Starting to read a lot of Lovecraft, and I'm really enjoying it. I've only read like 5 or 6 of his stories (including Call of Cthulhu and The Dunwich Horror as being the famous ones) and I'm really enjoying it. I think HPL has quickly risen to be among my favourite authors. But I'm not really scared, or terrified by any of his work so far, as I would normally with Horror fiction. Instead, I'm just entertained and fascinated by it. Is this normal? Are you supposed to feel like that with Lovecraft?

Album link

So we have had this popcorn machine for ages and just recently it completely stopped working. Being a fan of bigclive on youtube I though why not try fix it and maybe get a sense of how it works.

The guts

The insides honestly are pretty underwhelming - both the impeller and heating elements are quite small considering it only takes a few minutes to make a bowl of popcorn.

Circuit board and Another shot

Considering how few components there it was not too time-consuming to draw up a diagram. Please excuse the crude drawing.

From what I can tell it uses a bridge rectifier with a some caps to convert DC and even out the signal - and what looks like two resistors to further drop the voltage to the motor, maybe two offered better cooling? idk why they didn't use one. It's also kind of interesting how they used two separate coils for the heating with one of them in series with the motor, that will drop the voltage right?

They also have overheating protection here, with a an sefuse and a thermo switch, it actually has the piece of metal and a contact that will bend away when it's hot, I've only seen these in a textbook. Not sure why there are two types of thermo fuses?

The fault

Finding the fault ended up being quite easy, the main heating coil that comes off blue wire had melted. A piece of corn, oil, bits of salt or a mixture had found their way in and somehow melted the wire in multiple places. It cut the circuit so not even the motor was working which was my initial though when it stopped. I wound some solid core wire around the two ends, hopefully it will not unfurl or melt in the heat.

note: title subject to change

A few days ago I asked this question and got a few replies, so I figure this idea is worth trying out. If there's enough interest I'll probably move the day that this gets posted to something more regular for the week like Friday/Saturday/Sunday, but I figured I could make this one and gauge interest for the week.

Anyway, what have you been watching/reading this week?

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 Anilist, MAL, or any other anime/manga database you use!

Any Fantasy Football players on Tildes? Post your team here with your league rules and let's rate and discuss each other's teams!

Side thought: Are there enough NFL fans here to warrant a Tildes league? That might be fun. There's enough time to draft before the season starts if enough people are interested.

I'm here staring at my inbox for the third time trying to figure out how the hell the sorting in it works. It isn't alphabetically by subject or user, it isn't the recency of the first message (nor is it the recency of the latest message), and it isn't the number of messages. Testing it now, it also isn't the most recent you've opened, so I have no idea how this works or how to look for anything, not that it's big enough to matter much yet.

Am I missing something obvious? I feel so lost.

Is there a way to view all the subgroups in a group? Right now I don't see any way to access them without someone directly linking a subgroup. I think it would be helpful if there was a list of subgroups in each group sidebar, or a link to a page of them.

I just got here, so sorry if this has been covered elsewhere.

i just started getting into drugs and have found that it's more comfortable to smoke around two bowls a day after lunch and after dinner, i only smoke after i've finished all my tasks for the next few hours, and i don't let it drain my wallet. opinons? also if anybody here is starchy against legalization please give me your reasons i want to understand both sides of the issue.

be it coffee
be it kratom
be it moscato
be it meth
be it canna
be it coca

we've had a lot of more serious or intentful posts about drug use, usually with a focus on depression or addiction, but we've never had a ~talk.casual type conversation about it.

what drugs do you do? why do you like em? do you like em?

what do you want to try?

i can see how this post could push on a border of "acceptable" content, so my bad if i'm breaking any rules.

I've been trying to simplify my life for a few years now, from an environmental and mental health angle. One small change I found made a surprisingly significant difference is wearing an outfit for four days at a time.

Why four days? The original news article that inspired me, had a woman wear the same dress for 1 whole year! That was too much for me. My work has casual Fridays, so this sort just covers me switching to jeans on Friday. At least that was my reasoning when I started. Now, I wear everything for four days at a time regardless.

Obvious exceptions for if any item is dirty, clothing is not sufficient for weather or if I have to change an outfit for an event. I'm also not super hard on myself, so if I woke up feeling like a different shirt, I will just switch.

How this helped me? I don't spend any time in the morning thinking about what to wear anymore. Also don't wonder which clothes are clean, and don't accumulate as large a pile of "not clean enough to go back in the drawer" and "not dirty enough to wash" clothes in my bathroom/bedroom. I do laundry noticeably less, as I'm not just dumping my previously mentioned pile into my basket all the time. Clothes I do wash, all fit on my laundry line now, so I just air dry them. Previously, I machine dried anything that didn't fit.

Surprisingly, no one's really noticed me doing this, and definitely no one's said anything. I did tell a few people a few months in, including some coworkers and family I see everyday. They were shocked, lol.

This is also a bit of an anti-consumption thing for me. I currently have more than enough clothes, but thought if I reduced the amount I needed day-to-day, what I already own can last longer and I would be more aware of what I actually need to replace when it comes up.

So, thoughts on this or other things you may have tried to simplify your life?

Hi, I'm filling in for @Whom, since she told me she wouldn't be around to post this and asked that I make sure to post 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!

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.