Some of you may remember me from another thread, where I hemmed and hawed and fretted my way through trying to navigate my struggling relationship. I thought I'd reached the final chapter, I moved out and established a place for my child and myself. I cut as many ties as I could with my now ex, but of course several threads still remain.

Yesterday (April Fools of course) I found out that they had been cheating on me since last May, at least. Potentially longer. Of course, I'm devastated. I knew they had found someone else already recently, but I thought it was in the last month or two. This new piece of the puzzle has solved so many unanswered questions I've had, while also creating many new ones.

I feel used, financially/emotionally abused, gaslit, and more. I'm still working on processing everything. I'm trying to remain calm for the sake of the kids (especially mine) but it's really, really hard. I know it isn't a reflection on me - I tried everything I could to fix things. It is hard however not feel that utter sense of betrayal in my gut and soul like a knife.

What resources, reading, supports, guides are there for this? I'm just trying to get through today and then I have a three day weekend to work on processing this all.

I've been thinking a lot about LLM assisted development, and in particular why I keep dropping the available tools after a few attempts at using them.

I realized recently that it's taking away the part of software development I enjoy: the creative problem solving that comes with writing code. What's left is code review tasks, testing, security checks, etc. Important tasks, but they all primarily involve heavy concentration, and much less creativity.

Why aren't agents focused on handling the mundane tasks instead? Tell me if I've just introduced a security vulnerability or a runtime bug. Generate realistic test data and give me info on what the likely output would be. Tell me that the algorithm I just wrote is O(n^2).

Those tasks are so much more applicable to matching against existing data, something LLMs should be extremely good at, rather than trying to get them to write something novel, which so far they've been mostly bad at, at least in my experience.

I liked playing Ace Combat since I've been a kid, Ace Combat 2 was one of my favorite PS1 games alongside Crash Team Racing at the time, and I did play AC3 as well but don't remember much of it.

I completely skipped PS2 generations since I was on handhelds instead, so my first interaction with Ace Combat since 3 was ACAH(Yuck) on PS3, but I ended up buying Ace Combat 7 since that was actually a good game, but being bad at committing to one game hasn't allowed me to finish it, with AC8 being announced to come out soon, I decided I should try and focus on clearing AC7.

I never gave it a mind at the mind but since now I'm aware of what Lockheed Martin is, I noticed it when I started up the game the past few days at one of the splash screens at the start of the game, and given that Lockheed Martin's involvement with the current ongoing wars, it's safe to assume that Bandai Namco have had an agreement that most likely has had financial and monetary incentives to license their planes.

licensing weapons and arms aren't particularly a new thing afaik in games, I'm not much of an FPS person myself since I stick with Doom and Bioshock if I want a more "traditional" FPS experience (But prefer things like Ultrakill or Metal Hellsinger) and never been into CoD or other military shooters.

So depending on their license agreement, they either have paid the royalties upfront(Unaware of how licensing typically goes but I assume it's most likely to be this one?) just to have their arms in the game, or they get a portion of their sales. If it is the former then sales of the game do not directly(as in unless sequels or relicensing occur) contribute to their bottom lines, if it is the latter then every sale contributes to wars.

Posting this in places like reddit or other gamer spaces I'd imagine would elicit a "Don't bring politics to my games" kind of response.

I'm curious what Tildes users would think of this, I think that would make pirating these games or buying them secondhand(impossible on Steam though Steam family could count) be more ethical than buying them in a way, though I imagine some may advocating for separating the art from... whom the artist pays?

This is the "animation" (video, image). It is the circle on the upper left.

The watch is a very cheap one, a Chinese concoction called "Skmei El Luminous Dual Time". It looks great for my taste, but the insanely flashy, continuous animation is unpleasant. I bought it online, and the animation didn't look as annoying in the videos as it is in real life.

Yes, I know most people wouldn't care about that, but I'm neurodiverse etc.

The official manual makes no mention of the "animation", and asking AI was useless. There is a real possibility that the animation is hardcoded, in which case I will probably keep the watch as jewelry for special occasions.

Perhaps someone has the same watch and can help me out?

Thanks!

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.

Tildes is a very serious site, where we discuss very serious matters like april fools day, trans day of visibility and bees. Tags culled from the highest voted topics from the last seven days, if anyone was out of the loop.

