I’m thinking of ways to live in better simplicity and with more intentionality. I find this deeply challenging in practice, so I’d love to hear what works for you!

I’m thinking about this from three angles:

• Psychologically, I’m trying to be more satisfied with what I do have rather than wanting to make more money. When I spend on a luxury, I’d prefer that it feel meaningful. I’d like to better control my impulses.
• Financially, I’d like to have lower expenses so that I can save more for meaningful purchases. It also provides some comfort to know I’m living beneath my means.
• Ethically, I’d like to use less electricity (environmental reasons) and also donate more to useful charitable initiatives in my community. Years ago I was influenced by Peter Singer’s essay “Famine, Affluence, and Morality” and still take its principles seriously.

So I’m looking for two categories of advice:

• Ways to spend less money on anything in particular, sacrificing (yes) some luxury.
• Substitutes for expensive activities/experiences/objects that provide the same or more emotional value.

My current lifestyle is relatively simple except that I enjoy traveling a bit too much. I used to fly a lot, which was pricey and bad for the environment. I miss my foreign friends though!

I live in a bustling part of a large city, which is amazing except it means I’m constantly presented with expensive temptations. I like this place and don’t wish to leave, so I’m relying on habits/systems & willpower here.

Examples of things I do already:

• My city is pretty cheap for its amenities. My building is more affordable than most in my neighborhood. (I originally planned to move to New York, but…) It has various comforts, but I’m trying to use the appliances less. It’s hard to keep the AC off in the heatwaves though! And the dryer is so convenient.
• I live in an apartment with a roommate. I enjoy the companionship. It also cuts most living expenses in half. I’ve thought about buying a small condo, but that seems hard to do without raising my monthly payments. I’m getting attached to my neighborhood/area, limiting my options somewhat.
• I ride a bicycle instead of owning a car. I take the bus to work, or sometimes bike (about 25 miles each way). I walk a lot, which lets me see the city up close. I only use ridehailing services once or twice per year. I was thinking of buying a folding bike to cut the commute time in half (train -> bike), but I hesitate to buy a budget one; I’m afraid it’ll break.
• Meals lately are mostly staple ingredients (rice, beans, frozen vegetables, canned fish) and cheaper ready-made meals. I try not to buy anything over 25¢/oz ($4/lb). I think my grocery runs average 15–20¢/oz ($2.40–3.20/lb) at Walmart or Aldi. I have a bunch of bougie preferences I’m trying to get over—fancy pasta sauces and such. I prefer cooking on intuition rather than recipes (impatient). I love restaurants for the experience more than the taste of the food. I kinda miss eating out more often, it’s just so wasteful.
• I love socializing, but the drinks and coffees and lunches and dinners add up fast! Much of my social activity is community organizing and dancing, which is itself inexpensive/free, but that often involves regional train trips and business lunches and miscellaneous weird expenses, so I’m slowly doing less of that in some ways, which is both good and bad.
• Importantly, I’ve been working on being more satisfied with doing less. Not going to every event. Not buying the snack I want. Not seeing faraway friends as much. Not going back to Paris another time. 🙄 Finding ways to frame these changes positively (“going to the things I care about most,” “living with intentionality,” “making friends closer to home”…) is possible but something I continually struggle with.

Whatever your financial station I would be very interested to hear what you do to maximize your happiness on your income and be more satisfied with life’s simple pleasures!

Spoiler discussion for Christopher Nolan's The Odyssey

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.

Hello!

First, some context- I have a very particular way I keep track of my work and take notes throughout my work week. This is currently managed through an ever-growing list of Notion pages. And Notion is great! It does a ton of stuff really well, but it's also suffered from a lot of feature bloat over the years and has just enough oddities to irk me on the daily.

So, I built a thing. I call it True To-do because it's fun to say and I'm okay at software and less okay at marketing. It is an opinionated daily work tracker with a lot of little features:

• You can set a standard template that gets auto-copied to certain days of the week
• Supports infinite nesting and expanding/collapsing of those nested items
• Unfinished work the from the previous day can be auto-copied to new days
• It has various tools like a data roll-up and data controls
• It supports loading itself as an offline desktop app (PWA)
• Has many configurable settings for making the interface go from full to minimal
• Dark theme!

It is also 100% free, has no tracking, no cookies, no ads, doesn't ask for your email, your data does not leave your device, and is pretty performant (better than Notion, at least). It was written heavily with AI, but not by AI - It was directed, reviewed, and corrected by me.

What it does not have is any kind of user account feature. Everything stays on the device and will not transfer between devices unless you manually export and import the data. Maybe I'll add support for that at some point, I'm not sure. It is also only okay on mobile/tablet- this app was really made for desktop.

Anyways, give it a play around. It was purpose built by me for me but love to share the things I make when I think others may get some use out of them as well. I welcome feedback / bug reports / suggestions / etc.

https://hobblyhoy.github.io/TrueTodo-Pages/

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.

I’ve never played the original and am playing through the first game in the remakes and was curious if:

• you generally like the remake series so far?
• the characters had the same personality you imagined now that they’re fully voiced?
• the overall atmosphere/vibe is the same/similar?
• Anything else you’d like to mention as being surprising or disappointing when comparing the two.

Belgian Grand Prix
Circuit de Spa-Francorchamps
July 17-19, 2026

Next race:
Hungarian Grand Prix
Hungaroring
July 24-26, 2026

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!

