I'm not sure exactly what you'd call it, I always think of it as just "chow" but it's a large portion of what I eat. Basically anything that is-- few ingredients, one pot or pan, everything cooked together and thrown in at the same time, cheap, easy, relatively quick, but hearty and filling.

So like my go to is a one potato, half an onion, cabbage, and one de-cased spicy sausage. Plus seasonings, depending on how I'm feeling either Indian (those premixed spice packets) or asian (ginger and garlic powder, mushroom soy sauce and chilli oil) . The prep work is maybe 2-3 minutes then 15ish cooking. I view it as "I want a cooked meal, but I don't want to spend any time on it."

Basic Household Tool List

(Edited to add suggestions from the comments and the general philosophy of this list)

• Tool bag (at least 15 inches long)
• Hammer (12 or 16 oz)
• Rubber mallet (white head preferred, non-marking)
• 6 inch Needlenose Pliers
• 8 inch Slip Joint Pliers
• 8 inch Crescent/adjustable wrench
• 10 inch Slip groove (large jaw) pliers
• Box cutter (optionally folding) + set of replacement blades
• Hacksaw + spare blades
• Scissors
• 25' Tape Measure
• Set of precision (small) screwdrivers
• #1 and #2 Phillips head screwdrivers
• Small and large straight blade screwdrivers
• Multi screwdriver with torx/phillips/straight blade heads
• half-round file (h/t @patience_limited)
• a metal putty knife or a 5-in-1 combination paint scraper (h/t @patience_limited)
• roll of twine
• roll of blue masking tape
• roll of Gorilla tape
• roll of black electrical tape
• super glue
• small bottle of wood glue
• 2" paint brush
• torpedo level
• small flashlight
• a strong neodynium magnet - to use as a stud finder and for many other things (h/t @the_man)
• 9v batteries
• AA batteries
• AAA batteries
• 50 1" #6 wood screws (zinc/steel, not brass)
• 50 2" #8 wood screws (zinc/steel, not brass)
• small box of 1.5" finishing nails
• light and heavy duty drywall anchors
• course and fine foam sanding blocks (h/t @patience_limited)
• 5 gallon bucket
• safety glasses
• N95 masks
• leather work gloves
• foam ear plus (h/t @the_man)

Bonus list (things that are more expensive or nice-to-have upgrades):

• a stud finder - the cheap ones are worthless, buy a good one or not at all (h/t @DeaconBlue)
• a battery powered drill + bit set (h/t @patience_limited)
• a set of metric and imperial allen keys (h/t @sublime_aenima)
• a basic socket set with a mix of metric and imperial sockets (h/t @auk)

The philosophy of this list:

A good starter set should include tools and supplies someone will be glad they had that they didn't know they needed. Even if they aren't "handy", a handier friend might use them (and they learn something in the process). It doesn't include very specialized things like demolition, electrical, or plumbing tools. If you're going to undertake projects in those areas, you should know a little about what you're doing, and you'll be able to buy the right tools for the specific project. As as electrical engineer, I particularly don't include a multimeter because I don't want to encourage someone to mess around with electricity if they don't understand how it might hurt them.

This list specifically does not suggest brands (except where the brand is the thing, like Gorilla tape). Opinions on what brand is best vary widely, but my general suggestion is this. Don't break the bank buying high end tools for someone who may never use them. A $2 hammer is going to be fine for someone who uses it once a year. If they are using them often enough to want something better, they can buy something better (or you can buy it for them).

A continuation of last week's thread. So, got any recommendations for good multiplayer games, and what do you like about them if so? Looking to get a multiplayer game going here?

A few of the open options from last week:
There's a survival Minecraft server
There's a game nights Discord server
There's a Guild Wars 2 guild for North American server players, contact me for an invite with your account name.
There's a Splatoon 3 pool
(Note that these are run by Tildes users rather than being officially Tildes.)

It’s happened a few times for me but my most recent example was Tear of the Kingdom. I had played Breathe of the Wild and enjoyed the early game immensely but I had found that the more inventory I had the less fun I was having. Having a literal arsenal of very powerful weapons all ready to go did feel earned by the late game but it took away from the fun of beating an enemy with its own stick aspect. So for TotK I played as far into the game as possible without expanding my inventory and found the game so much more enjoyable (fusing is a big part of that I acknowledge).
I’m aware of Ironman runs I’m looking for something a bit more complex. Nuzlocke rules revitalized the Pokémon series for me a while back and I’m always on the look out for more self imposed rules in games.
Has anyone else accidentally walked into a different version of a game that they found more interesting.

This thread can be used for general recommendations for anyone, but I'm specifically looking for a daily sunscreen I can wear on my face and neck.

I'm looking for a holy grail sunscreen that might not even exist (in the US, but I'm willing to import if needed). Here are my preferences:

• Not greasy
• No whitecast
• I'm not allergic to it (this I won't know until I try it -- I'm allergic to "fragrance" which is a relatively useless thing to know -- it just means that any scented product is a roll of the die as to whether or not I react with it because there are thousands of different things that can constitute "fragrance" in a product)

I found what I thought was it: this imported sunscreen. Went on easy, smelled great (green apple!), and legitimately worked.

