I originally watched the Bourne Trilogy as a young teenager. I found them to be great action movies, and quite enjoyed them. At the time I knew they were regarded as great action movies, but did not understand the influence they had. Recently, I have heard about how influential they were on the genre, so I decided to re-watch them in my late 20s, with a lot more media awareness. A lot of the commentary I had seen going into this is how the movies popularized the shaky cam and fast cutting on action scenes. Going into this re-watch, I did not remember much, with only remembering just a few standalone scenes, but not much about the plotline (except Bourne has amnesia).

If you have not seen the movies in the past 5 years, I highly recommend you bookmark this post and stop reading then go back and watch them before continuing reading

So going into this movie, my expectations were more along the lines of a dumb action movie, with well done fast-paced editing for action scenes. I was thinking along the lines of mid-2000s equivalent to the John Wick franchise. I was wrong on this. The plot is a lot tighter than the action movies I was expecting, and the action a lot lighter. The entire trilogy has lighter action than compared to more modern action movies. There is a grand total of two explosions for the entire trilogy (one in Identity, where Bourne explodes a propane tank as a diversion, and the second in Ultimatum where another agent blows up a car). Instead, the movie focuses on hand-to-hand combat for the action (which will be discussed later), but also strongly prioritizes Bourne trying to sneak out of a situation rather than fight out of it. Trying to sneak out of an area definitely changes the tone of the movie, and for the better in my opinion.

For the action sequences, I found the fast cutting and shaky cam actually really good. I have been annoyed at other movies that have copied this style, because when done wrong it just turns the scenes into an unreadable mess. I think there are a few things done in Bourne that makes this editing style actually readable. The first is that the scope of these fight scenes are quite small. Normally they are 1v1 fights, not the fighting through a hallway of opponents that can be common in other movies. When the viewer has to keep track of only two people in a fight, the fast cuts are not as jarring. The second trick they use is providing establishing shots of the environment, keeping the environment small, and doing familiar environments (normally apartments). The viewer can very easily keep track of the different rooms they fight through, which grounds it. The third is that the fight scenes are relatively short. Also, all the fights have very clear goals (normally defeat this single person that is preventing escape). Too many movies looked at the well done Bourne action and copied it, without understanding what made the scenes work.

The other part of the movie that uses fast cuts is in the car chases. Bourne car chases are fantastic, although I would argue that there needs to be suspension of disbelief, as the damage to the vehicles are a bit extreme while staying operational. The fast cuts work well as the goal is clear "escape the city center." The viewer is not expected to be able to keep track of where in the city they are, just that they are being followed and Bourne needs to escape. Also, the movie does not use high performance cars, but instead does regular cars in tight European streets, which is a fun change compared to other movies.

The editing in general for the movie is quite engaging. I would describe it as a fragmented editing style, which works really well for the plot. The fragmented style disorients the viewer a bit, which matches well with Bourne suffering from amnesia. Cutting between various things puts the viewer into the mode of trying to piece everything together alongside Bourne (although the viewer has a bit more info, since they are aware of others actions). Then there is the two ending scenes in Supremacy (Bourne in Russia, then Bourne in the US on the phone with Landy) being reused in Ultimatum with it starting with Bourne escaping Russia and then the phone call taking place about 2/3 of the way through Ultimatum. Since I watched the two movies within about a week of each other, I found that having the movie partially exist between the two ending scenes of the previous movie really fun.

Last year I ran an AMA while sitting in a field waiting to graduate from my undergrad program. I had planned to do the same thing again as I graduated from my master's program but was foiled by the 502 Bad Gateway last week, and then forgot to do it after as I was busy with moving and celebrations.

So, 1 year older (and wiser? -ish?), with deeper eye bags and less sleep, AMA

I think the simplest thing Arc Raiders nailed about gameplay is the pacing. The enemies move at such a pace that you never get instantly vapourised; you always have a second or two to try something crazy even when you're utterly doomed. The times that 'something crazy' works you have a unique memorable moment. Let me tell you about one of mine.

A Rocketeer is a common headache in Arc Raiders. It's a quadcopter drone the size of a tank that shoots rockets. It usually takes a big and expensive weapon to take one down, but players started to take notice of an item called a 'Hornet Driver', basically a stun grenade. What happens when you stun an aerial drone? That's right, it drops right out of the sky, to its doom if the fall is far enough.

With this in mind, I emerged from some tunnels to find another player pinned down by a Rocketeer. I throw a Hornet Driver, it hits just the right spot and the Rocketeer drops to the ground but is unharmed... and then in trying to angrily get back in the air it flips itself over on its back, completely immobilised. The two of us strangers hesitate for a split second before we sprint over and beat the thing to death with hammers.

There are flaws in this game but in terms of creating organic events it's been a great time.

Custom games/game modes/rulesets give gamers the ability to enjoy some games nearly infinitely. Gary's Mod, Rust, Minecraft, Robolox, Fortnite, and many others keep people coming back as people create new ways to play.
When I was younger I played a ton of Warcraft 3 custom games. I remember there being a solid ~2 years when that was almost entirely what I would play whenever I was able to use the computer and then another 3-4 years after where I would play at least a couple of times a week.