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!

Here is the schedule for the upcoming year

Last week in August - Cats Cradle by Kurt Vonnegut,

Last week in September - Stories of Your Life and Others by Ted Chiang

Last week in October - The Poisoners Handbook: Murder and the Birth of Forensic Medicine by Deborah Blum,

Last week in November - We are Legion (We are Bob) by Dennis Taylor,

December break for the holidays.

Last week in January - Fire on the Mountain by Terry Bissen,

Last week in February - The Truth by Terry Pratchett

Last week in March - The Metamorphosis by Kafka,

Last week in April - The Tea Girl of Hummingbird Lane by Lisa See,

Last week in May - Pnin by Nabokov,

Last week in June - How to Become the Dark Lord and Die Trying by Wexler,

Last week in July - A Psalm for the Wild Built by Becky Chambers,

Last week in August - Light From Uncommon Stars by Ryka Aoki

Last week in September - Dr. No by Ian Fleming

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 figure the title is good enough, but, I just want to upload/make a spreadsheet in an .ods format so others can view it. Not edit it, not have to sign in to view, but still has sorting options or whatnot. And in the .ods format.

I'm seeing a few options online, but it seems more that they offer viewing but not sorting (which is a huge aspect of spreadsheets), or no importing, or doesn't support .ods.

So I can keep searching and I'm sure something is out there, but does anyone already use a site for these requests?

I've had the itch lately to play Minecraft again. I originally played on an account my brother gave me in alpha and used that for years before he asked for it back so he could do the account migration in to his Microsoft account to avoid losing it. Microsoft sadly doesn't do regional pricing for Minecraft so I don't think I'll be picking up a copy again soon and will probably wait till my kids are older and I pick up some copies to play with them.

I realized that the game has changed a lot since I last played, and when last played with my friends (probably 5-6 years ago at this point) I remember being a bit lost with all the new things that had been added from when I last played. While it's cool seeing new stuff being added to the game, I also realized that if I were to get Minecraft I would probably get it specifically to play older versions of the game. I saw there was a whole subreddit of people playing older versions of the game over at r/GoldenAgeMinecraft which also showed me that there are mods that essentially fork development from earlier points in Minecraft's history which I think would be cool to explore when I do get the game.

I was curious if any tilders play older versions of Minecraft?
What draws you to that particular version?
Do you play the current release version of Minecraft at all?

Also, anything older Minecraft you felt like sharing, please do. I've been watching some older Minecraft videos on Youtube in my second monitor while I work today.

Edit: I wanted to add this here since I found this out after posting. It turns out that Minecraft's Java edition has a demo mode, and the check for how long you've played the demo mode was added in release version 1.3. So I can go ahead and create a demo account and play the old versions for Free: https://minecraft.fandom.com/wiki/Demo_Mode#Trivia
I do plan on buying the full game eventually, but this will definitely scratch the itch I've been having for a long time and I will look at installing that on my computer once I've tackled my big work items.

Edit 2: I found that you can use the Betacraft launcher to access these older versions as well. I wish I had found that previously as I spent a solid ~30 minutes fiddling with my Win 10 LTSC computer getting the Windows Store and other services installed and it still wasn't letting me properly launch the old Minecraft versions.

I've always made rice in a pot on the stove and that's served me very well but I also like to steam vegetables, dumplings (usually from frozen), and eat oats for breakfast. After a bit of research, I've determined that I'm in the market for a rice cooker, an appliance I have never owned and have 0 experience with. Like most kitchen gadgets, I find that the market is oversaturated with options and my attempts at research have led me to some wildly different conclusions. Do I stick with brands I know like Cuisinart or KitchenAid? Do I spring for the fancy Japanese brands? Or do I cheap out and then upgrade when the device burns out? How large of a volume do I need? Are the fancy steamer inserts worth it? What if I want to steam rice and veges in one go? And so on

For my personal use case, I make rice 3-4 times per week easily. I need to be able to make enough rice for 4-6 adults max in one sitting. I would like to make a decent amount of dumplings in one go, say enough to get 4-6 adults started while I steam a second round. I want to be capable of steaming veggies and making oats. I want it to have a removable insert for cleaning. I'd like it to be fairly easy to use. Are these common wishlist items for a rice cooker? I am really not sure

Beyond my use case, I'm interested in what people own and use. Do you use it often? Any regrets? What other foods can I make with this gadget?