Unfortunately, I'm allergic to it.

I've since replaced it with this Sun Bum face stick which is similar, but it doesn't go on nearly as easily and the synthetic banana smell is offputting. Nevertheless, I put up with it because 1) it doesn't activate my allergies (yay!) and 2) the banana smell is actually better to me than "regular" sunscreen smell.

Sun Bum actually has a fragrance free mineral sunscreen, but it still smells like sunscreen (which I hate) and it has a really strong whitecast, so it's out.

The Sun Bum I'm using now technically "works" for what I want, but I don't love it. I'm looking to see if there's something out there that I can actually love wearing, especially because I'm going to be doing it daily.

If anyone has any recommendations, please let me know!

Please let me know if this has already been answered - request in title.

I'm looking for it because of this post, and I'd also like to make the logo the android-homescreen shortcut for going on the tildes.net frontpage via mobile browser.

So, this was the big "musical episode" they hyped up for a few weeks. As not the biggest musical fan in the world (they can be fun to go see on occasion), this episode was a resounding "meh" for me. It was basically just a novelty. The hip-hop Klingons were the funniest part though, wasn't expecting that...

So I'm currently at my local state fair getting lunch, so I figured this might be a fun topic. Let's talk about state fairs! What are your favorite memories? Favorite activities to do? Go-to snack foods? Weirdest deep fried food booths you've seen?

For me, I'm looking forward to getting kettle corn and soft serve ice cream later. The kettle corn I love is only sold at fairs, and I haven't had it in years. Otherwise we're just going to walk around and see what's going on, going wherever our feet take us.

Happy Baldur's Gate 3 Day! Just wanted to open up this thread to see what everyone will be rolling as. I haven't played any of early access, so maybe be careful on the spoilers.

I'll be playing as a stereotypical criminal human rogue, mostly because I like sneaking around and dual wielding, who is aligned maybe lawful evil (planning, scheming to get what he wants) but I want to eventually bring back to good because he realizes how much his previous life has hurt other people.

I'm interested to see what you all will be playing, and what you're most excited about!

What's your general philosophy around this? In theory, we learn all our fundamental vocabulary from context. But at the same time, it may be important to know the precise meaning. When do you look it up? When do you make an educated guess and keep going?

I'm a little over halfway through and I really have to force myself to keep playing it. Some of it is really cool and a lot of it drives me crazy. Sorry to rant a bit but a lot of the discourse online is extremely positive and I just wanted to let this out.

• So many cutscenes. They're pretty good cutscenes. The acting is largely very good, most characters are really enjoyable (although maybe one day FF will realize that antagonists can be multifaceted and not just generic evil badman). But so, so many hours of cutscene -- run over there -- cutscene -- go to the one map location that's unlocked -- cutscene.
• So much time wasting slow running around. Sometimes the maps are designed like a (linear) maze for apparent reason except to make it take longer to get somewhere. I see a quest marker and I just immediately "ugh" at how long it's going to take me to plod over there.
• And as a corollary to the above, exploration sucks. I learned very early on that there's no reason not to beeline to the next goal, so it makes the slow running that much worse. Dungeons are basically right out of FF XIV, which means one straight line and a very clear pattern of trash mob, trash mob, boss, rinse, repeat.
• The gear and stats are a non-entity. You go through the story, it more or less hands you periodic levels and gear. It feels like they thought including these things was obligatory, but for what they put in the game, they could have just not bothered.
• Combat is pretty fun! A little repetitive. A little samey. I wish there were more options for using all the skills you get. I have all these things I could unlock, but the very limited set of slots you get make they basically a non-option once you've picked the ones you like. The system just feels kind of half baked.
• And in that same vein, the big quick-time-event boss battles are neat too. I don't love them, because it feels a lot like I'm not playing a game anymore, but they do look pretty fantastic. Some of the latter ones go on for way too long. Just like, I was done with punching this fantastic looking beast 10 minutes ago.
• Maybe I haven't heard enough of it or listened long enough, but the music is disappointing. Which is sad because I love the tracks in XIV from the same composer. So much here is just ambient or otherwise underwhelming. A bunch of critical moments are just remixes on the classic theme, which is nice, but not really selling me on the new score overall.

I'm probably going to stick through to the end (slowly, with many breaks for Dave the Diver), at the very least because it was so expensive. I just wish it were better.

This is more focused towards those that use custom domains for their email. My current plan is up at Zoho for my team in a month, and even though I've used them for the past few years its been hit-or-miss (especially when using third-party apps or programs).

Who do you use? Who do you not trust? Who would you never go back to?

Sidenote: I hope this might eventually kick off a ~privacy group, one day.

Hey all, hope everyone is doing well today. I've been using a Pixel 6A for going on a year now, and I'm not very satisfied with my purchase. It's a decent enough phone, but it seems that the fingerprint reader doesn't work more than half of the time, and Google Assistant is about as reliable. It also just has a lot of weird little things that add up (for instance, plugging in the battery may not indicate that it's charging until you unlock the phone). Not to mention that I'm just not fond of the company these days, and I'd like to gradually ween myself off of their applications and such.

