Have you watched any TV shows recently you want to discuss? Any shows you want to recommend or are hyped about? Feel free to discuss anything here.

Please just try to provide fair warning of spoilers if you can.

I make playlists every so often because I hear such cool music and compile it into playlists not freely based on genre but rather on feeling and also similarity. Tastemaking, more or less.

The problem is... these playlists are promotional, to promote the music of my band. You can listen to these playlists without the context of that, but I think it's important as I don't want to self-promo any more than I have to.

So yeah. Is it ok if I post playlists here, and... would y'all be fine with that?

I want to finally try NixOS and build a desktop OS from the ground up with sway, iwd, waybar, foot terminal, cmus, etc.

I'm not a developer, but I'm a seasoned Linux user. Used Gentoo for years, Void Linux and now I'm on OpenSUSE TW.

I'm finding all sorts of guides and it seems confusing. In the past there wasn't any mention of home-manager and flakes, now it seems there are these things. Those are all things I need to care about? Is it all configured in one file?

Hey there, curious if any other folks on tildes suffer with this, and if so, if you can share things that have helped you.

Context: I am a very light sleeper. Eg: the sound of a phone vibrating, or whispering, will wake me up. I have no issues falling asleep at night, nor do I have any anxiety around sleep, I just wake up from the slightest noise. I've been like this all my life.

Unfortunately, I also live in a very noisy neighborhood: lots of modded vehicles, lots of rumbling bass, etc. I wake up 2-5 times a night. I might get a full night sleep once every 2 months.

For the past year, I've been working very hard on solving this problem. I have made some progress, but still suffer nightly because of this. Things I've done:

• Noise masking: I now have 2 white noise machines, an air purifier (max volume), and sleep with ear plugs. Unbelievably, the cars are still loud enough to be heard over all of that and wake me up. Even when I can't hear them, they vibrate the floor/my bed, and the vibration wakes me up. However, this has still made a massive difference (I went from about 3-4 hours sleep/night, to 6-7.)

• Sleep hygiene. I've learned a lot about it, and worked hard to implement different techniques. I keep a very steady sleep schedule. I eat well and exercise. I do not get in bed ever unless for sleep. etc. While this does not prevent waking up from noise, I think it helps with keeping sleep consistent (i.e. at least I know what time I'll get tired at night.)

• Light: In similar vein of sleep hygiene, I've learned a lot about how light impacts our sleep wake cycles; I avoid light and screens in the evening, and get in direct sunlight (for about 20-30 minutes) within an hour of waking. Again, doesn't help with noise, but helps tremendously with keeping sleep consistent.

• Medical help: I see a neurologist / sleep specialist. He is wonderful He prescribed a low dose of gabapentin, which has actually been really helpful. Unfortunately, it only lasts about 4 hours, so while the first half of the night is good, I still wake up many times in the second half of the night. I have tried some other medications (trazadone, benadryl, zyrtec) but they have either had no impact (trazadone), or make you drowsy the next day which makes me miserable (bendaryl, zyrtec).

One slight annoyance is that whenever I bring up sleep issues, the first response I tend to get is "you must have anxiety". Then, advice is tailored to that. Really, it is not anxiety, and therapy will not help me here. I just wake up insanely easy. It seems most solutions are for folks with anxiety, and I don't find a lot for folks that are just light sleepers. Can anyone relate?

Any advice you can throw my way?

As you may well know, Fairphone is a company that originally arose from a kickstarter campaign and makes phones that are as easily repairable, as sustainable and as fairly sourced as possible. They do have their issues, but compared to other big phone companies they've done a great job with this.

Now it appears that Fairphone is due to announce the so called 'Fairphone Keep Club' on the 14th of September - a bonus program as we all know it. You buy stuff, you get points for what you buy, and when you've got enough points you can redeem them to buy more stuff.

The keep club website claims that it's the only rewards program that gives back to those who keep their Fairphones as long as possible, but judging by the listed 'challenges' it appears that the most efficient way to gain points is to simply buy new stuff.

Personally I'm a bit torn on this, due to the idealistic viewpoints I tend to judge Fairphone under in accordance with their stated sustainability goals. I do realize that is a much higher standard than the big-players in the phone industry achieve. I also get that Fairphone wants to build its brand identity and create incentives to keep customers and sell their products. But at the same time I can't help but think that in the end that program is an incentive to be less sustainable, as it ultimately provides you with those fancy points as a psychological incentive to buy the newest and latest Fairphone product.

So I wanted to bring this topic into a wider community that may not currently be as deep in the Fairphone bubble: Do you think such bonus programs will rather help spread the idea of a more repairable, sustainable approach to phones, or will it rather serve as an incentive to artificially shorten a phone's lifecycle by prematurely buying a new one? And more generally speking: Do you think advertising strategies rooted in consumerism and classic capitalistic company goals are compatible with sustainable product lifecycles somehow, despite not exactly having aligned interests?

Note that I also posted this on Lemmy. I'm interested to see how those discussions will compare.

Hello... looking to hang a 100lbs heavy bag in my basement (with regular wood-stud walls). I've researched various options and have gone down all sorts of engineering rabbit holes, including pull-out strengths of various sized lag bolts, horizontal load maximums of different kinds of wood, etc. I've perused various marketplaces for various types of mounting solutions and such. The problem with standard DIY wall mounting is that it doesn't come off the wall far enough.

I'm wondering though -- and it seems simple enough of a solution -- why the following wouldn't work:

An 8-foot span of 2x6, turned "vertically" so that the top and bottom faces are the 2" edge, affixed 45 degrees to the studs. ASCII art not-withstanding, it's just an isosceles triangle, where the 8-foot hypotenuse is the lumber, and the "height" of the triangle is 4-feet. It would seem 2 brackets (the kind used in making decks) on each end, screwed into the studs would be suitably strong.