Edit: I appreciate everyone who has weighed in so far. I did want to add that I prefer not to add an instant pot. Not to discount anyone's experience but I have had bad luck with them (I've had a pair that burned out in the warranty period, one on its first use) and already have a slow cooker and pressure cooker cooker I am very happy with. I know they're amazing and do all kinds of different things but I'm interested primarily in a rice cooker that can handle a few extra tasks

Do you know any other playlists list like Absolutely understand guitar or The Secret Life of Machines?

Basically any Bob Ross like content of a person calmly teaching a topic.
I find some of this content through archive.org, but their search is not the best.

What have you been listening to this week? You don't need to do a 6000 word review if you don't want to, but please write something! If you've just picked up some music, please update on that as well, we'd love to see your hauls :)

Feel free to give recs or discuss anything about each others' listening habits.

You can make a chart if you use last.fm:

http://www.tapmusic.net/lastfm/

Remember that linking directly to your image will update with your future listening, make sure to reupload to somewhere like imgur if you'd like it to remain what you have at the time of posting.

Both sw and hw.

SW is usually hard to use, offering no meaningful settings or making them hard to get to with meaningful QoL features simply absent. Search in any kind of mainstream product is an absolutely excellent example.

If someone does need something other than the default workflow or encounters any error then that is too bad for them.

For a lot of hw products there is little to no meaningful choice alongside absent repair options. The best example is probably smartphones which are excessively thin bricks with a charging port, camera bump, sealed in battery and hard to impossible to change os.

Features decreasing longevity and contributing to waste(plug in for global warming) are simply accepted and even welcomed by end users for bizzare reasons.

For now there are still workarounds depending on how much effort you want to expend with that effort sometimes being truly excessive.

I'm used to browse the web without JS on my phone. (It's old, battery degraded.) Recently I noticed that Tildes is broken without JavaScript. Contracting/expanding threads doesn't work, as well trying to reply to a comment.

Is it possible to fix that? Maybe expanding all comments when JS isn't available and opening the reply form in a new page?

I have found myself confused about glue stick on the heat bed. I always have some applied, either reusing some from a previous print or applying it fresh. I manage a small print shop and have seen many prints fail, even on nice textured PEI plates, because no glue was used. I’ve seen prints fail only where there was no glue under the part many times. Yet I frequently hear from people, face to face, that they never glue. I’ve seen these people’s prints fail because they don’t use glue.

There are even special plates you can buy (SuperTack plates) that stick extra well to PLA to absolve you of the need for glue. But I find these coating on these plates to be too fragile.

Overall it seems like there’s a large contingency of people risking their prints and purchasing accessories to save what is maybe 20 seconds per print (that’s including periodic cleaning as you can reuse the glue many times). How do Tildes people feel about this? I teach a 3D printing class and tell people to always glue as they have nothing to lose. But maybe I’m missing something.

I haven't really seen any videos or articles that explain how it works, what each component does, or like... what kind of fuel it uses, or what an SRB is or you know like the actual numbers and the math and such. I don't know much about rockets but I would like to learn. the official nasa website and youtube channel seem to be... dumbed down and also doesn't actually explain much about Artemis II except for showing images and videos taken from it/of it

(This post turned out longer than I planned. TLDR: I’m thinking about going to university at forty and I’m wondering if anyone has any experience with this and would like to share those?)

For those of you who would like to know more background:

I grew up in a dangerous household which is why I moved out from my mom’s house at seventeen and immediately started working. I worked as a freelancer and started some small businesses, mostly in advertising and technology.

About ten years ago (at 30yo) I felt both advertising and technology were not the places I wanted to work in. These were just the places that were accessible for me at the time in order to make a living and survive. But when the survival mode subsided, I found they didn’t fulfil me personally.

I had a daughter on the way and wanted to find a way to make more of a positive impact on the world. Because I had no idea how, I started interviewing people who I looked up to. People who are very aware of the issues that the world faces but are not paralysed by it. People who try to fix the biggest issues of our time.

Very unexpectedly, those interviews became a big hit. The response was so overwhelming, that it has now been my full time job for ten years. I’ve interviewed 150 beautiful people, published two books in the process and I’m working on the third.

