so happy to see it gaining popularity. But it fits into a different category of mobile game for me since I fall asleep too quickly! And I love Balatro and others that I consider full games (that have a PC version as well). But they're also too long for this use case!

British Grand Prix
Red Bull Ring
July 4-6, 2025

Grand Prix:
Sunday, July 6, 2025 - 14:00 UTC / 10:00a US EDT

See your local times here

Next race:

Belgian Grand Prix
Silverstone Circuit
July 25-27, 2025

I'm embarking on a new phase in my life and am frankly pretty darned excited about it. My only child is off in college now and I find myself with extra time I didn't used to have. As such, some younger friends of mine have been reaching out and asking me to join them for "shenanigans" in the form of online video games. Mind you, I haven't played games since the mid 90s, so while this sounds exciting, it also is quite intimidating.

So far I have gotten my hands on a ROG Ally X. It's a nifty looking handheld that I have been assured would allow me to play a lot of the games my buddies play, but my eyes aren't what they used to be and the screen, however nice, isn't quite big enough for my needs.

Time to get a dock!

I was able to find a one for this thing, which is very cool, but now I'm thinking I'm going to drive my wife crazy shouting at the device to talk to my buddies. I assume I need a decent headset, but which one? These things seem to run the range in prices. Do I need it to be wireless?

Also, I'm guessing it would be good to have some sort of controller so I'm not on top of the screen, again, what fits the middle of the road? Cordless? Do I want a trackpad? Is that even a thing?

I am overloaded with options.

Basically, I'm a dad who has discovered he has a lot more time on his hands than he expected and good (and patient) friends who want to spend time with him, but I'm way out of my depth trying to plot a modest path forward (without spending silly money).

Anyway, thanks for making an old guy coming to the hobby feel welcome!

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.

Sometimes getting into a new hobby can leave you feel like you don't even know where to start. What equipment do you need? What is a good starter project? Are there any safety concerns? What are some of the tricky hurdles to getting started or good tips for getting better?

This thread is a place to ask questions about a hobby you're interested in and others to give insight. There are no "stupid questions"!

As part of a weekly series, these topics are a place for users to casually discuss the things they did — or didn't do — during their week. Did you accomplish any goals? Suffer a failure? Do nothing at all? Tell us about it!

Have you watched any TV shows recently you want to discuss? Any shows you want to recommend or are hyped about? Feel free to discuss anything here.

Please just try to provide fair warning of spoilers if you can.

Have you watched any movies recently you want to discuss? Any films you want to recommend or are hyped about? Feel free to discuss anything here.

Please just try to provide fair warning of spoilers if you can.

I feel bored with new movies. I don’t know if it is me or if I feel burnet out on what Hollywood is putting out, either way i don’t feel there is anything new or refreshing.

I’ve watched some old movies, such as '12 Angry Men' (1957) which i found incredibly interesting. The entire movie is shot in one room basically and is about a youth charged for a murder and the twelve men in question have to decide if he should be put to a death sentence or not.

The point about mentioning this movie is that it is something very different than what is put out from Hollywood now. The same goes for 'Oceans Eleven' (1960) with the Rat Pack, which is a very different movie than the reboot from 2001.

I find older movies has more interesting plots and stories, not that it needs to be from the sixties. It can be from any decade, but I’d like to hear what you think should be on a movie bucketlist!

Thank you for your time, and I’m excited to watch your recommendations!

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've given this some thought and I'm still not sure if I'm expressing it the right way.

I generally don't like "dumb" entertainment. Having said that, I don't think I'm particularly highbrow or pretentious. A quote I refer to often was made in regard to videogames and it aligns very neatly with my philosophy: “If every movie were a porn movie, most people wouldn’t see movies. The majority of games are basically porn—the onus is on [designers] to make more things that are worth a reasonable person’s time.” That's equally applicable to other forms of media as well. You can even argue that various popular mainstream movies/franchises are essentially porn of another type (gun porn, trauma porn, etc.). All of that is to say that I try to look for a level of emotional maturity or sophistication that's beyond cheap gratification.

In practice, that usually means that my plan-to-watch list has a lot of stuff on the more serious side of the spectrum. However, I enjoy comedy just as much as anyone else. Generally, I like clever, witty comedy and I find that I get that mostly from standup comics, sketch shows, and the rare sitcom - not so much movies. But am I limited by my sense of humor? Does emotionally mature comedy necessarily mean "intellectual"/smart comedy? What comedic films would you present as emotionally mature?

Main constraint: The space it needs to fit in is 7¾ in (19.7 cm) high. Width and length aren't a concern.

Primary use: Gaming. Doesn't need to be top of the line or cutting edge. Most of what I play isn't very demanding, though I would like the option to play newer stuff if I find something that interests me.

Budget: Ideally less than $1500, but I do realize that I might have to pay out a bit more because I want something both pre-built and compact. $2000 is the hard limit.

Important: I am NOT interested in building my own PC. (Yes, I have done it before, including one that was in a compact case that was HELL to get right.)

