I was talking with a friend not too long ago about this, and I'm curious what others have to say. For me there were a few, specific games that ended up playing a big role in my personal history, but one in particular that I can say had an immense impact on who I am today.

The game was STALKER: Shadow of Chernobyl. In 2007, I graduated high school and got a new laptop. Prior to that, I had a WinXP desktop from...at least 5 years ago, which was never really built for playing games. I really didn't know anything about computers in general, besides some basic maintenance - I genuinely just didn't comprehend "hardware requirements". With the new laptop, I guessed (somewhat correctly) that I could play new things, so I went out and bought a bunch of games I'd always intended to play. Among those, was STALKER.

I didn't know about that game at all, at the time. I saw it in a Walmart, looked at the back of the box, and it was so neat and strange that I figured I had to try it, not knowing at all whether my computer could even do it. Turns out, it couldn't, or rather, it could, but performance was really poor. ~10-15fps when trying to play in any of the dx9 rendering options. The game worked great in an unlit, dx8 mode, but it looked terrible, so I was determined to see that game the way it was intended.

Thing was, I had no background knowledge. What do I do? I trial-and-error'd my way through some of the graphics options, but couldn't really connect the dots on which settings did what/how to go about targeting better performance. I started exploring the computer itself, learning the basics of how games work on a PC (the real basics, I mean - as in, what does a gpu do, why does RAM matter, etc). Through that I landed on a first step.

That was to do a RAM upgrade. I had never done that before, but looked up what all I'd need/how to do it, and from there started really getting in deep to figure out what I could do to get the game to work. I trawled forums and asked folks - what does [this setting] do? Can I change it in the game's files? Which setting has the biggest effect? What effects could I live without?

That experience, over the course of that last grade-school summer, set up knowledge and skills I would use pretty much all throughout my life from then on. I learned so much, about what different rendering options did, the effects of different things on system performance, how to optimize windows itself a bit for playing games - I explored every avenue. I don't remember the hardware exactly, but the machine I had was not a gaming machine - a Dell Inspiron, it had a 40gb hdd (2007, mind you, low end even for then), and some sort of AMD integrated chip.

After much time, much trial and error, and even some game modding, I finally got STALKER to run at what I then could consider a playable framerate - a solid 24 lol. At the time, learning about framerate, I came to learn that's what movies run at, so I figured if I could hit that mark it would be good enough. I had saves set up to place me in the most intense areas I could find, and worked to try to get it to 24 in those areas. The end result was something akin to a portable version - lower resolution, some effects disabled, but generally the same look, same game. And in learning how to mod it a bit, I also got to tweak the game a bit to suit my preferences.

From there I started tinkering with every game I could, and with that computer. Even got to the point of making modified drivers for the integrated GPU - how exactly I couldn't tell you today, but I did squeeze out another 1 or 2 fps doing that (who knows what I must have borked deep down lol). The skills I picked up trying to get this game to run on my computer, opened up the whole world of computers to me, and so this game has a very special place in my memory.

Do you have a game like this, for you? One which ended up playing a big role for you? Or on a different track, is there a game which to your mind could serve this sort of purpose for a lot of people? I'm curious what you've seen and what you think.

I have been making a game with Rpg maker MZ in my free time. It is a slow process, but it is coming along. With no background or experience with coding, I had attempted to jump into Unity a while ago, but quickly became overwhelmed and gave up. Rpg Maker has felt like a great onboarding for learning game design. The simplicity of making events, adding in sprites, sound effects, dialog and anything else you want is amazing. I've gone from googling how to do the simplest of things, and now have a full town with npcs, a dungeon with puzzles and a few quests, and usually able to figure out any problems on my own. It feels like my own little world. I even have a small discord that I post updates to and get suggestions/comments from friends and family.

I think when I am done with this demo, I may give Unity another shot. I feel like I have a much better understanding of how to think when designing a game. I know Unity is a much bigger step, but I feel like I can at least see the staircase now.

So I guess my question for you is, what other programs have been instrumental to your game design journey? Have you used Rpg Maker and what are your thoughts on it?

Child labor is making a comeback with a vengeance. A striking number of lawmakers are undertaking concerted efforts to weaken or repeal statutes that have long prevented (or at least seriously inhibited) the possibility of exploiting children.

Take a breath and consider this: the number of kids at work in the U.S. increased by 37% between 2015 and 2022. During the last two years, 14 states have either introduced or enacted legislation rolling back regulations that governed the number of hours children can be employed, lowered the restrictions on dangerous work, and legalized subminimum wages for youths.

Iowa now allows those as young as 14 to work in industrial laundries. At age 16, they can take jobs in roofing, construction, excavation, and demolition and can operate power-driven machinery. Fourteen-year-olds can now even work night shifts and once they hit 15 can join assembly lines. All of this was, of course, prohibited not so long ago.

Legislators offer fatuous justifications for such incursions into long-settled practice. Working, they tell us, will get kids off their computers or video games or away from the TV. Or it will strip the government of the power to dictate what children can and can’t do, leaving parents in control — a claim already transformed into fantasy by efforts to strip away protective legislation and permit 14-year-old kids to work without formal parental permission.

In 2014, the Cato Institute, a right-wing think tank, published “A Case Against Child Labor Prohibitions,” arguing that such laws stifled opportunity for poor — and especially Black — children. The Foundation for Government Accountability, a think tank funded by a range of wealthy conservative donors including the DeVos family, has spearheaded efforts to weaken child-labor laws, and Americans for Prosperity, the billionaire Koch brothers’ foundation, has joined in.

https://tomdispatch.com/caution-children-at-work/#:~:text=The%20Covid%2D19%20pandemic%20of,distinct%20sign%20of%20social%20pathology.

Here is a Robert Frost poem related to the subject of the article. https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/53087/out-out

I'm GenX and I worked as a teen, but my earliest jobs were babysitting, not industrial labor.

I’ve always been a bit nervous of bleach. My white counters in the kitchen have been picking up stains, so I bought some bleach and have left it to sit. Hooray, the stains are gone!

BUT. Then I googled some bleach tips and discovered that you absolutely shouldn’t use undiluted bleach on your counters because it can ruin them 🤦🏻‍♀️

I didn’t pick up a lot of cleaning knowledge from my parents, and it’s been a lot of trial and error (so much error) figuring out how to keep everything clean enough. Now I have schedules and products and I do a pretty good job of it, but I moved out of home at 18 and I’m now 36 so it’s been literally half my life getting to this point.

So… what cleaning tips and tricks do you have? What product (remember to specify which country you’re in!) can you absolutely not do without? What products can be used for something unusual? Let’s hear it!

As someone who deals with ADHD, I often have a lot of trouble keeping myself organized. I have so many different thoughts swirling around in my head, and things I want to do, but it's hard to plan my time correctly. I often get the feeling that I'm wasting my day.

I'm wondering if anyone else has this experience, and what you do to keep yourself organized.

Everywhere I turn everything is more expensive.

I'm spending less and less every month on non-necessities, buying more basic foods, never eating out, spending less on entertainment, etc but everything else just keeps going up and up.