I actually upgraded to this phone from a Moto G6 plus (bought for >$200 via Amazon, compared to this $500 device), and I find myself wishing I hadn't hopped in the hot tub with it in my pocket that day.

With that said, what sort of alternatives do you fine people suggest? I'm not too concerned with specs (as long as it plays Pocket Trains, I'm happy lol), mostly battery life, Android, and sustainable company practices if that's still a thing in tech.

Currently looking at the Fairphone 4, but was wondering what else may be floating around out there. Thanks in advance, and have a great day.

I have a business trip to Denver in a few weeks, but I'm planning on staying a couple extra nights in order to see the city. My SO is also coming along. Neither of us have been to Denver -- any favorite things to do/see/eat?

• We both enjoy art museums.
• I've heard good things about Wings Over The Rockies, but I'm not sure how it compares to other aviation museums across the country.
• Food: We are both kind of foodies, but it doesn't have to be fancy. Any cuisines to look for, or unique places to go?
• Natural things: We might visit Rocky Mountain National Park or something like that. We have a rental car and don't mind driving if the destination is worth it.

EDIT: Post-locked topic

I didn't get the chance to reply or explain myself, ironically, as I posted this topic last night and then woke up this morning to 42 comments this topic being locked.

In short, I didn't want to block swearing from Tildes, I just wanted to find out if there was a NSFW filter, as I had my first one pop up in the feed yesterday. Reddit and other sites allow you to block NSFW content from the get-go. And yes, it is the minority by far on Tildes.

As for the swearing, I don't know why I assumed that the NSFW would remove that, I must have been tired when posting this topic. (And yes, I know that this is the internet and it's filled with non-friendly content, so it is naive to expect otherwise, sadly.)

I guess it would just be nice to have a place where you can have both great quality posts (such as on Tildes), as well as the comments be free of some unnecessary, low-quality words. I think Twitter and others allow you to block some words or topics.

I apologise for @Deimos that he had to step in to bring the peace, I didn't mean for this to happen. And apologies to the community for bringing any unrest. This was never my intention.

Hi everyone, only been on Tildes for a few weeks now.

First off, I love the quality of the content and the community's camraderie.

The only question is whether there is a way to filter NSFW, adult or profane comments. There is such great content on here, with amazing contributors, but sometimes you just get the people who like to use profane language like it's an adjective, and it has no place in the topic or discussion. I know we can't block people, but is there a way of filtering out such content, comments, or users?

I recently switch browsers from Safari to Orion after many, many years. I imported all of my bookmarks and then realized that I couldn't remember the last time I went through them to see what was still useful (or even around).

I also realized that I don't save a ton of bookmarks anymore as I keep all of my browsing history available and search through that.

How often do you all go through your bookmarks/favorites?

Hey there! I posted this on r/magictcg a while back, but I've seen and received many new ideas for cards and I'd love to see if you have any new ones.

I had my Japanese copy of Sliver Queen in my wallet for years because my friend found it for $2 in a bargain bin, and I thought I could just buy another - not knowing it was Reserve List. Whoops. So I decided to build an Illegal Slivers EDH deck where every card is somehow not quite legitimate, with a few restrictions - no power 9, no OG duals, and if I can help it try to make as much variety between restrictions as possible, all while trying to keep it as a legitimate deck that aims to use Queen as the wincon. But I'm only about a quarter of the way there. Here's what's up:

• Cards from other games with the same or similar names are used; Swamp from Wyvern, Island from Dominion, Ancient Tomb from Pokemon, Xiahou Dun the One-eyed from Wixoss, Karoo from One Piece, Duel Masters copy of Muscle Sliver...

• I'm using relevant illegal MtG prints - World Championship decks, Mystery Booster playtests, an art copy of the Unearth Sliver I keep forgetting the name of, silver borders / acorns, etc. Also Clickslither (from Legions!) instead of Quick Sliver (from Legions!).

• I was looking for a Wheel of Fortune tarot card before I found that lööps sticker and decided to go with that.

• My favorite is that someone originally stole the shipment of Crystalline Sliver promos before they were going to give them out... So if you had a copy of it at one point, it was literally-illegal stolen goods. Eventually they retrieved them and distributed them.

I've got other ideas, and I'm trying to break each rule. Looking for:

• The best single thing from the ban list

• Lutri as companion, or one card used twice

• One ante card

• Planechase and Conspiracy

• The card Unquenchable Fury, to be confused with Unquenchable Fury

• A 30th Anniversary card

• Some oversize cards as regular-size proxies

• An AI generated Sliver as a proxy

• Some configuration of Unfinity Stickers to make a new Sliver card of my own

• A World's Smallest for something like a Night's Whisper

• An Armageddon trading card for Armageddon, a Hearthstone from WoW TCG, a Force of Will from L5R TCG, a whole bevy of cards from LotR card game... I still also need Sliv-Mizzet.

