My partner and I have long been on the fence about whether or not to have a child. Now we're approaching middle age, it feels like it's a 'now or never' decision point, and ... well, I'm still torn.

On the one hand, I see the state the world is in. I'm keenly aware of the latest climate projections and what they mean (I also know enough to know how much we can still improve things if we decide to). I'm afraid of escalating instability and societal strife. What if I can't get my medications? I don't know how I'd go on even without a child in the picture. I still struggle to accept the world as it is, which is quite a bit bleaker than it was portrayed to me growing up. I spent years of my life wishing I was not born. How could I bring a child into that circumstance?

On the other hand, I'm really, really good with kids (and teenagers!) and find relationships with them really rewarding. I love spending time with my nieces, nephews, and friends' kids, and it leaves me wishing I could also shape a human with the values and priorities that are most important to me - stewardship, patience, music. I don't want the religious wingnuts to be the only ones shaping the next generation! My partner and I have a lot of privileges and would be able to offer a lot to a child, from quality education, to a fantastic extended family, to multiple powerful citizenships / passports. Hell, our parents would even move in to help us out with childcare for at least the first few years. You can't ask for much more than that.

Obviously this is a big question, and it's one my partner and I are talking about extensively. I'm also going to return to counseling soon to piece through things.

I'm certain that others on Tildes have also navigated this question. Do any of my thoughts resonate with you? What did you decide and why? Are you happy with your choice?

And has anyone adopted? Adoption is the dark horse here. Once upon a time that was my preferred route, but now that I've spent a lot more time reading about the risks and realities I've cooled on it a bit. I am certain I can deal with many challenges of raising a child, but not stuff like oppositional defiance or connection disorders, which occur at ~2x the rate in adopted children, many of whom have trauma. They deserve love too, but unfortunately I have limits due to my own mental health troubles. And all of that is to say nothing of the often sketchy or uncomfortable legal and societal circumstances of adoption.

I deeply appreciate any and all thoughts and experiences you take the time to share.

I've only watched the 1995 movie before, so it was a pleasant surprise this closer adaptation turned out to be straight crime drama with dense political intrigues and social commentary. The world feels more detailed and not just backdrop for philosophical musing, and so the questions being raised are more multi-faceted.

A particular highlight for me is the child-trafficking /ghost dubbing subplot. Not only does it further blur the lines between artificial and organic intelligence, but does so in a way that put more emphasis on the ethical dimension and not leaving it abstract.

Another example is her court statement questioning whether her shooting the kid or whoever brainwashed him in the first place should be more responsible for his death. The philosophical question is whether the death of a person should be marked when their mind or their body ceased to function, but the context of this being a defense for police unlawful killing gave me second thoughts.

Major's more lively characterization here also makes for an interesting contrast especially regarding her final act. In the 1995 version, she was morose since the beginning and just generally passive overall, so I interpreted her merging with the Puppet Master as due to being coerced, or her not very attached to living to begin with and so this is akin to a suicide on her part.

However, this version of Major is sexually active and enjoys indulging in life many pleasures. Crucially, merging (which was heavily implied to be analogous to digital procreation) was her choice, which makes that final decision more as embracing the call to adventure and choosing to enjoy new experiences, hence more life affirming.

Most of the political conspiracies went over my head though so if anyone can help explaining that side of the plot to me that would be great.

The first day of BlizzCon is happening. A lot of trailers popping and news spreading.

What are your thoughts? Ideas? Will you be playing their upcoming new titles?

• Starcraft (New Shooter coming 2030)
• Diablo 4 Expansion + Diablo 5 Teaser (2029)
• Overwatch new Hero
• Heroes of the Storm new Hero
• Hearthstone new Expansion pack (The Black Empire)
• World of Warcraft Midnight Eclipse Update Patch
• World of Warcraft Forever (Classic +)

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.

Spanish Grand Prix
Madring
September 11-13, 2026

Next race:
Azerbaijan Grand Prix
Baku City Circuit
September 24-26, 2026

Family league was foiled, so couple of us are just looking for randoms to help fill out a Yahoo league. There was a few members active on here during the season last year so figured there might be some interest.