I remember loving custom games like:

• Defense of the Ancients (DotA)
• Island Troll Tribes (also Jungle Troll Tribes to a lesser extent)
• Risk (and it's many versions)
• Wintermaul and Wintermaul wars (along with all the other tower defense and tower defense wars)
• Vamperism
• Pest Control
• Many others as this list would drag on

I remember chatting with a lot of interesting people, though I didn't have any friendships I made move past Warcraft 3 in to other games.

I know there are many other games with custom games or customer game modes that the community developed, with DotA 2 coming full circle from being the sequel to a custom game to having custom games of its own.

To get the conversation going:

• What games had your favorite custom games?
• What custom games were your favorite?
• Did you make or contribute to any custom games?
• Any favorite memories?

I'm curious about things in your life (things you do, objects owned, rituals observed) that may seem silly to outside observers (or even to you) but have objectively practical purposes or an internal logic that just needs a bit of explaining?

I was thinking about my Batman t-shirt that I'm wearing today, and my other graphic logo t-shirts that I know a man in his mid-40's isn't supposed to wear because it's childish. Now, granted I only wear these around the house and if I'm going out to run errands, and I'm sure I look a little foolish to most folks, but I've found that the graphic tees serve far more purpose than I ever imagined when I originally purchased them.

When I bought them, it was because:

1. I knew I'd be wearing them under a jacket all day as the office I worked in at the time kept the HVAC set in the high 60's (Farenheit) and they'd go unnoticed.
2. They cost a little less than high quality individual plain shirts as I happened to catch them all on a clearance in my size; extremely rare since I'm a tall dude who's half torso.
3. I had always wanted to wear super hero logos and stuff as a kid, but even into my 20's I could never justify the price even when working full time.

I've got around 10 shirts that I rotate through, along with a bunch of plain ones because when you buy them in packs of 6 they're still way cheaper. And I've found a few odd benefits I wasn't expecting.

• I often dress in dim light, without my glasses on. Having a logo means I rarely turn my graphic t-shirts inside out and I never put them on backwards.
• I'm a big dude, tall and broad and I take up a lot of space. I believe that people treat me as less imposing when I'm wearing a funny little t-shirt.
• They're surprisingly comfortable and well-made, and they've lasted me a decade at this point and will likely last longer than that.

So back to the main topic at hand: is there anything you have or do that's silly to yourself or others that actually has practical benefit or a logical reason that lets you suspend embarrassment?

Now that we know everyone's favorites, I'd love to hear about games that are further down the list -- the ones that don't necessarily rise to the high heights of definitive favoritedom.

So, share your eleventh favorite game this time. You know, the one that doesn't quite make it into your top 10.

Feel free to share your top 10 if you like as well, but lead with your 11th, as those are the ones I'm interested in seeing highlighted.

As a kid and young teen I used to be the kind of smartass aspiring nerd that I assume some of you were as well and many of you encountered at some point: smart, interested in technology, cool music, and anything non-mainstream, but with less than stellar social skills, lacking the knowledge and wisdom that you get by actually doing things instead of talking about them, and with not many friends, because few people around me shared my interests.

I did have some friends in the offline world who were quite similar, but they each lived in a different town and we only saw each other a couple times per year. The upside of that was that we valued every meeting all the more, where we talked, listened to newly discovered music (this was pre-Spotify but also pre-Youtube), played video games either in splits-creen or just by taking turns in an interesting singleplayer game, rode bikes around and did lots of more or less dumb shit.

Most of us grew out of this phase and became... well, we became nerds, but ones who were more or less well-adjusted and social, with our own friend groups, girlfriends, interests and hobbies that we actually participated in and not just talked about.

Nick was less lucky. He was perhaps the most stereotypical of us all, both in the type and depth of his interests and in his inability to meaningfully participate in them or to participate in society in general, really. Looking back, many things about him make much more sense if I think of him as autistic - not something you grow out of. Perhaps a diagnosis would help him accept this and adapt, but he had a dislike of any kind of institutions and doctors specifically.

I didn't mind though. He understood some of the things I liked, much more than the average person, especially a person my age. I used to hate electronic music, and Nick was the guy who gave me a CD with some early jungle and drum'n'bass, which was my entry drug.

Of course, the file called something like "jungle <date> <author>.mp3" was actually terrible early drum'n'bass, and the file called "drum and bass mix.mp3" was actually a brilliant jungle set - I'm quite sure it was Kemistry & Storm, sounded something like this, only without the MC and even junglier.

He also introduced me to some instrumental hip-hop like DJ Krush, whose music I sometimes listen to to this day, and Art of Noise, which I'm frankly not a huge fan of these days, but it served as a great counter-argument in the early-to-mid days of online nerdom when many otherwise smart people thought that all electronic music is stupid.

Of course I gave him music that I discovered as well. And we also exchanged videogames, old DOS games, new releases, but also some great shareware and freeware games often meant for hot-seat multiplayer, with up to four kids sitting around one keyboard, which was amazing fun for many hours. Being twelve years old buys with access to a CD burner, we natually exchanged other things as well.