In the past 6 months the financial stress of running this whole thing has lowered dramatically and we have found people who are helping us with the whole practical side of running this thing/interview series/podcast/art project/… (I don’t know what to call it). Which made me think about what’s next.

When I was seventeen, all my friends were at university. I loved having them over and talk about what they learned. At the time, I hoped my business would become so successful I would be able to afford private tutoring in everything that peaks my curiosity. That didn’t happen :).

The interviewing I do sometimes feel like private tutoring. I have learned an immense amount from these people. Albeit not really in a structured manner.

On of my favorite YouTubers had similar issues growing up as me, and recently posted a video where he announced he was going to college. It made me think about my own life. Maybe I don’t have to stay ‘a dropout’/“selfmade” (I disagree with that term but many people call me by it anyway).

My life is safe enough now to go to university. I can afford it, and I believe getting a formal education would very much challenge me, enrich my work and my writing and could maybe even be fun?

This is a long winded way of asking if anyone here has any experience in going to university at a later age. As I stated in the title, I am almost forty, and as much as this idea excites me, it also scares me and some relevant stories would maybe help in knowing what to expect.

Thanks for reading this far and sharing whatever wisdom you’re willing to share.

Welcome all to our weekly (ish) gardening group discussion!

Feel free to discuss anything related to gardening, beginner or advanced, challenge or success.

‘Seed’ questions?

1. How long have you been gardening?
2. What’s the best pearl you have learnt?
3. What are you worried about happening this year?
4. When in the season do you enjoy gardening most?

last session

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!

My wife and I just had a baby and are now soaking it all in on maternity and paternity leave. Currently, my wife still has a few weeks of recovery before she is mobile so we have a lot of "tv time" on our hands and are struggling to find things to watch. I was hoping Tilderinos might be able to make some suggestions to fill our sleepless days and nights! It doesn't have to be current and we have a range of borrowed streaming logins so the world is your oyster!

I've added some recent favorites from each of us to give you an idea of our preferences, but don't feel like you need to follow those if you are really excited to share something!

Me:
Shogun
Hilda
Good Omens
The Great Pottery Throwdown
What We do in the Shadows
Bad Sisters
Yellowjackets
Sex Education
Alone

Her:
Gilmore Girls
Outlander
Sullivan's Crossing
A Discovery of Witches
My Life with the Walter Boys
Emily In Paris
Valeria
XOXO Kitty

Both:
Great British Bakeoff
Severance
Clarkson's Farm
Designing the Hebrides
The Office
White Lotus
The Last of Us
Winx Saga (weirdly :) )
The Good Place
Younger
Brooklyn 99
Bridgerton

I've got a group of people at work with whom I started a games lunch club. Sometimes we also try to make games happen in the evening after work, or on a weekend. I noticed that some of the guys often use these terms:
"I have to ask the boss."
"I got permission! I can go to the after-work game."
Mind you, I think these are also the guys who have kids. For transparency, I do not have kids, but I do have a partner and dogs.
So, what do others think of this line of thinking? These are the 3 options that I always think about:

Option 1: These guys will use their spouse as a convenient excuse to say they don't feel like going to the event. "It's not me. I wanted to. But she calls the shots." I find this pretty silly. Just be honest. Why lie and, worse, pull your spouse into your lie?

Option 2: Shouldn't relationships be more equal? There should not be a "boss". You should not need "permission". Just be accountable and responsible. Prioritize your family over a game, and just say it. "Sorry, can't make it. Family commitments." This is totally ok. If you want to go, but know you have a previous commitment, and you have to ask your spouse if you can bail out of the previous commitment to play a game, I think you should probably make that decision yourself. She's not your mom, she's your partner in life! You should probably skip the game.

Option 3: They are saying it in jest. They may think saying it like that is funny and it implies they prioritize their family (a good thing).

In general, these types of phrases remind me of "happy wife, happy life" or "yes, dear" which I associate with something a senior citizen from a different generation may say. I thought my generation (millennial) was over that and had more egalitarian relationships where the couple is a team.

What do others think? It's hard to rely tone in text-only, so I will just say I'm writing this not out of frustration or anger, but just because I found it interesting and sometimes I like thinking of these things and seeing how others perceive them.

