I am well aware of the ongoing ebooks vs. physical books debate, and I have no interest in kindling that fire here.

Instead, I am seeking recommendations for books that are arguably better in physical form due to their makeup. House of Leaves is a perfect example, with its textual trickery essentially requiring physical pages. Coffee table books also fit the bill, for example. Some textbooks and reference books technically do as well, though I'm not interested in recommendations in those areas unless you have something in mind that's an absolute standout.

For me, it has to be ramen. It's so easy, yet so filling, and so tasty, and has practically infinite variations, so it can hardly get old! It can be done for one or more persons, and it replaces an entire meal: having noodles as replacement for bread, meat, vegetables, and broth to drink afterwards. Just an all-around great thing. My family certainly loved it.

I'm trying to get onto the podcast bandwagon, and so wondered if anyone can recommend any?

Tech podcasts are certainly interesting to me but anything geeky (tech, gadgets, science etc. as opposed to cartoons, comics, pop-culture - have no interest in any of those topics) would be ace.

Thanks!

After reading a thread on AskReddit requesting songs that made people cry, I thought about my favorite music and realized that most of the songs that made me cry were because they were uplifting in one way or another. So here I am today, asking you this: what songs move you to tears because of positive emotions? Here are a few of mine:

The Beatles - Let It Be. It's almost embarrassing to put this one first, but a simple three word phrase has never been filled with so much meaning. "Let it be" is practically my motto, and it's the philosophy which has most helped to steer me towards sanity. The music accompanying the lyrics just resonates with my heartstrings and it always makes me feel relieved after listening.

Yoko Kanno - Gotta Knock a Little Harder. People often describe music they like as being written for them. To me, this song feels like my very essence was put into sound. Its a song about breaking free of depression and loneliness. The thing I love about it is how honest it is; breaking through that door is brutally difficult. I love how there isn't an extra verse telling you how much better the narrator's life is after breaking through the door (or even that they made it through), instead implying it through choral swells and a little bit of the listener's imagination.

Arto Lindsay - Counting the Roses. This one may be cheating a little, because it's really the context of the song that makes me cry. It was written for a video game called D2, where a tragic character named Kimberly wrote the lyrics after a particularly terrible day. While the song is beautiful by itself, what affects me is the concept that it represents: even in an ugly, poisonous, depressing world, pure and beautiful things can still be found.

So I haven't read any books since my senior year, where the ones I did were for book essays. That was about 3 years ago. I was, however, a fanatical reader in my formative years, all throughout elementary school. I read lots of Fantasy like Harry Potter, the Magyk series, Skullduggery Pleasant, Percy Jackson, stuff in that vein. As of late, my ADD addled brain has decided to let go a tad and I want to get back into reading

This might be very vague but I'll try my best. I'm looking for books similar to (or maybe kinda detached from, if you think a tangential connection is sufficient enough to warrant an outlier) the books I mentioned earlier. I'm also very open to Sci-Fi, but I like world/race exploration the most. Interesting Alien species and odd planets/phenomena. I prefer novels where the author has a good grasp on the English language, with some wit or neat descriptors, but Tolkien-esque long-in-the-tooth verbosity wears me out after a while. I recall greatly enjoying some Halo novels as well.

This is getting a little long in the tooth, but lastly, if there's anything even remotely comparable to the SCP Foundation collection of stories, I'm way into it. I've also been picking up and putting down House Of Leaves for a while, and it has some neat stuff, but it rambles quite often. Not so much that I want to put it down, but it makes me restless trying to get to the meat but having to wade through the writer's extraneous verbose ramblings. I don't know if this will give enough info but I'll greatly appreciate anything thrown at me!

I'm still fairly new to anime (~2.5 years) and have been just watching either classics/high rated anime or whatever everyone else is watching that season and really want to know what are some pretty good anime/manga that are underrated and overshadowed by huge influx of anime every season?