The interesting thing is that despite his in retrospect likely autism, he seemed quite socially resilient. When he was I think 8 years old, his parents travelled from a poor, only briefly free and democratic Czechia, to a large city in Texas for a year, where his mother was to teach at an inner city high school through an exchange programme.

That year brought a ton of interesting stories, it was a shock for all of them, but that's a different topic. He returned with drastically improved English skills, prejudice against obese people and mild racism towards black people. Hey, don't look at me, I'm just telling it how it is.

The interesting thing is that racism was very much alive and present in Czechia at that time, but not against black people. Our history is completely different in that regard, so it was very common for people to say "I hate Gypsies, but I have nothing against Black people, Black people are cool." This changed later as we basically imported American racism as a side effect of importing more and more American media, though we still neither commonly practice nor truly understand (likely applies to me as well) this kind of racism.

As we grew up and stopped meeting twice a year, for new year's eve and during summer vacation, we lost touch. The last good thing I did for him was sending him an invite to my favorite local discussion board, which is to this day the only general purpose discussion board I know of that is much better than Tildes.

I think I hadn't seen him for at least a decade when a friend of our parents', whom we also knew well, unexpectedly died. We all met at a memorial party some time after the funeral, talked and played board games. Nick was invited to play table football, but couldn't join because for some reason he was losing the ability to grip things firmly and accurately.

It was quite new, so he nervously joked about it. Some of the other people present tried to get him to a good neurologist early through their connections (and failed). It took I think about a year until he got his diagnosis: not a rare, aggressive type of multiple sclerosis, but ALS, the thing with the ice bucket challenge, the thing Stephen Hawking had. He was 32 years old.

To this day I have no idea if there's any medication that can at least slow it down, because his personality and "social resilience" meant that he rejected all institutional help. This made it quite hard for his aging parents too. He hated having his hair touched but also later couldn't really wash it or brush it himself. He hated getting help in general, so he dressed himself for as long as he could, even when it took him two hours to put on a t-shirt.

This is all irrational and stupid. It was also all granted to him untill the very end, and so untill the very end he was allowed to keep his dignity in that way.

The sad part is that I only know all of this from second-hand information. I can't say I was indifferent, but when he was diagnosed we hadn't been in any contact for a decade, we weren't friends anymore. And through all that time I have been battling a chronic illness of my own that is unlikely to kill me, but that limits my life a lot, and when it doesn't, I have so many things I want or need to do when I suddenly can. I also live on the opposite side of the country, however small it is.

That said, of course I could have messaged or visited him if I truly wanted to. By the time I thought about it, he was barely able to speak and at that point I frankly didn't have the balls to do it. Of course, he normally refused to see anyone, he did not want to be seen like that, but he did sometimes accept people he knew from childhood.

A few months ago, he started having breathing problems. It may not have been the ALS progression yet but an infection, so despite his hate of doctors and hospitals, his parents managed to convince him to get hospitalized. He was just barely able to swallow tiny bits of food at that point, so he still had something like a breakfast with his parents, very underweight but without a feeding tube.

During the night he died, aged 38. If you know about ALS, you know there is some mercy in this. Dying at home with your family is always preferable, but with ALS that commonly means gradually losing the ability to breathe and slowly suffocating.

The saddest thing about Nick is that his life was marked by unfulfilled potential. He was not very socially competent and very impractical, but also quite intelligent and undoubtedly capable... of something. But he never managed to find the something. Worked a basic tech job for which he was not overqualified exactly, but certainly sharper than the job required (though I'm not entirely sure how he felt about it). Didn't really build anything for himself. As far as I know he never was with a woman despite almost certainly wanting to. I don't think he was particularly happy with his life either. And he never got the chance to change that.

Seeing myself in the slideshow of photos from his life during the funeral only made it more apparent how important our group of friends was in his life. The funeral took place in a neighboring town because the town where he lived only has a church next to the graveyard, not a secular ceremonial building, and he wouldn't want to have his funeral in a church. We all came, his family came, and so did his work colleagues, some of whom cried as well.

After the funeral we talked and ate and drank in his parents' flat. One that they will be forced to leave soon after probably nearly 30 years, moving into a smaller one and getting rid of some of their stuff. Through a slit in the door I saw a glimpse of what I assume was furniture and/or machines designed to make care easier, obtained despite his hardheadedness.

Okay, wipe your tears.

When I was a kid, Pornhub didn't exist. At some point we got Shoutcast, online radios and TVs thanks to which you could literally watch porn in Winamp, but before that me and my classmates sometimes watched a porn VHS one of us found in their parents' bedroom, and we also swapped CDs with porn. Those were hard to come by (no, don't say it), so each was precious, and during breaks in school we would talk about who's hotter, whether Amanda or Natascha. We were probably 12 years old when this started and I think we all turned out fine despite that.

Well, the one thing I got from Nick and never returned is a CD with his handwriting saying "P.vids .mpg open". When the three videos he burned on the CD didn't fill it entirely, he didn't finalize the burning process so that more could be added later, he was practical like that.

After remembering that something like this probably exists, I went through a box of my old stuff at my parents' house and actually found it. I still own an old laptop with an optical drive, so I put the CD in, but it failed to read. I tried cleaning the laser lens with a q-tip just in case because it looked dusty, and it really worked. VLC, one of the best free applications ever, naturally came (no!!) through as well.

