When I was a kid, I remember the soundtrack to the world being oldies. Stuff from the 1970s and earlier. Boomers were always being pandered to by nostalgia. Decades later that pandering shifted to the 1980s, something I'm sure the Gen Xers must have appreciated. A year or two ago I realized that the nostalgia train has been in the late 1990s and early 2000s.

It occurs to me that there has been nostalgic pandering going for a long time and I just hadn't realized it. I assume it's because a lot of the most notable ones have been pretty bad, particularly in the case of movies like the Space Jam sequel or the Jurassic World series. But music has had it's share too. I remember hearing a lot of references to 90s hip hop, and old bands like Backstreet Boys and My Chemical Romance have got back together. I've also been seeing a lot of references to old TV shows like Gilmore Girls and Buffy the Vampire Slayer (though, to be fair, people never really stopped talking about Buffy).

Personally speaking, I'm not a fan of this. Yeah, the movies have been bad, but that's basically just the state of hollywood right now. But more than anything, I'm kind of disappointing by it. I'm more interested in new art, generally speaking, and more importantly, seeing all of these throwbacks is starting to make me feel old.

Turns out Google has been ruining Drive's speed by ramming Gemini down our throats (again). To get stuff loading quickly again, follow these steps:

From the Google Drive page, go to settings (top right, gear icon). Drop into "Manage Apps."

Find Gemini and uncheck "Use as Default." Of course it's automatically turned on despite my organization and my personal accounts having already opted out of Gemini. Once it's off things run much, much faster.

Presumably they're doing some dumb shit and having Gemini scan the contents of your entire drive, constantly.

As some of y'all know, I moved recently to NYC (Brooklyn specifically) and now that I've settled in a bit more, I was wondering about volunteering my time to help out the less fortunate, especially with the holidays and everything going on with the government shutdown.

I've been juggling the thought of doing a soup kitchen or something but just wondering if anyone else had any interesting/unique/critical need things that they do! I hardly do volunteering unfortunately, always was more of a donating my money kinda guy.

I did fairly well on my SAT's, (10 years ago so idk how much help I can be) but I was thinking of volunteering to teach kids or something but not too sure if a weekly commitment is too much for me or not.

Preface: Sorry if this isn't the place, and if I'm cagey on some specifics. Also sorry for the length, this turned out a lot longer than I anticipated.

My partner and I have been together for nearly 8 years at this point. This was my first serious, long-term committed relationship; every other one I'd had was short-lived (<3 months) and I hadn't exactly had a lot of them. Maybe this is why I was blind to the cracks until things got unavoidable.

It started off strong and passionate of course, and things moved rather quickly. We (they, I'm not on the title) bought a house and we were expecting a child within a year. I should have kept things slower, thought with my head instead of blindly following my heart. I'd been very lonely for a very long time. I was happy those first few years, even if in hindsight the cracks were beginning to show. Even before baby came along, intimacy fell off a cliff. I had many talks about this with them, which led nowhere much really. The rest of the relationship still felt solid to me though. I pressed on.

In the beginning, they had a better job than I did. I earned far less. Luckily an opportunity came up for me to finish my schooling and further my career, and I put a lot of work into achieving just that. Now things have changed with that, and I feel like we could be doing well together... If it weren't for the financial instability I feel they bring. I'd never been great with money, but my partner's father took me under his wing and taught me a lot of financial literacy. I became adept at putting together spreadsheets and managing our finances. Our first major crisis we overcame together through being very fiscally conservative and digging our way out. We also had several windfalls that helped us out. Then... another crisis, again because of overspending on their end. We pulled from our IRAs in order to stay afloat, with promises to do better. Then... another crisis. Again. Same reasons. We put together a loan against the home's equity. More promises.

We are again heading to a crisis. We are out of windfalls and options and frankly I'm exhausted.

Finally, parenting and housekeeping. I've always loved how my partner cares so much for their children (from a prior relationship) as well as ours. They have a way of making magical moments which I envy. This is contrasted by their complete inability to parent effectively. There's no consequences, no expectations, no boundaries, and it's infuriating. Initially it wasn't quite that bad, and I felt I had equal say in parenting. Over the years, that's eroded to my partner viewing me as authoritarian and domineering. The kids know they'll get their way with them so why would they ever come to me first?