I was never a wordle fanatic, but I am hooked on this Alphable game now https://geoffpevlin.com/games/alphable/. I also play https://cluesbysam.com/.

Do people know of other web-based (hopefully free) logic puzzles like these? I like the daily format, but wouldn't limit myself to that if there are others that are also interesting.

I've done all of the https://www.rustylake.com/ games too, which I quite enjoyed, but these types of puzzles require a little bit more time investment that I don't really have right now. (I also hated that some of the "logic" in those games did not seem to make sense to me, and I'd have to google the answer to continue with the game.)

I also like https://timeguessr.com/ but don't return to that one as frequently because I can't play it on my phone.

I really like in-person escape games but they are expensive and vary drastically in quality, so was very happy to find these types of games scratch that same itch.

It looks like we’re finally getting some real options in the space, so I’m interested in people’s thoughts and experiences!

I’ve been running a pair of LG 27MD5KL monitors forever, and they’ve been largely great - but they’re really showing their age at this point, and I’m being forced to upgrade either way because my new job requires using a Windows laptop (likely a Dell Pro 14, but TBC), and those old LGs use an esoteric dual link DP variant that only Apple supports. I’ll also be keeping my personal MacBook Pro, so smooth compatibility with both is a must. Use will largely be software work: lots of documentation, lots of terminal windows, lots of dark mode, but some design review work as well where decent colour accuracy helps.

Options I’m seeing at the moment are:

• Asus ProArt PA27JCV
• Asus ROG Strix XG27JCG
• LG 27GM950B
• BenQ MA270S
• Apple Studio Display
• Apple Studio Display XDR

I get the impression that Apple’s the better option where possible, but I’m concerned about compatibility, especially when I don’t directly control the choice of laptop. If anyone has real world experience on that one I’d be interested, especially the difference between “technically works on non-Apple laptops” vs “is an equivalently good experience on non-Apple laptops”.

I’m guessing just using separate inputs for each laptop will be fine on whatever I go for, but I’m open to getting a KVM if needed (L1Techs? I haven’t actually checked how hard it is to find one that supports 2x 5K yet…). Couldn’t immediately see anything that’ll take Thunderbolt input from the Mac and HDMI input from the Windows laptop and push both to Thunderbolt output, which might otherwise have been a way to bridge the Apple display question.

Probably going for 27” 5K rather than 32” 6K, unless there’s a compelling argument for the latter. I briefly tried a Dell 32” 6K a few years back and other than horrible backlight bleed, sitting that close to a 32” display ended up feeling like I was craning my neck rather than moving my eyes to see edge to edge.

So, what do people think would be best here?

Sending up a bat signal for @gary and @ButteredToast - you guys both know your stuff on this one!

Hey there, I’m an uncle to a soon to be 15 year old niece who recently got into sewing and has a starter sewing machine. (Hope it’s ok that I post here!)

I want to get her something for her birthday next weekend that has to do with sewing or similar since that’s what she’s expressed interest in. She’s never really had hobbies before but seems genuinely interested in modifying clothes and up-cycling (I think that’s the term) thrift finds.

Can someone help me with ideas on what I could get her? She is relatively new to things and she lives in Texas (US).

I’m ok spending up to $150. Could go higher as I’ll just split costs with her dad or grandparents if the gift is excellent.

Update: thank you all for the thoughtful suggestions! tildes always comes through with advices/tips/ideas for me! i ended up buying Gingher 8” Fabric Scissors, Kai seam snips (detail scissors?), Clover seam ripper, 3-pack of pink Singer tape measures, and a grumpy cat tote bag. i think i’m going to take her out to the thrift store to grab some clothes she can work on too. next year if shes still into it i think me and her dad will go in on a nice sewing machine someone mentioned in the comments. thanks again everyone!

Right now, I have a Samsung Galaxy A12 phone, which has done everything I need for quite some time. It was bottom of the barrel in the Samsung lineup, and it quit receiving updates of any kind back in November of 2024. For a cheap phone, I've been pleased with it.

My use case is unusual. I rarely use my phone to go online, but on occasion, I am forced to do so. Most of the time I use it to make calls, or send and receive texts. SMS is fine for me. I don't play games on it, though I do use the camera now and again.

One slightly unusual task is tethering. When my internet goes down on my computers at home, the mobile network is often still available, so I tether my desktop to the phone connection. Visible will slow the connection speed tremendously, so I use an app that disguises the tether connection, and I get full speeds. So I need this app to work when the main internet connection goes wonky.

One year and eight months without security updates makes me a little more cautious about using the phone for anything online. I don't use it for bank accounts or credit cards, no instant payments of any kind, and there are no passwords saved within it. Even if I still got updates, I wouldn't use it for any type of financial transactions. I don't even check email with it.

In reality, a dumb phone would probably work for me, but Visible is notoriously picky about Android phones they will accept. And I don't use Apple for anything. No plans to change that.

I have been more and more interested in ditching Google software. I was recently forced to switch to Google Messages, since Samsung is turning their messaging app out to pasture. A Pixel 10a with GrapheneOS is something I'm considering. Visible will accept any modern Pixel phone, so they aren't a problem.

The question is, is any change necessary with how little I use the phone online? Perhaps I should just wait till the battery dies, but that doesn't help me in my efforts to de-Googlize.