The "last modified" date on each of the three files said December 19th, 2003. Obviously I looked at the videos, and it turns out that we were completely normal heterosexual boys with completely normal tastes. Not surprising, but nice to have a confirmation. One of the girls had Garfield socks, something that I remembered and laughed when I saw it so many years later.

This CD truly is the only physical thing that I ever got from him, as far as I know. I mean, there may have been some small things we exchanged as kids, but those were lost to time, whereas the CD rested among CDs of 70s French avantgarde and old Manowar albums.

I really don't need to explain how sad the whole situation was. But this one stupid CD gave it a funny and honestly kind of cool twist, which also made it easier to share this whole situation with various friends of mine who never met him, and who very much appreciated the absurdity, wholesome and morbid at the same time.

So now you can too.

"Different" can be interpreted in any way, in any context, for any magnitude.

When did you realize you were different?
What prompted it?
How did you feel about it then?
Has the difference changed over time?
Have your feelings changed over time?

About every six weeks, I go on a "stock the pantry" shopping trip to buy long-keeping items and non-perishables in quantity - cat food and litter, Costco, etc. After two hours of shopping yesterday, I was a little shocked to realize I'd spent half of my take-home pay on a trip that previously was about 25% less expensive. No one item had drastically increased in price - everything had just gone up that much.

[I'm also smarting because my primary care physician announced she was switching to a concierge care model, and I just made the first quarterly payment. U.S. healthcare sucks so badly that I can't take a chance on the two-year waitlists for in-network primary care M.D.s who provide 10-minute "annual exam" visits in my area.]

I'm dropping subscription services, buying cheaper conventional food instead of organic, getting generic personal care products instead of brand names and using less of them, cooking even more at home, thinking about making my own cat food, skipping buying pretty flowers for outdoors this year... and still feeling like the budget isn't going to keep stretching.

I know a great many aspects of Western lifestyles aren't sustainable, and I've tried to do my part to minimize material consumption. But there are so many expectations that you'll pay for perhaps excessive shelter (we didn't need a house the size we have, but it was what was available and affordable), have a car for work, be able to pay for services for things you don't have time, skill, or physical capacity to do yourself, and other monetary drains. I'm losing some sleep.

What are you doing to cope with exorbitant rents/mortgages, skyrocketing utility and grocery bills, extravagant medical costs, unaffordable childcare and services?

Do you feel like your quality of life has declined, due to missing luxuries, anxiety, fewer opportunities to connect with friends and family, or anything else?

Open rant here.

I don't usually write things like this, but I'm having difficulty and think I need to get it out. I had to put down my dog Willow on Monday (two days ago, as of writing), and I am not okay.

This is not the first pet I've lost. Several childhood pets, but those weren't really mine, they were my parents', and so I didn't have the same level of responsibility over the animal as I did with Willow.

Even of my pets, this is not the first loss. In 2022, I adopted a retired working dog Yukon and an elderly cat Gomez. We lost Yukon in May 2024 (aspiration pneumonia due to megaesophagus) and Gomez in May 2025 (renal failure). The renal failure was a prolonged decline, and so while we tried to manage the disease we had some time to come to terms with things. The pneumonia was very fast decline and more of a shock. I loved them both, but this now feels much worse. I guess because I only really knew them 1 1/2 and 2 1/2 years respectively. I feel guilty about that, like it shouldn't matter and I should have grieved for them the same, but I don't.

This was the first pet that was mine, in the sense that my wife and I have had full responsibility for her the entire 10 years we've had her. She was the best behaved dog I've ever had. Always by my side at home. Especially when I worked from home during/after Covid lockdowns I took her with me wherever I could. Loyal. I just killed her.

Well, I didn't do it, we took her to a vet and they did typical euthanasia. It doesn't feel like the difference matters.

Willow also had renal failure, which we learned about at stage 3 (already severe) in January. The past few months have brought back a lot of pain about Gomez since it was the same disease. Realistically, the fact she made it all the way to May still walking on her own is remarkable. Meals have been challenging for the past month or so. Since late last week she refused to eat, and her condition deteriorated quickly over the weekend. We knew this was coming, but childishly it somehow felt like she'd just keep going forever because she'd been doing so well. Of course that's not how it works, but I guess it's easier to imagine that things are normal.

I think we gave her the best final day we could. We took her to the same pet stores, park, restaurants we used to take her to when she was in her prime. I got her some drive-thru chicken nuggets, her favorite, and she actually ate all of them! She must have been hungry. I want to believe I could have kept feeding her fast food for a few more days or weeks or months, but I know it's simply not true. She moved slow, but still walked on her own at the park and pet store. By the time we arrived at the vet she seemed satisfied, tired, and ready for a nap.

I don't know.

As I say, I've done this before and I roughly know the "usual" advice about grief and how it seems to work for me. My wife and I support each other. We still have other pets, and it helps a little to hold them. Enduring a death the same month three years in a row is taking its toll. All our other pets seem healthy and relatively young, and I'm not superstitious, but some deep emotional part of me can't help but fear May 2027. I think I'm just tired.

