With the Reddit blackout, and me deleting my account, I'm not entirely sure how to fill the void that Reddit has left. I'm using Tildes and Kbin as a replacement, and they're amazing for discussing the topics I'm interested in, but I had grown to rely on Reddit for keeping up with the news topics that interest me; gaming, tech, astrophysics, hip hop, fantasy novels, and many more. And while alternative communities exist for each of my examples, they aren't the one-stop-shop that Reddit had become for me. On top of that, my initial reaction to a lot of questions or queries would be to Google "Steam Deck vs ASUS Ally reddit.com" (for example), to get some first hand community opinions. I know that it took Reddit many years to get to such a point, and that I can't expect any new alternative to be at the same level right now. I've thought about trying to get into RSS feeds, which I've never tried, but again my gut reaction would be to look on Reddit as to what are the best sources to add. I don't have much of a point to my ramble, just wanted to vent and lament that I'm kind of lost without Reddit at the moment; it had become such a useful and ingrained tool in my life.

I'm in zone 4b so it gets frigid here in winter, I'm thinking wood burning stove and I bought the thickest double walled plastic panels for the roof that I could find. I'm just finishing an insulated slab and I'm about to start framing. Please share with me any photos, plans, or guidance you might have! I have no idea what I'm doing!

After seeing the recent espresso post, I figured I'd start a thread for cocktails. I've been recently getting into decent rums (Smith & Cross is a favorite) and have been playing around with different recipes and uses.

So far, I've found a good spring/summer spritzer of cachaça (raw sugarcane distillate from Brazil, with a grassy, vegetal flavor), elderflower liqueur, and tonic water. I need to refine it, but I think I'm at a 2/0.5/4 ratio of spirit/liqueur/tonic. I love the way the herbal-sweet elderflower mixes with the cachaça, balanced by the bitterness of the tonic.

Having finished out the Amazon Prime series "The Expanse" I'm now working my way through the novels and I keep coming up against a problem with with railguns. Specifically, the way that railguns are used in The Expanse doesn't mesh well with the way they're portrayed.

First, some background. Ships in The Expanse are generally unarmored. There are a bunch of reasons for this but the short version is "most things that can hit you in space will kill you anyway" and armor adds mass which makes every manuver more expensive in terms of reaction mass. So no one has armor. This is important because it means that ships in the Expanse can get ripped up by something as mundane as a stray bullet from a Point Defense Cannon (PDC). PDCs are... well, they're guns. Regular guns which are flinging around much less mass and at much lower velocities than railguns.

Thus, ships in the Expanse are equipped to handle impacts but nothing much bigger than a sand-grain moving at a few km/s.

When we're introduced to rail-guns in the series we're given to understand that they use magnetic acceleration to chuck a 5kg chunk of tungsten and/or uranium at a target at an "appreciable percentage of C." That's much faster than a bullet or any micrometeors ships are likely to encounter. Even 1% of C is ~3,000 km/s.

5 kg of Tungsten is less than you think. Some back of the envelope math suggests that's about cube about 2.6 inches on a side... which is not big. That works out to an incredible energy density which would make a lot of sense if railguns were routinely being fired at planets or asteroids but, since they seem to mainly target ships, the vast, vast majority of the energy that goes into flinging that slug at its target is going to carry through to the other side of the ship.

All total we're talking about 488.5 million Newtons of force for 1% of the speed of light. Helpfully, this scales roughly lineraly so long as we don't get too close to C and induce relativistic mass issues, so 10% of C is 4.8 billion Newtons and so on. So, that railgun slug is carrying a lot of energy. At 1% of C it represents 22.5 trillion joules of kinetic energy. Written out long-ways so we can appreciate all those zeros it's 22,500,000,000,000 J. At 10%, we're talking 2.25 quadrillion joules. To give some sense of scale, that means that, at 1% of C, three rail-gun slugs are delivering about as much energy as the bomb that destroyed Hiroshima in 1945. At 10% of C one round carries about 537 kilotons, or about the yield of a modern, city-busting hydrogen bomb.

Those are absolutely titanic amounts of energy but, realistically, they'll never deliver that much power to a target. After all, a railgun round can only push on its target as hard as the target can push back on it. If the round just punches through the entire ship like it's made of paper, most of the energy stays in the railgun slug as it exits the other side of the ship and you get a neat hole rather than a gigantic flash as trillions of joules of kinetic energy turn into heat.

And obviously, if we're trying to kill things, we want the latter. The solution to this problem is fairly obvious: you need fragmentation. While it's great to have a tungsten cube all tightly packed together as you accelerate it, if you're shooting at a ship, you want a fairly diffuse impact, especially if we're talking about a 10% of C railgun slug. There aren't a lot of things out there in the solar system which can take 500 kilotons of hate and come out the other side in one piece. Moreover, at the distances at which a rail-gun fight happens, that spread would help ensure that you hit your target. Like a shotgun loaded with birdshot, a fragmenting railgun round would provide a cone of impact rather than a line, making dodges less effective.

And, as I mentioned earlier, you don't need a ton of mass to make this work. If a PDC round can go straight through a military craft then we can safely assume that a chunk of tungsten with the same kinetic energy will do the same thing. PDCs look rather a lot like the close in weapons systems in use on many naval ships today so we'll use those as a guide. The 20mm cannon on a Phallanx CWIS tosses out rounds at about 1,035 m/s. Those rounds weigh about 100 g (0.1 kg) which gives them a kinetic energy at the muzzle of 53,422 J.

So, if we could predictably shatter our 1% C railgun round into 421,136 pieces, each would have about the same kinetic energy as a PDC round and be able to hole the ship. At 10% C we could go even smaller and do the same thing with upwards of 40 million shards. 1% is plenty though. Each hull-penetrating piece of our original 5 kg bullet needs only weigh about 1/100th of a gram, which works out to being about 1/100th of the size of a grain of sand.

Put another way, if the fragmentation of a rail round could be precisely controlled, a target ship would experience hundreds of thousands of individual hull breaches with the mean distance between them determined only by the geometry of the ship and the angle of the attack. The result of this would be either the delivery of a titanic amount of energy to the ship itself as the armor attempts to absorb the impact or, if no armor is present (as seems to be the case in the Expanse) the rapid conversion of the interior of the ship to a thin soup.

This, however, seems never to happen in the series and what leaves me scratching my head. As a book and TV series, The Expanse does an otherwise bang-up job with hard science fiction. Most things in universe make sense. This, however, does not. We have take as a given that the materials science technology exists to allow the mounting and firing of a railgun on a ship -- there are a lot of challenges there -- but the straight-line-of-fire use of them is a rare problem with the world-building.

Any fans have any suggestions to help me square this circle?

So let's be real, a lot of dubs don't live up to the original. Stuff gets lost in translation, the actors aren't as good, for some reason they choose a guy who sounds like he's 10 to voice the teenage protagonist (coughanothercough). A lot of people prefer subs for that reason.

But sometimes, sometimes the dubs throw out the original script and go all-in on the hamminess for gag dubs, and by god they can be amazing.

The golden example: the Ghost Stories dub. They got a generic ghost hunting anime that they knew wouldn't sell that well in western markets, and thus gave the English distributors free reign on changing the script. Every episode is like an Abridged series, and so politically incorrect but so amazing for it. The voice actors are very obviously having a blast with all the ad-libbing going on, you can see them developing the characters themselves and loving it.

So what other amazing gag and parody dubs do you guys know of?

I'm following the New York Times' liveblog and list of winners; I'll try to update this post.

• Best Play: “Leopoldstadt”

“Leopoldstadt,” a wrenching drama that explores the destructive toll of antisemitism by following a family of Viennese Jews through the first half of the 20th century, won the Tony Award for best play on Sunday night.

The play is by Tom Stoppard, an 85-year-old British playwright who is widely regarded as among the greatest living dramatists, and who had already won the best play Tony Award more times than any other writer. This is his 19th production on Broadway since his debut in 1967, and his fifth Tony for best play, following “Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead,” “Travesties,” “The Real Thing” and “The Coast of Utopia.”

“Leopoldstadt” is an unusually personal work for Stoppard, prompted by his late-in-life reckoning with his Jewish roots, and the realization that many of his relatives were killed in the Holocaust. Stoppard was not yet 2 years old when his own family fled what was then Czechoslovakia, where he was born, to escape the Nazi invasion; he was raised in Britain and has said he only fully came to understand his family’s Jewish heritage when he was much older.

“Leopoldstadt,” directed by Patrick Marber, was first staged in London, where it opened in 2020, shortly before the coronavirus pandemic forced the shutdown of theaters, and then resumed performances in the West End after theaters reopened in 2021. That production won the Olivier Award for best new play in 2020.

The Broadway production began previews Sept. 14 and opened Oct. 2 at the Longacre Theater. The run is scheduled to end on July 2.

The play, named for a historically Jewish section of Vienna, begins in 1899 in the living room of an affluent and assimilated Austrian Jewish family and continues until 1955, after much of the family has perished; some members of the family had mistakenly thought that their integration into Viennese society would somehow protect them.

The show is quite large for a Broadway play, with a cast of 38, including several children. It was capitalized for up to $8.75 million, according to a filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission.

The lead producer is Sonia Friedman, a prolific British producer who has notched an impressive set of wins on Broadway: She was also a lead producer of the best play Tony winners in 2020 (“The Inheritance,” which was granted the award at a pandemic-delayed ceremony in 2021), 2019 (“The Ferryman”) and 2018 (“Harry Potter and the Cursed Child”).

• Best Musical: “Kimberly Akimbo”

“Kimberly Akimbo,” a small-scale, big-hearted show about a teenage girl coping with a life-shortening genetic condition and a comically dysfunctional family, won the coveted Tony Award for best musical Sunday night.