And once this is all done... Find 100 different card sleeves to wrap these in. I'd also love - LOVE - to get the Queen graded and still use it as my Commander.

So, Tildes - how else can I make this deck even worse? Thanks!

Basically as the title says. I'm a big proponent of "judging people by what they do, not what they say"; it has been one of my most unshakeable life mottos and I can't, for the life of me, grasp why or how someone with even a modicum of intellectual honesty can believe otherwise.

I'm very interested in the nature of the mental gymnastics going on inside the people who defend themselves with such statements.

Thanks folks !!

EDIT: rephrased for clarity

My lease is ending within the next two-three months and I have been trying to plan my next steps. My goal has been to buy a house (and hopefully coincide with my lease ending) but the more I have been looking at inventory, the more I have been hesitating about that commitment. I currently am a full time remote worker who can live in any US state at any given point.

I found that I can find a short term rental (60-90 days) in downtown Honolulu and am finding myself increasingly interested in the prospect. I have never visited Hawaii, and while I was recently married, we never actually went on a honeymoon because we are saving for a house. The rental I would choose would be ~$2300 a month, fully furnished and utilities included. I of course would have additional cost to consider, such as needing to put all my furniture in storage and paying rent on the locker. In addition, I would not have my car so I would need to find a decent place that is walking distance to life necessities.

This option would not make me broke, but it would cost me additional money. If I bought a house now, I would probably have to hold off on any big vacations for awhile, and Hawaii was on our list to go to in the next 5 years.

So just curious, what are your thoughts? Would this be a good way to spend my winter or would the burden of not having a car be difficult in Hawaii? Any other things I need to think about?

My contribution:

It's 2:17am on a school night, you're a teenager, and you're googling "most disturbing movie ever made" - because you can. Among mentions of films like A Serbian Film and Audition, you also notice that a film with two names is commonly mentioned: Salò, or The 120 Days of Sodom. Huh, even the name sounds creepy. After looking behind you to make sure no one's watching, a brief glance at a summary of the movie explains enough to make you want to forget about the whole thing forever. Regardless, you fall further down the Wikipedia hole... (or in my case, you really do forget about it for 10 years, only to unfortunately stumble across it again yesterday.)

Salò was made in 1975 and is based on a novel written by Marquis de Sade in 1785. It is known as one of the most disturbing films ever made, but as I learned recently, the film and novel somewhat pale in comparison to the real life of the author. Sade was a French guy who committed all manners of wild, outrageous, and terrible behavior throughout his life, and his Wikipedia page is a crazy ride. You know the word "sadism?" This man is literally the etymological origin of sadism. (Also, practically his whole existence requires a content warning. In this case, it seems that the art has never been separate from the artist.)

In 1763, Sade was charged with "outrage to public morals, blasphemy and profanation of the image of Christ," which at first makes him seem pretty cool. Alas, it all goes downhill from here, as he was known as a nuisance and danger to every community he lived in.

Later, when Napoleon Bonaparte issued a warrant for his arrest after being offended by his novels, Sade was imprisoned, then had to transfer prisons because he was being such a disgusting sex pest to other prisoners at the first one. His family had him declared insane and moved to an insane asylum. While in the asylum, he was permitted to direct and perform his plays, using the other patients as actors. Somehow, even when living amongst the most underprivileged members of society in prisons or insane asylums, it seems that Sade was never fully prevented from promoting his ideas and art to the world, even though the subjects he explored were universally horrifying to society - then, as well as now. I found this fascinating.

Sade wrote The 120 Days of Sodom on scraps of paper while in an insane asylum in 1785, and lost it in the Storming of Bastille during the French Revolution. It was somehow rescued (eternally unbeknownst to him,) and was finally published in 1904, to eventually be adapted into the film that sent me down this whole rabbit hole.

While reading about Sade's life, I was surprised not only by the major events in history he was present for, but the lasting impact he had on philosophy, art, and culture. As mentioned above, the word "sadism" has its roots in his name. The Surrealists adopted him as an inspiration in the 1920s, dubbing him the "Divine Marquis" and praising his ideas about "sexual freedom." (Side note: I love surrealism, but I swear, I never stop discovering new, unsettling facts about Dali and his ilk.) Along with Surrealism, he is said to have had great influence over Modernist art. Some consider his work to be a precursor of nihilism. Sade also influenced Sigmund Freud, Friedrich Nietzsche, and at least one serial killer.

Discussion

Learning about this guy left me astounded, and I just needed to share with someone. Could I have just posted the Wikipedia article? Yes, but that's not as fun as writing down this crazy story and some of my feelings about it. (Note: I did not link sources excessively in this post, as it generally follows the structure of the Wikipedia article and sources can be found there.)

I couldn't believe I didn't already know about Marquis de Sade before today (maybe because I've never taken a philosophy class?) It also got me thinking that I'd like to hear about any other outrageous, controversial, or just plain strange characters in history that you might know of. Even the other historical figures mentioned above have pretty wild lives themselves. (And on the other hand, I suppose there's so much here to chew on that we may just discuss Sade in general. If so, have at it. I'm particularly fascinated by how such a sick individual has heavily influenced significant parts of our culture, and how to feel about that.)