Our cat Pinto, still a 9-month old kitten, we've had since she was newborn and abandoned by her mother. We think she was abandoned because she couldn't latch properly to nurse, so we fed her on bottle day and night. Given how much it hurt about Yukon and Gomez after just a couple years, already old when we adopted them, and how much it hurts now about Willow after 11 years, who was a young adult when we adopted her, I am terrified of losing Pinto. I know it'll happen. I don't know what I'll do.

The quality of the pain doesn't really feel new, but the quantity is so much worse than I expected. Feeling guilty about that is new. The fear is new. Not really sure how to process it. You're not supposed to have favorites but I guess you do anyway.

I don't really know what I'm trying to get out of posting this. Pity? Not really. I guess I just need to get it out of my head. I'll probably look back at this thread in a few days to see what people have said but I think I just need to get this out and step away from it for a while and process.

https://i.imgur.com/U1Nq7X8.jpeg

Maybe beating a certain dungeon or winning a particular game, or something deeply emotionnal for you.

What is yours?

I have two and they are both in WoW because I played for 10 years.

1. Amber Shaper Un'sok. I decided to join a hardcore guild before MoP because I had ambition and wanted to know what it felt like to raid with capable people. It was an awesome 4 years journey that I will never forget.

When you raid in WoW, it's very rare that the kill relies mostly on 1-2 people, it's always a group effort. That boss was different because there was a mechanic that allowed one random person every ~1min to get transformed and you had specific duties to do and dealt A LOT more damage.

We kept wiping and wiping because people kept fucking up when they got transformed and I kept thinking "if only it could get back to me, I know what to do, just transform me!" Lo and behold, we got an attempt where I got transformed first and last (before the phase switch).

We killed that boss on that attempt. It felt so good to "carry" the group!

2. Last one is with my brother, doing a duo run of MC back in WotLK. It was super easy to do as a raid, but doing it with 1-2 people was definitely still hard.

See, I almost never played with my brother, ever. But WoW was the first game we played together for real. It was an awesome time.

Anyways, we had decided to start a guild together, just to have the guild bank lol so one day we decided to run MC to try to get some old stuff that maybe we could sell. We had an absolute blast that night, wiping, having fun, just playing together.

...it was 15 years ago and I still haven't had a moment with my brother like that. He ended up quitting WoW a couple months after and I just kept playing. We grew apart and that was that. I still think about that MC run with him from time to time.

Could be something about you, your thoughts, priorities, health, etc.

Could be something about the world, the way things work, etc.

Could be anything really.

What has changed, and how do you feel about it?

Do you have a dream job/one you've always thought about doing?
Do you work your own dream job? If you do, what is something you'd like to change about it to make it even better?

This question popped in my head this morning while not wanting to dive in to a weird work thing and after a quick look, it's been ~4 years since the last time a similar question was asked by @kfwyre (who posts awesome discussion questions!), and I thought that it's been long enough to ask again for new Tilders to chime in or for whoever answered last time to come back and see if their answers are the same.

Earlier today we had a post about dream jobs, and that had me thinking, what was the best job you ever had? Why did you leave that job? Did you know it was the dream job while you were at that job or did you only realize it years later?

An event, a moment, an experience, etc.

Can be big or small; significant or insignificant; serious or funny.

It doesn't have to be a bad thing. You could be glad you missed out on something!

What did you miss out on?
How do you feel about it?

@RoyalHenOil's comment in another thread got me thinking, and I feel like it might be helpful for me to hear what other Tilderinos have to share about this. I've wondered for years if I might have ADHD. Any time I've looked into it, it never seems like I check enough boxes for that to be an accurate label. But I've also gotten the impression that many psychological things like ADHD might be better understood as a spectrum (or even a region?), so lately I keep coming back to the possibility that I just have some other/related flavor of executive dysfunction. Or maybe I just haven't figured out how to "adult" properly yet for other reasons. I don't know, but it feels like being able to name the way my brain works would help things somehow.

I tried for hours to write up an explanation of my experiences, but I couldn't come up with anything that felt accurate and was a reasonable length, so the five-second version is this: The thing I keep coming across and identifying with is the "hyperfocus mode" that some people report. I enjoy this but also feel like it must have something to do with my struggles in some areas. I can prioritize tasks effectively plenty of the time, but I also can't at other times. If I used an Eisenhower matrix, things in the "important but not urgent" category would mostly be gathering dust (except for ones I happened to focus on). I don't really have any control over the "hyperfocus mode" and its target changes unpredictably.

There's an exhausting amount of nuance I could add to the above. I'd really love to hear from anyone who's had experience with any sort of divergent executive function that doesn't seem to fit into any of the currently available boxes we use to understand these things.

Addendum: I reread RoyalHenOil's comment just now and I think responding to it directly might be easier than writing out my own explanation from scratch, so I'll include that response here for anyone who feels like reading it.

Radicalization has, of course, varied meanings to pretty much any person you ask to define it and it is both contextual and a spectrum. I will provide no definition of such here as this isn't a pissing contest and a person's definition is likely to be highly personal based on their own lived experiences up to and post said "radicalization".