The musical is the smallest, and lowest-grossing, of the five nominees in the category, but it was also by far the best reviewed, with virtually unanimous acclaim from critics. (Nodding to the show’s anagram-loving subplot, New York Times critic Jesse Green presciently suggested one of his own last fall: “sublime cast = best musical.”)

The show, set in 1999 in Bergen County, N.J., stars the 63-year-old Victoria Clark as Kimberly, a 15-going-on-16-year-old girl who has a rare condition that makes her age prematurely. Kimberly’s home life is a mess — dad’s a drunk, mom’s a hypochondriac, and aunt is a gleeful grifter — and her school life is complicated by her medical condition. But she befriends an anagram-obsessed classmate and learns to find joy where she can.

“Kimberly Akimbo,” which opened at the Booth Theater in November, was written by the playwright David Lindsay-Abaire and the composer Jeanine Tesori, based on a play Lindsay-Abaire had written in 2003. The musical, directed by Jessica Stone, began its life with an Off Broadway production at the nonprofit Atlantic Theater Company in the fall of 2021.

The musical, with just nine characters, was capitalized for up to $7 million, according to a filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission; that’s a low budget for a musical on Broadway these days, when a growing number of shows are costing more than $20 million to stage. The lead producer is David Stone, who, as a lead producer of “Wicked,” is one of Broadway’s most successful figures; this is the first time he has won a Tony Award for best musical.

• Best Revival of a Play: "Topdog/Underdog"

A new production of “Topdog/Underdog,” Suzan-Lori Parks’s tour de force about two Black brothers weighted down by history and circumstance, won the Tony Award for best play revival Sunday night.

The play, first staged at the Public Theater in 2001, was already a widely hailed masterpiece: In 2002 it won the Pulitzer Prize for Drama, making Parks the first African American woman awarded that prize, and in 2018 a panel of New York Times critics declared it the best American play of the previous quarter century.

The new production, which ran from September 2022 through January 2023 at the John Golden Theater, was directed by Kenny Leon. It starred Corey Hawkins and Yahya Abdul-Mateen II as the two brothers, ominously named Lincoln and Booth.

In the play, Lincoln works in whiteface as a Lincoln impersonator at an arcade, while Booth makes ends meet by shoplifting. They share a one-room apartment, a fondness for three-card monte, and a set of familial and societal burdens from which they cannot escape. “‘Topdog/Underdog’ is both a vivid, present-tense family portrait and an endlessly reverberating allegory,” the New York Times critic Ben Brantley wrote in 2018.

• Best Revival of a Musical: "Parade"

“Parade,” a musical based on the early 20th century lynching of a Jewish businessman in Georgia, won the Tony Award for best musical revival Sunday night.

The prize cements a remarkable rebirth for the show, which was not successful when it first opened on Broadway in 1998, but which is shaping up to be a hit this time, thanks to strong word-of-mouth and the popularity of its leading man, Ben Platt. It was one of several shows this season about antisemitism, as the number of reported incidents has been rising.

The success of “Parade” is also a significant milestone for the musical’s composer, Jason Robert Brown, who is widely admired within the theater community but whose Broadway productions have struggled commercially. Brown wrote the music and lyrics for “Parade,” and the book is by Alfred Uhry; both men won Tony Awards for their work on the show in 1999.

... Audible groans here as Jason Robert Brown, the composer behind “Parade,” gets cut off at the microphone. He started to say something about Mary Phagan, the girl whose murder in Georgia set the Leo Frank trial in motion.

• Best Leading Actor in a Play: Sean Hayes, “Good Night, Oscar”, as Oscar Levant

Sean Hayes, who portrays the witty but troubled pianist Oscar Levant in “Good Night, Oscar,” won the Tony for best lead actor in play.

Best known for his long-running role as Jack McFarland in the television series “Will & Grace,” Hayes received critical praise for his drastic transformation in this stage production, adopting the hunched posture, irritable scowl and anxious twitching of Levant, who channeled his neuroticism into crowd-pleasing radio and television banter.

Hayes, 52, has also brought one of his lesser known talents to the stage for this performance: classical piano, which he started studying at age 5.

Telling the story of one night in 1958 when Levant finagled his way out of psychiatric hospital to be interviewed on Jack Paar’s “Tonight Show,” the play focuses on the pianist’s idiosyncrasies, compulsions and struggles with opioid addiction as surrounding characters try desperately to manage him.

This is Hayes’s first Tony Award. He was previously nominated for his Broadway debut in the 2010 revival of “Promises, Promises,” a musical adaptation of the Billy Wilder film “The Apartment.”

• Best Leading Actress in a Play: Jodie Comer, "Prima Facie", as Tessa Ensler

The leading actress in a play category this year was a face-off of extremes: Jodie Comer, who delivers a physically and emotionally exhausting performance in Suzie Miller’s one-woman legal thriller “Prima Facie,” versus Jessica Chastain, who scarcely stirs from her chair during the entirety of “A Doll’s House.”

In the end, it was Comer who triumphed, for her tour-de-force solo turn as a lawyer who defends men accused of sexual assault. Jesse Green, the chief theater critic for The New York Times, described it as “a performance of tremendous skill and improbable stamina.”

It was a remarkable win for the 30-year-old English actress, who is best known for playing the assassin Villanelle on the television show “Killing Eve.” She not only took home her first Tony Award on her first try; she won it for her first performance on a professional stage — ever.

“It kind of felt unattainable,” she told The Times in April of the prospect of doing theater.

• Best Leading Actor in a Musical: J. Harrison Ghee, "Some Like It Hot", as Jerry/Daphne

J. Harrison Ghee, whose portrayal of a gender-questioning musician fleeing the mob in “Some Like It Hot” has charmed critics and audiences, won a Tony Award for best leading actor in a musical Sunday night, becoming the first out nonbinary actor to win that award.

Ghee’s victory came shortly after Alex Newell, who is also nonbinary, won a Tony Award for best featured actor in a musical, becoming the first out nonbinary performer to win a Tony.

The Tony Awards, like the Oscars, have only gendered categories for performers, and Ghee and Newell agreed to be considered eligible for awards as actors. (Another nonbinary performer this season, Justin David Sullivan of “& Juliet,” opted not to be considered for awards rather than compete in a gendered category.)

Asked in a recent interview with The New York Times about having been nominated in a gendered category, Ghee said: “Wherever I am, I will show up as who I am. Someone’s compartmentalization of me doesn’t limit me in any way.

“I hope for the industry we can remove the gender of it,” they added, “because we are creators and we should free ourselves beyond so many labels and let the work speak for itself.”

At least two performers who later came out as nonbinary have previously won Tony Awards as best featured actress in a musical: Sara Ramirez, who won in 2005 for “Spamalot,” and Karen Olivo (also known as K O), who won in 2009 for a revival of “West Side Story.” Also: Last year, the Tony Award for best score went to Toby Marlow and Lucy Moss for “Six,” and Marlow is nonbinary.

Ghee’s depiction of a main character in “Some Like It Hot” reflects the way views on gender have evolved since 1959, when the Billy Wilder film it was based on was released. In the movie Jack Lemmon plays a musician named Jerry who dresses as a woman named Daphne to flee the mob; in the musical Ghee plays the same character, but Jerry’s path to becoming Daphne becomes one of self-discovery, not disguise.

The performance earned critical praise. Jesse Green, The Times’s chief theater critic, wrote that Ghee “carefully traces Jerry’s transformation into Daphne, and then the merging of the two identities into a third that takes us into territory that’s far more complex than jokey drag.”

Ghee, 33, worked as a drag performer before finding success in musical theater, with key roles on Broadway in “Kinky Boots” and “Mrs. Doubtfire” before “Some Like It Hot.”

• Best Leading Actress in a Musical: Victoria Clark, “Kimberly Akimbo”, as Kimberly Levaco

Victoria Clark won the Tony for best leading actress in a musical on Sunday night for her role in “Kimberly Akimbo,” in which she plays a teenager with a rare disease that causes her to age rapidly.

As unusual as Clark’s role has been as a sexagenarian playing a gawky teenager with a fatal diagnosis, critics pointed to the pedestrian subtlety with which she imbued her performance.

“So remote is she from the bellowing divadom of those tourist-bait extravaganzas that I’m tempted to call what she does not singing at all, but acting on pitch,” wrote Jesse Green in his review of the musical for The Times.

This is Clark’s second award in the category: In 2005, she won for “The Light in the Piazza,” a musical in which she played an American tourist traveling with her daughter — a performance that Ben Brantley of The Times praised as a rare reflection of a “real human being” in an American mainstream musical.

A veteran stage actress, Clark, 63, has performed on Broadway since the 1980s, earning Tony nominations for featured roles in “Sister Act,” “Rodgers and Hammerstein’s Cinderella” and “Gigi.”

• Best Featured Actor in a Play: Brandon Uranowitz, “Leopoldstadt”, as Ludwig Jakobovicz and Nathan Fischbein

Brandon Uranowitz, a four-time Tony nominee, won his first Tony Award on Sunday for performing a pair of featured roles in the critically acclaimed play “Leopoldstadt.”

The play, by Tom Stoppard, follows an Austrian Jewish family — the Merzes — from 1899 to 1955. In the early days, the bourgeois family is comfortable and complacent, shown enjoying time together at holiday gatherings and family functions. But eventually the Nazis arrive, and their lives are upended and destroyed.

“My impostor syndrome is on fire,” he said in accepting the award.

“Thank you, Tom Stoppard, for writing a play about Jewish identity and antisemitism and the false promise of assimilation with the nuances and the complexities and the contradictions that they deserve,” he added. “My ancestors, many of whom did not make it out of Poland, also thank you.”