Was originally thinking of solely a Tildes fantasy football league but don't think there's enough people for that lol

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.

Every generation has their "I remember when I heard about _____" event. If you were old enough to know what was going on in the world in 2001, you probably remember finding out about the attacks. What were you doing? How did you find out? What do you remember from that day?

So, for about 3 years now, the only game I pretty much play has been Slay the Spire. I have about 650 hours on the first game and almost 400 hours on the 2nd one (which came out in march of this year...). I recently beat (again) A20 with all 4 characters and A10 on all 5 characters in STS2.

I have tried playing other roguelikes, but I always come back to StS because it's the only one that is 1) a difficult enough challenge 2) fun 3) turn based combat 4) intellectually challenging 5) playable with a controller

I tried Balatro, Dicey Dungeons, Slice and Dice, Darkest Dungeon, Vampire Crawlers, Brotato, TFT, Binding of Isaac, Hades, Gungeon...

I liked them all, but none of them provide all my 5 criteria, really.

You guys have any recommendations?

Just wanted to start another general cycling discussion thread, this time about longer rides.

I did my first metric century (100km) ride last Saturday, as part of an organized event here in the Bay Area. The ride took us through Marin county, which is the region just north of the Golden Gate bridge for those unfamiliar, and it was absolutely beautiful the whole way. The ride itself was wonderfully organized and supported: there were rest stops / feed stations every 20 miles or so, stocked with really great food, water, and sport drink mixes. There were also medics riding the course and support vehicles to help with mechanical issues, or to give you a lift back to the start if you had to tap out.

It was my first time doing a longer ride like this. I only signed up for it about 6 weeks ago and I am so glad that I did. Training for this really forced me to learn about cycling longer distances, from planning routes, to essential items to bring with, to proper nutrition, and beyond. I went from doing 10-20 mile rides a couple of times a week to doing this 62ish mile ride (with 4000ft of elevation) in 6 weeks, which I am super happy about!

Now that I can ride these distances, it's totally changed the options that feel open to me and I've been having a blast exploring my area. I'm no longer intimidated by routes with decent climbs or long distances, which has really opened up a lot.

Anyway, I absolutely loved it, and if anyone has been thinking about doing something similar take this as your sign to 100% do it!

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 topic is part of a series. It is meant to be a place for users to discuss creative projects they have been working on.

Projects can be personal, professional, physical, digital, or even just ideas.

If you have any creative projects that you have been working on or want to eventually work on, this is a place for discussing those.

When do you decide you can no longer ethically work somewhere?
What would be your line?
Would your ability to do harm reduction or meaningfully change the situation make a difference in your decision?

Have you acted on these stances before?

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!

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.

First, thanks to Tildoes in the previous Graphene thread for being the push I needed to ditch stock Android. 90% of my experience with it has been positive.

Where I'm left with questions is about how the system impacts device performance, internet speed and the apps themselves.

1. I'm running a Pixel 7 and unable to determine whether delayed swipes, app load times or crashing is more of an old phone issue, that Graphene is still relatively new, or something else.

2. Internet speeds, even on a 1 Gbps home network or a wireless one can be intermittent, stuttery and slow. While the catastrophist/news reader in me defaults to incoming mobile network collapse, the obvious answer is something else. Do you have this issue with your Graphene install?

3. I've created a user account with Google Play and one without (I have Aurora store there), and despite installing MicroG via ReVanced Manager, some streaming apps still don't work. Some of those being ReVanced YouTube distros. Any suggestions? Is this just par for the course? (Edit* added Revanced, not Vanced)

While I'm comfortable booting former apps from Firefox shortcuts, I'm looking to. Learn whether there's an easier way to do this.

Also, please just share your Graphene journey. How do you like it?? Do you feel so cool now??

Thanks!

Tildes is a very serious site, where we discuss very serious matters like lg, milestones.developmental and golf. Tags culled from the highest voted topics from the last seven days, if anyone was taking note.

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!

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?

The Reboot!

I used to run a series of "Screenless Day" monthly posts that were aimed at nudging people to put a short pause on the toxic aspects of tech in their life. They never got much traction, but it was also hard to tell if people were participating because they wouldn't necessarily be here commenting on it and would instead be, you know, off doing other things.