Electricity just went up 12%, my gas bill is up 20%, rent has gone up 10% year after year, water is somehow 30% more expensive than it used to be, my groceries are more expensive than ever even though I'm buying in bulk and not buying anything fancy, I've stopped eating luxuries I used to enjoy like steak and fancy cheese because they've just gotten outrageous.

I have a good job that pays decently but my raises have been less than 3% a year and I feel like I'm getting squeezed out of everything I once had. There's no light at the end of the tunnel is there?

As mentioned before my partner is a new paraplegic. He was a chef before becoming disabled a decade ago and the primary cook at home until the more recent injury. He's struggling to make sure he eats in part because making a baloney sandwich is currently an ordeal. We expect that to get easier as he gets OT and more used to being in a chair, but I'm wanting to start with prepared meals and work up to easy meal kits that help him get back into cooking. Difficulty level is things that taste good and have a variety of foods, as well as, for the future, kits that require less manual dexterity.
Recipes also welcome as well as any must have kitchen items. We have an air fryer, microwave, electric kettle and toaster he can use easily. Oven and stove that are a bit more tricky right now.

ETA: in the United States and with a large variety of grocery stores around me.

I read some funny stuff on here and there are plenty of witty responses around, but a community for humorous content may lighten things up a bit and it can start discussions too… after all:

“Laughter without a tinge of philosophy is but a sneeze of humor. Genuine humor is replete with wisdom.” -Mark Twain

Hey all, so I'm a trans woman and, like a lot of other people, my biggest point of dysphoria is my facial hair. I've been going through electrolysis for the past five months. I love it when it works, but the speed of the process is really getting me down. I do one hour every two weeks (I'd do more if I had the money), and after five months of solely working on my upper lip the progress just isn't where I was hoping to be.

What are y'alls experiences with electro, and what was the regiment that worked for you? Did you do something other than electrolysis, how'd it work out? Other general hair removal tips to look as clean as possible?

I'll share one of my own:

• The Finishing Touch Flawless Razor (Walmart link) has been the best, and most affordable electric razor I've found that gets an extremely close shave without too much skin irritation (I have the most irritated skin in the world). Highly recommend!

I have wasps building hives under the eves on my house. I'm looking for a way to kill them without Raid or other harsh chemicals. Right now there seems to be about 10 hornets starting on this hive. I see a number of other places they've made hives around the house that were removed before we moved in. My current options that I've found so far are spraying with dawn soap/water/garden sprayer or peppermint. It seems a little too high to get a garbage bag around them easily before pissing them off. Any other good ideas?

Behold, we have received a new season of anime. So, I thought it'd be nice to have a place where people can recommend what they're checking out.

For me, I think this is actually a pretty strong season, with lots of promising shows. As for what I've seen so far:

Hormiya: the Missing Pieces - this is basically a lot of the content that the original series cut out in its speedrun through the series. While I would have preferred that they'd just adapted it at a normal pace originally, I'm happy that they're revisiting this series to give it its due.

My Tiny Senpai - Fun to see this webcomic turned manga (that also has a sequel manga) get adapted. If you like fluff romcom slice of life, this is your jam.

The Girl I Like Forgot Her Glasses - This is an interesting one seeing adapted. I enjoy the manga well enough, but I do feel like it'd be more suited as a short than as a full length anime (5 or 10 minute episodes would very much fit the content better, drawing it out did make some moments a bit cringe). That said, they did some incredibly ambitious stuff with cgi in the first episode that made it incredibly interesting just from a visual perspective. If you're a manga reader, do brace yourself for the art style and character design shifts, as I found them more than a bit jarring. Another fluff romcom for you fans out there.

Reborn as a Vending Machine, I Now Wander the Dungeon - Oddly enough, I just started reading this light novel series a month ago with no knowledge it was getting an adaptation. I know any sane person's reaction would be that isekai has truly reached the bottom of the barrel, but this will surprise you with its quality, I guarantee it. The source material is a comedy isekai with truly interesting characters, and I think the first episode was a mostly well executed adaptation (LN adaptations tend to lose the main character's internal dialogue which I find important, but here it's included because it's very necessary).

Now, here's some recommendations of stuff I haven't seen yet, but am familiar with source material I'd rec:

The Most Heretical Last Boss Queen - Yes, I know I know, Villainess Otome isekai is the new overpowered mc isekai, a dime a dozen. But trust me, this is a good one. A stellar cast of characters, and yes, while it follows the tropes of the subgenre, I think the stories it tells are incredibly interesting. I started with reading the manga (cancelled due to artist poor health), and then jumped to the original LN, and I have to say this is a series that has just consistent quality across the board.

My Happy Marriage - While I've read a bit of the manga and own the LN's, I haven't read the LN's yet. However, if you like dramatic romances though, this one's for you. It's not quite a "I will fix her", type series, there's elements of that due to her past. But really both of our main characters need a lot of growing to do, and they'll do that together. Expect a slow and dramatic pace.

The Masterful Cat is Depressed Again Today - Like silly slice of life? This one's for you kids. The manga is a fantastic slice of life following an OL and her rescued cat who really rescued her. The cat's also like 6 feet tall and cooks.

Tenpuru - This is a manga series from the artist, not author, of Grand Blue Dreaming. However, it also has a very similar vibe in general if you enjoy that series, but even sillier if that's possible. I guy trying not to be a playboy like his family is, and flees to a Buddhist temple full of women. Expect absurdity, and yes, definitely a harem, whether he wants it or not.

Saint Cecilia & Pastor Lawrence - A slow paced slice of life with romance undertones. A lazy saint and the pastor that takes care of them, their budding romance, and the friends they make along the way.

Hyakushou Kizoku - this is an odd one to recommend, because I've only actually read a chapter or two of the manga. However, this is from an author you'd all know Hiromu Arakawa, known for such minor series as Full Metal Alchemist and Silver Spoon. This is an autobiographical series of her time growing up in Hokkaido on a farm (experiences that very much inspired and informed Silver Spoon).

Anyways, these are just some of my own thoughts on this season, I'd love to see yours.

I'll be traveling to Havana, Cuba for 4 or 5 days this Fall and I am asking for any recommended activities or destinations to put on an itinerary.

My main interests are (1) anything to do with the history of the Cuban Revolution and (2) social and technological measures taken to cope with constraints of the trade embargo (and yes, this even includes maintenance of old automobiles); and I'm not particularly interested in Ernest Hemingway, smoking cigars or getting drunk on rum. I will have a 12 and 14 year old kid with me, so I'm also looking for some interesting, age-appropriate activities for them. I will make an effort to take a day trip to the Che Guevara mausoleum in Santa Clara, but the rest of the time will be in or very near Havana. What do you recommend?

Curious to see if there are any other sports sim fans around here. If you're not familiar with the genre, the two most popular and longest running are APBA Baseball/Football/Hockey and Strat-O-Matic Baseball/Football/Hockey. Personally, I'm a big fan of Second Season Football and I'm playing with Back to Minnesota's 1965 season so I can bring Jim Brown and Cleveland back to glory!