Today is my yearly reminder of what I consider to be the impetus of what "radicalized" me.
So thought I'd ask all of you for yours.

There are plenty of video reviews of this car out there from people who do it for a living, but I'm not a car influencer or anything like that, I'm just an enthusiast who bought this car with my own money and wanted to give some real impressions for other enthusiasts out there.

Long ago Subaru made a Forester XT that was more or less a de-tuned STI engine in a compact SUV and it was AWESOME. I had an 04 XT that was turbo-swapped, with race exhaust, it was a very quick car and other than getting terrible gas mileage, burning oil, and eventually imploding the transfer shaft in the transmission, it was pretty great. In the ensuing years Subaru pulled out of WRC, killed the STI, and stopped putting turbos on everything (shame). While the hot hatch market has kept up to an extent, the crossover/smaller SUV performance market more or less died entirely.

Fast forward to 2023, I purchase a new Ioniq 5 to replace our BMW 3 series before our kiddo is born, since it's easier to get the car seat in and out etc with a higher vehicle(if it'd have even fit in the 3 series at all). And it's.....great, they are awesome cars, and changing to an EV was not a big deal at all, we mostly charge at home, but the overall build quality of the Ioniq 5 is really quite good, and it's a well put together car, there's a reason it's won many awards since release, outside of the ICCU roulette(which nobody seems to know whether you will or won't be affected, we haven't, knock on wood).

As things go, at some point I start wanting another enthusiast vehicle, my friends and family have stayed car people the whole time, and there's only so much envy you can have when you see Corvettes, 911s, etc, fast is fun. Well Hyundai releases the Ioniq 5N, the legally distinct M5 Estate, the Great Value Urus. And I happen to find one for a good price, and with another kid on the way, I really still can't have a 2 door sports car, it needs to fit a car seat(or two) and well, if having one of a car is good, having two of a car must be....gooder?

I don't need to tell you about all the weird quirks etc about the 5N, every single youtube video goes over this, it's pointless to rehash. What you need to know: holy fuck this car is fast, if you have been in fast cars, or hot hatches, or supercharged trucks, or tuned builds, I assure you it is likely faster. Over 600hp with minimal losses and a single gear transmission, AWD, and large summer tires will do that. The only car faster I've regularly driven is a 992.1 Turbo S, which is a stupid fast car that it's wild they sell to the general public, but those cost $250k, this costs $68k (or the aforementioned ICCU issues, there is quite a few lemons for far less, and those have pushed the clean titled, low mileage used down as well) so you can very easily pick up a 600hp, practical hatchback, for around 50k or less if you want a buyback. That is an absolutely, tremendously insane value. And yes, we all know EVs are fast, but the suspension setup, the grippy tires, and the additional chassis work they did makes it suspiciously capable to cornering, it corners better than many sports cars stock, which should not happen in a 4800lb SUV, wtf.

So then: is the 5N worth it over the normal 5? If you do not want an enthusiast vehicle, no it's not. Especially in the US market, the 5N loses amenities that it gets in other markets, or that are on the Limited trim of the base version: no HUD (Boo), no heated rear seats or sunshades (Boo) and no sunroof option(idc). The Limited trim seats are also much more comfortable for long drives, and you have the relax/recline function for charging stations. The 5N bucket seats are perfectly comfortable, they are actually great for the car, but I had to drive the car back 250miles and it was fine, but it would have been better in the default seats. Other downsides: the range is TRASH, expect 200miles at full charge max, 10% of battery buys you 20miles, the car is on fatter, larger wheels, with lots of additional cooling for performance, and you WILL want to drive it like a lunatic because the car BEGS you to. I wouldn't recommend this car as a first performance vehicle for someone, it's just too fast. Nobody should go from a normal car to a car that runs an 11.1 quarter mile bone stock.

On all the N options: I basically never use the e-shift, I don't care, I like not having gears, it's what you'd want in any car if you could get away with it. Shifting is vestigial, and while I can understand coming from manuals, people like the sensation, it's kind of fun, but I like going fast, and I want the cars full power as much as possible, but it's there if you want it. I really like the N-Pedal, I absolutely adore one pedal driving, and while I usually use the max default regen, the N-Pedal cranks that even more, and a quirk is that, because it's intended for track use, N-Pedal won't bring you to a complete stop the way that max regen in default will, I wish they'd change that honestly. Dynamics wise, this car has a rear power bias, and if you make a turn and punch the gas you WILL kick the ass out, especially in N mode(which is basically how I have the car every time I drive it, with everything in Sport+ except ESC in sport not off, and suspension in normal (sport+ suspension is harsh)) so it is far livelier than any other EV with big HP and accel numbers out there. And while again, it is not light at 4800lbs, considering the new M5 weighs nearly 6000, there's no shortage of large and heavy performance vehicles these days.