Me being uninformed: This might be a silly question, but can I lay desktop towers down on their side? Any traditional tower isn't going to fit, but some of them are thin enough that, if put in landscape instead of portrait, they would. I've read conflicting things about this online, particularly regarding liquid cooling and airflow.

If anyone has any recommendations, I'd appreciate it!

Tildes is a very serious site, where we discuss very serious matters like us senate, viktor orban and knowledge management. Tags culled from the highest voted topics from the last seven days, if anyone was mystified.

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 have two giant drawers right now that are complete rats’ nests. Cables of every kind and type, all mixed together. You can’t tell where one cable ends and another begins.

It is at the point where I recently needed a cable that I know that I have, but it was easier and less stressful to just order a new one than try to find it in the mess.

Ideally, I’d have cables that are neatly organized, not tangled together, easily identifiable, and space efficient, but I honestly have no idea how to make this happen.

Anyone have any tips?

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?

Share some digital clutter from one of your hard drives -- something from a LONG time ago. For example: a to-do list, poetry, a script you wrote, a PowerPoint presentation, etc.

Give us the date the file was created/modified.

And, if you so choose, give us context on the file (but if you'd rather let it speak for itself, feel free!).

I have changed my email more than once, just as part of customizing my online identity and all that.

and that obviously required me to login into any accounts I had and updating the email associated with them.

the most common workflow I have found is
login -> navigate to settings page -> edit the email field to the new email -> go to the inbox for the new email -> click confirm on confirmation email

then you can go to that website and do the forgot password, provide your email and change the password and get complete control.

I have always found that workflow weird cause it's the most prevalent one I have come across and seems so susceptible to tampering.

if someone leaves their laptop unattended for 3-4 minutes in public while visiting a bathroom (which happened often in the library of my university), there was nothing preventing me from going to their Facebook or whatever account they had open on their computer, changing the email to my own email and then clicking confirm on my inbox once I am back at my desk.

and most people don't have 2FA so that would effectively give me control of their account.
Hell, my university once had a potential data breach and they were 99.999% sure the data was not actually accessed by a malicious actor but still sent a mass email saying that they were advising everyone to change their passwords. a classmate of mine in the software systems program's attitude was basically "oh well, who cares?" and I just facepalmed internally.

there are maybe 3 websites I have come across that instead first send a confirmation email to your current inbox and after you confirm on that, then you get a confirmation email on the new email inbox. which isn't perfect but I feel like it's a bit more sensical and the best you can do without involving 2FA.

even then, that's also susceptible to the situation I described above if the user is always logged into their email.

I find it odd that websites don't prompt for a password as part of the email update process (or better yet 2FA with an app as even prompting for a password isn't a guarantee if the user has the password manager as an extension in their browser and they recently unlocked it before leaving their session unattended) to ensure that email changes are always done by the account owner.

I am a big fan of Cloudflare Tunnels, it's let me muck about with quite a few low risk apps and it's been fun.

one thing that's always bothered me though is the SSL setup.

According to their website, only enterprise users are allowed to manage their own TLS private keys.

I can kinda understand the logic behind free accounts not having that perk.

But if you are someone who really doesn't like cloudflare reading your traffic or you are a business, it seems odd to me that it's not being demanded of cloudflare that they make it more available for paid users to not expose their TLS private keys to cloudflare.

Why are so many folks OK with cloudflare essentially being able to read all their traffic?

or am I overestimating how many people are using the Pro and Business account? is the majority of their users just Free or Enterprise?

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!

Tildes is a very serious site, where we discuss very serious matters like lego.island, 2025 iran israel war and the onion. Tags culled from the highest voted topics from the last seven days, if anyone was puzzled.

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!

So I am finally starting the process of designing a personal website that can help manage and organize my finances for me.

So obviously, the security of such data is paramount and for the heck of it, I want to design a webapp where it doesn't operate by the rules of "trust me bro" even though I will be the one designing it and most likely will be the only one ever to use it. Just want that experience of proper encryption setup.

Also, even if I am the one operating it, I'd like to set it up so that even if the database is compromised, none of my information is.

skip to bottom if you want to just see my 2 question

Did some reading online, between reading when StandardNotes does encryption as well as how it does it and some basic reading into encryption

• https://www.baeldung.com/java-aes-encryption-decryption
• https://security.stackexchange.com/questions/14068/why-most-people-use-256-bit-encryption-instead-of-128-bit

and the importance of not having a local unencrypted database like Joplin does

So all that got me curious how Google encrypts the user data it has and would up reading

• https://security.stackexchange.com/questions/269341/how-does-googles-on-device-encryption-work
• https://developers.google.com/workspace/cse/guides/encrypt-and-decrypt-data

and the basic take-aways seem to be:

• utilize encryption on a field before storing it in a database so that even if the machine gets compromised, the data won't be
• if you want to go even further, take the approach of StandardNotes, where it seems even the web server itself never touched unencrypted data it seems? Looks like all the encrypting and decrypting happens locally and only encrypted data is sent to the server

1. But that got me curious. It can't be argued that Google is not secure. they have the best minds working there to ensure just that. and yet its also well known that their respect for user privacy is non-existent. Which means that they've made sure to protect the data [email, google searches, google docs, google maps history] from hackers but they can themselves decrypt at least some user data for the purpose of data collection and selling ads.
   But if Google can decrypt the data and that implies they store the keys on a server from what I can tell from my reading, how it is protected if someone malicious gains access to the database? If that person got access to the database and the keys that Google uses to decrypt the data, wouldn't that compromise the data?