Mine picks would be:

• One Outs : It's basically a Sports anime about Baseball with heavily focusing on mind games (similar to Death Note/Code Geass/etc) It is 8.4 on MAL but It's really underrated in terms of it's audience

• Black Clover : It's really not that bad as people say it is. Yes the adaptation is bad but the story is really good, yeah it's basically generic shonen but it does the generic shonen things much better than other generic shonens. I'd still suggest the manga over the anime (with coming back to see the climax of arcs/seeing your favourite scenes being adapted)

For Manga:

• Gokushufudou (The Way of the House Husband) : It's basically a manga about an ex-most wanted gangster now living as a house husband. It's one of the most funniest mangas I've read.

• Vigilante: Boku no Hero Academia Illegals : It's a spinoff of My Hero Aca which is pretty cool but not really popular. The story could be boiled down to what would've happened if Midoriya wasn't able to pass the UA exams. Oh yeah and it's all canon (the main author verified this).

That's basically it for what I've read/watched.

I've realised that when people discuss film, I've missed out. There are so many influential and important films that I haven't watched.

Could you please recommend a (or more) films that you think is essential for an educated person to have watched? It can be a classic, or something less known.

Note: I wasn't sure whether to post this in ~games or ~tech, so if it needs to be moved, feel free to put it where it belongs!

I've been playing my Playstation Classic a lot, and it's made me want to setup a full emulation box for my TV. I started looking into options and quickly got in over my head, so I'm hoping you fine folks can help me sort this out.

Caveat: I am somewhat techy, but not nearly to the same level as the average Tildes user.

Here is a rundown for what I'm going for:

• Systems: I want to be able to emulate up through the Dreamcast with no slowdown (or, at least, no slowdown as a result of my hardware--if it's natural to the original console or a limitation of the emulator, that's fine).

• Input: I want to use a wireless controller for input. Ideally six face buttons and four shoulders, so that it can easily stand in for almost all common controller layouts.

• Graphics: If possible, I'd like to be able to enhance the eye candy a bit with things like upscaling, increasing the internal resolution, and shaders. This would be nice to have, but is not a necessity. Running at fullspeed in the original with no enhancements is the target minimum, though.

• Footprint: Something up to the size of, well, a retro game console. I don't want a full PC next to my TV, but it doesn't have to be the size of a credit card either.

• Budget: Let's go with under $400 USD? Given the cost of a Raspberry Pi that seems like overkill, but I know the Pi can't do all the way up to N64/Dreamcast, and I'm not sure how much more power those need. That price limit is flexible if I'm being unreasonable with my expectations.

With all that in mind, here are my questions:

1. What hardware best suits my needs? I am not interested in building my own and am seeking pre-built solutions.

2. What controller is best? I'd prefer to have a one-size-fits-all solution, rather than swapping them out. Six face buttons would help make the Genesis, Saturn, and N64 feel more natural, but I suspect that might be hard to come by?

3. It looks like Retroarch is definitely the way to go for easy setup, but there seem to be a lot of different standalone options (e.g. Lakka, RetroPie, Recalbox). Which one should I go with? I should add that I really only care about ease of use and simplicity. I do not need something flashy, and the less friction in both setup and use, the better.

4. Any other tips, pieces of advice, or resources? I don't have a lot of experience with emulation, so a lot of this is uncharted territory for me, hence my uncertainty and need for guidance.

Last time we had some discussion whether it'd be best to discuss authors from different countries, or authors writing in different languages. I think it'd be best if the focus is on the language, but I won't get mad if you post Nabokov in the thread about Russian. So, without further ado:

What are your favourite texts originally written in Korean?

Hi there!

From time to time, me and wife enjoy playing 7 Wonders Duel on our weekends and we like that it's not that long because we always have to do other things. Of course, always playing the same game starts to get old (even though 7 Wonders Duel is quite great).