There has been some renewed interest in the idea recently, so I decided to reboot the series and see how it goes now (especially because the wider tech landscape is arguably worse than it was back when I first started them).

The spirit of Screenless Day remains the same as it always has been:

a simple event aimed at encouraging people to take a temporary step away from toxic or consuming aspects of technology and spend their time and energies elsewhere

Anyone can choose to take a Screenless Day at any time, but the idea is to nudge people towards doing it over the first weekend of the month. Each new discussion topic will go live on the first Friday of the month, and it will remain open for the duration of the month.

It is strongly encouraged that you talk about your Screenless Day here, as part of the fun of the event is that, even though you might be doing something independently, your actions fit into a larger community picture of other people here sharing the same values.

Also, to promote both reflection and discussion on the goals of Screenless Day, each month I will be including a new discussion question to provide people the opportunity to reflect on their relationship with technology and keep the topic more “alive” and visible.

This Month

In addition to the once again regularly scheduled Screenless Day, there are a couple of housekeeping things for our first month back:

1. Building a notification list.

I will be building a notification list to be pinged each time a monthly Screenless Day topic goes up. Anyone commenting in this topic will be included by default. If you do NOT want to be included in the list, please let me know in your comment.

2. Changing the name?

"Screenless Day" can be a bit misleading (see the FAQ below), so I'm open to other name ideas. Everything I can come up with tends to sound negative however (e.g. "Pause Toxic Tech" day or something), and I want the name to be a simple but positive one.

Monthly Discussion

Use this topic to:

1. Talk about your plans for an upcoming Screenless Day.
2. Tell everyone what you chose to do for your Screenless Day, and how it went.
3. Reflect on your relationship with technology.

This month's discussion question:

• Of all the tech you use in your life, what platform/app/device/etc do you feel has the most overall negative impact on you? Why do you think that is?

FAQ

(inspired by a deleted post. I'll respect the user and just make this a generic topic.)

What was the hardest part about growing up into an independent adult for you? Was there some advice or mental Eureka! moment that gave you a big boost?

Affordability and employment are at a crisis level for our youth these days. Want to share some hardships you experienced, or big hurdle you had to navigate out of, as a way to encourage others that things will get better?

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'm in the midst of wedding planning and would like to hear your experiences, as I have only been to one wedding.

I'm curious about if you've picked up on any unique considerations that went into the structural/event design as well as the emotional takeaway from attending the event:

What made that wedding distinct from the others?
What aspects of the wedding did you find thoughtful and memorable?
How did that wedding make you feel as a guest?
How do you want to feel as a guest at a wedding?

Not necessarily new, could be old but you simply haven't watched before.

Simply curious about everyone's habits. Like for me, I know about the dedicated databases but in practice, I just stumble upon whatever the algorithm decides to show and if the art looks eye-catching I'll give it a shot.

My parents are doing an interstate move in a few weeks, and I want to get them a gps tracker that they can put in a box to help them track their stuff. The main goal is to provide them their own data if they get into the situation where the carrier and the trucking company are blaming each other for not knowing where their stuff is.

Tracki, Ameriloc, and LandSeaAir seem to be the big names, but there's very little signal and not much independent information. Also a ton of products on amazon in the <$30 range that seem indistinguishable.

Even several hundred dollars in cost is not a deal breaker here, considering the issue of their stuff, but I didn't really find a clearly better expensive option.

Whatever I get, I also plan to get two airtags as backup. Maybe that's enough by itself, but I like the idea of having an active option, even though I know they could all fail for different reasons.

Has anyone used one, and if so, what was your experience? What would you recommend using or avoiding?

Moving right along myself.

Links with more information for anyone undecided: LibraryThing:StoryGraph

Content Warnings based on user submissions from StoryGraph.

Plot summary of the previous work in the series (From Russia, with Love) from Wikipedia.

Tildos, I have a problem.

So, my wife is a huge film buff. However, there is one movie that she had repeatedly rented from Hollywood Video sometime in the early 00's that she has been unable to recall or find, despite all advances in search engine technology.