Fun facts are welcome, considering I certainly didn't bring any.

Hi!
I'm planning a big trip to Korea (Month-long), and have most of it planned out already. The only big thing I have left is where to stay in Jeju Island.
For context, we'll be staying in Seoul for two weeks before Jeju (working remotely, not so much of a holiday) and doing some evening trips, and day-trips. Jeju is our first stop after Seoul, and we'll stay there for a week (6 nights).

We're trying to organize Jeju so that we have the first half of it be more hiking oriented, and the second half more beach-y and relaxed.

So far we're leaning towards staying in Seowigpo for 3 nights and then go somewhere in the north. Main names we've seen recommended for the north have been Hamdeok or Aewol, but we're open to suggestions.

So yeah, any advice on where to stay, what to do, etc. is very welcome!

It seems that this thread has sparked a lot of interest from the gamers of Tildes, but the forum just isn't a great place to actually get things going. To remedy this, I've created the Tildes Game Nights discord server where people who like the format of Discord can get together and play games :). I hope to foster the same sort of civility we have here, so the rules are pretty much identical to Tildes' (with a bunch of the rules being taken directly from the code of conduct). I already have some channels set up for the games that got a lot of votes in the linked thread, but I can add more if there's popular demand.

Here is the invite link :)

I'll go first: turn-based combat.

While not as common as they once were, there are still a lot of games, AAA and indie alike, that get massively popular and are known for their supposedly excellent turn-based combat. Games that are probably what a lot of people who don't care for turn-based combat make an exception for, for one reason or another. Say they really enjoy how Undertale is "the RPG where you don't need to kill anything", or how Persona 5 is "so stylish". Also, there's the classic JRPGs of old, such as the older Final Fantasy games, or these more military grid based kind of games like Fire Emblem.

I just don't "get" any of it. I've never beaten a game featuring turn-based combat from start to finish. Yes, that includes Pokemon games. I don't know what it is specifically. I've beaten games of basically every other genre, but when I start any turn-based game because of some friend recommendation or good reviews, I try it, am genuinely invested for a couple hours, then my interest in the game just dies all of a sudden. I don't think it's any one issue really, probably a lot of different things.

Anyone else never really got into these kinds of games? Or do you have some other game genre that everyone else swears by that you just don't care for?

Roguelikes have a special place in my heart. When you know that your character is mortal, the stakes feel so much more real, and your progress feel so much more earned. You can’t second-guess the level design, because random, and sometimes things are simply not unfair, like when you get transformed into a cute mushroom, while your otherwise generic foe get transformed into a god. I consider unfairness, uncertaincy and chaos to be core gameplay components.

Here’s some roguelikes I liked, in no particular order:

Inscryption
Sort of like Slay the Spire with retro aestetics combined with the gritty feel of the SAW franchise. The most atmospheric and foreboding deckbuilder I've ever played. It is sort of a meta-game where you play a retro computer game in which you play a tabletop roleplaying game with a deranged dungeonmaster.

Noita
Looks like a rather generic pixelart side-view dungeoncrawl, but beneath the humble surface lurks Finnish folklore, a revolutionary physics engine and an insanely versatile magic system, likely the best in any game. The game is vast, both in sense of game world but also the numbers of monsters, spells, perks and secrets. I consider this the best roguelike, full stop.

Don't Starve
Craft to survive in an unforgiving wilderness, battling wildlife, hunger cold and insanity. Having to constantly collect resources makes this game a bit on the grindy side, but the hand-drawn artwork and a rich world to explore and unlock makes this stay fresh.

Jupiter Hell
This, the successor to DRL (Doom Roguelike), is the only classic roguelike I could ever get into. The top-notch visuals makes me literally forget that I'm playing a grid-based turn-based rogue-clone. Still, the game is rather lacking in variation, and there's no lore or story choices. While I think this is by design, the DOOM roots and whatnot, I'm missing the sense of exploration and wonder found in other roguelikes. But even with that, the game is cool and ever so dark, and there's quite a lot of depth despite the simple controls.

FTL
Simplistic and neat pixelart space exploration game. The meat of the game is space combat in real time with pause, between which you plan your route on a node-based overworld and make various choices. The game, while cozy, is quite intense. You're trying to escape a vastly superior fleet while fighting off incoming attacks and trying to not run out of fuel while hopefully improving your ship to survive as the stakes rises. Every choice you make feels like a life or death decision. The fights offers a lot of different tactics. There's various ships to unlock by completing various missions. The one downside is that you have seen all the different encounters way before you have everything unlocked, but the mod FTL Multiverse adds a lot of new content.

Into the Breach
Simple tactical turnbased on 8x8 fields, by the folks behind FTL. The main gimmick is that you can see how the enemies are going to attack in their turn, and try to counter it. This works surprisingly well and offers a lot of depth.

Depth of Extinction
Underwater turnbased tactical. The game feels like watching a cheap action movie from the eighties. Sometimes the missions can feel a bit samey, and the underwater setting could be more in forefront but this doesn't stop the game from being quite a lot of fun. I'm hardly an expert here, but I've heard people who prides themselves of their expertice at turn-based tactical gaming giving this one a lot of praise.