• Best Featured Actor in a Musical: Alex Newell, "Shucked", as Lulu

Alex Newell, a “Glee” alumnus who is bringing down the house nightly with a barn-burning number in “Shucked,” won the Tony Award for best featured actor in a musical Sunday night, becoming the first out nonbinary actor to win a Tony for performance.

Newell, who identifies both as nonbinary and gender fluid, plays a fiercely self-reliant whiskey distiller in “Shucked,” which is a country-scored, pun-rich musical comedy about a small farming community whose corn crop begins mysteriously dying.

“The standing ovation isn’t jarring as much as the consistency of it,” Newell told The New York Times last month. “I’m beside myself a lot of the time because I’m like, ‘Y’all are really still standing up.’”

Newell agreed to be considered in the gendered actor category, explaining, “I look at the word ‘actor’ as one, my vocation, and two, genderless. We don’t say plumbess for plumber. We don’t say janitoress for janitor. We say plumber, we say janitor. That’s how I look at the word, and that’s how I chose my category.”

• Best Featured Actress in a Play: Miriam Silverman, “The Sign in Sidney Brustein’s Window”, as Mavis Parodus Bryson

Miriam Silverman, the only acting nominee from “The Sign in Sidney Brustein’s Window,” has been with this production since its Chicago debut. “I’m always more drawn to complicated, tricky, flawed characters,” she told the Times. “And not trying to make them likable, per se, but just trying to be inside of them in all of their humanity.”

Alice Ghostley won a Tony for the same role when the play debuted in 1964.

• Best Featured Actress in a Musical: Bonnie Milligan, “Kimberly Akimbo”, as Aunt Debra

On Sunday night, Milligan, 39, took home her first Tony Award for best featured actress in a musical, for her scene-stealing performance as Debra, Kimberly’s scheming aunt.

It was the first Tony nomination for Milligan, known for her vocal range and vocal belting, who made her Broadway debut in 2018 in “Head Over Heels,” a musical that combined a Renaissance pastoral romance with the music of the Go-Go’s.

• Best Direction of a Play, Patrick Marber, “Leopoldstadt”

Patrick Marber won his first Tony on Sunday for his direction of the harrowing, critically acclaimed Tom Stoppard play, “Leopoldstadt.”

Marber, who was previously nominated for directing a 2018 revival of Stoppard’s “Travesties” has also written plays and worked as a stand-up comedian.

“I’m thrilled to win this,” he said, calling Stoppard one of his heroes.

• Best Direction of a Musical: Michael Arden, “Parade”

“‘Parade’ tells the story of a life that was cut short at the hands of the belief that one group of people is more or less valuable than another and that they might be more deserving of justice,” he said in accepting his award. “This is a belief that is the core of antisemitism, of white supremacy, of homophobia, of transphobia and intolerance of any kind. We must come together. We must battle this. It is so, so important, or else we are doomed to repeat the horrors of our history.”

Arden went on to recall how he had been called a homophobic slur — “the F-word,” he said — many times as a child. And he drew raucous cheers as he reclaimed the slur, making clear that he was now one with a Tony. “Keep raising your voices,” he said.

One of the production’s most talked-about features is Platt’s wordless presence onstage during the entire 15-minute intermission. Arden recently told Michael Paulson that he “wanted to challenge the audience, when they’re getting their cocktail or texting their friends or talking about what they’re having for dinner, to look back and see Ben onstage, and to get a sense that while the world was turning, this man was sitting in a prison cell.”

• Best Book of a Musical: David Lindsay-Abaire, "Kimberly Akimbo"

A tough category this year, with fine work addressing daunting needs. David West Read somehow made a jukebox musical (“& Juliet”) witty. Robert Horn (“Shucked”) came up with more corn puns than anyone thought possible. Matthew López and Amber Ruffin revamped a classic farce (“Some Like It Hot”) as a contemporary exploration of race and gender. But David Lindsay-Abaire may have had the hardest job of all: turning his own play “Kimberly Akimbo” gently, cleverly, ruthlessly into a great musical.

• Best Original Score: Jeanine Tesori (music) and David Lindsay-Abaire (lyrics), “Kimberly Akimbo”
• Best Choreography: Casey Nicholaw, “Some Like It Hot”

Casey Nicholaw won the Tony for best choreography for “Some Like It Hot,” a boisterous Prohibition-era musical with tapping, swing dancing and intricate staging.

Nicholaw, who also directed the production, has been nominated in the category six times before, but this is his first win. In 2011, he shared the Tony for best direction of a musical with Trey Parker for “The Book of Mormon.”

• Best Orchestrations: Charlie Rosen and Bryan Carter, “Some Like It Hot”

Broadway World: In their visit to the press room, recently annointed Tony winners, Some Like It Hot orchestrators, Charlie Rosen and Bryan Carter discussed the timely and important subject of the need for Broadway-sized orchestras for Broadway shows.

Bryan said, "Having an 18-piece orchestra is a luxury. We're hoping that the show inspires new companies to use large orchestras because orchestras really are the heartbeat of musical theatre."

In discussing the challenges of bringing their larger-than-life orchestrations to life, Charlie shared, "The challenge of this show, in particular, was that I hold Marc Shaiman and Scott Wittman in such high regard. They're such legends, I really thought twice, three times, four times, about every single note that I wrote on the page. I really wanted to do their score justice because they're so incredible and so prolific," Charlie added.

• Best Scenic Design of a Play: Tim Hatley and Andrzej Goulding, “Life of Pi”

NYTG: The Broadway transfer gave the cast and creative team the opportunity to make changes. "We were able to make some positive adjustments to the story based on the feedback from the West End," said director Max Webster, noting the first act was tightened.

The move also gave the designers the opportunity to expand the design elements of the show. “It is always good to get the opportunity to work on a show for a second (or third, or fourth...) time,” said scenic and costume designer Tim Hatley. “In my experience designing for theatre and film over the past 30 years, I have never walked away from a production thinking I have managed to get it all right.”

Most importantly, the design teams needed to adjust the scope and scale of the scenic design to fit the Gerald Schoenfeld Theatre in New York, which is wider and shallower than Wyndham’s. “This has, of course, had a knock-on effect, and video and lighting have had to adapt their designs to work with the new dimensions,” Hatley said.

For his part, video designer Andrzej Goulding (co-nominated with Hatley in the scenic design category) upgraded the show’s simulations. He also worked with lighting designer Tim Lutkin to recolor some scenes for the Broadway run and blend his projections, which naturally light the set, with Lutkin's lighting of the actors. The designers also had to adjust certain visual elements to accommodate different sight lines.

“The heart of the design is the ability to transition seamlessly from the hospital into Pi’s story, which is, for the most part, at sea,” said Hatley. The split-second transitions, which happen in full view of the audience, are integral to the narrative. “This was my challenge as the designer of the show, and I am pleased to have pulled it off.”

• Best Scenic Design of a Musical: Beowulf Boritt, “New York, New York”
• Best Costume Design of a Play: Brigitte Reiffenstuel, “Leopoldstadt”
• Best Costume Design of a Musical: Gregg Barnes, “Some Like It Hot”
• Best Sound Design of a Play: Carolyn Downing, “Life of Pi”
• Best Sound Design of a Musical: Nevin Steinberg, “Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street”
• Best Lighting Design of a Play: Tim Lutkin, “Life of Pi”
• Best Lighting Design of a Musical: Natasha Katz, “Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street”
• Special Tony Award for Lifetime Achievement: Joel Grey and John Kander

The actor and director Joel Grey, 91, will be honored for Lifetime Achievement at the Tony Awards this evening for his “everlasting impact” to the theater, said Heather Hitchens, president and chief executive of the American Theater Wing.

• Isabelle Stevenson Award: Jerry Mitchell

Parade: When Jerry Mitchell moved to New York City in 1980 to dance in his first Broadway show, Brigadoon, he'd inadvertently walked into one of the worst tragedies of American history. By 1985, he'd lost his first friend to AIDS. By 1990, he'd lost four more. As a gay dancer and choreographer performing in New York, he lived in the epicenter of the AIDS epidemic and felt helpless as his friends and colleagues died.

That helplessness turned into action in the early '90s, after Mitchell was cast in The Will Rogers Follies, in which he was "dancing every night...practically naked" in a tribute to the Ziegfeld Follies. "I was really in great shape," he told me over coffee on a warm May afternoon in a park only a few blocks from Broadway. "I looked hot, and people were noticing...and so a friend of mine said, you should go dance at the Splash Bar on 17th St., which was this famous gay bar, and raise money for our fundraiser." The fundraiser in question was for Broadway Cares/Equity Fights AIDS, an organization founded in the theater community to fight back against the disease that ravaged their friends and loved ones.

"A light bulb went off over my head. I called seven friends who were in Broadway shows who also, I knew, had great bodies, and I put together a strip show, a burlesque show on the bar. We made $8,000." And that was the birth of Broadway Bares.

While Broadway Bares my have started as an eight-man strip show in a gay bar, its Chelsea nightclub days are long behind it. In total, the dancing/body-celebrating fundraiser has earned more than $22.5 million for Broadway Cares/Equity Fights AIDS, with the burlesque dancers raking in nearly $1.9 million last year alone. The charity provides lifesaving medications, health care, nutritious meals, counseling and emergency financial assistance to those in need due to HIV/AIDS and other illnesses.

• Regional Theater Tony Award: Pasadena Playhouse

LA Times: Pasadena Playhouse will receive the 2023 Regional Theatre Tony Award, becoming only the second Los Angeles institution to earn the honor and continuing its triumphant streak after years of turbulence.

The prize, which includes a $25,000 grant sponsored by City National Bank, will be presented at the 76th Tony Awards on June 11 in New York.