My wife was not totally excited by Jaipur, Santorini and Patchwork, for example. So, which board games would you recommend for two players where the playing time doesn't exceed 60 minutes? The board games don't need to be 2-player specific (like 7 Wonders Duel), though.

Edit: For future reference to other players. Besides the great recomendations in this post, I also found other very interesting 2-player games under 60 minutes. They are, Hanamikoji, Kodama Duo, Yokohama Duel and 13 Days: The Cuban Missile Crisis. I actually bought Hanamikoji because it's so cheap and fast. Great game too!

I just had an "Impossible" burger here in Vegas. I honestly couldn't believe it wasn't meat.

I'm not vegan or Vegetarian, but I eat it from time to time.

Any other good recommendations out there for good meat substitutes?

Hey all. I've been listening to the Eagles for a while and love their stuff (born a couple of decades too late to really appreciate them though). I do enjoy the newer styles of rock (ethereal(?)), but I'm looking for a new-ish band that sticks to the old guitar/drums/etc of classic/country rock. Any recommendations for me?

Does anyone have any good recipes for bread?

My wife and I have been doing a lot of baking lately and I absolutely love making bread. It's easy (most of the work is sitting around waiting for it to rise/proof) and we've been making fresh sandwich bread to use in our lunches for the past few months.

I've found two recipes that I really like:

• BA's Best Sandwich Bread
• Simple Country Load

With a lot of websites going down the shitter in an attempt to monetize (looking at you, Reddit), I'm wondering where some nice places are online. Nice whether in UI, the community, or really just in general. Below is a small list off the top of my head.

Tildes, because of high quality discussion.

Disroot. It's a slew of useful tools, available for free, while respecting privacy. Genuinely really useful, lots of utilities, good documentation, and a really nice community.

Wikipedia. It's Wikipedia, end of.

Mastodon. This one wholly depends on your instance, but on most(?) the people are nice, and the environment is a lot less argumentative.

Hacker News, high quality discussion over a fair few topics. Very active, too.

So I stumbled upon this streamer, KRX_ and he plays Cities Skylines in the evenings, when I have time after work to check it out. And it is relaxing to see someone build a city. He's playing Sims 4 right now, and it's still, it's like watching Bob Ross.

For those of you who may be too poor to afford the latest AAA titles, or just don't want to support policies like micro-transactions and "If you're offended, just don't buy it", there are many open-source and/or free games that can tide you over. Some of my favorites are:

• FreeCiv: A civilization building game based on Sid Meier's Civilization 1 and 2
• OpenTTD: A transport network building game based off of Chris Sawyer's Transport Tycoon Deluxe
• Dwarf Fortress: Not Open-Source - fortress colony management simulator with an additional RPG gamemode

Do you guys have any other free, possibly open-source games that you would recommend?

I know I'm late to the party, but do you have any recommendations, hidden gems? What's your favorite lately?

I've played most of the big games on console, so I would be looking for something that isn't on PS/Xbox.

Thanks!

Edit: I usually like puzzly games such as Limbo, Inside, Little Nightmares or story-driven epics like RDR2, God of War.

So I'm running a D&D 5e campaign, and so far have been doing "theatre of the mind". But it has it's limitations when I want the players to use actual combat strategy in some areas. I have experience a few years ago with using a 25mm paper grid for 3.5e and Pathfinder, which worked well because it was quick to draw a map with whiteboard marker.

Now I have a 3D printer, and I'm wondering if anyone has any dungeon tile recommendations, considering the following:

Firstly, are there any systems that are quick to assemble/disassemble as the players discover new rooms, or we need to clear table space?

Second, stability of the map is important. If a player knocks the map with their hand, will everything collapse, simply shift slightly, or is it rigidly held together?

Third, community: A larger community that contributes (and takes contributions) would be better than a propriety system that doesn't allow homebrew designs.

I've seen a few systems (openlock, openforge, and almost any keyword combination that I can think of is on kickstarter), but I'm finding it hard to get a feel for how popular the systems are, and how well they actually work when on the table.