If you've never heard of this before, think of these games as "story generators" where you can play two teams against each other and see how close the dice rolls and stats get to real life. I play as a sort of chill night where I listen to a baseball game or a podcast with a cup of coffee. Throwing dice around and watching Jim Brown plow through some poor defense is really enjoyable :)

You can also play head to head with another player! I highly recommend a smaller game like Pocket Pennant Run if you're interested in diving into games like this. A similar game would be Stone Cold Hockey for hockey fans and Fast Drive Football for football nerds like myself.

The biggest communities online are definitely the Delphi Forums for Tabletop Sports as well as the Digital to Dice Podcast Facebook page.

Digital versions of the APBA and Strat games exist, and there is a huge fanbase for the Action! PC Games, and a hugely popular game is Out of the Park Baseball which has simulator-like features but is mostly a baseball management game.

Recently, I began revisiting some older films and purchased a few Criterion discs. My first one was Women on the Verge of a Nervous Breakdown (Pedro Almodóvar, 1988) but I’ve since purchased a few more and am slowly working my way through my small stack. The amount of special features is sometimes overwhelming! I’ve enjoyed some of the interviews (Carmen Maura from Women, Sheryl Lee from Twin Peaks: Fire Walk With Me) but have a lot more to get through. Many include a booklet, too.

I also recently got my hands on two of Peter Greenaway’s films - The Draughtsman’s Contract through Kino-Lorber, and Drowning by Numbers in 4K through Severin. I’m a bit spoilt for choice at the moment but there are still films that I’d like to get the “premium treatment.”

Do you enjoy premium/upgraded versions of movies?

Which special features do you look for?

Is there a film that you’d want to get the “premium treatment” or a 4K remaster?

For me it was when I went with my family on vacation to Knotts Berry Farm. My parents gave my brother and I each a set amount of money (I think $10). We went in a store in the park and I bought the first thing that grabbed my attention, a change purse that said Knotts Berry Farm. Mind you, I'm a 5 year old boy that has no use for a change purse. No idea why I did it, impulse I suppose.

My brother took his time and searched the entire store carefully. After looking for a while he found in the back corner they had a toy section. They had GoBots for sale. He got a GoBot. I still had my change purse.

I asked my parents if I could return my change purse and get a GoBot and they said nope. They explained that I made my choice and in the future I should make more thoughtful choices. I'm now in my 40's and my wife and kids regularly reference the change purse story as I'm very careful in researching anything I purchase to avoid another change purse incident. My wife has searched for years to find that stupid Knott's change purse as a memento of our beloved family story.

Love to hear other people's life lessons

Many of you are probably familiar with Show HNs from HackerNews. Perhaps we are not yet big enough to share those as regular top-level posts, and it is also hard to distinguish between plain self-promotions — it might thus suit us better to have these in a more controlled way.

If you are interested in sharing your project, please send a top-level comment as a reply. Probably sticking to HN’s relevant ruling will be a good starting point, paraphrasing the especially important parts:

[Show ~] is for something you've made that other people can play with. [Tildes] users can try it out, give you feedback, and ask questions in the thread. The project must be something you've worked on personally and which you're around to discuss.

A [Show ~] needn't be complicated or look slick. The community is comfortable with work that's at an early stage.

Please make it easy for users to try your thing out, ideally without barriers such as signups or emails. You'll get more feedback that way.

If your work isn't ready for users to try out, please don't do a [Show ~]

I've been really bad at coming up with things to cook lately, resulting in me eating the same unhealthy food all the time. I'd like to change this and to get familiar with new recipes, so I was wondering if the users of Tildes have any good recipes to share. Vegetarian and vegan are preferred, but non-vegetarian recipes are also very welcome!

What are your go-to cheap, easy and healthy recipes?

Edit: I'm too overwhelmed by all your comments to respond to everybody individually, but I thank you all for the great suggestions, these are of great help!

I've been playing a ton of the Star Wars deckbuilder lately and love how the game flows. Want a short game? Play to 3 planets. Longer so you can get a better theme going? Play to 5. I like that it bucks the points to win trend by putting people head to head in combat and that you can attack a lot of things, even the market. Plus it feels thematic.

I have followed numerous discussions on here lately regarding extracting oneself from being Google-reliant, and they've all deeply resonated with me. For years now I've been slowly migrating numerous Google-bound things over to my own self-hosted alternatives. I've moved my storage, contacts, documents, and some (but sadly not all) of my calendars to home solutions, fairly easily too.

But the biggest hurdle I've been facing this whole time, the one I've been putting off the longest, is the act of figuring out how to get almost twenty years of mail archive and history on my primary account away from Google and into a space where I can access it separately. I have been steadily changing the main email on my more active external accounts to a self-hosted one, and now only seeing a shrinking handful of lesser-used services still attached to the old gmail. But that history is too precious to me, and I still find multiple occasions where I need/want to reference some communications from long ago.

I've tried searching the web for options, but so far all combinations of my queries are either really elementary "here's how to set up a new email" crap, or else aimed at moving from one Gmail account to another Gmail account. I've been thinking that the simplest approach might be just to set it up as a POP3 account in my mail client (eM Client, for the record), download it all, and then when I finally pull the plug just drag it into the local client archive, and then remove the account from the app. But I figure there have to be others who have done this, right?

Howdy everyone! In talklittle's fundraiser I pledged I would fix all outstanding issues of Tildes ReExtended before 2023 is over should we reach 200 donors. Well the 200 donors mark was hit pretty quickly, so after over a year of inactivity I've gotten back to it and brought Tildes ReExtended up to speed again.

Most of the work so far has been on getting the codebase up to par with my current preferences, but there is also a new feature and some bug fixes. Namely: the long-awaited Hide Topics feature with 4 different ways of selecting topics to automatically hide. The content scripts will run as soon as the HTML is available, meaning there should be less stuff popping in or out, the Hide Votes was also fixed so it now hides the correct votes again (yay edge cases Edit: I just noticed another edge case doesn't work :^) fuck). And also the extension is about 3.5 times smaller in size now (245KB -> 70KB). :D

If you don't know what Tildes ReExtended is, it's basically the Tildes equivalent of the Reddit Enhancement Suite extension. Commonly requested features that can be implemented client-side (like the Hide Votes feature) and quality of life utilities like the Jump To New Comment and Back To Top buttons.

Hope you like it!

• Mozilla Addons
• Chrome Web Store

If you're new to Tildes and like what you see, please consider donating! Tildes is a non-profit community site driven by its users' interests and any amount of support ensures it can keep going. Thank you! 💖

Hi, I was wondering if the current duration before voting gets locked on a post is still 30 days? I tried to find the answer in the docs but didn’t see it (apologies if I missed it) and all I turned up in a search of the site was a topic from 3 years ago mentioning the 30 days, so I wanted to see if that’s still accurate.

Thanks !

The idea is to get a console to play raging in complexity from the NES, SNES, up to Nintendo DS and PSP. Anything above that is not a priority or a necessity. But it would be nice to have a screen large enough to handle DS games in some form. Can I find anything decent in that price range?

Thanks :)

Over decades, it seems that there has been this evolving body of knowledge surrounding plating and presentation, which can only be absorbed fully, if you've spent several years at a high-end bakery or fine dining restaurant (swooshing a sauce with the back of the spoon, quenelles, 3-dimensional whitespace, etc.).