So yeah, I've had the car for several months now, and really enjoy it, and wanted to share my own opinions with you all, for the price to performance ratio of this car is truly, truly stupid, and you're not sacrificing practicality for it. One of the first things I did was throw a car seat in the back, and it's got enough boot space to put my kid's huge wagon+anything else. You really can't buy anything at all comparable for less than double or triple the price. Downside is that there simply isn't that many 5Ns that were allocated to dealers, and at the beginning they were charging over MSRP for them because they could. AND there's no telling that the ICCU may or may not fail, and it'll brick your car if it's not fixed, so that's a downside, that said, going back to the title of this whole post, my Suburu XT also exploded it's transmission and couldn't drive anywhere afterwards either, at least the ICCU is under warranty for a while, and I went through I think 3-4 high pressure fuel pumps on my first gen 335i, too.

We don't have a ~cars area, so hopefully hobbies is the right place, cheers.

I keep thinking about this post from @first-must-burn and the genuinely amazing way he helped one of his family members, and it inspired me to ask this question.

No need to be modest or downplay your efforts in your answer. Feel free to pat yourself on the back and acknowledge the good job you did (even if it feels awkward to do so!).

What are some ways to grow your savings without investing it into the stock market/401k?

In short, I don't want my savings to fund giant corporations. It seems like most mutual funds can't exist without a portfolio of such corporations despite calling themselves green or ethical.

I've been storing funds in CDs or HYSEs but wondering if there are any other avenues.

Hello all, long time listener, first time poster. First time poster because this is a throwaway account as it will have more personal info included than I'd like linked to my main account. The point of this post is to request guidance/advice/ideas from the always incredible, intelligent, and helpful people of Tildes.

The high level points:

1. I am a female 40 year old, for lack of a better phrase, starving artist living in the US. I am single, live alone with my cat in an apartment, and have no debt.
2. I have not held a steady/normal job in over a decade (mental health being a primary reason), my personal income has come from a couple of very small business ventures where I make things by hand, some freelance graphic design, the generosity of friends, and pet sitting. The latter is dead in the water as all my pets were in another state and I just moved in the last 30 days to a place that is much smaller and simply will not have the customer base to do the same, nor am I all that interested in pursuing it here.
3. My primary method of financial support over the last decade was being the homemaker to my now-ex husband up until about two years ago when he informed me he no longer wished to be my husband. Since then my primary financial support was from my now-deceased father, who generously provided me with $2,500 per month to subsist on, with my previously mentioned ventures closing the finances gap as much as possible.
4. Over the decade of being in a single income household and for the last two years subsisting off a "guaranteed" income of $30,000 per year I managed to learn to be extremely frugal wherever possible so as to not spend above my means and keep a roof over my head. I eat once per day, my overall health isn't great but I am attempting to address that, and thus far my "retail therapy" budget to give me a little boost of dopamine has been $50 per month that is generally spent in thrift stores. I wouldn't call it living so much as I'd call it surviving and am often unsure why I bother.

The issue/question at hand:
My father has passed away and with him my primary/only means of support, with his passing I have inherited just over $500,000 in a Traditional IRA. So my primary question is how to minimize tax burden and maximize return on his investments to make them last as long as possible while I figure out the next stage of my life.

I am not opposed to getting a normal/steady job, but this is more difficult to obtain than one would imagine with a decade long gap in employment and an unwillingness to sacrifice the mental health gains I have made and gestures broadly everything else that is going on. There is also the bit of freedom that this amount of money provides that will perhaps allow me to double down on my small business ventures, investing in them/myself at a level that I was unable to do prior and therefore enabling them to become a primary source of support. So there is a thought of setting a budget, both monetary and time, to allow myself to try to grow my businesses first.

TLDR: Single, solo, poor, woman gets $500k pre-tax, how to make the most of it?

The "nobody" in the title doesn't have to be literal -- it can be a battle that very few people know about. The important thing is that it's mostly hidden.

What is the struggle?
Is it hidden by choice?
Do you want more people to know about it? Why or why not?

You're the glue, the leader, the center of gravity, the one making it happen.

Without you, it would probably fall apart, cease to function, or stop.

What is it?
What do you do?
Do people appreciate your role, or is it invisible?

For a while I've had a habit of collecting hobbies and moving from one thing to another. Sometimes I stay in the hobby for a long time, but eventually I move on. Even within a hobby I have some subhobbies that I move between (in TCG's I've moved from MTG to Flesh and Blood to now Riftbound, but I'll still jam some MTG games too of course). I used to be more into weightlifting, now I only go to the gym for chest day because I've been doing rock climbing for a year and have recently picked up archery.

For people who kinda do similar things, what's a favorite hobby you've collected? Have you dropped it or pulled back from it once you found a new hobby? What's your latest hobby that you've been into? Do you still keep your old ones, and how do you balance everything and find new hobbies to try?

Did you fear adverse weather conditions like icy roads? How did you handle them?
Did you initially consider yourself as too incompetent to drive?
Were you afraid of breaking traffic laws?
Were you afraid of getting into an accident?
Did you face any of these situations and how did you handle them?
Are you still afraid of driving?

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.

As the title of the post asked, is there anything that you are no longer a fan of/support?

Feel free to share any experiences you have that made you change your mind on something. These could something smaller such as deciding to no longer support or engage with a brand due to store clerk being a bit rude to you in one interaction, to you disliking the actions or direction taken by a corporation/creator/franchise.

