This is one of those posts that make me wish we could tag multiple tildes. Because this would apply to ~tv, ~movies, ~comics, ~games, ~books, and ~anime, with possibly even more.

A long time ago I read an article about weird crossovers, and it made the point that thanks to unrelated crossovers and six degrees of separation, the Archie comics Sonic technically existed in the same universe as... Some popular live action shows, because that show had a crossover with some other show that crossed over with Sonic. Obviously not really, but it was a funny thought.

I failed to find the article I remember, but my brief search did bring up the Tommy Westphall Shared Universe, which comprises 400+ shows thanks to various crossovers, cameos and in-universe references. There is a whole fandom wiki dedicated to it. There's also this site that lets you search for connections between TV shows. The site's description from DuckDuckGo is "Easily search and find the relationship between shows in the Tommy Westphall Universe and beyond." It's silly, but fun!

Thing is, most of my cursory searching into it has people focus on live-action TV and movies. And... Well, like I said at the start: the article I remember reading made a connection between Archie comics Sonic and some live-action show thanks to some crossover.

Since that first article, I've wondered off and on about the weirdest crossovers out there, and just how weird of a shared universe could exist. I don't want to limit it to one or two mediums, I want to find crossovers that can transcend mediums! Comics, TV, games and more!

So: what are the weirdest crossovers, cameos and in-universe connections you know of? What are the wildest connections we can make? And, for bonus fun, what are the ramifications of shoving all these wildly different series into one ridiculous universe?? how many different apocalypses can we shove into it

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.

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?

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.

I don't know if you know Destin Sandlin. He has a youtube channel named "SmarterEveryDay." I believe he would self-describe his channel as "a red-neck doing sciencey stuff."

The guy has everything, from the southern accent to videos about seemingly-dumb red-neck things that involve a significant amount of engineering and the opportunity to teach about science. If you don't know him, some (not all) of what I consider his best videos are:

• How Does A Carburator Work
• Why Snatch Blocks are AWESOME
• Bullets HITTING Bullets in Slow Motion
• World's Longest Home Run

The large part of his content is like this. Maybe not of this quality, but the theme is often some, what he calls, "redneck" thing turned into an engineering challenge. And overall, the quality of his videos is quite high.

Sometimes he will just tag along with some expert explaining their fields. These are also entertaining and IMHO educational pieces of content. If you want examples, there are:

• This is Music On An Oscilloscope
• How Carburetors are Made
• His 3 parts series on how photographic film is manufactured: Part #1, Part #2 and Part #3
• Everything About Grain Bins

And more rarely, he will post weird, life advice or motivational content. Usually this is wholesome or harmless, but it feels disconnected from the rest. Examples are:

• Marriage Advice
• What's it like to become a father?

I've always like Destin. This is not a university class, and in the past he has taken some shortcuts with safety. But overall, I think he is an honest content creator, and he is entertaining and educational. He also has increase the safety of his experiments, and been educational about (see the video linked above about bullets hitting bullets) I feel that he has kept the clickbait as low as he could get away with Youtube's algorithm, and that's rare in this day and age, therefore I respect him for that. Overall his content is, IMHO, humble and wholesome.

I think this contrasts with Veritasium which has become way too clickbaity, and Mark Rober who reminds you every 5 minutes that he quit his job at NASA to do Youtube. By the way, did you know Mark Rober used to work at NASA?

Of course, Destin is not perfect. He has taken, what I consider to be, bad sponsorship in the past, such as NordVPN which is just a shady VPN (just use Mullvad or Mozilla VPN if you want to circumvent geoblocking), HelloFresh which is overpriced food delivered by a Roach Motel company, or Casper Mattress which AFAIK is a dropshipping company selling products with some health concerns. But many other Youtubers took these sponsorship, so I won't criticise him too much for that. Also his quest to make something 100% in the USA is very laudable, at least to me.

There are some weird stuff though. I'm trying to not be too much parasocial, but most of his content that is not science related feels... weird. It's often about family, helping the poor, being a good member of the community, which I think are good values to have, but it has this weird religious semi-conservative undertone that I can't really pinpoint, it's more like an uncomfortable feeling.

Most of his videos used to finishes with a reference to a bible verse in gray over a black screen. This has disappeared most likely as the Youtube algorithm started asking him to link to his other videos at the end of his videos. I also always find weird the videos with his kids because they address him as "sir". I don't know if it's cultural, but in France (where I'm from and where I live) this is usually associated with radical Catholics (aka "traditionalists")

I've pro-actively tried to avoid judging him on the last part, because I believe people can live their life as they wish as long as they don't hurt anybody.

But now, I'm torn... He has recently made more and more references to the bible for historical and biological facts. The two videos, I have in mind are:

• Nature's Incredible ROTATING MOTOR where at 27:25 he hints at creationism.
• More recently, in Pompeii Changed How I Think About The Roman Empire, the video uses the bible as some kind of historical reference, for example at 12:36.

And this is starting to bother me. I don't mind the past "I have some belief I want you to know, but unrelated to that, I put it aside, here is some engineering/science video." However, I do mind the recent "I'm talking about science, and let me tell you how it matches my made up beliefs based on a book made up by people 1000s of years ago."

I know that Destin owes me nothing. And the counter point should be "hey... if you're not happy just stop watching him." But I just feel that I'm watching a guy who spend more than a decades building his brand and audience just tearing it appart, and it was a good brand and audience. I'm just sad about it, but maybe I'm overreacting.

What's your opinion?