I'm an aspiring dessert artisan, and I'd like to get up to date on those principles, approaches, and techniques, without having to squirrel my way into the fine-dining lifestyle.

Instagram and pictures in cookbooks are great for inspiration, but I feel like I would improve faster by understanding thought process/vocabulary, than from analyzing finished products.

Any suggestions/advice/resources? (Most visual design books are too general imo)

Hey everyone. I just beat FFXVI and wanted to share my thoughts in case anyone was thinking of getting the game, or if anyone wants to have a good discussion about the game. I tried to make it as spoiler-free as possible, but please do be advised that this could end up accidentally spoiling certain story elements.

Please note, these are just my opinions. I haven't really played any other FF games, so I'm only comparing this one on it's own merits. Please, if you disagree with something, don't lash out at me. I'm just a dude posting this for good fun and have 0 accolades on why I'm qualified to review anything lol

Also, if you're reading this and have a gaming recommendation for me, I am 100% open to it. I've been looking for some new games to play, so if you think of one I might enjoy while reading this, please let me know.

Pros:

• Graphics: This game looks amazing. There were times where I would just walk through locations and really appreciate how everything looked. I don’t do this often in video games, so it’s nice to see a world that felt genuinely awesome to appreciate and admire. You can tell a lot of work went into building these towns/locations, aside from some of the later areas.


• Combat: The combat in this game is great, addicting fun. I know this is a point of contention for fans of previous FF games and how this is a definite departure from the turn-based style, but some of the best moments I had were chaining combos and getting staggers quick. Towards the end of the game, I was able to bring down some of the mini-bosses extremely quickly and it never got old to pull off. I see people saying things like “You just press square the entire time and win” which I don’t agree with at all. If that’s how one chooses to play the game, then you’re actively not engaging with the combat mechanics and that’s on you. The combat can be complex with different abilities interacting with each other to obtain massive damage, that's what I like in a game.

• Story: The story of this game is phenomenal and I was engaged most of the way through. I’ll have some of my thoughts on story-beats below because there were times where this game dragged on, but the overall concept of a nation at war with each other and essentially starting your own faction from the ground-up is a lot of fun. About 50% of the way through, you’ll unlock a mechanic that allows you to see how all the factions have been interacting with each other, what wars were started and why those wars were happening throughout the entirety of timeline of the game. I spent a solid hour reading everything in these menus because I was intrigued by the complexity of everything and how it all tied into other events, and how sometimes your main characters crew were beyond detached from what was going on in the main world to achieve an ultimate goal. It’s really awesome to see what other antagonist are doing despite your current story beat being involved with something else at that moment, and I wish more games would incorporate this because it really works to make it feel like the game doesn’t revolve around you but that you are apart of an overall story.

Cons:


• Eikon battles: For those not in the know, you’ll occasionally transform into a giant beast (Eikon) named Ifrit and take on other giant beasts (Eikons) throughout the story. At first, these were really fun to play and were truly spectacular to watch but as the story goes on, the fights get less and less engaging. In these parts of the game, you really can just press square and win. Aside from dodging, there is practically no complexity or strategy to these fights. There really isn’t strategy with the main combat either but at least with the main combat, you can pull off insane combos. As Ifrit though? Forget about it. The best combo you can do is ‘Square, Square, Square, Square, Triangle’. You do get 2 abilities as the story goes on, but they’re really nothing special. I actually started to play these section how I play Diablo; outheal the damage. I just used the one combo and healed 2-3 times per fight, while closing the distance as much as possible. I guess this is a valid strategy but I can’t imagine this is how the devs wanted these parts to play out.


• Quicktime events: I think QTE’s should stay in the 360/PS3 generation. I haven’t seen a current Gen game utilize QTE’s, let alone utilize them as many times as FFXVI did and it’s these dated mechanics that are definitely contributing to others saying the game feels outdated. There are multiple times where you’ll go up to a door click ‘X’ and it will be like ‘Now hold R2’. This happens a lot in the game. It happens so often that I’m not convinced at all that it has anything to do with enhancing the gameplay and was made simply to show off the Dualsense controls because, whilst I don’t like the QTE, the Dualsense will give this haptic feedback during these parts. I can’t really explain it, but it does occasionally work well enough to be immersive. The other QTE events are during Eikon battles, and they’re literally just ‘Press X’ and ‘Press R2’ in an extremely generous amount of time. There’s also another QTE even where you just mash square endlessly until you win, which reminds me of mini games in Mario Party 1… on the Nintendo 64 nearly 30 years ago. It’s just an outdated design IMO and I would have rather just watched cutscenes than occasionally press a button. I will say though, there was one QTE which I laughed at. There’s a scene where the MC is coming to grips with an important story-beat and the QTE literally says “Press L3 & R3 to accept the truth”. This gave me giant “Press F for respects” vibes, and I don’t know whether they meant for this to be hilarious but it was. This is the only QTE event I thought was good.


• 70% fun, 30% drag: I found the first 70% of this game to be an insanely good experience. Truly next-gen and one of the best action games I have played. The story was engaging, the combat was really fun and the character/world building peaks about here. Afterwards though, not so much. It goes from being a story about conflict between nations but once that resolves, it’s a story about killing God. From here, I really couldn’t care less about the happenings. The people you’re built to dislike from the beginning have resolved story arcs, they introduce new antagonists that aren’t super interesting and it’s just an overall slog the last 30%. Also, that’s a specific percentage, but when I found myself wanting the story to wrap up, it was right at the 70% mark. From what I’ve read/watched about the FF series, it seems like a few of the games have this inevitable drop-off and can get pretty convoluted, but what I can say is… that first 70% was some of the best gaming I’ve had in a while. The last 30%, not so much.
 The ending of the game was great though and I hope that we get a continuance of this story later on.

Random Thoughts:


• Side-quests: I’ve seen people saying the side-quests are generic MMO like side-quests and I flat out disagree. First off, I think the only reason anyone is making the MMO comparison is because the same team that made FFXIV (an MMO) created this game, so it’s low hanging fruit and easy to criticize without putting in any effort. The side quests are not any different from any other RPG game I’ve played. Most side quests in most RPGS boil down to “Talk to this person, go kill this thing, come back and get a reward”. I have played very few RPG’s that didn’t have these as a majority of their side quests. Even something as recently as Diablo 4 has primarily only these types of side quests. I don’t understand why people give FFXVI so much flack, but I just don’t agree. The side quests are more about world-building and getting to know what your average person existing in this world deals with. You’ll learn backstory about your companions you wouldn’t know otherwise, get various upgrades/mementos and really get to know the world you are playing the game in. I’m not saying that some of these side quests aren’t just “Go talk to this person, then talk to this person and win”, because there are some that are really that simple, and if that’s not your thing then that’s okay, but I seriously don’t understand why people are giving this game flack for doing the same things that every RPG has done before. Just seems unfair IMO.