I did want to note that while this thread can obviously veer in to the negative based on the question, it doesn't have to be. You could no longer being a fan of something could be due to your tastes changing over the years, or a life experience making you decide you want to change your habits.

Personally - and keeping it spoiler free - I thought Season 4 was much better than I expected it to be. It felt a lot more sincere and there was just a lot more going on than in some of the other seasons.

Wondering if anyone had any thoughts they want to share?

Let me start off by saying that I'm exhausted by AI hype. Being interested in LLM agent technology (AI agent hereafter for brevity) means skimming over a lot of hype for one or two useful, semi reality based, bits of information. Maybe the part that I find the most frustrating is how effective the hype is. I don't know if there's ever been a hype cycle like this. Probably a big part of the reason for that is the internet has already proven, within living memory for most people, that technological revolutions really can change everything. Or mess everything up. Either way they generate a lot of economic activity.

So this post is not that. I'm not going to tell you about how AI agents are the second coming for Christ. I'm not selling anything.

Fairly early into learning about AI agents I wanted a way to connect to the agent remotely without hosting it somewhere or exposing ports to the internet. I settled on tailscale and a remote terminal and moved on, I rarely used it. Somehow the tiny friction of "Turn on tailscale, open terminal app, connect, run agent" was enough to make it not feel worth it.

I know I'm far from the only person who had the same "I want it remote" thought, the best evidence: OpenClaw. It's just one of those things that everyone naturally converges on.

If you're not familiar with OpenClaw, the TLDR is: Former founder with more money than he'll ever need vibecodes a bridge between instant messenger apps and LLM APIs. Nothing about it is technically challenging or requires solving any particularly hard problems. It almost immediately becomes the fastest growing GitHub repo of all time and is currently at number 14 for number of stars. It blew up the (tech) internet like very few things ever have. Within months he was hired by Open AI.

OpenClaw now does more than just connect messaging and agents, but I believe that one piece is the killer feature. My tailscale terminal solution, combined with a scheduled task or a cron job and some context files could already do all of the things that OpenClaw can do, and countless people had already implemented similar solutions. But I think it was the tiny bit of friction OpenClaw removed that was responsible for a lot its popularity.

I thought that was interesting but I have no interest in the security nightmare that is OpenClaw, or the "sentience" vibe for that matter, so I built my own tool.

Essentially it's just a light secondary harness combined with a bridge between Signal and Claude Code. It does some other things too, things I wished existing harnesses did, some memory and guidelines, automated prompts and reminders to wake the agent up and have it do stuff, some context to give the agent some level of persistence, make it less LLMy, less annoying. None of that is particularly interesting though.

Once I got it working (MVP took less than a day) and started playing with it, the OpenClaw phenomenon made a lot more sense. Somehow having the agent in a chat interface, with almost zero friction (just open the chat and send something) was cooler than it had any reason to be.

I can't explain it any better than that at the moment. Not only was it kinda fun, it lent itself to a whole range of "what ifs". What if it could do X? What if I wrote a tool that gave it Y capability? I've been experiencing that for some time, but somehow agent in your pocket has a different feeling.

Here's an example of a "what if". What if it could do our grocery shopping? I definitely want that. I already had a custom browser tool that I built for agent coding assistance so I was most of the way there. It was just a matter of teaching the agent to login and navigate a website, something they're already trained to do. Some hand holding, a few helper scripts, and an evening's worth of hours later and I had it working. The agent can respond to a shopping request by building a shopping list based on our most recent orders, presenting it to us for approval/edits in a Signal group chat, doing searches for any additional product requests and adding the finalized order to the cart. It could also checkout the order and schedule the delivery time but I'm doing the last 2 clicks manually for the time being. It's an idiot savant, it seems like a bad idea to give it access to my credit card. Maybe eventually.

The fact that I can handle shopping with a couple of signal messages feels effortless in a way that handling shopping by connecting to my PC terminal remotely via tailscale terminal wouldn't have. Especially when I can include people in the loop who have no interest in tailscaling anywhere. Everyone can use messaging apps.

I imagine before long solutions like this will be built in, either in the grocery websites and apps, or into the frontier harnesses themselves. There will probably be agents everywhere, for better or worse. Probably I'll wish that the agents would all fuck off. In the meantime it's exciting how easy it is to get these tools to do useful things.

Could be from a place you visited or moved to. Could be from a community or group you joined.

Whatever it was, there was something new or unfamiliar to you, and you had to wrap your head around that something that you weren't used to.

What was the culture shock, how did you respond to it, and how do you feel about it now?

A loss
A problem
A struggle
An emotion
Something difficult
Something perplexing
Something that takes a lot of effort
Something that doesn't fit neatly into an easy description

What are you working through, and how is it going?

What's something you grew out of/moved on from/phased out?

How do you feel about it now? Fondness? Embarassment? A nostalgic ache?

Why did you end up moving on from it?

Was it a conscious decision, or was it something that happened over time?

What have you tried lately that hasn't quite worked out? Small things like hobbies gone wrong, or social experiences that were slightly awkward.

Sometimes it can be cathartic to both get these things off your chest and to hear what others have struggled with as a reminder that no one is perfect.