Retromancer
Arena-shooter with a very stylish retro aestetics which doesn't confuse you in the fast-paced chaos. This, combined with a RPG fantasy theme really make this stand out from the other twin-stick offerings. This is a game I consider a spiritual successor to the original twin stick shooter, Robotron 2084. Of course, you need to play the Hunter, the other characters doesn't have the Robotron-trademark mashine gun fire. There's a dash function which is quite handy when you're about to be cornered. There is not really any character building, although by scoring enough points you can unlock various pickups. I guess it is designed for local multiplayer (there's four characters to choose from) but I haven't tried this. Plays excellent with controller.

The Wrath's Den
This is basically Dungeonkeeper, but simplified into a turnbased pixelart game with keyboard controls. You use space to switch between minions, arrow keys to move them, X to do various actions. Besides the random room choices, everything follow simple strict mechanics, which sometimes requires a bit of observation to grasp. The one major downside is that you cannot save your game. Much suck! But other than that, this humble little game is quite easy to fall in love with.

I love keeping up with industry announcements and new trailers, but a lot of game news websites are too full of fluff. Is there a good videogame news aggregator or a journalism site that you like? I used to like IGN and Kotaku but I find their content more useless than not.

The rules are you have a magic remote, and you are immediately transported to a location of your choice. You can use it as many times you want, but it will only go to the one location. Where do you put it?

I am going to be in the market for a vehicle soon enough. My 2003 car is starting to show its age. Unfortunately my family still requires two cars often enough that I will need to find a replacement.

I have been bouncing the idea around in my head of getting an electric car.

As it stands, my 2003 has not gone over 50 miles in a single day more than a handful of times since we got a hybrid three years ago, and I don't see that changing soon. To me, this seems like an excellent opportunity to get a used electric vehicle that might not be getting the range that it once had. A vehicle that got 150 miles on a charge off the lot that now only gets 75 miles might be a problem for the original buyer but might not be for me.

My question to the users of Tildes - have you bought an "old" (I use this term very loosely) electric car for a similar use case? Are there problems with used electrics that don't have an ICE equivalent? Are you generally happy with the decision?

I think the population of the site has likely grown to the point where we could get some multiplayer gaming going. While I don't currently have anything in mind, I figure there will come a time when I do so I thought I'd try to get things rolling.

So, what multiplayer games would you like to try but lack the people for? What is your general availability for playing? Is there anything else people need to be aware of? Interest permitting, a recurring thread may be appropriate, though the exact interval would depend on the level of interest.

ChatGPT got all of its information from these websites, but these websites still use advertising to gain revenue. When a user asks ChatGPT a question, instead of going to the site, it's using the information stored on the site without giving the site any revenue.

That's why they're being sued. (Also why Reddit is doing what it's doing with the API)

What do we do? How can we keep these sites alive, and still make use of ChatGPT? I can write code and solve problems days faster than I used to now, but it seems kind of morally bankrupt of me to use this service which is so clearly putting the foundations it was built on out of business.

I am taking my 70 year old mother on a guided trip to Spain and Portugal. She is very excited. The trip starts in Barcelona, goes down the cost and over to Lisbon and Porto and then ends in Madrid. We then plan on taking a train to the coast. Before going back to Barcelona and traveling home

I have three main questions

1. Can I bring my unlocked pixel 5a and add a secondary sim card? How does that work?
2. Are there any must have items I should pack that I may not think of?
3. Anyone have any advice for me?

This is my first trip to mainland Europe, and probably her last international trip so I want it to be easy, stress free and memorable.

I am taking my 70 year old mother on a guided trip to Spain and Portugal. She is very excited. The trip starts in Barcelona, goes down the cost and over to Lisbon and Porto and then ends in Madrid. We then plan on taking a train to the coast. Before going back to Barcelona and traveling home

I have three main questions

1. Can I bring my unlocked pixel 5a and add a secondary sim card? How does that work?
2. Are there any must have items I should pack that I may not think of?
3. Anyone have any advice for me?

This is my first trip to mainland Europe, and probably her last international trip so I want it to be easy, stress free and memorable.

My wife and I (from the U.S.) are going on vacation and as part of a larger itinerary have scheduled a week in Northern Ireland, based in Belfast. We'll spend the first couple of days decompressing and exploring the city, but besides that I'm wondering what would be worth doing there during that time. I've been focusing on the other parts of our itinerary and have only very limited knowledge of that area and its attractions. We plan on renting a car for a day or two to get out of the city but otherwise will be relying on public transit. Thanks in advance for any recommendations or advice!

... and I think I'm going to be very hooked.

Spoilers for being 4ish hours into early access..

And I'm fine with that. I'm trying to lean into the emergent story telling of the game and accept my choice as they roll and as they come.

