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?

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What are your favourite go-to songs at karaoke? Trying to steal ideas from you guys before I go next time.

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Modern karaoke places are pretty affordable these days , and have a good selection of songs. If you've never been or haven't in a long time, would love to encourage you to go try and report back your thoughts.

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If anyone else uses MeshCore (or meshtastic), what has your experience of it been? What are your thoughts about the future of the project with the drama? I don’t think it will be a big deal, I suspect it will blow over without a large fracture but it’s very much a guess rather than considered view.

Tildes is a very serious site, where we discuss very serious matters like infowars, framework.laptop 13 and web.small. Tags culled from the highest voted topics from the last seven days, if anyone was studious.

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I’ve bought enough digital comic bundles now that they’re starting to take up a decent chunk of storage space.

What I’d love to do, if possible, is losslessly compress them all down to their minimum sizes, in the same way that FLAC does with music. Is this a thing? And if so, what’s the best way to do it?

If lossless compression isn’t possible, is there a lossy compression that’s effectively lossless in that I won’t be able to tell the difference anyway? Lossless compression gives me good piece of mind, but the storage savings from an invisible lossy one are honestly quite appealing too.

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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!

Finale of season 4 spoilers here. You have been warned that people will discuss spoilers here. Don't blame me if you are spoiled of things that happen all the way to the end of season 4, which premiered today.

Anybody else watch the Season 4 Finale and just blown away by how it ended? I was NOT expecting a full PTSD Mark episode to end with him agreeing to let Thragg use the planet as a breeding planet. Its such a smart, awful way to have him make a morally compromised decision and come to terms with Thragg. Also the mid credits scene of Allan being told to use the Scourge virus! Amazing television and i can't wait to see what they do next.

Edit: thank you to whomever added the tags for me. I am usually just a lurker and appreciate someone flagging this post appropriately! I was too excited to get my post up and see what people had to say!

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!

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Please just try to provide fair warning of spoilers if you can.

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

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

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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 have been gifted a tiny bit of VPN quota from a relative to allow me to upload my beatsaber creations. Its been the most important thing for me to put out, had found a very kind community, was known-ish in it. I spent multiple weeks working on one of the projects i had planned, it was the only thing do to daily. Since it was finished life's been nothing after nothing after nothing. Fear, stress, depression, power infrastructure might get hit, planning for loss of power, loss of water, loss of food.
Constant stream of people asking for internet in news website comments. On the verge of crying 80% of the time.
I'm not gonna buy atrociously prices VPNs, even in this state people are scamming eachother with fake VPNs.
I miss life, life's been on pause for more than a month. the best describer of life is that it's on pause, that's all.
I was never at risk for depression, my friends who were now have it and struggle with it.
I have lost weight and gained a few more white hairs tho.
I love everyone and everything, i wish to get back to life.

Will be seeing you hopefully in a better state.
-Pooya (slabs37)

edit 2026/4/14:
got connected via another paid vpn, don't think this one will last long either. i put the wrong url, because ofcourse i did...

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?