The Mark Taper Forum, in 1977, was the first L.A. theater to receive the Regional Theatre Tony. Other Southern California recipients include the Old Globe in 1984, South Coast Repertory in 1988 and La Jolla Playhouse in 1993.

The award marks an astonishing turnaround for Pasadena Playhouse, which was on the verge of shutting down in 2010, when it laid off most of its staff, canceled the remainder of its season and filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection. Rescued by the generosity of donors, the theater was back on shaky ground when producing artistic director Danny Feldman was appointed to succeed long-term artistic director Sheldon Epps in 2016.

• Tony Award for Excellence in Theater Education: Jason Zembuch Young

Jason Zembuch Young is the artistic director of the public South Plantation High School in Plantation, Fla. He stages full-length musicals and a full-length plays in both voice and American Sign Language.

Now, his efforts are being rewarded with a special Tony Award, granted each year in partnership with Carnegie Mellon University to a U.S. educator who has “demonstrated monumental impact on the lives of students and who embodies the highest standards of the profession.”

• Tony Honors for Excellence in the Theater: Lisa Dawn Cave, Victoria Bailey and Robert Fried

Broadway will have an unusually busy summer

There usually tends to be a lull in new Broadway shows between the Tony Awards eligibility deadline in late April and the start of the school year. But this season is shaping up to be different, with seven openings between Memorial Day and Labor Day.

The first, a horror play called “Grey House” starring Laurie Metcalf, has already opened. Jesse Green had mixed feelings about it, describing it in his review as “so expertly assembled from spare parts by the playwright Levi Holloway and the director Joe Mantello that you may not notice, between the jump scares and the shivery pauses, how little it has on its mind.”

Up next is “Once Upon a One More Time,” about the feminist awakening of fairy tale princesses set to the music of Britney Spears. That show will be followed by two other big musicals: “Here Lies Love,” about Imelda Marcos, a former first lady of the Philippines, with a score by David Byrne and Fatboy Slim; and “Back to the Future,” adapted from the hit film.

Broadway’s summer openings will also feature a comedian, Alex Edelman, performing his acclaimed solo show, “Just for Us,” as well as two comedic plays, “The Cottage,” which is a contemporary version of an old-school farce, and “The Shark Is Broken,” which is about the backstage chaos that challenged the making of “Jaws.”

So I got a 1.20m, 30kg punching bag, and hung it on the upper floor. I don't have boxing gloves yet but my friend suggested I just use cloth bandages on my hands. I'm looking for a boxing gym near me. I'm open to any striking art but I've done taekwondo before and I'd really like to concentrate on boxing now. I can throw basic punches. I've been watching some videos on boxing basics and I think it's awesome. Anything I could start working on for myself?

I'm already confident in self-defense. I don't have any specific reason to do it other than boxing looks fun. It's something I've been meaning to get into for years.

I'm not in shape at all.

Tips are welcome!

I'm writing this post in the spirit of the powerful conversations that I had participated in on reddit in /r/adhd. I'm giving up reddit, after this recent fiasco. And, so, I hope to find a similar community here.

And, so, here we go.

I recently quit my job in Big Tech after 7 years in that space. Corporate America, and Big Tech in particular (among other fields) is a human meat grinder. Humans go in and husks come out. After taking a medical leave of absence from work due to complications from anxiety, and multiple medical interventions, I realized that I needed to evaluate whether my job, even my career, was sustainable for me. It only took a few weeks, after returning to work, to accept that, yes, this job and perhaps this career are actively harming me. After talking about it with my wife, at length, I found relief in quitting.

At the core of it: my career has simply been incongruent with my values.

Sure, I've always been a nerd. I was the "brainy" kid. I didn't know how to people well (though I'm told that I'm not on the spectrum or not in any meaningful way). I'd always been overweight and prone to stress. Throughout my life, I was often labeled as the "sensitive" one by people. I rarely felt as though I fit in with any group of people, save perhaps for the other misfits who would band together because they didn't with in with any group of people.

Just before the pandemic began, at the tender age of 47, I was diagnosed with ADHD Combined type. More recently, I was diagnosed with C-PTSD, that I have likely suffered for 40 of my 50 years.

Now I know where that weight comes from: self-medication to give me a dopamine hit and numb me to layers of trauma. I also know where the emotional reactivity comes from: emotional flashbacks resulting from the C-PTSD.

1. Lexapro for well over a decade. It helped to blunt the lows but, I've found, also the highs. I rarely feel poignancy with Lexapro. When I have occasionally been able to ween from it, I have felt a far greater range of emotions.
2. I've had an excellent therapist for going on 8 years who practices ISTDP. He's helped me learn to show up for my more challenging emotions instead of instantly reaching to numb them.
3. Adderall and Vyvanse both used to help until I received a stellate ganglion block (Disclaimer: I have been a client of Dr Mulvaney's practice though I link to it as his explanation is excellent; I'd make this a footnote alas tildes doesn't support that extension for markdown)
4. Ketamine (prescribed) to better address the depression and anxiety. Ketamine, as a psychedelic, combined with the skills learned in therapy has let me dig deeper into my layers of trauma, leading to better overall mental health and better self-understanding.
5. Stellate Ganglion Block mentioned above. Short version: it reduced my seemingly PTSD-driven emotional reactivity to about 10% of what it was prior to the SGB. It's like getting a new nervous system. Unexpected side effect: medications that act on my nervous system now respond differently. As a result, stimulants are now extremely uncomfortable for me whereas before they were effective. Before the SGB, I would say that fear was my primary emotion. Now, I feel things.

I know: I'm privileged. I'm an "old white dude who profited from being in Tech". Yep. True. But I can't retire yet; we don't have that kind of money. We do, however, have enough such that I have the luxury of time to figure out my next steps.

What I have right now is the plan to make a plan. The core of it: live a life congruent with my values--not just at some far off retirement but here, now.

At first, step 1 was to answer this question: "What is the minimum amount of money that I need to earn for us to not massively disrupt our lives?" But then I realized that this is a fear-based question. It means starting out by saying "no" to everything that doesn't earn "enough" money for some arbitrary value of enough.

Where I'm at now, Step 1 Mark II, poses a more inspiring question: "What does retirement look like for my wife and I?" I don't know that we truly get to retire in the sense of living a life of leisure as seemingly many Boomers and earlier were privileged to do. Besides, part of my sense of accomplishment and peace is knowing that I did something to make the world better.

So what do you struggle with?
How are you doing?
What are you doing about it?

Be well.

P.S. This is me trying to do my part, as a new member of this community, to encourage growth not in membership but into different areas of discussion.

I'm personally a little busy for 3d printing at the moment - but I love to see and be inspired by what others are doing. I know this is text based, but I'm also interested in what issues you are running into. I find it useful to see examples of what common problems and solutions others are running into.

I've got an "old" Prusa MK3S that is still going strong for me. When I get the time again I've got a few projects lined up: a brain, a mask, and a fluid desk sculpture that I'm excited to get printing.

What have you been printing lately?

What are you reading and what's next on your list? Are you enjoying it or just trying to get to the next book you want to read?

I'm almost finished with Columbine by Dave Cullen. It's an in depth look into what led up to the massacre, the aftermath, and how it could have been avoided. It's a well written book and sadly still very relevant today. I would recommend it to any true crime enthusiast.

Next up is either Mindhunter by John Douglas & Mark Olshaker or Children of Dune by Frank Herbert. I've been in a true crime phase for the last year, but I'm also trying to finish the entire (original) Dune series.

Personally, I would recommend Pixlriffs. A few days ago, he has started a new season of his Minecraft Survival Guide series coinciding with the release of Minecraft 1.20. The series goes over each step, including the basic ones, to get yourself started and beyond on a Minecraft world. Here is a direct link to the start of season 3 inside a playlist. If you are a new or returning player to the game, I think it's a very nice resource to get the hang of it.

The channel has been going for quite a few years now so there's a lot of content to watch, including a separate channel that he handles the writing and narration for dedicated to recapping the event of the Hermitcraft multiplayer server. The Hermitcraft players are themselves content creators I'd recommend checking out.

In a few weeks, I'll be making a short trip (3 days) to Palo Alto, working in the Stanford Medical Center area.

I'm hoping for some local or experienced insight into "don't miss" destinations for food, culture, history, and sight-seeing. It's likely I'll only have Sunday afternoon and weekday evenings free, so the personal tour may have to be more focused than local guides might otherwise suggest.

My home area has great food, but I'm really starving for Eastern cuisines. I'm willing to go beyond what a corporate travel budget permits if there's truly extraordinary, "can't get anywhere else" dining available.

Your insights are greatly appreciated!

As the title says, could someone explain the Fediverse or this whole concept of federated instances?

I looked at Mastodon a few months back and recently at Lemmy and read a few articles and I still don't quite get it. I joined a Lemmy instance but didn't see any content from other instances. (God this makes me feel old)

To me, a non techie (who is reasonably computer literate), the problem with all these federation based platforms is that they don't seem immediately intuitive to laypeople.

It also seems to have the problem of individual instances being quite parochial in that there seem to be a lot of niche instances but few that are necessarily generic for an international audience, or conversely instances that are too vague ('this is an instance for humans') whereas with something like Reddit you just sign up and post in subs just like vbulletin based forums and subforums back in the day. Tildes is essentially similar in principle.

Please feel free to tell me, if I'm an old man yelling at the Cloud.

First off, hello, I'm new here, and I hope this is an okay place to ask...what podcasts are you all into?

Here's some of my favorites:

Dispatches from Myrtle Beach:
Link from Good Mythical Morning has a conversation with his father. It's a strange mix of funny, heartwarming, raunchy, and endearing.

The Newest Olympian:
Mike Shubert from the Potterless podcasts reads the Percy Jackson books (I tried reading along with the podcast because I'd never read them, but couldn't put the books down, so I'm ahead of the podcast now). It's a funny podcast regardless if you've read the books.