I want to hear your thoughts on early access. Is it what you thought the game would be? For cRPG veterans, is it going to live up to meet your expectations for what one should be? Care to share your outcomes for the situation I engaged with (spoilered of course for players who want to go in completely fresh)? I've not played 5e, what do you think of the adaptation? And any other thoughts you have in that old noggin?

to clarify the "new-ish to cRPG's", I've played the opening hours to a handful of them including Pillars of Eternity, Pathfinder: Kingmaker, Mechajammer, Disco Elysium and Encased. I liked them all, but I have trouble committing although I did complete Disco Elysium and LOVE and ADORE it. I will return one day including games like that Fallout 1/2, Planescape: Torment, and others on my list.

Love and candy to you all

I'm sure there are multiple comic artists and writers on Tildes, so let's talk process for designing and planning pages! Hopefully this fits here, but if not feel free to move it.

I've only drawn a few comics myself, and I like to make a script first for longer projects. It can be detailed and break it down by panels, or just give an overall summary of the page. For shorter comics though where I can clearly envision it (e.g. 4 pages), I like to kind of wing it. Someone else I know likes to go right into roughs, and then figure out what to cut as he goes along.

How about everyone else? What are your preferred methods and steps?

I'm sure most of the nail salon choices near me are fine, but I'm going to have to choose. Are there any red flags I should look for? Are there indications of quality that aren't the same as most expensive option? Any advice would be helpful.

I’ve been noticing food shrinkflation a lot here in Belgium lately. Smaller soda cans, biscuit packet counts going down, 125g becoming 115g etc.

And honestly, to choose between the same size package getting more expensive vs less of it… I’ll take the latter. It’s reducing consumption. Which is great as a whole, but also selfishly if I’m buying a pack of crisps and I get to eat less of it … great.

Not so great on essentials obviously but those aren’t really hit by shrinkflation as much as snacks, etc.

Okay, that’s it. I do want to stress that I don’t like paying more for the same shit, but on a practical level, if I do, I much rather get less for the same price than have to spend more and be stuck getting the same quantity.

Especially if it’s junk food… I’ve even found myself disliking the old soda can sizes when I come across them. Having gotten used to the new ones, the old ones are straight up too much.

You might be able to tell by my username which is my favorite audio drama. If you haven't heard of it, Wolf 359 is a space opera dramedy focused on a cast of deeply likable characters who find themselves carrying out mysterious research onboard a space station owned by a soulless corporation. Heads up, the whole thing is very enjoyable but the creators say the real story doesn't get going for real until about episode 9 and I would agree. It's funny and entertaining but gets pretty serious around there. Don't worry, the early episodes are super short and still good.

Other audio dramas I highly recommend are:

Bronzetown
1865
Limetown
Edict Zero FIS
Station 151
Archive 81
The Magnus Archives
Theater of Tomorrow
The Hyacinth Disaster
Life After / The Message

I’ve been getting back into guitar playing and trying to have more focused practice when I play each day. I wouldn't call myself a "beginner", but I don't think I'm near the "intermediate" stage yet. I know chords and power chords and can transition between them pretty easily. I've been working on figuring out CAGED shapes, but still really struggle with playing scales and "solo-ing"...partly because (1) I have tried exploring music theory and "learning the notes on the fretboard", but it hasn't clicked for me yet, and (2) my fret fingers feel sluggish and don’t seem to move across the fretboard with the ease that I seem to have when switching chords.

That said, I’m feeling pretty discouraged right now. Looking for some “pick me ups”, so to speak. And wanting to learn to play a few songs all the way through so I can feel more confident in my ability to actually play a song. But I don’t really want to get hung up on a difficult “solo” or a bunch of individual fretting stuff yet.

As I thought about making this post, I figured it might be useful to also ask about some "beginner tips" on how to best stay motivated to stick with learning, practicing, and playing the guitar. If I'm going to keep this up, I want to really invest in it and stick with the guitar. Here are some additional questions/thoughts to hopefully trigger a discussion.

Fellow guitarists:

• What has helped you in the past?
• What helped you get over the "discouraging" first steps of guitar playing and keep at it?
• What were some of the first songs you were able to learn to play all the way through?
• How did you learn the notes on the fretboard?
• How did you learn to play different chords all around the neck?
• What would you say to your younger self to help encourage them to continue pushing through the sticking points of guitar?
• What was the "key" to getting guitar playing to "click" in your brain?

Looking forward to seeing what advice fellow players can offer! Everyone's musical journey is different, and I am interested in learning how you learned to get to where you are now!

If i have a lot of acrylic on canvas paintings and I want to produce prints to sell, where do you make the prints? Local Kinko's/staples?
Clear plastic bag or no? Brief artist blurb at the back? Post card?

Have you ever bought a print? What made you want to buy it or what stopped you, and what would have made it go from no to yes?

My poor beautiful boy is really going through it at the moment. He's just shy of 5 months and puberty is hitting him like a truck - he's lost two of his puppy teeth in a week, his adult coat is coming through in patches and now he's suddenly becoming terrified of people with seemingly no rhyme or reason.

Strangers (even strangers we walked past 30 minutes ago with no issue), family members that he'd spent the last 4-5 hours around on a visit and yesterday even my partner who's been there since day 1 and takes him out on walks and plays with him every day! It's not constant either; when my partner tentatively came downstairs to go to work this morning it was all smiles and waggy tails like nothing had happened.