• RPG Mechanics: This game should have either added more RPG mechanics, or leaned into the action style and got rid of them entirely. There is no point in leveling up in this game. You don’t get rewarded for leveling up. It happens automatically and you don’t get to distribute any skill-points or anything like that. You literally don’t get anything but new weapon unlocks and an increasing number. I have never played a more shallow RPG. You get Ability Points which can increase your Eikon powers, but somewhere down the line, you just start stockpiling these because you have nowhere to spend them. Sure, you can unlock more abilities and increase those powers, but why would you do that? This game has obvious skills that are significantly stronger than other skills, so why would you use those other skills? I’m sure if I experimented around, I can find some great ways the skills I never used can interact with each other, but why would I when the ones I use now are already doing massive damage? IMO, they should have just leaned into the action gameplay and did away with the RPG mechanics. I know this is FF and FF is an RPG series, but the RPG mechanics are insultingly bad in this game and I can see why FF take offense to it. I do, and I’ve never extensively played any of the others. They could have at least added damage modifiers, resistances, etc that you can spend Ability Points on. By the end of the game, I had 8000 unspent Ability Points because there was just nowhere to spend them once you've got your play style.

Overall, I'd give the first 70% a 9/10 and the last 30% a 7.5/10.

I started getting into makeup about six months ago and I've become a bit obsessed. I've been trying to nail a natural, glowy everyday look which I mostly have down.

I managed to work out what my undertone is - always thought I had cool undertones but it turns out I'm neutral tending towards warm. I think this was one of the trickiest things to get to grips with, especially as it's one of the first things you need to figure out if you want to find a good foundation match. I tried lots of the recommendations online and spent an inordinate amount of time staring at blue and green marker lines on my arms trying to work out which ones more closely resembled the colour of my veins (the fact that I couldn't tell should have been a clue I was neutral). In the end I took a photo of my face and put it into Photoshop and used the colour picker to see the CMYK balance of my skin tone.

My approach to my makeup base has been to follow Lisa Eldridge's technique for covering acne/ redness etc. It basically involves using a base layer of tinted moisturizer before applying concealer where needed (I generally use a primer beforehand as well). I'd like to try some colour correctors to better conceal redness and the circles under my eyes but e.l.f has completely sold out of the colours I need and I'm waiting for them to come back in stock.

I really like Jecca Blac's glow drops for adding some glow/ highlights to my face. It's the only product of theirs I've tried but I would recommend them as a brand if you're just getting started with makeup. They're vegan, cruelty free and gender free/ trans inclusive, and they offer free consultations if you buy a product with them so you can learn how to properly apply it.

Another product I use all the time is the Body Shop's freestyle multitasking crayon in the colour 'staple'. It's one of the first things I bought and I think it's great as a starter product because it has so many uses - it's lip-liner, blush and eyeshadow all in one. It's good for travel as well for the same reason.

The other thing I do most days is tightline my eyes. I tend to follow this technique which works well for me and gives my eyes a bit more definition without being over the top. My eyelashes are quite dark and long anyway so I tend not to use mascara on a daily basis.

If anyone has any tips on doing winged eyeliner I'd love to hear them! I think I probably just need more practice but I find it quite hard because I'm basically unable to wink so I have to do it with my eyes open.

Also any product recommendations for a setting spray/ powder (preferably vegan and cruelty free). I'm currently using e.l.f's Halo Glow setting powder but I find it quite mattifying and it tends go a bit cakey for me after a few hours.

Anyway, I would love to hear any and all of your thoughts on makeup. What products do you love? Are you looking for some recommendations? What's your goal with makeup and what does your routine look like? Anyone that you follow for inspiration or tips?

Hello people,
This is my first post, so if you have any tips, please tell them

For a number of years I've thought about the idea that the experiment of the "free" internet has failed.
Around fifteen years ago the only goal of social media was to grow and how to make money was an afterthought. Now that investment money is drying up and websites like Reddit and Twitter are trying their best to find a way to become profitable, I'm thinking again of the idea that the "free" internet doesn't exist.
Small niche websites are able to exist on donations, but they aren't reliable and people aren't willing to pay a random single access fee or subscription for a website they don't know. Streaming has found an audience, but that has become close to the tv model.

So I thought:
What if your ISP has to pay a website a fee everytime a user accesses the website?
Of course you have to think about how that payment works and how this system can be abused.
I expect the system to work like music streaming, where an artist gets a certain amount of money per stream.
I am curious how the internet developes with this system. If smaller websites can exist without having to rely on adverstisements or if it might even get profitable. How these websites get paid and how IPS's will handle this (I expect monthly fees to become 10 euros/dollars etc. more expensive).

What do you think of this idea or do you have your own (dumb) idea?

Recently Lockheed Martin put out a post on social media [1] where they showed a silhouette of a yet-to-be-revealed aircraft. Most people seem to believe it will be the reveal of their entry to the NGAD program [2] (Next Generation Air Dominance).

While not much is publically known one interesting tidbit is how much it looks like the silhouette of the Testor Corp [3] F-19 [4] model that was released back in the mid 80s. Testor said at the time that the model was based on intelligence (aka leaks) of what would eventually become the F-117.

Aviation forums in the past have said F-19 model is what they WANTED the F-117 and it does look quite a bit like the Have Blue [5] test craft they built, however, the legend is that they couldn't get the math to work for radar deflection properly at that time due to lack of computational power and ended up with the geometrically simpler F117 design we got.

[1] Lockheed Martin Teaser: https://theaviationist.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/07/LM-NGAD-story.jpg
[2] NGAD: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Next_Generation_Air_Dominance
[3] Testor F19: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Testor_Corporation#F-19
[4] Testor F19 Image: https://test803.files.wordpress.com/2018/10/img_6712-1.jpg
[5] Have Blue: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lockheed_Have_Blue

What are your thoughts on romance in RPGs? I'm using the word "romance" here because it's usually what the topic is called. But I think it's too specific and has unwanted connotations with cheeziness. I would prefer the term "attraction", which can also refer to more challenging relationships that might not include sex or even happy endings.

The recent news that Starfield will only feature 4 romance options has fans debating, and before Starfield it was Cyberpunk, Mass Effect, Dragon Age, Skyrim, etc. Each of these games took a slightly different approach to romance and each had their fans and critics. On the one hand, the Witcher 3 had a defined player-character and very few romance options, but the writing was excellent and the romances fairly believable. And then there was Skyrim, where you created your own character and had lots of romance options, but all you needed to do was a fetch quest for your belle/beau and then give them a necklace before living a happily married life of fighting bandits, adopting children and saying the same things to each other ad nauseam every day for eternity. But even Skyrim's romance had a certain charm to it. At least you got to live with your partner, build a house, have a family and go hunting together...

I fully understand the viewpoint that gamers would rather have fewer options if they are deep than more numerous janky options. We're yet to see what Starfield's execution will be like, but even if they have done a good job with it, I can't help feeling a little disappointed that there are so few options in such a massive game. I fully understand how difficult it would be to have more options and still make the romances compelling, but I think this should be strived for, rather than just given up as too hard.