RadioLab and the new season of RadioLab's More Perfect podcast
If you've never listened to radio lab, just pick any episode. They're interesting and weird and you'll learn stuff. They're just good. The new hosts are still finding their way, but it's still good, so maybe start with some of the older episodes.

Judge John Hodgman

• He settles stupid disputes between people...e.g., "Is a hotdog a sandwich" (No.)

Song Exploder

• Even if I've never heard of the song I listen. It's about how songs are made, and it's super interesting.

99% Invisible

• it's about recognizing all the fascinating things in the world around us that we pass by every day without noticing. Always read the plaque.

Oh No, Ross and Carrie

• they do non-sciencey things and then discuss from a science perspective. (E.g., joining a religion, going to flat earth meetings, visiting psychics, getting holistic medical treatments, etc)

This American Life
just interesting stories about people and things in life?

The Memory Palace
super cool podcast...usually pretty short that takes things from history and tells the story in just a unique and interesting way.

Science Friday
deep dive into science news for the week

Behind the Bastards
all about the worst people in history.

Sawbones: A Marital Tour of Misguided Medicine
Hilarious podcast about medical history

The Adventure Zone
The McElroy family plays dnd and other role play games

The Moth
people tell personal stories to crowds of people.

The Daily
New York Times's podcast

Wait Wait Don't Tell Me
news comedy gameshow

60-Second Science
as described

Good Job Brain
pub trivia podcast

A Hotdog is a Sandwich (but it's not)
Good Mythical Kitchen's Josh and Nicole debate food things

Dead Pilots Society:
really interesting. They take scripts from failed TV pilots and hire actors to do table reads of the script. Every other week is an interview with the script's writers too, so you can listen to those if interested or just the table reads if not.

Brainstuff:
just interesting tidbits. Short podcasts.

I'd love to hear your recommendations!

Edit: Thank you all for all the recommendations! I'm still reading all the posts and adding them to my list to give them a shot!

Someone mentioned elsewhere that they signed up for Tildes “years ago during the beta”. That reminded me: Tildes hasn’t reached beta-testing yet.

Officially, Tildes is still in alpha-testing phase.

The login page says “Tildes is currently in invite-only alpha...” And the Contact page says “To request an invite to the Tildes alpha...”

We’re still in alpha-testing. Alpha-testing of software usually happens on an incomplete product before it is released to the customer.

This is a very important point. Tildes is not feature-complete yet: there are literally hundreds of feature requests yet to work on before Tildes will be what people want it to be – and even that list is far from complete. In Agile software development terms, Tildes is a minimum viable product, or, in other words, “a version of a product with just enough features to be usable by early customers who can then provide feedback for future product development”.

Tildes works as it is, but it’s a bare-bones forum: you can post, and comment… and that’s about it. It’s a proof of concept. There are a few minor tweaks here and there, which give the impression that Tildes is more complex than it is, but they’re misleading. There are plans to make Tildes a more complex website but, right now, most of that complexity of Tildes exists only in people’s imaginations (and there have been some very imaginative people contributing to that list of future features!).

Most questions about “Why doesn’t Tildes do X?” or “Can Tildes do X?” can be answered simply by saying “Tildes is incomplete and X hasn’t been built yet.” There are some questions about missing features which can be answered by saying “Tildes was never intended to do X”, but those are far and away in the minority. Most flaws, drawbacks, and problems with Tildes exist because Tildes is still a proof of concept, rather than a finished product.

It’s also worth noting that Tildes’ current feature set is absolutely not up to the task if the user base and site activity increase too quickly. There’s too much manual tinkering required at the moment to make things work properly: for one thing, there are no significant moderation tools on Tildes (that’s almost all done manually at the moment). There are still a lot of features yet to be built - and we don’t even know what some of those features are yet!

To pre-empt the people who will rightly point out that Tildes is 5 years old: Tildes’ feature set was intended to grow gradually over time, in line with a gradual growth in users, activity, and the need for those features to exist. However, Tildes has not undergone much growth over the past few years, so the existing features were sufficient to manage the existing activity. Basically, the site didn’t need a lot of fancy features to handle the low traffic here.

This sudden surge of new users might change that. But it will take time to build more features. That was always the intention, and it hasn’t changed now.

Until then: Tildes is still in alpha-testing. It’s an unfinished product. Set your expectations accordingly.

EDIT:

If you're one of the many people who seem to be replying to this topic, saying "it's okay, I like this simple bare-bones site as it is"... then you're probably not part of my original intended audience for this topic. This topic was aimed at all the people who are arriving here, being taken aback at how simple Tildes is, and wondering where the advanced features are.

However, we can still take the "set your expectations accordingly" message and apply it to you: "Tildes is an unfinished product, so you can expect it to change in the future. It won't be like this forever."

Either way, "set your expectations accordingly" is the message here, whether you're expecting more features and not finding them, or whether you're expecting simplicity and enjoying what you see. Either way, you should know that things will change around here. Maybe slowly. Maybe quickly. Maybe they'll get better from your point of view. Maybe they'll get worse from your point of view. But, change they will.

I’d really appreciate suggestions for any action-packed anime series you might be able to share.

I “play” Zwift indoors for exercise when I don’t have time to ride my bicycle outside. While Zwift is a huge improvement over nothing, I still find myself watching the clock more than the screen. To help keep my mind busy and pass the time, I’ve been watching anime while riding indoors for the last several years. The more intense the anime, the better!

I think the early Attack on Titan seasons are the most emblematic of what I’m looking for, though I’ve been enraptured by other less likely shows, such as Psycho-Pass and Dr. Stone.

Chainsaw Man, Blue Lock, Shield Hero, Sword Art Online, Parasyte , the first season of Vinland Saga, Shokugeki, and many others have helped me get through countless hours of riding in the past, and I could really use a few new series going forward.

Thanks in advance!

Edit: cleaned up some phrasing

Edit 2: It's really hard to come up with an exhaustive list, but as folks jog my memory (or when my own addled brain decides to be useful) I'll add other series I've seen so far as well.

• Yowamushi Pedal
  • Because: of course
• Lastman
  • A rare French anime, and I really enjoyed it
• Fireforce
• Neon Genesis Evangelion
• One Punch Man
• Kill La Kill
• Gurren Lagann
• Jojo's Bizarre Adventure
  • Watched a few episodes but struggled to get into it
• Eighty-Six
• My Hero Academia
• Demon Slayer
  • Watched through the train movie and discontinued when they turned said movie into the next season
• Mob Psycho 100
  • Watched a few episodes but struggled to get into it
• Hunter X Hunter
• Cowboy Bebop
• RWBY
  • Struggling with the current season
• Tokyo Ghoul
  • Struggling with season 3
• Sabikoi Bisco
  • Made it to episode 10 and fell out of it, can't remember why
• Ranking of Kings
  • Made it to episode 8 but never got into it
• Welcome to Demon School Iruma-kun
  • Made it to episode 11 before dropping it
• To Your Eternity
  • Made it a handful of episodes in but never got into it
• Berserk
  • Watched the first season, need to get back to the second
• Black Clover
  • Amusing enough, managed to watch 143 episodes lol
• MEGALOBOX
• FLCL
• Naruto
• That Time I Got Reincarnated as a Slime
• Tower of God
• Aoashi
• Black Summoner
• DNA2
• Death Parade
• Erased
  • This one hit me in the feels
• Fate/Stay Night: Unlimited Blade Works
• Fullmetal Alchemist Brotherhood
• The Greatest Demon Lord is reborn as a Typical Nobody
• Gundam Build Divers
• Kaiji
• Noblesse
• Over Drive
• Overlord
• The Promised Neverland
• Puella Magi Madoka Magica
• Shinobi no Ittoki
• So I'm a Spider, So What?
• The World's Finest Assassin Gets Reincarnated in Another World as an Aristocrat
• takt op.Destiny
• RE:Zero

Hey everyone. I’m a Computer Science major who feels very behind. I don’t have any substantial projects to put on my resume. I look at basic open source stuff and can’t understand it.

I’m currently attending WGU online, but also work full time so I don’t have a ton of free time to learn or work on side projects.

Anyone have advice for a guy in my scenario? I ended up dropping out of college a couple times during COVID and now I’m just trying to get back on the right path.

The language I know best is Java, but I’ve been trying to learn C++ and web development as well. Applied for internships but no luck so far, I think I need to make some better projects.

The 24 hours of Le Mans is about 6 hours in! Anyone watching? Thoughts?

Besides the hour-long safety car during the rain, it's been a lot of fun so far. It's my first year watching after getting into F1 and Indycar in the past few years and I'm having a blast.

I had often considered an e-bike and whilst I don't consider myself particularly good at cycling I have always enjoyed going on a bike ride.

I live in a mountainous area and I am overweight and late 50's with arthritis and so cycling was becoming harder for me (I resisted an uphill battle). Cycling has always had health benefits both mental and physical but now it was a struggle.

I therefore started to look at the different models that were available. My requirements were for a hobby cyclist and enough range for a few hours ride.

I dont know what it is like elsewhere but blimey they are expensive here in the UK. 1500 - 2000GBP for a base model. So I kept my eyes open for a second hand model and finally picked up an E-MTB for 300GBP which fit none of my criteria.
A Coyote Edge 650 which was sold by a shop called Halfords here in the UK. 36v rear hub driven and a 7 gear rear cog setup

i have only ever ridden hybrids or tourers before but MTB's are an eye opener and if they are as much fun without the electrics then I really did miss out on some fun in the past.