I used to really value the art of essay writing. There seemed to be such a richness in the different ways people would construct arguments, structure those arguments, then deliver those arguments stylistically, not just from the perspective of being persuaded as a reader but also from the perspective of seeing how a given writer thinks, relates to the living tradition of language, and understands the world conceptually. But it's basically lost most of its meaning to me in this age of LLMs. The reality is, LLMs are capable of writing texts that, if you gave them to a seasoned reader 5 years ago, they'd say it was well written and indicative of a truly thoughtful mind. Even if there currently exist certain tells with LLMs, those styles certainly existed in different ways in real human writing beforehand. Now, those perfectly reasonable set of styles are verboten and we have to dedicate half our deep focus to figuring out whether, or to what extent, an essay or article was written by AI. It's difficult to enjoy, let alone care, about essay writing and the writers behind them now.

I can still find value in books, though, because they were written in the past and I don't mind never reading any non-scientific book published after 2022 if it comes down to it.

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?

This is a recurring post to discuss programming or other technical projects that we've been working on. Tell us about one of your recent projects, either at work or personal projects. What's interesting about it? Are you having trouble with anything?

I've been working on an ocean life repository website for work, and I found myself randomly rambling about sharks because they've always been such a fascinating example to me of how evolution can keep a very recognizable blueprint while splitting into a ridiculous range of lifestyles.

A whale shark, a thresher shark, an angelshark, a tiger shark, a goblin shark, and a reef shark all still read instantly as "shark", and yet they're doing such different things that it almost feels wrong. Filter-feeding giants, ambush predators, open-water hunters, deep-sea weirdos, tail-whip specialists. All while still sticking to this unmistakable shark... ness?

I've been trying to pin down what I even mean by that "blueprint". Not just body shape exactly, but some deeper structural identity that survives a lot of diversification. Other groups feel a bit like this too. Felines, canines, birds… they can branch into very different niches, sizes, and behaviors while still feeling strongly constrained by a common template. A tiger, a lynx, and a house cat are all very clearly "cat". Wolves, foxes, and chihuahuas are very clearly "dog". Canaries, hawks, parrots, and hummingbirds are all still "bird".

It fascinates me how common this is in evolution: nature finding one robust structure and then radiating outward in very different directions without losing the core design. Not the most morphologically extreme variation possible, maybe, but variation under a very conserved plan.

Sharks just feel like one of the wildest examples of that.

So: what's everyone's favourite shark, and why?

Mine is probably either the lemon shark or the thresher shark because of how smart they are. Lemon sharks are fascinating for their social behavior and learning, then threshers are incredible both for that absurd tail and for feeling like such a weirdly specialized, clever branch of the shark blueprint.

Tildes is a very serious site, where we discuss very serious matters like hiring, sora and three cheers. Tags culled from the highest voted topics from the last seven days, if anyone was bemused.

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!

Hey folks,

My apologies but you've rolled a nat 1 on your stealth check (the D&D kind...) as today you have disadvantage.

If you are trans, including all sorts of folks under the broader umbrella, please, if you choose, take this moment to be visible, share something that brings you joy, gender euphoria or just small happinesses.

You are valid and loved even when this world does not feel validating or loving

(⁠⁠˘⁠︶⁠˘⁠⁠)⁠.⁠｡⁠*⁠♡

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!

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.

hey there tildes. i’m moving out of texas in august no matter what and am trying to decide between chicago and portland. i was wondering if anyone here has lived in either (or both) locations and could help me decide by sharing their experiences.

i’m currently in texas and by the time i move, i will have only been here 1 year but this was always supposed to be a temporary stop for a job (that is very much not working out due to the owner of the company — i’ve posted about it a few months ago and struggle with it in my mind to this day).

i’ve moved around a bit, both in the same cities and across several states, over the past 5 years. im tired of moving and starting over, so im really going to focus on making the next place work for at least 5 years. the world is too chaotic for me to pretend to see farther out than that.

i had been reading and watching a lot of videos about chicago over the past month or two and now wondering if i should give it a try? i just assumed i would move back to portland by default because i liked it well enough and now im not sure if i should fall back to something familiar or try again somewhere else.

just want to say that i know moving wont magically make my life great and i know i will have to put in a lot of work to make everything work regardless. greener grass and all that.