Maybe it was the extra time during COVID but they also put more effort into housekeeping early on as well. Now I feel it mostly falls on my shoulders, and my will to clean and keep up is murdered by the fact that within hours it's a mess again. It isn't helped by the fact that my partner is a hoarder. I have to gut things from the house in secret. I haven't seen the corners of my walls in ages. I spent a week while they were away cleaning the home top to bottom last year. Within a day it looked like a bomb went off.

These are all things I've tried discussing with them, multiple times, over the years. I mostly get brushed off, or (what I feel now are) empty promises. Most infuriating to me is "I don't know what you want me to say." I want you to say what's in your heart, what you feel! Don't tell me something you think I want to hear, be honest.

I feel I know where this is going, I don't want to fall in the same trap I see many couples are in where it's clearly over and yet they keep moving along. We're not married, a clean break is reasonable, I know my partner can be mature about things because their relationship with their ex is amazingly calm and chill.

I'm terrified in a way of being alone again.

I don't really know where to turn for more perspective. I've already talked with my sister, and a close co-worker who is going through some of the same feelings I am. Those conversations have been very helpful. Recently, what really put things in stark contrast was the other day when my partner's father asked "So is everything ok between you two?" If he went out and asked, it means it's really obvious things are not ok.

I've been fantasizing a lot lately about what a split would be like. Making plans for where to go, and figuring out how to reconcile things like accounts, items, and debts. Worst of all I've been fantasizing about being with other people; the intimacy and passions has been gone between us for a long time. The last time my partner initiated anything between us was a year ago, and I don't even remember the time before that. Everything feels so wrong and unsatisfactory.

I told them yesterday we need a frank talk, and not through text this time - their preferred method of communication with me for a while now... But I have no idea when we even have time for that away from the kids.

Closing thought: I don't want to feel like I've pre-determined my outcome here. I feel I've done what I can though, to make my own feelings clear. Thank you for any thoughts.

A prototypical example of what I am looking for would be fruit juice. Where I am at the only options for something that isn't orange or apple are overpriced lemonades with about thirty to fifty percent fruit content and truly expensive 100% ones.

Usually I simply buy the expensive ones and add 1-2 parts water ending up with better tasting juice at same or less cost.

Another step would be squeezing fresh fruit yourself but that adds time, space, complexity and money costs.

What things can be done in a typical kitchen without buying additional single purpose appliances? Sufficiently multipurpose ones or small tools are fine. Basically I want to reduce the number of steps in which the food is industrially processed.

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.

I was reading this post about the Tildes hierarchical tag system and it got me thinking about possible tags with double meanings.

For example, the gooning tag could be interpreted in a sexual way, or interpreted as the act of being a goon/villain. To clear up the misunderstanding, you could make a gooning.baddies tag, but that also has a double meaning.

What are some tags that could be used for serious topics that can have a less serious interpretation?

I have held out for years from getting a loyalty/membership card from supermarkets as I hate the tracking that they do. But here in the UK so many prices are now locked behind it in most supermarkets, it feels like I’m just giving them so much extra money it’s getting ridiculous. I end up spending more money to shop where they don’t do this, but most of the major players are now adding these member only prices it’s hard to keep the status quo.
For other privacy minded people, how do you manage this?

In a landscape of so many quality things to watch, I wanted to take a minute to recommend Code 3, which came out earlier this year. It stars Rainn Wilson, Lil Rel Howery, and Aimee Carrero, among a few other known actors and actresses. It follows Wilson's character, a paramedic working for Los Angeles 911, through a period of a couple of days. The comedy is pretty funny, although I should mention it does have a couple of dark moments as well, in case anyone would rather shy away from that. But I recommend it specifically because, having lived that life, it's the most accurate depiction of life on a 911 truck I've seen from Hollywood. The ups, the downs, the laughs, the tears. I watch a fair amount of things that I feel like weren't worth my time in hindsight, but this is the first movie in a while where I enjoyed the entirety of it. Hopefully some of y'all do as well :)

Trailer (YouTube)

IMDB

TheMovieDB

Rotten Tomatoes

safety.air, food.processed, neurons.artificial, storage.data - there are many many more examples to be found of unnecessarily hierarchical tags. These are not tags that benefit from such a scheme. All we have now are syntactically reversed phrases, reducing readability. What person wants to look up "safety" and peruse rail vs. air vs. public? Or energy vs. data vs. thermal for "storage"?

Where we have the line drawn now is far too arbitrary. Why is republican party not party.republican? decomposition.runaway?? lights.head for "headlights"??? I feel like I'm taking crazy pills.