Does anyone have any recommendations on a good system? I guess i'm most interested in the game flowing smoothly, but I'm not opposed to going to a blank paper grid if that's really the better solution.

This is the first post (a test post, to see if there is any interest) of a series of posts where we can share our favourite texts in foreign languages. I will try to include the large languages, and some small as well. You're welcome to request a language too. So, without further ado:

What are your favourite texts originally written in Italian?

I'm making an effort to cut out meat from my diet and I'd love to hear what everyone's favourite vegetarian meals are.

For a long time I have been making pasta with ground beef and I recently found out that I can just not put the beef in and it tastes even better. The tomato sauce really gets a chance to shine without the beef.

I'm learning Spanish and feel like reading is really helping me get to the next level. I've read 1984 and one part of Harry Potter in Spanish but now I'm thinking of trying some original, non-translated literature.

What Spanish-language books would you recommend (that are not too difficult to read)?

Recently I've started getting really into manga/anime that focuses pretty heavily on brawling.

I binged Kengan Asura, which primarily focuses on a fighter named Ohma and his coach as they fight in an underground fighting ring.

Baki was very similar, but probably a bit more silly, and a bit more focused on the conflict with his father.

Part of my problem is I don't really know what to look for after this. Does anyone have any suggestions for either manga or anime that is focused on fighters / fighting like Kengan or Baki?

In a bit of a synthwave haze at the moment and craving some more, does anyone have any good artists?

Current list:

Fm84
Gunship
Freeweights
September87
Timecop1983
Dance with the dead
Lebrock
Scandroid
Droid Bishop
Turbo Knight
Neon nox
GOST
Pertubator
0edit
Dav Dralleon
Dynatron
Power Glove
Lazerhawk
Magic Sword
Starcadian

I've read a few novels, I think an excellent short novel is Elevation by Stephen King. It's not what you'd expect from a Stephen King novel (no horror elements), but it's a great read. I can't say too much without spoiling it, but here's the blurb:

The latest from legendary master storyteller Stephen King, a riveting, extraordinarily eerie, and moving story about a man whose mysterious affliction brings a small town together—a timely, upbeat tale about finding common ground despite deep-rooted differences.

It starts off a little slow, but give it a little bit of time. It's readable in an afternoon, I think I spent 5 or so hours reading it.

Just as with the Wii, I think the motion controls are a big and fun feature of the Switch.

I have already searched online, but could not find a list of games that have motion controls (and in what way). I did see some attempt to put it on Wikipedia, but it was removed due to being too specific to be on Wikipedia itself.

If anyone found anything or is willing to help out, we could collaboratively write one up. What the best place for it would be, I do not know yet, but WikiData pops to mind.

I see votes, but I see no comments ...no idea how to interpret that.

This is my 2019 project, to gain some understanding of the subjects of income and wealth inequality. I've prepared a reading list but was just wondering if there is a proper way to go about it. I'm from a third world country and didn't go to college, if that's of any help.

Greatness is tough enough, but consistent greatness is nigh impossible. I'm curious as to who are some musicians/bands out there that have always delivered and never stumbled, putting out great release after great release for their entire careers. It doesn't mean they've never had a bad song or a gaffe or anything like that--just that their main releases have been solid from start to finish.

It's neat that Rap/Hip-Hop is having a renaissance of sorts. However, I don't really like any of it. In an industry that claims rock is dying (or at least has been for several years), what rock bands have been killing it, spinning it in a new direction, or paying inspired and original homages to their rock forefathers?

I'm an audio engineer, and I spend many hours a day consuming music. I could talk your ear off about genres, sub-genres, vocal styles, rhythms, and exactly what combinations of those I really enjoy. Technology, recommendations, and websites like everynoise.com have really enhanced how accurate my recommendations are, and I'm constantly consuming music that I absolutely love.