I have now done 500+ miles and it has been nothing but fun. I sometimes only get out for an hour after work but for my head that is usually good enough. I can also get to the top of the mountain and just sit and admire the view then follow the trail back down (and dont tell the wife but I am getting quicker and quicker on that down hill track)

There is no real point to this other than to share my experience as a first time e cyclist

Downsides, it is expensive. The e bike, the helmet and gloves can be quite expensive and the bits that you need just in case, pump, water bottle, spare inner tube, glasses for when the sun is low. Also when the battery starts to go that is a huge expense, in my case we are looking 300 to 400GBP.

On the other side though it has re-opened some routes I haven't done in years, my mental state is a lot better I'm losing weight, and I am having fun. Do you know how many flies you can catch when you are smiling!

Top tips I have found though is that Ali-Express is awesome for tools and parts and that charity shops (Thrift shops in the US) have been excellent for sportswear, I got some good base layers a while ago and the wife brought me home 2 MuddyFox cycling jerseys the other day, one which had a shops label still in.

If you are still contemplating whether to get one, do so and then make the time to ride it. You won't regret it.

p.s. Im not buying Lycra

I’m attending college this fall and moving cross country for this move. I wanted to ask everyone who’s currently in college or graduated not too long ago on whether if it’s worth it to stay on-campus in the dorms.

I heard you get assigned a roommate and some dorms, depending on which one you get, can have 1-3 additional roommates.

I’ve always had my own room and the closest thing I’ve had to a roommate was my little sister…but she had her own room as well.

I know staying on campus it’s easier to get to class and I get to live the traditional college experience. I don’t mind having a roommate but I heard if you have a shitty one, it’s not gonna be fun.

The perks of having your own apartment you get the ability of having your own space and doing whatever you want with no dorm monitors right? Only downside is paying rent?

If you have any insight or experience to share I'd love to hear them! 🙏

Ever since I caught the FromSoftware bug in 2020 it's been difficult for me to enjoy action games anymore, but on the plus side, it has led me to spend more time exploring and enjoying cozy games! In particular, I love cozy games that don't involve any kind of violence or death mechanics.

It seems to me like these games are what people think of as being targeted towards kids, but kids these days aren't really interested in them because they are very calm, slow, relaxing and meditative, and everything kids actually consume in the "Screen Era" tends to be the exact opposite.

For me, these cozy games are a great way for me to get in touch with my inner child as an adult and they help me a lot with emotional regulation, making sense of my own childhood, all sorts of stuff, really.

Do you play cozy games? Are you interested in exploring cozy games? Do you stream cozy games? I'd love to hear from you and your experiences playing cozy games as an adult! Everything from recommendation requests, to reviews, to let's plays, and beyond.

It feels like in the last few years so many companies are becoming incredibly greedy in a chance to try and raise profits and please the shareholders, companies hoping that people will comply as they have no choice and give away more of their money to allow these companies to make record levels of profits.

It seems like people are getting less and less and what they have left the companies just want more and more from everyone. I'm not referencing any specific company here but I have seen these trends in the last couple of years get a lot worse.

Customer Impact

• Raising prices there is some valid reasons to raise prices, but sometimes prices are raised just as a way to make more money quickly.
• Quality reduction it feels like companies are asking more money for less quality goods more than ever.
• Excessive manipulative marketing especially on social media and other playes which can misleed people.
• Data explotation companies mis-using peoples data just so they can make some quick money.

Employee Impact

• Wage stagnation Despite the soaring profits many companies refusing to increase wages, leading to financial insecurity.
• Unfair labor practices Companies expecting more from their employees for less money basically.
• Job insecurity replacing workers with automation and outsourcing to cut costs.
• Mental health high pressure enviroments to force profit-driven companies causing record levels of mental health issues.

Society and Enviromental Impact

• Polluting Companies prioritising profits over the enviroment leading to pollution, waste etc
• Economic Inequality Coporate greed leading to income disparities, undermining social coheison.
• Unfair influence on policy Companies using their power and wealth to influence policy making

My question is, when is enough is enough? At what stage should something be done? Anything? to stop corporate greed from runing society?

What kind of setup/equipment do you have? Preferred roasts? Maybe you don't have equipment, but a favorite drink or place?

My setup isn't anything special, but it works for me. I have an Expobar Office Lever that I bought in 2017. Daily use and a bit of minor maintenance along the way, and it's been a solid machine. Paired with a Quamar M80E grinder.

Also have a second, more entry-level machine at our cabin - Gaggia Classic Pro (which is having some issues right now) and a DF64P grinder.

For beans, I've been using a subscription from Bottomless for the last 1.5 years and have been super happy with it. I enjoy trying different roasters from all over the country and the service has been super reliable and not all that expensive for the fact that you get just-in-time freshly roasted beans at your doorstep.

Anyway, what are you guys drinking?

With the death of third party apps, I'm gone. Way over 90% of my interactions are on RIF Is Fun, and I don't see myself changing over. (Ironically, I'm typing this on my laptop, but this is definitely the exception.)

The u/spez "AMA" (quotes because it was anything but an AMA) yesterday made clear that there was no vision, no plan, no grand strategy, no genius behind the scenes trying to make a bad situation better. There is next-quarterism, venture vulture capital destruction, and a fundamental misunderstanding of where Reddit gets its value. Without the users, the mods, and the developers who make this insane place work, it will never turn a profit.

Who wants to advertise on a website when there is random nsfw spam? Or where there is rampant racism without folks to clean it up? Or where nobody goes because there is no content? Developers, mods, and users provide (in order) the methods of interaction that then get applied to lead to the economic driver of the company. In the "AMA," the most damning comment in my mind was "we’ll continue to be profit-driven until profits arrive". You can't cut costs out of a budget hole when most of the work done comes from free labor, and when the content that drives eyeballs to the site is free too.

Reddit is cutting the legs off of the 1% and <0.1% of users by seeking short-sighted profits off the backs of third-party developers. Reddit is gaslighting and libelling and doing a pretty shit job of it, because we all can see what's done and said here...And it is just going to accelerate the decline of the site.

I'm not going to be deleting, because I have unreasonable hope that things can change for the better, I'll just not coming on nearly as much. I'll probably sleep or something with the extra time. Or maybe I'll read books on my phone, or develop a new strange addiction.

Here lies Reddit, a hive of scum and villainy to rival Mos Eisley. It was home. So long, and thanks for all the fish.

My friends and I have been striving for the perfect score of 13 in Just One, and there's almost always one or two cards which make it seemingly impossible unless you're very lucky.

Just One if you're unfamiliar, is a game where your teammate wants to guess a word -- and you each independently give a one-word clue, "Donkey", "Dreamworks", "Ogre". If two or more players write the same word, all those clues get hidden -- so your clues can't be too obvious.

The words vary absurdly in difficulty from words like "Wine" and "Snake" where you can basically break the game by listing wines and snakes -- to words like "Mexico" and "Strawberry" where you can come at them from a few directions. ...But about 10% of the words are things like "Grotto", "Couscous" and "Ramses" where honestly, you could possibly sit down with someone for 30 minutes describing them in excruciating detail, and they might still not come up with those particular words. Could you describe "Couscous" to your 10-year-old nephew who lives on Chick-fil-A and Mcdonalds? Could you disambiguate a "Grotto" from a cave, cavern, bunker or lair? Sometimes it's a vocabulary thing but more often, it's just words with a lot of synonyms.

I call these "land mine" cards and I'm curious if anyone else has noticed this phenomenon. Have any of you gotten a perfect score in Just One? If so did you randomly dodge these land mines or did you overcome them with a really perfect clue?

I recently acquired the criterion release of Stalker (1979), a film I have not seen since I was a teenager. I remember liking it back then, but I didn't appreciate how much it would simultaneously wash over me as well as work it's way into the back of my mind, like an eel of a tone poem.

For those who have not seen Stalker, it is a journey of three men into a mysterious and beautiful "Zone" in search of their deepest desires.
I full throatedly recommend. Gorgeous film.

While the symbolism has been thoroughly discussed elsewhere on the internet, a less talked about aspect (of this and other films) is how it makes the viewer feel.

For me personally, the three moments that most affected me on a visceral level all involve people lying down.
Why, I'm not sure.
But they are: The scene where The Stalker lays in the tall grass, I felt such a calm bliss as he soaked in the lush green nature of The Zone;
The scene where The Stalker sleeps on a tiny dry piece of ground in a large flooded canal, I felt a sense of sublime misery. The only thing I could compare it to is when you get suddenly awoken when you haven't had enough sleep, and have to go out into the cold early morning still nodding off, and nothing feels real;
and third is the lingering shot of the dog sitting guard over the entwined bodies near The Room.
I felt a profound longing sadness. I imagined that the entwined lovers died together in some relation to their deepest desire.

I really love films that wash over the viewer in this way like a tide, and I hope that some of you do as well.

Another film that has a similar aspect is Upstream Color (2013), and while the creative mind behind that film is....perhaps a mentally unwell abuser, I can't dismiss the art he has created. I guess my relationship with his work is complicated.

How do you Feel about stalker?

Are there any films that had a similar effect on you as this one did to me?

Always looking for recommendations!

Happy Friday everyone! I'm making a post to see if anyone wants to beta test my Tildes.net iOS app Backtick.

Background

I've been wanting to create a Reddit app for quite a while, and just when I got started, the API change chaos happened. Thankfully, I remembered signing up for Tildes.net a few years ago and decided to pivot to make an app for this site instead! The app is still a work in progress, but I believe releasing early and getting as many eyes on it during development results in a better end product (and it's more fun for me 😊).

Features

Here are the current features of Backtick:

• Light mode/dark mode
• Login to Tildes.net (suports 2FA)
• Front page feed with sorting support
• View, vote, and comment on posts
• Reply and vote on comments
• Collapse comments
• View notifications
• Full markdown rendering
• Text-to-speech for posts and comments

Here is a video demo of the app in its current state (updated for v1.8.1): https://youtube.com/shorts/iukQJyJbtw8?feature=share

I know there missing features, but as I mentioned before, I would love to get as many people in as early as possible to help shape Backtick's future.