Of all the big entertainment media (movies, TV, books, etc.), games are understandably way behind when it comes to romance. It's either rarely implemented or implemented poorly because technically it is very difficult. Yet it's often a major part of storytelling and virtually omnipresent in other media. Sometimes it's the main story; other times it's a side story within the main one. But it's quite rare for it never to feature at all in mass entertainment media. Of course, it's often shoehorned in because it's what the viewers/readers want and expect, but you can also argue that attraction to someone else is just a fundamental human emotion and maybe even unavoidable, especially in an epic or heroic scenario like an RPG. I'm sure someone with professional experience in this field could probably speak more to this point, but I'm thinking here of those intense emotional feelings you get from stressful situations, which could lead to crushes and attraction for those in the same situation, or to rescuers and caregivers (Nightingale syndrome), or even to abductors (Stockholm syndrome) and the opposite (Lima syndrome).

And the fact that it's a fundamental human trait that plays such a major role in our lives (for better or worse) is why I think gaming companies should not ignore romance and should strive to create truly compelling attraction stories. It's an area ripe for innovation and could really make a game stand out from the rest. It's time to move on from the stereotype that gaming is for teenage boys and all they want is to shoot things and maybe have sex with big-titted avatars. Gaming is now for everyone, for all ages and for all sexualities (including asexuals), and I'm sure there's a market for mature stories to reflect what drives many people's decisions and behaviours.

The RPG genre in particular seems to be the best fit for romance (outside of dating sims, which I know nothing about). The beauty of role-playing is that you get to be who you want to be, which includes exploring attraction and your sexuality. It's incredibly challenging and maybe even impossible to create a game that would please everyone, but I certainly don't think the idea of compelling attraction gameplay should be given up because previous attempts have felt so inauthentic.

Going back to Starfield, I'm really excited to go out exploring the stars, fighting space pirates, upgrading my ship, and acquiring cool abilities. I love all these things about RPGs. But I'm also a sucker for a great story and experiencing a genuine human journey. For me, this includes relationships, both platonic and sexual, because it would be unavoidable when spending so much time with people on my ship, and exploring the galaxy. The importance of attraction in games will vary between gamers, but as other mass entertainment media has shown us, it's massively popular when done well, probably because it speaks to something so fundamental within us as humans.

These are just some of my musings and ramblings. What are your thoughts?

• Is it a waste of dev time and resources because it's too hard to do well?
• Is it an aspect you particularly enjoy or hate in RPGs?
• Which game did it best?
• What would you like to see in RPGs of the future with AI possibly being used?

Hey there! Any web developers/designers out there that have resources on creating websites that are fully accessible? I am getting back into web development after a decade away and want to learn the correct way. Thanks for any tips!

My wife just went back to work and as the one who works from home, that means I'll be cooking a lot more. I'm not bad in the kitchen, but I'm not good at just making something up without a recipe -- I can alter and combine existing recipes once I'm used to them, but I need that starting point.

My wife and I are also both neurodivergent so it's very easy for us to get overwhelmed and not have the executive function for cooking -- which is why we eat way too much takeout currently. So I'm looking particularly for recipes that are easy and tasty. Ideally they should be reasonably healthy as well, but "healthier than takeout" isn't a high bar.

We live in Germany, so please keep that in mind if you want to recommend a specific brand of premade stuff. That said, I don't turn up my nose at premade things if they're tasty and worth it.

We do have a wok, the staple sauces for Chinese cooking , and access to okay Asian supermarkets. As an example, our current staple weeknight meal is "chop up some broccoli and stir-fry it in light soy sauce and black vinegar w/ aromatics and sichuan doubanjiang." I'm willing to go out and buy sauces and seasonings for specific cuisines if I can find them and they're useful enough, but for perishables like veggies and meats I'd prefer to stick to what's easy to find at a German grocery store, since those are in walking distance. But anyway just don't assume we only want European-style food.

Stuff that feels appropriate for summer is also a huge plus! I know a few great stew and risotto recipes but I can't bring myself to make something so heavy in this hot weather.

Edit: I love the films too, but I'm really looking for examples in the text, even if the adaptation does the scene justice, I'm interested in how Tolkien himself wrote it.

I'm on a bit of a JRR Tolkien kick recently and revisiting some of my favorite bits from the books. One thing I really appreciate about Tolkien's writing is the outright poetry of some of the paragraphs and lines. I think the only "wordsmith" who appeals this much to me is Cormac McCarthy (and to some extent GRR Martin) -- but for very different reasons. Anyways, I'll share my favorite section from the Legendarium.

Théoden's charge at Minas Tirith - The Return of the King

To set the stage, the Rohirrim have navigated to Minas Tirith and are greeted by a dying besieged city steeped in darkess and fire. Upon seeing this, we get this line about Théoden:

But the king sat upon Snowmane, motionless, gazing upon the agony of Minas Tirith, as if stricken suddenly by anguish, or by dread. He seemed to shrink down, cowed by age.

Merry utterly loses hope at seeing the city and the reaction of the king. Then as all hope seems lost, we get one of the best sections in the whole trilogy:

At that sound the bent shape of the king sprang suddenly erect. Tall and proud he seemed again; and rising in his stirrups he cried in a loud voice, more clear than any there had ever heard a mortal man achieve before:

Arise, arise, Riders of Théoden!
Fell deeds awake: fire and slaughter!
spear shall be shaken, shield be splintered,
a sword-day, a red day, ere the sun rises!
Ride now, ride now! Ride to Gondor!

With that he seized a great horn from Guthláf his banner-bearer, and he blew such a blast upon it that it burst asunder. And straightway all the horns in the host were lifted up in music, and the blowing of the horns of Rohan in that hour was like a storm upon the plain and a thunder in the mountains.

Ride now, ride now! Ride to Gondor!

Suddenly the king cried to Snowmane and the horse sprang away. Behind him his banner blew in the wind, white horse upon a field of green, but he outpaced it. After him thundered the knights of his house, but he was ever before them. Éomer rode there, the white horsetail on his helm floating in his speed, and the front of the first éored roared like a breaker foaming to the shore, but Théoden could not be overtaken. Fey he seemed, or the battle-fury of his fathers ran like new fire in his veins, and he was borne up on Snowmane like a god of old, even as Oromë the Great in the battle of the Valar when the world was young. His golden shield was uncovered, and lo! it shone like an image of the Sun, and the grass flamed into green about the white feet of his steed. For morning came, morning and a wind from the sea; and darkness was removed, and the hosts of Mordor wailed, and terror took them, and they fled, and died, and the hoofs of wrath rode over them. And then all the host of Rohan burst into song, and they sang as they slew, for the joy of battle was on them, and the sound of their singing that was fair and terrible came even to the City.

This might be my favorite bit in all of LOTR because we see good king Théoden shed all his fears and doubts and actualize into the man he was meant to be. And to be compared to the Valar Oromë to boot! Wow. I am also a total sucker for any moment in the trilogy when a deed or character gets compared to events or characters of the First Age. Anytime that happens, you know it's a big deal since the First Age was so much "larger than life" than the events of the Third Age. Tolkien does a similar thing when Sam faces off Shelob noting that not even Túrin or Beren with any craft of the elves could have injured her -- yet Sam stood his ground, nonetheless.