But when it comes to books... I'm so lost. Literature genres are like the equivalent of listing what instruments play on an album. Okay, this book is "sci-fi," so I know it's probably got futuristic technology, may be set in space, and could have some aliens. But that doesn't tell me anything about the writing style.

I know enough to know that I can't go just by good reviews on sites like amazon. How do I learn to quantify what I enjoy and curate my recommendations more effectively?

as in the title. Be it textbooks, bios or anything else. Somewhere I've heard that a couple of books in a given subject can give you quite a good understanding of it.
It does not have to be a niche either; I am interested in hearing about your favourite general psychology or biotechnology books just as well; I hope we can exchange recommendations about how to dive into a given field.

For me, I'd say that to get a taste of Computer Science from the metal to high level concepts, I'd go with:

• Introduction to Algorithms by Cormen et al. - for many it's bible of algorithms designs, I also enjoyed it very much (and I like to think that it was not only because of widespread aclaim)
• CODE by Petzhold - for people who like to understand every part of the system they build; it goes through the process of building a computer, starting with logic gates and ending with fully working Turing machine.

I miss music blogs. I mostly used them for piracy in the past but plenty of them (pirate and non-pirate) have been great sources for curated lists of new good music. I'd like to add some more variety to my music discovery methods for this new year, so what blogs do you still follow / respect?

Some previous semi-related threads that might be of interest:

How do you discover music?

How do you keep up with new music?

Music Blogs & Mini Station Rant

Tildes' guiding principles are laid out in its announcement post:

• Non-profit, no investors
• No advertising, user-supported
• Open, honest, and open-source
• Minimal user-tracking, better privacy
• High-quality content and discussions
• Limited tolerance, especially for assholes

I'm interested in other projects that line up with some or all of these principles. It doesn't have to be a site with the same function as Tildes, just the same feel. What else is out there that we should know about?

I haven't posted at all on Tildes, but I've been here! I've seen how great of a community it is, even if it isn't that popular yet, so I wanted to ask you kind people for advice on where I should move to. Please tell me if this is the wrong group.

I can't decide where to move. I really want to live in a giant city like NYC because I have a degree in CS and computers are popular in big cities, plus I just enjoy them, but (as I'm sure everyone knows) it's super expensive. I also really love rain and snow. If any of you could recommend a relatively inexpensive city that rains and snows a lot, I'd greatly appreciate it. It doesn't have to be in the U.S. Thank you all so much!

At the risk of sounding like an audiophile I noticed that on some bluetooth devices audio quality comes out absolutely terrible (Like radio recorded with a phone microphone). I was using a pair of Bose QC 35 headphones and on my phone they sound just fine but on my desktop which has a cheap $2 bluetooth usb the sound quality is terrible. Ok for $2 what can you expect but now I have a distrust for all bluetooth devices. How can I know if my bluetooth usb is killing the quality of audio when thats not even a listed spec on these devices. I looked in to this a little bit ago and there seem to be a few proprietary extensions to bluetooth that allow lossless streaming but they aren't well supported because they are proprietary. I understand that high quality lossy compression is pretty much the same quality as lossless but how do I find a product that uses high quality lossy compression when it seems some of them use absolutely horrible compression?

I've played and enjoyed Neverwinters Nights, Baldur's Gate, Icewind Dale, and Planescape: Torment. I was wondering if you guys could recommend some games in a similar style that I've overlooked. Thanks!

I've found a few really, honestly fantastic open source games and I'd like to share them and discover some new ones too.

Firstly, NullpoMino is a fantastic cross-platform Tetris clone. It's highly, highly customizable and is lots of fun to play. It's got a great community over at Hard Drop, and if you like Tetris - you'll like NullpoMino. However, there are a few issues with it; one in particular being the relatively low skill ceiling of Marathon. The skill ceiling is very low (compared to other titles such as the NES edition), but this is solely exclusive to Marathon as far as I know. It turns into a test of patience rather than skill. Another issue is with installation; as the game was made for 32 bit systems it is rather slow, and it's finicky to run on Linux. However, it is a fantastic Tetris title (and open source!)