Testing

If you're interested in testing the app as I continue to work on it during my free time you will need:

• An iOS 16 device
• TestFlight (Apple's testing app)

You can access the beta here: https://testflight.apple.com/join/gNH18NE9. If you have any issues please DM me your Apple ID email and I will send you an invite manually.

Thanks, everyone! Have a great weekend.
- Ash

Edit:
Getting some great feedback! I'll be tracking bugs and potential features here if anyone is curious: https://chatter-brick-3d3.notion.site/Backtick-Tracker-888150b641ae4c0ab39dc0345783bc50?pvs=4

Edit2:
I created the Discord server to help facilitate better collaboration with those who wish to be more involved. It will be a place for discussion around potential features, bugs, and general chat. I will still be taking in feedback via TestFlight and Tildes.net, so it's perfectly fine if you don't want to join.
Join here: https://discord.gg/aah7nkfpBY

A common theme in web development, and the crux of the so-called "Web 2.0" is scrolling through dynamic lists of content. Tildes is such an example: you can scroll through about 50 topics on the front page before you reach a "next" button if you want to keep looking.

There's a certain beauty in the simplicity of the next/previous page. When done right it's fast, it's easy, and fits neatly into a server-side rendered model. However, it does cause that small bit of friction where you need to hit the next button to go forward -- taking you out of the "flow", so-to-speak. It's slick, but it could be slicker. Perhaps more importantly, it's an interesting problem to solve.

A step up from the next/previous button is to load the next page of content when you reach the end of the list, inserting it below. If the load is pretty fast, this will hardly interrupt your flow at all! The ever-so-popular reddit enhancement suite does precisely that for reddit: instead of a next button, when you reach the bottom, the next page of items simply plops into place. If the loading isn't fast enough, perhaps instead of loading when they reach the last item, you might choose to load when they hit the fifth from last item, etc.

To try to keep this post more concrete, and more helpful, here's how this type of pagination would work in practice, in typescript and using the Intersection Observer API but otherwise framework agnostic:

/**
 * Allows the user to scroll forever through the given list by calling the given loadMore()
 * function whenever the bottom element (by default) becomes visible. This assumes that
 * loadMore is the only thing that modifies the list, and that the list is done being modified
 * once the promise returned from loadMore resolves
 *
 * @param list The element which contains the individual items
 * @param loadMore A function which can be called to insert more items into the list. Can return
 *   a rejected promise to indicate that there are no more items to load
 * @param triggerLoadAt The index of the child in the list which triggers the load. Negative numbers
 *   are interpreted as offsets from the end of the list. 
 */
function handlePagination(list: Element, loadMore: () => Promise<void>, triggerLoadAt: number = -1) {
    manageIntersection();
    return;

    function handleIntersection(ele: Element, handler: () => void): () => void {
        let active = true;
        const observer = new IntersectionObserver((entries) => {
            if (active && entries[0].isIntersecting) {
                handler()
            }
        }, { root: null, threshold: 0.5 });
        observer.observe(ele);
        return () => {
            if (active) {
                active = false;
                observer.disconnect();
            }
        }
    }

    function manageIntersection() {
        const index = triggerLoadAt < 0 ? list.children.length + triggerLoadAt : triggerLoadAt;
        if (index < 0 || index >= list.children.length) {
            throw new Error(`index=${index} is not valid for a list of ${list.children.length} items`);
        }

        const child = list.children[index];
        const removeIntersectionHandler = handleIntersection(child, () => {
            removeIntersectionHandler();
            loadMore().then(() => {
                manageIntersection();
            }).catch((e) => {});
        });
    }
}

If you're sane, this probably suffices for you. However, there is still one problem: as you scroll,
the number of elements on the DOM get longer and longer. This means they necessarily take up
some amount of memory, and browsers probably have to do some amount of work to keep
track of them. Thus, in theory, if you were to scroll long enough, the page would get slower and
slower! How long "long enough" is would depend mostly on how complicated each item is: if each one
is a unique 20k element svg, it'll get slow pretty quickly.

The trick to avoid this, and to get a constant overhead, is that when adding new items below, remove the same number of items above! Of course, if the user scrolls back up they'll be expecting those items to be there, but no worries, the handlePagination from before works just as well for loading items before the first item.

However, this simple change is where a key problem arises: inserting elements below doesn't cause any layout shift, but inserting an item above ought to--right?

The answer is: it depends on the browser! Back in 2017 chrome realized that it's often convenient to be able to insert items into the dom above the viewport, and implemented scroll anchoring, which basically ensures that if you insert an item 50px tall above the viewport, then scroll 50px down so that there's no visual layout shift. Firefox followed suite in 2019, and edge got support in 2020. But alas, safari both on mac and ios does not support scroll anchoring (though they expressed interest in it since 2017)

Now, there's two responses to this:

• Surely Safari support is coming soon, they've posted on that bug as recently as April! Just use simpler pagination for now
• Pshhhh, just implement scroll anchoring ourself!

Of course, I've gone and done #2, and it almost perfectly works. Here's the idea:

• Right before loadMore, find the first item in the list which is inside the viewport. This is the item whose position we don't want to move. Use getBoundingClientRect to find it's top position.
• Perform the DOM manipulation as desired
• Use getBoundingClientRect again to find the new top of that item.
• Insert (or remove) the appropriate amount of blank space at the top of the list to offset the change in client rect (note that if there's scroll anchoring support in the browser this should always be zero, which means this effectively works as progressive enhancement)

Now, the function to do this is a tad too long for this post. I implemented it in React, however, and combined it with some stronger preloading object (we don't need all the items we've fetched from the API on the DOM, so we can use before, onTheDom, after lists to avoid getting a bunch of api requests just from scrolling down and up within the same small number of items).

What's interesting is that it still works perfectly on chrome even with scroll-anchoring disabled (via overflow-anchor: none), but on Safari there is still, sometimes, 1 frame where it renders the wrong scroll position before immediately adjusting. Because I implemented it in react, however, my current hypothesis is I have a mistake somewhere which causes the javascript to yield to the renderer before all the manipulations are done, and it only shows up on Safari because of the generally higher framerates there

If it's interesting to people, I could extract the infinite list component outside of this project: I certainly like it, and in my case I do expect people to want to quickly scroll through hundreds to thousands of items, so the lighter DOM feels worth it (though perhaps it wouldn't if I had known, when starting, how painful getting it to work on Safari would be!).

What do you think of this type of "true" infinite scrolling for web? Good thing, neutral thing, bad thing? Would you use it, if the component were available? Would you remove it, if you saw someone doing this? Are there other questions about how this was accomplished? Is this an appropriate post for Tildes?

The previous introductions thread was only a few days ago, but it's getting pretty long and we expect more people. So here's another one!

This is a place for new users to post an introduction with a few fun facts about themselves. You will find the post box at the bottom the page. Maybe say hi to someone else you see while scrolling down?

If you like, you can also write something about yourself in your profile. See "Edit your user bio" on the settings page. Anyone who clicks on your username will see it in your profile. (It appears on the right side of the page.)

You can find out more about how to use Tildes in this topic: New users: Ask your questions about Tildes here!

Anyone into SUP/iSUP? I got my iSUP about 3 years ago and use it all the time. It’s a big one, able to carry 400 lbs so my entire family gets on it and cruises around lakes and rivers sometimes. What does everyone else have?

It could be a fun way to get some more interaction going in this group instead of just the "what have you been watching/reading this past month?" posts. We could start with a short, 12 episode show just to see how it goes. If it goes well, maybe we could do it again with a longer show.

Since posts don't die from old age on tildes, we could keep it contained to one post. I believe we could just post a top-level comment each week with something like "Week 1 - Episodes 1-3", then keep all the discussion for that week's episodes as replies. Users could visit the post whenever, collapse all replies, and then only open up the episode discussions they want to participate in to avoid any spoilers.

This would prevent multiple posts cluttering up the front page for everyone, but would still be easy to navigate. It would take some self-policing to make sure that nobody else posts a top-level reply, but I think it could work.

What does everyone think? And any suggestions for a show? I'm thinking something like Erased might be good since it has a fairly broad appeal.

Edit: Assuming we do a 12 episode show to kick things off, what day of the week would everyone want me to post episode discussions? And how many episodes per post? We could do something like 3 episodes every Friday, or we could do 1-2 episodes say every Wednesday and Sunday if we don't want to wait a full week between discussions.

Edit 2: Sounds like we're gonna go-ahead with Erased! I'll put together a schedule and create the post later today with details.

Hey ~food! I'm relatively new here, but I would love to share my love of cookbooks with you all and discover some new ones to add to my collection.

While Salt, Fat, Acid, Heat and The Food Lab are certainly some of my favorites. I have discovered others that I have repeatedly gone back to that aren't as decorated with rewards.

One of my favorite authors as of late, Olia Hercules, has a couple of cookbooks that I absolutely adore! She specializes in Ukrainian dishes and her recipes have helped dispel the myth of potatoes and cabbage being the only slavic ingredients. Mamushka is her first cook book with several great recipes, including a chicken marinade that is impossible for me to get away from. Summer Kitchens is another lovely cook book by her that reads like a love letter for documenting Ukrainian cuisine and has so many great vegetable recipes.

I'm curious to hear about other people's recommendations! Please give me a another reason for needing a devoted bookshelf for my collection.

So I've been wanting to host some gameplay sessions on Discord for a while now, and I figured the best option would be visual novels or adventure games and similar types of games that are more story-driven. You don't have to worry about the video lagging as much, and you can pretty easily pause playing to talk to people without worrying about getting distracted.