I propose that heirarchical tags should only be used for things that have a clear natural hierarchy that is generally used outside of Tildes for some purpose. Geographic hierarchy makes perfect sense to me. Being able to search by country, then by state/province, then by city is very sensible. For describing a section of the tree of life - yes please. Maybe we should even go so far as to use : instead of . for tags like source.youtube. When would I ever look up just source?

1995 A.D.

I traveled back to this year to revisit the release of Chrono Trigger.

The game is out for the Super Nintendo Entertainment system in Japan and the United States. It is not available in Europe or Australia. Those regions won't get an official release until Crono uses the Epoch to visit the Nintendo DS in the year 2008 A.D., over a decade later.

I travel around and speak with different townsfolk. Everyone seems to have opinions on the game.

My first stop is a little cave called GamePro where I speak with Sir Scary Larry:

Chrono Trigger is another satisfying and superlative game from Square. If you've finished FF III and are itching for some fantasy field work, pick this one up. Thankfully, the fantasy isn't final yet.

I then meet Al Manuel in a little town square by the name of Electronic Gaming Monthly:

THIS IS AWESOME!! Chrono Trigger is an RPG that combines the best features of the FF series and Mana and puts them all in a game that easily gets my vote for RPG of the year! As with all Squaresoft games, the visuals are drawn with stunning detail, and the music immerses players even further into the quest. Of course, the game's best feature is its endearing story line. Add multiple endings to that and you've got a must-have for your RPG collection.

I wander into some houses and find Video Game Magazine lying on a desk. Geoff Higgins has written about it:

Chrono Trigger is the newest in an increasing number of quality RPGs to come out in the past year. Coming on the heels of games like Ogre Battle and Might & Magic III, Chrono Trigger could easily have paled in comparison. Instead, Squaresoft has brought us another reason to hold onto our SNES.

Right next door is Game Informer, with this posted on their bulletin board:

In contrast to Square adventures of the past, Chrono is a shining new star. [...] The characters that you meet during your quest all have well-developed storylines that make their small sprites seem larger than life. The magic spells advance and become more grandiose as they go to double and triple techs. To put it simply, Chrono is the pinnacle for RPG's on the Super NES and must be played to be believed.

While there, I also speak with Andy "The Game Hombre" McNamara:

Let me tell you a little story. Everytime one of these Square Soft RPG's comes to the office I can't get any sleep. I get so involved in the storyline that I stay up late trying to see what happens next to this soap-opera on a cart. You'd think that one of these days these guys are going to screw-up and I may finally get some sleep, but noooooo. It never happens. Once again, this game put me into that guru floating sensation of "wow." If you're looking for an RPG, you don't need to look any farther. Chrono is the feel-good game of the summer!

I am about to leave, but he keeps going:

Originally, the cover of this issue of Game Informer was going to be graced with Chrono Trigger [...] However, the artwork created for the game was done by a well-known Japanese artist known as Akira Tomiyama. This man is famous in Japan for such artistic feats as Dragon Ball Z and Chrono Trigger -- the hottest game right now in Japan. In his ride to glory, however, he managed to forget the little people.

He and his company refused us the rights to use his artwork on the cover because they felt that any magazine that featured Akira Tomiyama artwork on the cover would instantly be worth quadruple its original cover value. They even went as far as to say that it would be traded on the black market because his artwork is so sought after in Japan.

I think he meant "Akira Toriyama" but I don't mention it. And now that I think about it, none of the places I visited had Chrono Trigger artwork on their main displays. Sure, you can see some of the characters and screenshots tucked away in individual houses and shops, but the banners I see when entering the locations are always for different games: Killer Instinct, Lunar: Eternal Blue, Super Bomberman 3, the Virtual Boy.

Everybody is talking about Chrono Trigger, with many people seeing it as the hero of the time, but nobody is featuring its artwork.

But then I notice a little Game Players shop, and it, quite surprisingly, does have a small picture of Crono and Marle on its door. Interesting. Inside, I talk with Chris Slate, who doesn't mention it:

Can Square Soft do anything wrong? I mean, look at the track record: Secret of Mana, Breath of Fire, Final Fantasy II and III [...] it's hard to criticize near-perfection. The graphics are beautiful, the interface is slick, and the gameplay is just plain fun. It's RPGs like this that wil eventually win over the mainstream.