The "Sagulator" (google it!) seems to think that such a setup would only experience a total 0.01in sag in the center of the span.

The heavy bag would just hang from this with a strap that loops over the beam.

An 8-foot span basically means I have a lot of clearance on either side.

I suppose I could just go right into the ceiling joists, but with my proposed setup I can slide the bag to one end or the other and create a bit more of a dynamic setup (albeit it looks a bit more unsightly).

Thoughts or suggestions? Or am I crazy?

In an effort to make life feel a little more joyful, I added a new calendar to my calendar app called "Nice things". In this calendar, I'm putting all sorts of nice upcoming things to look forward to (album/movie/game releases, the start of Fall, when my preorders will ship, upcoming eclipses and equinoxes and full moons, you name it). My goal is to feel more connected with the passage of time, rather than letting each day blur into the next. I want things to anchor and ground me each day.

Along the same lines, I'm curious: What are you looking forward to? What things on the horizon have you excited for the future? What would you put on a hypothetical "nice things" calendar?

As of late, I've decided to introduce my dad to video games. It's his birthday upcoming in a few days, and I'm leaning towards getting an Xbox of some kind. I haven't been in the world of vidya for quite some time, so I'm hoping to lean on other opinions to make the right decision.

The main question I have is: if I'm buying used, is it worth it to try and find a Series S/X or would I be fine at entry level with an Xbox One? I figure I'll get GamePass and figure out what sorts of games he'd like to play before investing. I only really have $200 to spend, which puts a Series more or less out of the question. Would an Xbox One be a decent introduction to gaming for someone who doesn't have much of a standard for graphics / gameplay etc.? Also: what games should I add to the library?

This thread is posted weekly - please try to post all relevant US political content in here, such as news, updates, opinion articles, etc. Extremely significant events may warrant a separate topic, but almost all should be posted in here.

This is an inherently political thread; please try to avoid antagonistic arguments and bickering matches. Comment threads that devolve into unproductive arguments may be removed so that the overall topic is able to continue.

I'm a long time Tildes user but I've created this separate account because I'd like to avoid connecting this topic to my normal username.

I am going through a divorce that will take about a year to finalize and I am struggling with the stress. If it were a short term thing, I would grit my teeth and bear it, but I have a full year ahead and I'm afraid I need some help in order to make it through with my physical and mental health intact.

My wife has a personality that includes "kill mode" for anyone she deems as an opponent -- whether it is another driver on the road, a customer service agent who doesn't give her what she wants, or anyone at all who she perceives as having slighted her. This is one of the reasons why we're getting divorced. I have nearly the opposite approach to conflict, and I can't handle seeing people get attacked so fiercely or so often. Now that we're getting divorced, I am the target of these attacks. For clarity, they're only verbal attacks, not physical -- there is no physical abuse in this case.

I could stiffen up and fight back whenever she starts arguing with me, but we have kids and I want to commit myself to preventing their exposure to hostilities as much as possible. But this means I have to do my best to brush off my wife's verbal abuse and maintain composure so they can have a stable dad to rely on.

Right now I'm having trouble sleeping and I am constantly anxious throughout the day. It gets worse whenever I have to interact with my wife; and unfortunately we have to interact frequently every day to coordinate childcare and logistics of the divorce. I have a tightness in my chest from being so anxious (not heart attack) and I am struggling to maintain focus on work or any tasks I have to complete. I can hold back the tears, but I really do want to cry many, many times a day.

What can I do to wade through this time period? I know there are breathing exercises to help calm down. What else can you recommend? I am trying to make sure I do eat well enough and that I drink enough water. I avoid alcohol entirely and don't take any kind of medication.

Any advice at all would be greatly appreciated. And I'm sorry if this is not an appropriate forum for this question. I will delete if so.

I have been a reader in my teens and my early youth. This all changed when I started to develop a depression back in the days. I had no will, interest or strength to pick up a book. During my university years I read a lot of textbooks but no prose. Picking up a book today feels like a chore for me. I find a lot of them bland and have to force myself to read/finish the story. So basically, my text boils down to: What helped you to rekindle your love for books/reading again? I am curious about all the answers.

EDIT:
Thanks to the comments so far, I have seen that I did not answer the important question why I stopped reading and why it now feels like a chore. So I'll try and give a bit more answers.
Besides "having no strength" during my phase of depression, I kind of started to hate the worlds the books offered. I wished to be part of these worlds, where my depression would not mess with me, where I could be happy or at least experience cool adventures. But after every reading session came the hard realization that I was still in this world with my depression and all my problems. That was when I decided to stop reading.

As to why reading feels like a chore today: I don't know. I started to read books again that I loved as a teenager/ young adult, but the magic was gone. Meanwhile, I also started to pick up more books from up-to-date bestseller lists, but I found a lot of them pretty boring, or I did not like the style of the author.

Not sure how many people follow IndyCar, but figured I'd do the same as I've been doing for F1.

Honestly, one of the worst races I've ever seen in any series. Which is too bad, because I love Indy at Laguna Seca. But it was like watching Formula 2 or Formula 3. At Monza. Constant crashing and spins, especially on restarts. I don't know how many times the race got yellow flagged, especially after restarts.

We know from last week's race at Portland that Alex Palou of Chip Ganassi Racing wrapped up the Drivers Championship in his Honda. So I'll put the season results below.

The 2024 IndyCar schedule has yet to be released, but should be out by the end of the month.