I am not a Tolkien scholar, but I know Tolkien was incredibly steeped in medieval and ancient literature (I mean, he was a Professor of English literature) so I know his heart was really in old mythologies in Germanic or Norse traditions (for example Túrin Turambar's story is directly inspired by the Finnish tale of Kullervo, or how almost word-for-word bits of The Wanderer poem end up in Rohan's culture and song). Because of his Christian faith though, I suspect he had qualms with the often-brutal mortality of those tales and the cultures which produced them. This section with Théoden charging bravely against hopelessness and despair I think represents the "merger" of all the positive qualities he found in heroes like Beowulf with his more temperate worldview. It's an idealization of the heroic good-pagan Germanic king.

I have a Baratza Encore (or whatever the entry level model is called) and it could use some tlc. There are a bunch of bean parts accumulating under the hopper and grounds are getting stuck in places. I can disassemble to get the big stuff, but that's not enough. I'm wary of just splashing water or using a damp rag to wipe parts down. The oily residue needs some sort of detergent but I don't want to ruin anything or end up having my coffee tasting like soap or something.

Anyone have any experience or suggestions?

Edit: thanks to everyone for the tips! I've bought some grindz and I already popped the hopper off and gave the grinder a good brushing. There was a lot of buildup and the first grind afterward felt like it sounded quieter and I could swear the grounds were more consistent, but those are both probably illusions. Haven't made enough cups to taste a difference yet but I'll definitely be adding a regular cleaning to my routine.

I usually just read ebooks on my phone using ReadEra, but I'm going to the beach in a few weeks and I'd like to buy a dedicated eReader so I don't burn through my phone charge (I usually stay on the beach from as close to sunup as I can manage to sundown). I'd like something that handles multiple file types, especially ePub, or at least doesn't require a proprietary file type or have RDM. I'd also like it to have a long-lasting battery (I frequently read for several hours at a time), and be sturdy/waterproof (because beach). I guess backlighting might be nice, togglable if possible, and if I could get on the internet to download files directly to the Reader that'd be nice too so I don't have to plan ahead. It doesn't need to be huge, in fact smaller is probably better. Price is definitely a factor, but I'm open to refurb if available for a higher-priced model.

Needs: Inexpensive, waterproof/sturdy, strong battery, ePub/open file types/no DRM

Wants: Backlighting, internet

I've done some comparison shopping but I'm waffling so I want other people's opinions. TIA!

Every time I would be in the market for something particular, say, a keyboard, or a camping tent, I would ask google, “What is the best air fryer, Reddit.”

I would get the link to the subject, however niche it was, and see discussions from assumedly real folks talking about the subject I was curious about. It was informative, and I could research deeper into brands or products I didn’t know about before.

Is there another site that even comes close to that? Or are we currently in a dark period until something like that comes along? I don’t typically use advertised websites to tell me “lists of the top ten handheld gaming consoles.”

Just wondering if there’s an alternative to my previous method of research.

See title. I thought this might make for an interesting topic and I can't see one like this in the search, so...

What sorta got me thinking about this - a couple days ago, I noticed that Dying Light 2 got a sizeable update, with a pretty heavy emphasis on changes to the game's parkour mechanics. I absolutely loved the first Dying Light, as well as both Mirror's Edge games - parkour and other kinds of momentum-driven gameplay are my jam - so that got me curious enough to check it out again, for the first time in a year.

I played for a few hours, got some of the way in, and... felt pretty underwhelmed. It certainly feels better than it did last time I played, and the change to retain momentum during parkour moves does feel pretty nice... but it still feels far too slow and floaty to me. It feels awkward and unresponsive to me. On top of that, the combat updates - while I actually appreciated DL2's changes to the combat over DL1's (a major gripe I've always had with DL1's combat is that sometimes zombies take just one or two hits and sometimes they take twenty, and I have never been able to detect any kind of pattern to it - combat level, game progress, weapon damage, etc., none of them seem to impact it so I have no idea what's up with it), playing it again now... left me feeling pretty disappointed.

I booted up DL1 for the first time in a while the next day, just intending to compare how it feels - and I've since found myself drawn several hours into it. Even in the first half hour of the game, where your climbing's super slow and everything, it feels so much more snappy and reactive - it feels good. And while my previous gripes with its combat are still present, it feels so much better to me now than DL2's does (for the most part - fighting human enemies still sucks). I can't quite put my finger on what it is, but there's just something really visceral and satisfying about it that DL2 doesn't have.

As I've been playing DL1, as well, I've been thinking about its story again. As much as it's maligned for its story, I think it's actually a really interesting subversion and deconstruction of expectations in a lot of ways - while that could be a thread (or video essay, I've thought about it) of its own, the way I see it: despite how the intro and story set him up, Crane actually fails pretty hard at being a hero until towards the end. I mean, the very first thing he does is take a crowbar to the back of the head, get bitten, and get someone else killed. It's a pattern that continues throughout most of the game (and even The Following, I'd argue, even though I don't care for it much). I find it pretty memorable beecause of that, even if it falls flat in some places.

Meanwhile, Dying Light 2... I honestly couldn't tell you much about the story? It didn't leave any kind of impact on me at all. I'm not really the kind of person who plays games for their stories very often (unless it's something like Ace Attorney where that's explicitly the point), and I have to admit that I went into DL2 with low expectations to begin with (I held off getting it at launch because of Denuvo, by the time I did pick it up reviews were already fairly negative; and I tend to view "your choices really matter!" in advertising as a huge red flag so that wasn't a good sign either), but even so. It might be in part because I actually quite liked DL1's ending - I found it pretty refreshing for a post-apocalyptic zombie game - so DL2 throwing that out didn't sit well with me from the get-go (also part of why I'm not too keen on The Following, but that's a different matter).

Overall, it just sorta left me thinking about how... even though I'd tried to go in with tempered expectations - all I really wanted was a fun zombie-flavoured parkour game, where climbing and jumping and swinging and stuff felt fluid and rewarding - I still found myself left feeling pretty hollow about it, even after an update that allegedly addressed some of my biggest issues with the game. It's especially frustrating, because the Inner Circle (I think that's what it was called, I can't remember - the second city map) is really, really cool and I would absolutely love to just aimlessly run around it... if the movement didn't feel floaty and awkward. Stuff like climbing to the top of the VNC Tower felt exhilarating and awesome - I could catch a glimpse of something excellent there, but it was so outweighed by everything else.

So... Yeah. I dunno, I thought this'd make for an interesting question. Have theere any been any sequels you've played that left you feeling underwhelmed, in comparison to the previous game? If so, why?

alright maybe some part of me just wants to ask this so i'd have an excuse to waffle about dying light and its story a bit but still i think it's an interesting topic nonetheless
EDIT: formatting

I cannot push nor pull to/from my local repo to/from my remote. I get the message "Your branch and 'origin/main' have diverged", etc.

I will be able to fix it, I'm already in the process of refreshing my memory on how to rebase this cleanly.

But ... I am the only person working on this. I have only one local and one central/remote repository. And I never made a branch.

It's just me, working on one computer, right here ... make a few commits locally, then push 'em ... make a few commits locally, then push 'em. That is my entire workflow.

How in the hell did I end up with "my branch" (???) and the origin/main branch being in conflict with each other?