As I'm leaving, I notice Super Play, the shop across the street, has a full, front-and-center display: Chrono with the Epoch! Did they get permission from To[m|r]iyama? Did they break the rules? Was this actually just fan art drawn by someone else?

Wil Overton doesn't have any answers for me, but he does share this:

This is a fine game and one Square fans will get a lot out of. The time travel premise is superbly implemented, and the way things are intermingled through the different periods means the main underlying story stays strong throughout all the individual quests. Definitely recommended... if you've got the time (ha!).

Having thoroughly explored the region, I hop back in the Epoch and return to...

2025 A.D.

It is here that I noticed that the threat of Lavos still remains, his heat steadily growing, slowly placing the entire planet in peril. Meanwhile, despotic royals lust after power and oppress their subjects to pursue their own selfish glory and greed.

We can use a hero. Maybe Crono will visit our time?

Or maybe we have to pursue this quest ourselves.

Team up, level up, fight for good, support one another, and...

...maybe...

...against all odds...

...change the course of history.

So concludes this month of our COLOSSAL GAME ADVENTURE!

For anyone wondering, u/ali asked me to step in and host because they are traveling and weren't sure if they'd have consistent internet. I hope what I wrote is up to their standards!

This topic is to share your thoughts on Chrono Trigger:

• The good
• The bad
• The fun
• The interesting
• How the game was like back then
• How the game holds up now
• Your favorite moments
• Your least favorite moments
• The things it reminded you of
• The memories you have of it
• The memories you made playing it
• And absolutely anything else!

Because we are now removing the cartridge, spoilers will not be hidden in dropdown blocks so please be aware of this if you haven't yet finished the game.

This topic remains open, so you are welcome to post in it whenever you do finish the game, even if it is days or weeks later.

Up Next:

• Current CGA Schedule

Our next month, November 2025, is our very first Arcade Special, which is a group of shorter games that are intended to be played together.

The theme is: PlayStation WHAT? and will be hosted by the esteemed u/Lapbunny.

It's a collection of oddball, off-the-wall games, 4 of which are on the PlayStation and 1 of which is on the PlayStation 2 because someone forgot to check the games' information before bundling them up.

It was me. I'm the someone.

This is the nineteenth of an ongoing series of book discussions here on Tildes. We are discussing The Poisoners Handbook: Murder and the Birth of Forensic Medicine by Deborah Blum. We will be discussing We are Legion (We are Bob) by Dennis Taylor at the end of November.

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.

I've gotten very tired of fighting the GUI of my company's self-hosted charts.io instance, so I've been looking around at diagramming tools. I saw D2 posted on Hacker News, which seems like an interesting option, but I'm curious if anyone around here has a beloved tool to recommend.

I think my main use-case would be diagramming how components of a software system go together, although sometimes I'm interested in making wiring diagrams and stuff, too. Something that lets you specify overall dimension constraints for diagrams would probably help, since I often need to throw a diagram into a PowerPoint.

Important Upcoming Dates

Wednesday, October 29 - Final Update Topic
Wednesday, November 5 - Timasomo Showcase Topic

November 1-4 are for putting the "finishing touches" on your project and readying it for the showcase.

While November 1 is technically the creative deadline, remember that there are no Timasomo Police, so if you need to keep working into November, go for it! We've had people submit to the showcase days and even weeks later.

Time for another update on your progress:

• What did/didn't you get done this week?

• Anything go according to plan?

• Anything go off the rails?

• Any successes or struggles to share?

• Do you need feedback or help on anything?

This is your topic to share anything and everything you want about what you’ve made so far.

Mexico City Grand Prix
Autódromo Hermanos Rodríguez
October 24-26, 2025

Next race:

Sao Paulo Grand Prix
Autódromo José Carlos Pace
November 7-9, 2025

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've had my Steam Deck a few months so I'm comfortable getting around. That said, it could do a lot that it isn't. Partly because the default desktop experience is so barebones and has kinda bad ergonomics.

I know there's emulation and such that I'd be interested in. I'm a linux nerd so don't be shy. I'd say the main thing I'm looking for is for the Desktop mode to be more of like a "default to Couch Mode: unlocked, but can go to a (nice) desktop if need be". I really like the idea of playing my GOG games, emulators, etc all in one menu that's ergonomic to controller. I have a file server handy as well, anything good to do with that in conjunction?

Besides that, what good/cool uses have you found?