What I particularly want are games that have choices that matter so people can give input. Someone once mentioned playing "Your Turn To Die" with friends where they could vote on the choices, and it's been stuck in my head ever since. If you haven't played that game, there are multiple points where you have to choose between two characters dying, which definitely shapes later chapters. Obviously I know what goes on in that game though, and I'd prefer to be just as blind as everyone else.

So please give me suggestions! Funny games, mystery games, horror games, psychological thrillers, I'm open to anything! (Except most dating sims. Those can be long and tedious if they don't have some twist to them.)

Minor edit: It doesn't have to be just visual novels or adventure games. I'm open to basically any game that doesn't depend on real-time reaction speeds (e.g. most platformers), so that we don't have to worry about getting killed while talking, or the video lagging and/or quality dropping for some people. (That's the main reason I've eliminated movies as an option, video lag and connection quality issues can really hamper the experience.)

After reviewing all the beginner friendly tags on the GitLab and figuring out easy answers the hard way, I finally made my first merge request for issue #700 to an open-source project! It isn't much, and probably took me 10x the amount of time it would take for someone who knows what they are doing, and it probably has some issues that needs to be worked out (although I tried to test as thoroughly as possible), I still submitted it. Even if it doesn't get accepted, I'm sure if someone wants to pick up my pieces, they can do so and build out this functionality in a better way.

I just wanted to share and put it out there that you don't have to be a master programmer to make contributions to this site))

Many of us listen to whatever music strikes our mood, but there are some out there who, in addition to mood, listen to and appreciate music in focused listening projects. It could be a discography of an artist you want to finish, or it could be listening to all the top 10 albums from each year. There's really no end to the listening projects we get ourselves involved in. I'd like to open a discussion about this.

I've been involved in a number of listening/appreciation projects over the years. For example, even though half the year hasn't elapsed, I've already finished my 2023 Listening Challenge, in which I listened to 50 albums on a variety of criteria.

Right now I'm discog diving some of my favorite artists, and the experience has really opened my ears to the lesser-known avenues of exploration. I've completed so many already, satisfying my urge to always be doing something goal-oriented. Right now, for example, I'm listening to The Musings of Miles as part of my Miles Davis discog dive.

So what are you into project-wise? Please share your experiences!

I was inspired by this comment by @rogue_cricket in another discussion on spirituality. I was going to simply reply, but I think it could be a fun, new topic for recommendations and it didn't seem to fit the overall conversation over there. Since I'm brand new, let me know if I'm doing this wrong and if I should just reply instead.

So what are everyone's symbols or rituals? Whether you are Christian, Buddhist, Athiest, Agnostic, Muslim, etc., what are some things that make you feel more connected?

Here's my contribution:

A little context: I call myself agnostic. I believe there might be something bigger out there, but that it doesn't make much sense to put a face to it or try to figure out what it wants from us. Since I don't prescribe to any particular religion, I have come up with my own ways to feel the serenity of connecting with whatever it is (The Universe, God, Nature, etc.):

Tibetan Singing Bowls:

My friend bought a big, expensive, crystal bowl that I used several times while meditating. The vibrations are supposed to resonate with and activate the chakras in your body. I found a smaller, more affordable set on Amazon. While they don't have the same gut-vibrating power as the large, crystal bowl, they still help my meditation sessions immensely by giving me something to focus on.

Character Asset Stones:

As a member of a 12-Step program, we are supposed to constantly work on weakening our character defects by strengthening our character assets, but I always seem to have trouble remembering them in the moment. My sponsor suggested painting words such as "kindness," "generosity," "honesty," and "forgiveness" on small river stones. I will randomly pick one out of a fish bowl before I leave the house every day, and carry it in my pocket, reminding me all day to work on that one particular character asset. I feel that little spark of connection and a sense of satisfaction every time I get to practice my asset for the day.

Sitting Quiety and Observing:

This one is very hard for me, as my brain always defaults to wanting to scroll something or do something. I've found that it works best if I have something interesting to focus on. I'm fortunate enough to live near the beach, so sometimes I will just go watch the waves for a while. Sometimes I people watch on the patio of Starbucks. It's important for me to leave my phone elsewhere, or I'll want to pull it out and check texts-emails-reddit-grindr-blah-blah-blah. But sitting quietly and just being for a little while, enjoying the sights and sounds, "stopping to smell the roses," makes me feel connected to the Universe.

I'm looking forward to some more ideas...

So, I have been getting into some Blades in the dark stuff recently. I am loving it due to the fact that I really don't need to spend much time between sessions doing any prep. Sure, I can spend as much time brainstorming cool stuff to happen but really it all happens at the table.

So, what other cool TTRPGs are out there that support this kind of play?

I saw all the hype about Google's new passkey rollout on Hacker News and Ars Technica in the past month, and have even read an article stating that, paraphrased, "I should start using passkeys immediately, even if the tech is not all the way there yet."

Some questions:

• Are you using passkeys currently? Which provider?
• Is there a fear of vendor lock-in (looking at you, Apple) or ditching the product in the future (looking at you, Google)?
• Any other concerns I should be aware of, e.g. what happens if my phone gets run over by a bulldozer?

I'm a pretty conscientious person and I like to research stuff before I buy it - I'm not obsessive about getting The Best Whatever In Class, but like anyone I'm interested in a good deal for a product that suits my needs.

Between the prevalence of review-stuffing bots, Google's results getting worse, and reviewers themselves sometimes having questionable financial backing, I'm finding it harder and harder to find reliable information. So the gold standard is personal recommendations from real people!

I checked and it's been a while since we've had a general recommendations thread on Tildes so I thought it might be nice to start up another one with the influx of new folks!

Possible points of discussion:

1. Are you looking to buy something and hoping to hear from people about what's good and what's bad? Post the type of thing you're looking for in a top-level comment and others can chime in!

2. Is there a product you enjoy or that has improved your life, fills a niche or special requirement really well, or stands out to you as being a big improvement over its competitors? Is there a particular company you had a great experience with? Share with others who might also benefit!

3. Is there a product you tried, HATED, and want to warn people about? Something that's all hype, no substance? I think that also fits here.

4. Are there any reviewers or sites you trust in particular?

I’m interested to see how many others in the tilde community are trying to actively lose weight, what methods you’re using, any big milestones you reached recently and/or your goals!

I’ll kick off: I lost 25kg in 2022, have been on a long maintenance break while I restarted running and getting into my exercise groove, and am now starting up again to lose another 15-20kg. Last year I was just calorie counting but became a little obsessive so this time around I’m trying intermittent fasting - I’m short and I don’t have many calories to play with so skipping a meal feels like the most doable!

I’m a recent joiner after discovering tildes on Reddit (frankly have found that place terrible for my mental health lately, so this API thing bringing about discussions of alternatives has been a godsend!) but one thing I did like on there is the motivation I’d find in knowing I wasn’t the only one on this journey. Perhaps others feel similar! (And if not, if I’ve committed some heinous social faux pas by posting, I can only apologise - this feels like such a nicely curated place that I’m nervous of spoiling it like some great oaf burping during dinner with the queen)

Two years ago by wife and I split up as friends and while I understand it and think it was the right move, I'm still in tears and the feeling of a broken and pointless life. She moved on, found friends, new hobbies, new whatever. I still am where she left me and I don't know what to do. We've been together for almost 20 years and while I wasn't very communicative before, I sure ain't now. Even less than before.

I tried finding new friends, but I can't really read people and seem to misinterpret everything. I've met a woman on my daily walks with my dogs and her dog loves me and my little idiot dog. We two seemed to like eachother and after a few months of random meetups I asked her if I should give her my email (because I thought that would be less intrusive than my phone) to meet for walks. I made clear that I didn't intend to hit on her, but the look on her face broke my heart. I can't really tell what it was, but it wasn't positive. Now I'm back in my hole and back at feeling alone.

How do people move on? How can I get out of this... I don't know, terrible loneliness combined with the fear of seeing that expression again if I open up to others? I don't think I can handle this often.

Do you prefer kinetic VNs (where there are no choices, just story), choices that slightly alter the dialogue but don't impact the story much, or choices that result in new scenes/routes/endings?

Personally, I'm a fan of having choices in the game and having them impact the narrative -- either by unlocking a new route, a special scene with a character, or getting an alternative ending. Stein's;Gate was a lot of fun for me.

I do enjoy a good kinetic novel when I just want to listen to music and read, though. Queen Beast is a great recent example -- go check it out!

I had last year my first and only experience with VR, at home with a friend. I dont even remember what the product was, but the experience was just amazing. Ever since I wanted to get a Headset myself, but now I don't even where to start.
What do I need to know to make a good decision, as these products are quite expensive?
What should I look for? What are important details?

I want mainly to play some games. That one day we just played beat saber and superhot.
What other experiences are worth exploring?
I have an ok linux (gaming) pc, it was beefy once, but it got quite some years now :-)
I saw there are standalone products as well?

Hey all. I’m sure there’s a lot of new users making their way to Tildes this week. Let’s share some Letterboxd profiles to get the community going. I guess I’ll be first! Follow me if you have similar taste and I’ll do the same: https://letterboxd.com/plo/

My fiancée and I are going to Provincetown, MA to celebrate both Pride and her birthday.

Her mothers used to take her to Ptown every summer as a kid, so as an ally I’m looking forward to soaking up the positive vibes and getting to know this place that’s so special to her. I’ve been learning more about the town and what it’s meant to the LGBTQ+ community over the last few decades.

It shouldn’t have had to be a hideaway but it’s so cool that such a place exists and that it feels so separate from the rest of the country via that long drive out on the Cape.

The world is certainly a scary place right now but this month is full of so much love. Are any of y’all going to any parades or events to celebrate?