Any Git gurus care to take a stab at this?

Thanks in advance.

Edit, more info:

I am guessing here, but for awhile I was working in a VM on my local machine ... but Android SDK is too much of a resource hog, so I committed and pushed everything on the VM, shut it down, and then pulled latest down to my actual machine ... or at least, that's how I remember it.

My working theory is that, somehow, I screwed up that "switching between machines" process, although, so far, no clue as to how/why I did.

Theory #2 is that Android SDK did something sneaky/stupid behind the scenes -- my last several commits have been done through the Android Studio IDE, not directly in the terminal.

Last Edit:

D'oh!

Found it. I made a couple of "quick changes" to the project's README.md file directly in the remote forge, and that's what screwed me up.

NOTE: This does have slight self-promotion which I'm aware is against what Tildes is. While it is to drive attention to my band and although originally so, music promotion is NOT the sole reason for this post. It is here for context. It does benefit me, but I make music for this type of discussion. Grief and mourning are important things to me, and art helps me open up and process those feelings. Music is art.

Want to do more of these posts, as I have found my niche in ~music to be this. Nevertheless, I want to balance these to be fair and to make these special. Please leave feedback about what you think, and whether or not I should continue these posts. DO NOT VOTE if you think it does not fairly contribute to ~music or Tildes as a whole. All I ask is you read this entire post before reacting or commenting.

I've been going back and forth on this but I decided to do so. I want to keep things as anonymous as possible, so please respect my wishes.

I am part of a band called LUCY. Over this fortnight, I've been grinding hard trying to promote the discography in order to get as many eyes as possible. I wanted to make this post to highlight "Film" — which I strongly believe is the best released song thus far. But I didn't want to use my account just for promotion. I love Tildes, even with its quirks, and I wanna do quality, meaningful posts. Then I heard from a friend or an acquaintance that a good friend of theirs died.

Suicide, no less. I was......

There's no word or phrase or idiom. There's nothing that can describe the feeling and realisation when someone is gone. It reminded me of why I wrote "Film" in the first place — to grieve and remember a friend who killed herself. I don't think a number of grief songs or popular anti-suicide songs really talk about grief. That one Logic song was bleh but cool, but that remix that goes "WHO CAN RELATE" was insulting.

You may not even have a loved one who killed themselves. You may have one who just died, or disappeared. Or the worst:

The relationship you once had with a person you loved lots. One of your most prized people in the world. That one day, breaks and bo matter what. It will never happen. They're gone from your life

Forever.

And they're not coming back. You have to move on. Even tho you don't want to and sometimes, you yearn for the connection. To be near. Bittersweet nostalgia, to fall back into place. Y
In the end, it is what it is. Yeah..

Grief is hard. Mourning is hard. Moving on is hard. It's messy and there's no right way to do it. Life is unfair and one day, it will end. Songs and albums help. Music is that language and that lexicon that knows just how you feel. "Film" was what I wanted to do, to bring attention to that process. Nowadays, it's an occasional comfort song that's best played when it's overcast and blue. And you'll know when if you know.

So my question for y'all is... what songs or albums have you listened to that reminds you of someone you've lost? What are some lyrics that don't stick out like a sore thumb, they hit you like anaesthesia? What are your stories? What are your regrets? What are you afraid of? Hell, if youre a musician, what songs have you done that address this? And no matter what, please don't feel like it's too much. To the extent of the code of conduct and what is appropriate, there is nothing pathetic about grief. Esp if you're hanging on and can unravel at any moment.

Ask me anything about my list of songs for grief too (won't include my band's songs heh). I have another song in the works that I'd love to just talk about. I'm an open book as far as grief, fear and such. I write songs for catharsis anyway.

Hope you are all having a wonderful day or night. Forgive me if I can't reply or listen to all the songs, I really do wish I could. I will vote tho.

I'm seeing a lot of doomer content lately and plenty of defeatist commentary to match. I know it sucks out there but surely there's an air balloon that looks nice in the sky or something, right? It's exhausting to see the same negative stuff that I would see on reddit.

I need something positive and maybe you do too.

Here, I'll share something nice to get us started: This 72 year old guy graduated and his 99 year old mom cheered him on.

Under lighting strike delay for 30 minutes, then started to on/off drizzling rain, hopefully we get the race in today!? Upside though, Cole Custer (Ford Mustang) in 1st place, if you're a Ford person like I am ya gotta be loving it!

UPDATE -

NASCAR has canceled the rest of the race do to rain and possibly more lighting strikes until 11AM (ET) tomorrow 7/2 on USA Network

Hey y’all, welcome back to the second weekly game jam thread.

Whats a game jam you may ask. Well imagine if you locked a group of game developers in a box for box for some quantity of time ranging from a few days to a few weeks and told them to compete with each other by building something around a theme and then judging whatever each other came up with, that's a game jam.

Now you may ask why would anyone play these things besides the other game game jam entrants. I don’t know about everyone else but despite being one of the younger users on this site I can’t help but feel like I have to work very hard to find any sort of magic in my life and I keep telling myself if I just keep playing more games and scraping and scrounging at the fringes of the industry I can find the magic again and be happy for a little bit.

Its actually a little scary sharing these games with you guys. I know its unreasonable to get emotionally invested in tiny games I did not even make but it does make me happy that people are taking an interest in this thread. Here is what I have for you this week.

HeartBeat

Platforms: Windows, HTML5
Genres: Rhythm

Do you remember that one part in that one game that you like, during the final boss fight when the heroes theme is reprised and layers are added to the song for each stage of the boss fight and then the vocals kick in and its awesome. Here in game jam land our motto is “All killer no filler”, we like to skip to the good part and this entry from Boss Rush Jam 2023 fits the bill. Its the final boss battle of a rhythm game and features an unusual control scheme that takes a few tries to get the hang of. Let me know if this game jogs any memories of boss fights.

e-scape

Platforms: Windows
Genres: Simulation

If you talk to a gamer that has been around for awhile they will have a story to tell you about a game that they used to play that has since been shutdown. Its always the same story. They see an article out of the blue that the game they used to play just announced a shutdown date. They log in and like a traveler from an antique land, are greeted by a ghost town filled with statues of champions and kings soon to be buried forever at the command of a datacenter sysadmin.

That is e-scape, look on its works, ye mighty, and despair!

This week was both nostalgic and somber for me and that leaked into this weeks selection in a big way. I really do look forward to seeing peoples responses to this thread though and I hope to keep doing these threads for the foreseeable future.

PREVIOUS WEEK NEXT WEEK

Back in the day I remember setting up squirrelmail + qmail to host my own email as well as for others. And then I got that coveted gmail invite and never really looked back.

I've started to get into the mindset of erasing my digital trail, at least for my personal activities, and email seems to be the main one that I need to figure out.

The idea of setting up my own email solution came up again because I wonder how transparent / private services like protonmail and mailbox.org really are.

Any suggestions or insight would be appreciated. Squirrelmail seems to be now defunct, and I am pretty sure the world has changed enough that residential ISPs don't allow running of servers at home anymore. I guess I could setup something on AWS if I had to.

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