Some people here know me, I’ve been open about having been a virgin until I was 24. I didn’t really think about this too much before I had sex, in that there are various skill levels. The person that I lost my virginity to was my age, but she had been having sex for over 10 years. We had a fling for a few months, so for a while she was the only person I was having sex with. I had nothing else to compare that to, and so to me what I was doing with her was the baseline of what sex was. It wasn’t until I started having sex with other people that I realized that she was actually significantly skilled in the area, and was quite a bit above average. So in that way, I lucked out on how I was introduced to sex.

Subsequent sexual partners have been lackluster. For a bit I thought, okay maybe they’re just not experienced even if they are quite a bit older than me and have been supposedly having sex for twenty some odd years. But after more people who claimed to have experience came my way, I started to think okay maybe experience doesn’t matter if you’re just doing the same thing over and over.

I’m going to try to describe what the issue is. Out of the partners that weren’t particularly good in bed, it feels like they can’t move their bodies very well. Like they’re stiff, movement isn’t fluid and they don’t have strong energy, there’s no vigor to them. I came to a theory that if someone can’t dance, that that translates into their performance. Because I think being able to dance, suggests that you have rhythm control, body control, and more explicitly hip control. As well as endurance. The first girl was someone that could dance, so we would dance together a lot and I think my dance ability translated to me being pretty good despite my inexperience. But with women that can’t dance I often find that they struggle to keep up with anything I’m trying to do. Like if I’m trying to set a rhythm they fight against the rhythm, not on purpose, it’s like dancing they just don’t have the rhythm.

Another thing is I last a really long time, like minimum an hour. The first girl was able to keep up with me even as the sessions went on for over two hours. A lot of other women I’ve been with are done by the 20 minute mark. Which to me is just like getting started.

So far this sounds like I’m bragging. But the point I’m getting at is that, I was not physically attracted to the girl I lost my virginity to. While we got along, generally, I also wasn’t super into her personality nor was there that much of an emotional connection from my side anyway. And since then I’ve been with women that I am both physically and mentally attracted to, but because of our lack of sexual compatibility I’m really not as keen on seeing them.

This kind of came into my brain, when I was looking at Reddit posts where people were discussing the former partners of both Ariana Grande and Sabrina Carpenter. Both singers are known for dating unattractive men. So when I saw a user say that, if you listen to how many of their songs are about sex, they likely prioritize sexual compatibility/chemistry above anything else. Which made me realize I think I do too. Maybe it’s just because sex is still a relatively new thing for me, and it’ll dissipate as time goes on. But, I wanted to know if other people were in the same boat.

Title doesn't refer to a literal "itch" (though it certainly can!).

Instead, it's something that's bothered you for a while, or that you've been passively curious about, or that you've been meaning to get to, etc.

What was the itch, and how did you scratch it? How do you feel about it now?

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

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.

I recently have been reconnecting with something from my childhood: the Krosmoz universe! Anyone who was a kid in France between 2004 and 2012 or so either grew up on it or is at least a little bit familiar with it. Most people outside of the country, if they know of it, generally only know of Dofus, the first of their three (actually five (actually eight if you count the dead ones)) tactical MMORPGs, or the derived TV animated series Wakfu, which was picked up on Netflix at one point. But it's massive here. Even today, they're still quite popular and perpetually developed.

As a medium, video games are not generally so closely tied to countries; more than half of their history has been during the era of globalization and the Internet. Even in the past, when you could only buy games in person in a store, people's minds everywhere were nonetheless on games from overseas. Today, games made in Sweden or Morocco have lived on the same storefronts as games made in Venezuela and Australia for a good while, and I'd bet most people don't even think about where the people who make the games they play come from.

I personally think this is a great thing! But the fact that there's something like Krosmoz, that's so unusually localized to one place, makes me curious to know if there's more; and if there is, I want to know what's unique about it, and what it says about its players and makers, too.

I've asked this before on reddit, and I remember being told about Metin2, an originally Korean MMO that was so popular in Eastern Europe that even a decade after the original Korean and US servers were shut down, players from those countries are still updating the game and keeping it alive. This is a different situation from Krosmoz but another fascinating one. It's the kind of thing I wanna know about.

This is an invitation to yap, if you'll oblige me. Do you have anything like that where you're from? A game or game franchise that only people of your culture know, and that you want everyone else to know about? I wanna hear about it!