Another good open-source game is Osu! I've never played it competitively, but it's a fair bit of fun to play with friends and is a great game. It's cross-platform, although I've only ever played it on Windows, and it has a nice community. Fantastic game that I don't see mentioned too much.

The last game for this post is SuperTuxKart. It serves as a great kart-racing game, that's fun and has a low barrier to entry. Graphically, it's not drop-dead gorgeous, but it's not bad at all either. It's decent solo, and a lot of fun with friends. Would highly recommend. Cross-platform and available as a snap.

I am replacing my mouse, and I have giant hands. Pretty much every mouse I've ever used has been too small for me, so I would like to finally buy something that fits.

I don't need anything fancy beyond two buttons and a scroll-wheel. It doesn't have to have extra buttons or switchable DPI or anything like that (though I'm not opposed to those either). It'll be used on Linux, and will be my everyday driver. Wired and ergonomic are preferred but not mandatory.

Anyone have any good recommendations?

Looking for VR game suggestions. Turns out there's a lot of crap to dig through to get to the good stuff. Give me your best of the best. I'll start us off:

Multiplayer - Arizona Sunshine, Pavlov, Rec Room

Single player - Sairento, Beat Saber

For the past few years, I've grown more and more uneasy with Amazon's business practices. I think it's time to move on. Not to mention the declining quality in products since international shippers were added (as discussed in the podcast Reply All).

I'm addicted to the convenience of 2 day shipping, even though we use Amazon less and less, I like knowing I have that option.

I've been considering a Costco membership instead - how does their online shopping and shipping times/prices compare?

I've also considered using Jet more but I don't know much about their ethics, does anyone?

Open to other alternatives and discussion about business ethics here.

I ask because I have several physical books that I would love to have digital copies of.

Most of the services out there are destructive, so you lose the book when you send it in to scan. I'm fine with this in theory, except for the fact that I'd hate to lose the physical book and have it replaced with a crappy digital copy. I've not had terribly great luck with my own attempts at OCR with documents (but I'm also not a professional).

Additionally, some of the books I want to scan have extensive footnotes. The ideal would be that the book gets scanned and edited to have these footnotes hyperlinked in the resulting ebook, but I don't know if anyone offers that kind of service. I'd even be okay with the footnotes just being eliminated if it's too much trouble. What I don't want is them just being flowed into the main text of the document.

There are a lot of different options out there, and I'm more than willing to pay for a good job. Has anyone used one of these services and can speak to their quality?

Last month my dad had a stroke. Miraculously he didn't lose much functionality at all, though he does have some minor cognitive issues that we're working on in rehab - mainly memory. Accordingly, we want to find some games he can play on his tablet to help keep his mind active and focus his attention. But the mobile game market is hard for me to navigate and sort through for what I'm looking for.

I need games that're about a dollar or less and don't have in-app purchases. Basically games you could give to your kid and trust that they're not gonna be psychologically manipulated into wanting to empty your bank card or something like that.

Brain teasers and simple puzzles are ideal for sharpening his mind but any game that's good clean straightforward fun will work. I don't think he's going to be able to handle anything with a whole lot of moving parts like an RTS right now, for instance.

I can't afford to spend much on this and I don't know what kinds of games will interest him most so I want to give him a lot of choices. I've already looked through a couple of the other mobile game rec threads on here and I'm checking out the games listed there, but I was hoping you all could help me think of some stuff more geared to my situation. Any pointers even just on where to go looking or what to google would be appreciated. Cheers!

Edit:

Thank you all for being so supportive! I've added a bunch of the games you recommended, and I also found a couple nice lists that I thought I'd add here for anyone else interested.

Short List of Totally Free Games

10 Completely Free Mobile Games

Stay awesome tildes!