portland

i’ve lived in portland before (2 years) and visited many, many times in the 7 years before moving there. i liked it for the most part.

things i didn’t like (mostly my opinion/experience)

• PNW gray, dreary weather for many months. im prone to bouts of severe depression and it’s a lot of work to keep healthy during the dark months. was in for seattle for 7 years prior to living in portland so i was maxed out with the gray perhaps.
• cost of living is kind of high for the size of city and offerings
• it’s a very slow, sleepy city that feels more like a very big town than a small city. sometimes i liked this about the city (less traffic, crowds) and sometimes i didnt (less “things going on”, especially later at night)
• the sheer amount of unsheltered people and seemingly no solution or even progress. when i lived there, it was really, really bad (2021-2023) and i’ve read that it’s actually gotten worse since ive left. it’s heartbreaking.

things i did like

• green year round, even if it’s gray and winter. beautiful outdoors/hiking, swimming in the river
• proximity to seattle (i have friends there)
• much more agreeable politics for me (Leftists everywhere)
• great food options, fun bars, interesting shops
• very bike friendly (newly into biking, was not when i lived there)
• decent public transit
• relatively friendly people though i did struggle with making deeper connections
• very positive towards folks who are queer or generally nontraditional. that’s important to me
• seems like a lot of creative folk live here

chicago

i’ve never been to chicago. i’ll visit in june to check it out. i also don’t know anyone there. this isn’t a huge deal since i have done this kind of move (only visiting right before moving and not knowing anyone) i guess 3 times now.

reasons i think i will like it

• liberal city
• great public transit
• big, dense city
• diversity
• seemingly decent cost of living
• people say midwesterners are friendly (?)
• job opportunities just by the fact that it’s such a huge city

things that are/may be negative

• brutal winters. i am not used to real winters. seattle/portland had very mild winters and even denver’s were honestly not bad at all. i hear lots of talk about chicago winters.
• crime. no, i don’t think i will be regularly mugged or killed like the US media makes it sometimes seem, but compared to everywhere i’ve lived before, it’s has a higher violent crime rate.
• friends/community. i’m in my mid 30s and it’s harder to make friends the old i get and that’s sort of my number one goal each time i move to a new city. also never really had “community” and would really like to have that in my life.
• politics. i know that portland is generally much more left and chicago is more generic democrat. this isn’t the end of the world and i don’t expect everyone to be as far left as i am but i want to be able to live in the same reality as my community.

huge wall of text, i know, so thanks for those that read it. i’m not great at organizing my thoughts in these posts, but i’m just tryin’ to figure stuff out!

if anyone has anything they want to share based on my likes/dislikes and your experience, please do! i really enjoy reading what the folks here have to say about things.

I'm looking for some recommendations. I'm not a voracious reader, so just about anything you can recommend will be new to me.

I'm not sure how to describe the genre I'm after, which is really why I'm here. I just got done binging Petscop on YouTube; the surreal and Lynchian story telling coupled with the dark subject matter really sucked me in. I'm also somewhat enthralled by some of the higher quality Backrooms content.

I'm interested in short stories or novels.

Edit: sorry for not tagging. I completely forgot!

Japanese Grand Prix
Suzuka Circuit
March 26-29, 2026

Next race:
Miami Grand Prix
Suzuka Circuit
May 1-3, 2026

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.

For context, I live in the tropics and get a lot of sunlight for most of the year outside of monsoon season.

I was recently chatting with some coworkers and one of the mentioned baking cookies on their dashboard during the summer, and I remember my brother mentioning doing that when he lived in Arizona. That is something I could probably do here, but we always keep a sunshade up in our car so it isn't incredibly hot when we get inside.

This got me thinking about solar ovens since I remember seeing a video of someone using one to cook online awhile ago, and I was curious if anyone here has one or has any experience using one and if it was worth it or if they would have any recommendations.

I relatively recently reinstalled my OS (distro-hopping to Fedora KDE) and as I was installing my various everyday programs, I began to wonder whether there were any solid competitors to VSCode in the space other than IntelliJ products (which I strongly dislike compared to VSCode already). I've used VSCode for a while, but I've definitely noticed my experience with the app getting a little bloated and overwhelmed. But I'm not keeping my finger on the pulse of new IDEs, so I don't know if there's anything new (or at least a solid alternative of some sort) out there that people are switching to.