2. if I decide to design my webapp so that all the encrypting and decrypting happens locally, that means that if I were to decide to create a REST API for my application, that would also have to be taking in data in encrypted format, no? Cause if that takes it in plaintext, that means that my webserver would have to be responsible for encryption, which it needs the keys to do that with and if it can encrypt with keys it has access to, then it can decrypt too, no? or are websites that deal with encrypted databases and have REST APIs that can take in plain text information generally coded to be using asymmetric encryption? meaning its different keys being used for encryption and decryption? Or is API Token the key in an encrypted format? or have I misunderstood the whole thing?

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?

tl;dr - Is it normal for 6 year olds to randomly start throwing massive tantrums. My son up to this point has been very mild mannered and not prone to getting upset. But the last few weeks have been insane.

My son (6) has been going through something that is just really challenging the heck out of me. It started a few weeks ago when we were getting ready to leave for trip to visit family a few states away. He complained that his stomach hurt and began sobbing and begging to take a bath. So we accommodated and let him take 3 baths in a single day because we figured he just wasn't feeling well. We scheduled a doctor's appointment and the doctor just suggested a bland diet for a day and see how it plays out. After that he didn't really seem to have any issues, so we went ahead with our trip.

The hours-long drive didn't seem to faze him at all and we arrived safe and sound, despite a heavy rainstorm on the way. Over the course of the trip, every time we tried to drive somewhere to meet up with family, he'd claim he was sick and if we pushed on it, he'd throw a tantrum. Which is very unlike him, to be clear. And anytime we weren't talking about a car ride, he was acting pretty normal. We thought maybe it was anxiety from the drive there? The rainstorm was very intense at times, and I can see how that could be incredibly scary for a kid.

We spent the rest of the trip hyping him up for the drive home. My wife and I both have anxiety disorders, so we tried to help him understand that we knew how he felt and offered some advice (in a 6yo friendly way, to the best of our abilities). We also maintained a relatively bland diet for him in case he actually was feeling sick. But anyway we were absolutely dreading the ride home.

Just getting him and his sister in the car proved to be the absolute worst day of my parenting life. He threw the tantrum of tantrums, which set his sister off and she kept trying to escape from the car. Meanwhile it was 90F+ outside and our car's AC doesn't really kick in until you start driving. I was hot, upset, angry, scared, frustrated and just not operating at peak parental power. There was a lot of yelling, a lot of trying to hold them into their seats so I could buckle them, and all of it obviously just made the situation worse. I really fucked it up and I'm still trying to work through it all.

Long story short, we ended up separating him and his sister, with him driving home with us and his sister driving home with my parents. Once his sister was out of the car, he calmed down and we were able to leave. The plan was to just drive off and get some gas, let them both calm down, then pick her back up.

I had to go on a work trip shortly after that trip, so I was away for most last week. In that time my wife didn't try to take the kids anywhere, for fear of having a repeat incident, but solo and outnumbered by the kids. When I got back I started trying to hype my son up for the car ride to his and his sister's 6th birthday party the next day. He tried to negotiate saying maybe we could just walk instead of drive. I explained, "no it's a short car ride, but we couldn't walk there".

When the time came to take him to the party, he threw a tantrum, but I redirected using my car's remote start fob (he really liked that) and I talked him down a bit. The ride to the party was fine, as was the return trip. Then yesterday we did a trip to Gamestop so he could pick out a birthday present for himself and again the trip both ways was fine (with zero tantrum!). Although he has yet to get in the car with his sister since we got back from our trip a few weeks back and he has specifically called out not wanting to be in the car with her.

BUT the last two nights he's started throwing the exact same type of tantrums at bedtime, claiming he can only sleep in our bed and he's sick and his legs hurt and all these other things. When told no, he screams bloody murder, starts kicking and hitting, and it's really difficult for me to handle that. The tantrums of course set his sister off and then we have two 6yo twins feeding off each other's sadness and anger like two colliding hurricanes.

Is this just normal 6 year old stuff? I know they're still learning to regulate emotions and so maybe that's it? His sister went through something like this a few months ago, but it was exclusively about bedtime. She'd throw massive tantrums at bedtime while he'd just quietly go to bed. So that kind of reinforces that this is just a growth spurt of some sort? But I'm getting concerned it's something else, but I don't know what?