Looking to get a tablet for my birthday but I'm so disconnected I don't know what specs to look for, where to get one or a decent price range to expect. I do need something on the cheaper side, but am ok with something good if refurbished. Only ever had a tablet once and it was a "free*" one from Verizon over a decade ago. I'm also open to other device suggestions.

Wants:

1. Not an iPad
2. To be able to use it with an attachable keyboard as a light laptop replacement for the couch.
3. To be able to use it to play mobile games similarly while on the couch.
4. To set up in the kitchen when cooking with recipes or a video.
5. To work for playing/running D&D or Pathfinder (Foundry VTT is the biggest memory user.

I am wanting to be able to disconnect from my phone and all the work apps and social media and such while still playing farmrpg on a lazy night watching a panel show on TV.

Or watch something on the tablet while knitting or something.

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 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 bragging.humble, social media and proselytism. Tags culled from the highest voted topics from the last seven days, if anyone was able to keep up.

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!

For example, games like Superliminal (solving puzzles), The Stanley Parable (exploration) and the upcoming Subliminal.

The backroom games I've looked at tend to be just about walking and walking and it gets really boring. I played the game called "Pools" and though I liked the aesthetic, I just got so bored because there wasn't anything to do at all other than just looking around and walking. any suggestions?

Finally embarking on a side-project that I will be doing with Django.

One thing that I am having to consider is how to do encryption.

Looking at the explanations of different levels of encryption here, I think data at rest is really all I need to do (although, I will probably use cloudflare tunnels which will also ensure data in transit but I just won't be implementing it myself is all).

Now, doing data at rest, doing some research, django-cryptography comes up a lot but that hasn't been updated in forever, to point where an open issue on its repo points to a new library (django-cryptograph-5) that was made specifically cause the devs of django-cryptography seem to have abandoned it, but that same thing could happen to the new off-shoot.

I can't tell if this means that I am looking on the wrong webpages for knowledge of how to do about this or when working in the python open-source ecosystem, there's no list of trustworthy reliable publishers of a library for data at rest encryption? like how Django REST Framework is so established, they even have sponsors now.

Food highlights for the year?
Favorite meals?
New baking breakthroughs?
Hilarious cooking disasters?
New restaurants in your area?
Delicious snacking?

Let us know how all about your food for 2025 and what eating/cooking/baking/snacking was like for you.

As we finish out 2025, it's been a minute since we had a question like this and with apologies to @kfwyre for stealing their MO.

What's something you're proud of? Maybe from this year, maybe not, but especially something you don't get to talk about a lot, for whatever reason.

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?

I've made an effort to read some more poems this year and always enjoy finding out any more when I can. In the UK you can find anthologies of "The Nation's Favourite Poems" and "The Nation's Favourite Comic Poems" et alia by the BBC, which is where I've learnt most of my new ones this year. It'd be great to see what poems have left an impression on you this year.

For brevity, I'll put a short one here and then two longer ones I discovered this year down in the comments.

Two Cures for Love - Wendy Cope

Don’t see him. Don’t phone or write a letter.
The easy way: get to know him better.

Hello,

I seem to be in a write it down phase and have gotten to the physical health part.

I'm looking for fun, absurd, dumb, exaggerated, vanity goals related to fitness.

What I have now is:

• standing front/back flip
• cartwheels as a mode of transportation
• being able to touch my chins with my forehead with straight legs
• doing 10 handstand push ups
• running on all fours
• being a human flag
• holding my breath under water for 10min
• walking with a total weight of 150kg for 4hrs in mixed terrain with an average speed of 5km/h
• jumping up 1m from standing
• doing the splits (both ways)
• gripping my forearms with the opposing arm behind my back from top/bottom
• going down into the bridge from standing and then get up to a handstand

The idea is to have these feats as goals so that I have something to strive for... I have well over 40years to reach them.

Think of something that you would cringe at when shown or talked about, but secretly you think it's kind of cool.

Like that uncle that always has to show off...

My list is mostly gymnastics, but I sure welcome pure strength, endurance or other things too.

And so concludes Guybrush Threepwood's thrilling quest to learn the Secret of Monkey Island! He did learn it, right? The secret? Surely there was a secret learned in there, somewhere? Well... that's what you get for spending more than 20 bucks on a computer game.

What were your favorite (and least favorite) moments? Favorite puzzles? Most frustrating ones? There are, in fact, a number of SECRETS to be found in The Secret of Monkey Island! Like these:

Share your stories below. Was this your first experience with the game or a nostalgic return? How has it held up over the years, in your estimation? Timeless classic or overrated turd? Don't hold back, we can handle it. We've spoken with apes more polite than you.

So here we are at the end of another colossal month. Next up, we'll ring in the new year with @datavoid for our January 2026 play of The Legend of Zelda: The Wind Waker! In the meantime, if you're so inclined, consider checking out the rest of the Monkey Island series:

• Monkey Island 2: LeChuck's Revenge
• The Curse of Monkey Island
• Escape From Monkey Island
• Tales of Monkey Island
• Return to Monkey Island

OK, that's it, turn off your computer and do something constructive.
Like play a little racquetball. Or wash your car. Or cook dinner. Or join a funk band. Or travel to a foreign country. Or run for president. Or talk to a member of the opposite sex. Or lube your car. Or host a weenie roast. Or dig for buried treasure. Or milk a cow. Or have a yelling contest with your neighbor's dog. Or perform brain surgery. Or paint a yellow line in the center of your driveway. Or write your name in the snow. Or teach basket weaving to clams. Or sing Welsh folk songs at the bank. Or plant trees on public property. Or confuse the person next to you. Or make a triangular table. Or hop, skip, and jump. Or ride a train. Or organize your sock drawer alphabetically. Or go bowling with your mom. Or train potato bugs to do tricks. Or make a quilt. Or publish a magazine about pencil shavings. Or eat lime jello with pineapple in it. Or pave a freeway. Or learn to draw. Or take up photography. Or learn to tell time. Or photocopy money. Or go out for pasta. Or sew a dress. Or bathe your iguana. Or go fishing. Or paint a stranger's house in the middle of the night. Or take up windsurfing. Or change your hair style. Or sharpen your whiteboard markers. Or feed a toucan. Or enjoy the sun. Or do a crossword puzzle. Or buy some cool clothes. Or go to the beach. Or play croquet with your dad. Or water your plants. Or build a doll house. Or invite some friends over for salmon and white wine.

See you next month!