I'm on Linux, so nothing Mac-exclusive. I know VSCode's extension library is probably hard to match given its popularity, but I'd hope for an alternative that at least has potential to have extensions to cover lesser-known languages and file formats for me. I liked the look and feel of VS Code when I switched to it years ago, so I'm all for apps with similar vibes, but I'd like something that feels faster and more focused.

Please don't recommend vim. I've already heard of vim, and if I wanted to switch to it I would have already.

Looking Back on Temple of Elemental Evil

My table wrapped up T1-T4 Temple of Elemental Evil a few months ago, and I decided to take a break before moving on to I6 Ravenloft to play some video games for a bit. It's a good thing, too, because there's been several hospitalizations and deaths so far this year, but that's a topic for elsewhere.

After having finished it, I can confidently say that I don't really get all the hype T1-T4 gets in this day and age. Perhaps when it was new, but I still see people today lauding its greatness. It was... fine. T1 had a very strong start, no real complaints there, but as the book went on it meandered more and left a lot to be desired in the third and especially fourth floors of the dungeon. I've heard rumors that Gygax was unable to finish it in time due to being pulled away for TSR business often, so he gave all his notes to Mentzer to complete the work. I would believe it, personally. I've also since been told that the campaign book has an errata, so perhaps that fixes a lot of our issues with it, but I've not read it; no real interest in running this again.

The Upcoming Ravenloft Run

Moving past that, though, we'll be starting back up on April 11th with the group's first batch of characters going to the castle representing Ravenloft to have dinner with the Count; some of them received a letter inviting them over to congratulate them on their work within the region and on the power they've gained. The players know what they're getting into, but the characters don't. Joining us this go around are:

• Rowan Human Magic-User 7 (~66k XP)
  • Henchman Freya, Human Fighter 5 (~18k XP)
  • Henchman Rikka, Human Fighter 5 (~18k XP)
• Iskandar, Human Magic-User 8 (~106k XP)
  • Henchman Thorgisl, Human Fighter 2 (~2k XP)
• Ser Duncan, Human Paladin 6 (~55k XP)
• Melceth, Human Cleric 7 (~55k XP)
• Elowyn, Elf Fighter 5 / Magus 5 (~55k XP)

Looking Ahead to the New World

Regardless of what the results of the Ravenloft module are, there will then be a time skip of a couple or few years before a portal to a new setting, Jovian, will be made available to the group; a planet with two suns--a very large, incredibly bright one representing Bahamut and a much smaller, dimmer one representing Tiamat--that is bathed in an eternal twilight. Two major themes I aim to hit with this setting are reclamation and perseverance.

To go along with the change in setting, I am also planning on making other changes to the game. We are:

• finally getting rid of the gnome
• retaining the half-ogre
• adding the mul, which are a half-human/half-dwarf race from Dark Sun
• removing the Assassin class
• adding the Runecaster class
• replacing the base Cleric class with a specialty priest for each of our 17 deities
• allowing halflings to be Illusionist in the absence of the gnome
• allowing mul to be Occultists, a custom class of my making
• allowing half-orcs to be a Magus, another custom class of my making, in the absence of the Assassin

What have you been listening to this week? You don't need to do a 6000 word review if you don't want to, but please write something! If you've just picked up some music, please update on that as well, we'd love to see your hauls :)

Feel free to give recs or discuss anything about each others' listening habits.

You can make a chart if you use last.fm:

http://www.tapmusic.net/lastfm/

Remember that linking directly to your image will update with your future listening, make sure to reupload to somewhere like imgur if you'd like it to remain what you have at the time of posting.

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.

This is a recurring post to discuss programming or other technical projects that we've been working on. Tell us about one of your recent projects, either at work or personal projects. What's interesting about it? Are you having trouble with anything?

You know the trope: an epic fantasy world with magic materials that have strange properties or give people superpowers or what have you. It seems half of the time, this material is a type of crystal with some kind of electric power, and the other half of the time it's a type of metal that's basically steel, but stronger or something. The main examples that come to mind are Marvel, where you have the Soul Stones, Adamantium, and Vibranium.

Are there any other cool types of materials to use for this type of resource? Like maybe an obscure type of material that certain scientists study, but the general public doesn't know much about?