This would be filed under the 'formative pre/early teen latchkey girl sexual awakening' moments. So she can't really remember much beyond the favorite sex scene, and even then details are scarce. Can crowdsourcing solve what 15+ years of searching has not?

Fragments discovered so far list:

• Not pornography. Probably legitimate film, not skinemax.
• Scifi/fantasy of some sort. Costumes described as "waterworldesq, but not waterworld."
• Scene probably takes place in a desert
• She is sleeping with some other dude's friend
• Missionary. He's loud, and at one point she bites his nipple.

I know. Not much to go one, especially since almost all remembered details highly overlap with porn results.

Other films that have already been well worn by this point:

• Tank Girl
• Waterworld
• The Fifth Element
• Barbarella

Edit: After 2 weeks, @myrrh solves our mystery

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.

Inspired by the really serious topic what's your line I wonder what "lines" you have for small talk, ice breakers or to just pass some time.

My favourite "line" is:

What do you think about raisins?

or (replying to things like "what do you do for a living?"):

Eh, that's not really interesting, but what do you think about raisins?

I like it because it's quite dumb, but lots of people of all ages have some experience with and opinion about raisins so it is easy to talk about.

And with some luck you get plunged into a heated debate about raisins as candy substitute, raisins in bread or even hot raisins in food!

Linux has certainly come a long way, but it's also got room to grow.

• What are the things that are current issues with Linux for you? Annoyances, incompatibilities, lack of polish, etc.
• Also, if you're willing, share your level of experience with Linux (e.g. newbie, seasoned veteran, etc.). (I imagine those new to the OS will have very different pain points than people who have been using it for 20+ years).

Importantly, I ask this NOT to have people dunk on Linux or to start arguments about different aspects of it, but I do so to start a conversation about what could be better/smoother/easier. I love Linux and love that it just keeps getting better, day after day and year after year. The idea of highlighting where it could continue to grow in the future is exciting to me.

Italian Grand Prix
Autodromo Nazionale Monza
September 4-6, 2026

Next race:
Spanish Grand Prix
Madring
September 11-13, 2026

A few years ago when I was new to tildes a typed tildes.com directly in the URL bar. I realized I'd forgotten the correct domain extension and did a web search for "tildes community" or something similar.

One of the results was for tilde town . At the time I glanced over it and thought about joining but I never got around to it. Last July I somehow stumbled over it again and this time I applied to join.

It's a pretty cool place.

The idea is that it's a Linux server that each user gets an account on. You then ssh into it - and that's where the community lives!

They have a chat system, a forum system, microblogging that's private to that community, command line games (some of which are multi-player) and a bunch of other really neat features. Each user even gets a folder in their home directory that let's them serve up public web pages.

Technically they have about 2,000 registered users, but the number of actual active users seems to be similar to our community here.

The vibe reminds me a lot of what we have here except that tilde town is casual "slice of life" only and doesn't do news articals at all. Some of their forum posts are similar to our own, with posts for what people are reading and watching and what projects they are working on.

Ive enjoyed my time there so far and I'd encourage any one who's interested to check it out. My username over there is grendel84, stop by and say hi!

I got a kiosk for two days at my school last week to present my ideas to college students to gauge interest. 16 people said they'd be interested. There's even a teacher that'd want to be involved, he teaches a game programming course. There's also a university club nearby that wants to team up. (Also mid to long term, I'm in Quebec City so I could contact the many local studios around the campus.)

I wonder what the people of Tildes expect when they hear about a video game creation club. Have you been in one before?