I posted this once and immediately deleted it to make it shorter. I did not really succeed. Please don't sue me!

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 am forced to use WhatsApp for work. I would prefer to not have the WhatsApp app on my personal android phone. Is there any workarounds or alternative apps? Switching to a different chat network is not an option unfortunately.

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.

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!

This post is mostly going to be incoherent rambling, but I hope this does make some sense and gains engagement from my other fellow Tildes users on here.

I, like many others, participated in the Reddit exodus to a degree after the API changes some years ago. I've been using tildes semi-regularly ever since, but I still frequent Reddit just as much as I used to (however, being much less active in terms of commenting/posting) simply due to the sheer size of the user base.

Of course, since January 20th 2025 (the beginning of Trumps second term), the world has definitely seemed to be in an increasingly state of turmoil ever since. De Minimis exception rules, non-stop changes on tariffs to different countries, the war in Iran, capturing the Venezuelan president (for better or for worse), trying to unite the Western hemisphere under the American flag, unveiling of the Epstein files, Isreal still attempting to ethnically cleanse Gaza, and countless other disputes that have been ongoing such as Russia v. Ukraine, China v. Taiwan, etc.

None of this is relatively good news, nor am I really a fan of any of these actions above, save for perhaps capturing Maduro.

Whenever I scroll through r/worldnews or r/news, it just seems that present day society is literally going on the brink of collapse. I'm just wondering, am I in the wrong to think that most people are living their lives the way they always have, and just hope for the best and they stay relatively unaffected?

I am someone who travels to the US semi-regularly, and if I were to take the word of the average redditor on there, I would safely assume that I am about to be shot on sight by ICE or be captured and waterboarded (slight exaggeration, I hope). And yet when I arrive, people are living their life the way they always have. Perhaps there is a tad more mistrust between citizens, and perhaps a bit more individuals feel more free to be openly racist (these are all assumptions, not stating them as fact), but everything is mostly just functioning the way it always has.

My question is, should I be more on the side that there is going to be significant political and economic reform in the world, or will things play out the way they always have for the 21st century, where everything gets, very slowly, shittier by the day, but things remain decent enough to quell the suggestion of a civil war?

Thanks for reading anyone, and appreciate any thoughts on the subject.

P.S I have no idea how to tag this, so thanks in advance to whoever does end up tagging this post.

Spouse and I are trying to get bids from local solar installers and we'd appreciate some crowdsourced knowledge from Tilderinos. Questions first, then some context...

• In the current market, is "no, your equipment can't talk to the Internet" actually an unreasonable demand?
• Is there a term or phrase we should be using to look for, or guide installers towards, solar setups that fully function without Internet access?
• Are there any equipment types -- microinverters, for example -- that definitely will not work due to architecture?
• Are there battery controllers, or central inverters, that are known to play nicely (read: can be expanded later) with batteries from other manufacturers?

For each installer, we start the conversation with "it's essential that the system work entirely offline, without Internet." We're flexible on nearly everything else: system size (probably ~15kW), number of panels, battery, etc. Our first concern is making sure that a 25-year investment is not dependent on some company's cloud servers; secondly, that we're not inverting our dependency graph by making our electric power reliant on the whims of our ISP. There's also the privacy angle. But we're not looking for a totally off-the-grid setup, just trying not to lock ourselves into a bad purchase.

So far, one third of the installers (3/9) have immediately told us we're unreasonable and to just go away. Two others said "sure!" and ghosted us afterwards. One was a little more forthcoming, saying that the equipment requires periodic connections to the manufacturer for monitoring and they couldn't provide a warranty without it. The last two provided bids, but it's difficult to tell if they're telling the truth given the conflicting info we've seen.

So the Summer Solstice of 2026 concludes the 30th year that spouse and I have been married. We're in the queer bin, no offspring, two cats, and have both had miscellaneous careers, now on the bumpy path to elderhood.

Relationship advice - ups, downs, and all arounds, is a perennial theme of Tildes discussion.

This is your opportunity to throw down your questions about how to manage keeping it together this long.

Full disclosure: I've had two glasses of wine for our intermediate celebration (we decided to have a small one on the actual date since it's a Monday, the blowout is Friday night), so the immediate answers may be a little fuzzy.