I understand this is a pretty normal stage in a dog's development so we've just got to try and endure it until it passes. I've tried leash corrections and moving away, getting him to focus on me and rewarding him when he does, as well as inching closer and getting the scary person to throw treats at a distance when that's feasible. I know teaching him sit/ down would be extremely helpful and we're prioritising that.

I've also booked a 1-2-1 training appointment for the end of this week so hopefully a professional can help us figure things out but I'm hoping to hear from any fellow puppy owners. How did you cope with fear periods? Any tips?

Edit to specify: he's a belgian shepherd. We've had him for just over 5 weeks now.

Thank you so much everyone for your comments so far! The big theme is tiredness so I'm starting to get a plan of action together for dealing with this today:

• light physical activity, training and brain games in the morning/ afternoon
• main physical activity after work to get him good and tired
• keep an eye on his energy levels and try to create some structured naptimes

Also:

• carefully consider puppy classes
• if we have to go visiting, take familiar bedding
• rinse, repeat, rinse, repeat

We'll go to the park again straight after work as we always have in the spirit of consistency and hopefully get good and weary before my partner gets back tonight.

From a non-MAGA’ers perspective;

He took a perfectly fine (albeit starting to decline) social media platform with millions of users and derailed it completely from what it was before to a farce.

Why even buy Twitter if you’re going to change the entire format, including the actual name of the brand? Why not build a competitor from the ground up and call it X?

Unless you’re the melonhead billionaire your guess is better than mine, but I wonder if this bumbling incompetence is pre-orchestrated somehow or if he’s making it up as he goes.

I mentioned offhand in our introduction thread that I've never dated -- I wanted to hear people's experiences, since chatter online is very dominated by the male experience of mostly looking for casual hookups and struggling to get matches. I particularly want to hear from people who did not go in wanting a casual relationship

Some additional discussion questions: Did it go well or poorly? Did you run into mismatches in expectations? Did you end up in an unsafe situtation? How many people did you explore before you found someone long term?

Age for context would also be helpful, since I know many of you skew older.

Hey all!

(If this is the wrong place for this, please feel free to reassign)

During the winter months I can't get out to do much photography, but I love darkroom printing. Last winter I started buying antique photo negatives on ebay to have something to print.

It's been amazing! Many are from the 20's, 30's and 40's, with one set (of glass plates) having been manufactured pre-20th century!

I don't know how many I have, but it must be somewhere around 300-500 negatives. Currently they are stored in their original envelopes from the labs that developed them nearly 90 years ago, but that's not a good long term option. I love history, and I want to do this right, but I feel a bit overwhelmed with the volume.

Data I'd like to keep track of:

• The name of the person on the envelope the negative came from
• The date on the envelope
• The approximate date taken (if known)
• Ideally the specific envelope it came from

I'm going to try and store these in a binder of some sort, though that presents it's own challenges since it won't be possible to find sheets with sleeves that are the right size for the negatives. But that's a problem for me to solve haha. I've never had to index/catalog physical media before, so I'm pretty clueless on where to start.

More than anything it's really important to me to preserve this history in a safe way. For many of the people these pictures may be the only trace on earth that they ever existed, and I want to respect that.

Hey people :)

Friendly reminder to look again at your songs in your Soundhund, Shazam, etc! I don't even seem to have half of them in my favorites playlist but that's definitely not intended.

I'm listening to my recognized songs in random order right now and it's just song after song and whoa after whoa. Well, that's no surprise, these songs are "curated" by me precisely because they grabbed my attention when I was out and about enough that I felt the need to try and recognize them !!

I hope you also find a couple golden tracks as I've done today :)

Mods: I put this in Tech because Amazon is a tech company, if this is the wrong group I apologize.

For the last several purchases I have made through Amazon, not only has the advertised "expected delivery date" been wrong, Amazon hasn't even shipped the product by the delivery date. The day I expect an order to arrive, I get a notice from Amazon saying it's "running late" and the new expected delivery date is anywhere from 4 to 10 days away.

This is on top of the fact that I have Amazon Prime. Prime eligible meant "it would be delivered within two days" for the better part of a decade. They slowly transitioned away from that to "two days delivery after it ships," and now it seems like half of everything takes 5-8 days to deliver, even with Prime.

Anyway, the reason I reported them to the FTC because I believe they are advertising misleading or downright incorrect delivery times in hopes of winning your business over a competitor who is honest about their delivery times. If I want a monitor and Best Buy has it for $200 with 3-5 day shipping, and Amazon advertises it being delivered on day 3, I'm probably going to go with Amazon if I'm in urgent need of a monitor. But then the third day rolls around and Amazon indicates "oh, well, it's probably going to be 3-4 more days." If I had known that, I would have just gone with Best Buy, where I know it would have at least been delivered in 5 days; now I'm stuck waiting a week for Amazon.

I don't even know if this is something the FTC cares about. But it should. I encourage everyone to report this if they've encountered the same issue.