I wrote myself a brainstorm document, here are the general ideas:

• Every field of study is welcome. Game projects are great for multidisciplinary groups, and people can also do stuff outside their field of study.
• General roles (someone could have many): project lead, game designer, gameplay programmer, systems and tools programmer, art director, 2D/3D/animation artist, UI/UX, composer, sound designer, writer, QA, voice actor, etc.
• Around 2 hours together per week, meeting in either a classroom or a club location if we get one.
• Would be nice if people shared what they learned during the week at each session.
• Game jam orientation? A college semester lasts 15 weeks. We could pick a theme at the start to drive the game ideas we want to do. Scope control is really important.
• Building a portfolio should be a main goal.
• Do we allow people from outside the club to come hang out? There are probably solo people working on their own games.
• How to handle intellectual property? Should we eventually try to sell games for the club finances? I guess we should at least be allowed to use the games for club marketing.
• If we do console games, we'd need an NDA. Not sure a club can even get console dev access, though we could probably work with a third party for that.
• Some nice stuff: the school has a recording booth we could record voices in. We might also have access to the school's servers if we get the proper approvals.
• We could demo the games in the school's public spaces to get feedback.
• The club could have a website, itch.io page, Discord.
• How to train people who have never made a game before?

Did I overthink this or forget about important details?

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?

Bureaucratic nonsense; a glaring inefficiency; “that’s just how we do things here”; etc.

Whatever it is, it’s absurd, but you’re also powerless to do anything about it and just have to live with it.

Tell us all about it.

Note: “workplace” can refer to career, school, home — wherever you do work in the face of absurdity

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.

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.

Asked in ~comp thread, figured it should be its own post.

Thinking about whether I want to do some upgrades to my 10 year old PC or buy new. I could bump RAM to 16 without breaking the bank since its DDR4, and maybe splurge on a new processor, but I'm not sure if I'd just want to go with a new machine at that point, thoughts?

AMD Ryzen 3 1300
8.00GB Dual-Channel DDR4
MSI B350M PRO-VD PLUS
4GB ATI Radeon RX 480

Edit: To follow up some questions about what I'm using this computer for, not a whole lot at the moment. I was thinking of making it into a media server or a Steam OS console now that it's available to download, but it's more of a whim and a project itch to keep my mind off of personal and global events.

Edit 2: I did pick up a AMD Ryzen 5 5500 for $75 and 16GB (2 x 8GB) DDR4 3200 from Corsair for $115 from Newegg. I'll roll the die and see if it works out. Thanks for the help!

Before your time = you weren't old enough to otherwise follow the zeitgeist at the time the show was made. If you grew up watching reruns of The Honeymooners with your grandparents or something, that still counts.

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?

This is the eighth Tildes Book Club Discussion for 2026 and the twenty-eighth overall. We are discussing Light from Uncommon Stars by Ryka Aoki. At the end of September we will discuss Dr. No by Ian Fleming.

I don't have a particular format in mind for this discussion, but I will post some prompts and questions as comments to get things started. You're not obligated to respond to them or vote on them though. So feel free to make your own top-level comment for whatever you wish to discuss, questions you have of others, or even just to post a review of the book you have written yourself.

For latecomers, don't worry if you didn't read the book in time for this Discussion topic. You can always join in once you finish it. Tildes Activity sort, and "Collapse old comments" feature should keep the topic going for as long as people are still replying.

And for anyone uninterested in this topic please use the Ignore Topic feature on this so it doesn't keep popping up in your Activity sort, since it's likely to keep doing that while I set this discussion up, and once people start joining in.

I'm thinking of this in a "pitfalls of being self-taught" context, but I'm sure there's plenty of other places these moments happen. Feel free to also interpret the title as "How did I not know that?", "How did I miss that?", "Why did no one tell me that?" and the like!

The inspiration for this post is that I am over a year and a half into my Linux journey, which has involved a solid amount of tinkering and eagerly getting familiar with the command line, and I just now realized that you can do man <literally any command> to quickly get to the manual for it. And also that whatis exists. For the last 18+ months, I've been just doing <command> --help or <command> <subcommand> --help and searching the internet to supplement that. I knew that man pages exist, but I guess for some reason it didn't occur to me that there would be a way to access them that easily.

I love learning things on my own and building understanding by doing, just picking a direction and running with it, but... man. I often wonder how many little things that "everyone knows" I've missed through sheer random chance. And then there's things like my man pages revelation that I can't believe I didn't piece together on my own, considering all the other crazy stuff I've figured out. Oh well lol. I suppose it's good when the humbling reminders of my own capacity for ignorance arrive via something low-stakes like this than via something that could wreck my system!

Anyone else have similar stories to share?