Hey all, hope you're doing well today. I'm visiting NYC for the first time with my wife in January (she's been a couple of times already), and I would greatly appreciate any advice or recommendations you could offer! Of course I have to do the obligatory Broadway show and pizza, and I have this nifty little guidebook, and wow as I write this I am such a tourist.

Thanks!

Find yourself watching tons of great videos on [insert chosen video sharing platform], but also find yourself reluctant to flood the Tildes front page with them? Then this thread is for you.

It could be one quirky video that you feel deserves some eyeballs on it, or perhaps you've got a curated list of videos that you'd love to talk us through...

Share some of the best video content you've watched this past week/fortnight with us!

This is an off-shore sweat-shop knock off variant of @Akir 's "Kitchen Towel" installment of "Someone Asks Basic Life Questions to the Internet" thread, which was very popular.

Short problem: So many different types of stuff around the house and I'm sick of it.

Longer problem:

I have dozens upon dozens of types of towels, gifted to me from teenage years from someone, and I've never managed to be able to buy my own towels. And it sucks. They're all different types and styles and sizes and fabric and....I'm old now and I hate it and I just want to fold ONE type of towel in the bathroom and ONE type of towel in the kitchen. I would like different colours for different purposes, maybe I can decorate them myself or whatever -- but I want standardization. From @Akir's thread, I learned about "Flour Sack Towels" from @tanglisha and omg where had that advice been all my life. I feel like seeing the light at the end of the tunnel for kitchen towels.

What I need:

Recommendations for all types of household goods that have stood the test of time, where I can obtain the same product from multiple sources or one long standing brand that is not interested in diversification.

one common type, common functions, common properties

Example: Corelle dishes. I have "big plates" and "little plates" and "bowls" that are all the same size and form, and at thrift stores I can easily find replacements of these common types, even if they were made decades apart and in different patterns. All exactly the same: serves the same and washes the same and stacks the same. The company seems uninterested in discontinuing their line of products and I love them for it. I need the Corelle of all things.

What are your trusty brands and types of "things" that are so obvious you'd never have to think about buying any other types of? Something so standardized that in your region they're just known as "----" instead of what they are actually called or brand name or size?

Do you know a brand that just makes ONE thing forever and they'll never change? Or a public domain type of thing that's an industry standard? I need to know what they are. Nails? Screws? Tools? Computer things? Cables? Cutlery? Knives? Types of household chemicals? Spices? Meat cuts? Margarine? Storage bins? Kinds of wood? All kinds of things, please.

Side question about existing, gifted, singleton household towels and socks :

I'd like to ask about what to do with my existing million different types of socks and towels. I want to buy my own as an now older adult. At what point should I flat out tell them to stop giving me socks and towels? Do I just suck it up and keep quietly re-gifting them to food bank? What about all the ones in current rotation? I would hate to throw out stuff but at this point I'm nearly ready to do it.

This is a recurring post to discuss programming or other technical projects that we've been working on. Tell us about one of your recent projects, either at work or personal projects. What's interesting about it? Are you having trouble with anything?

I've offered to cook Christmas Dinner for my husband's side of the family, but have one problem. While my husband and I aren't the biggest beef eaters nor big fans of steak, my in-laws are. I don't mind cooking for their requests and find it a fun challenge to cook a different type of meat, but here's the concern: due to not regularly cooking it, I'm not as well versed in the methods or approaches.

They would prefer either a prime rib roast or beef tenderloin; both cuts I have never worked with. While there are a number of recipes out there, I would like see if anyone on Tildes has a recommendation on how to cook either cut or another of similar quality. My mother-in-law does not like a lot of pink appearing in her steaks as well, so I'm having to consider how to handle that while also not over cooking the meat. I was already considering dry brining it overnight, but after that I'm unsure what direction i would go.

Any tips and advice would be greatly appreciated!

Have you watched any movies recently you want to discuss? Any films 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.

Today's problem description: https://adventofcode.com/2023/day/20

Please post your solutions in your own top-level comment. Here's a template you can copy-paste into your comment to format it nicely, with the code collapsed by default inside an expandable section with syntax highlighting (you can replace python with any of the "short names" listed in this page of supported languages):

<details>
<summary>Part 1</summary>

```python
Your code here.
```

</details>

Desk space at my home is very limited.

Right now I have a set of speakers hanging out behind my external monitor, but I'd really rather get rid of them entirely and just have the speakers/soundbar built-in to the monitor itself. It would give me a lot more room to work with because I'd be able to push the monitor back further on the desk.

Also, presumably (and correct me if I'm wrong here), having the speakers powered by the monitor and fed audio through HDMI would free up a lot of cabling clutter as well. My setup is already very messy (2 laptops and a KVM switch), so cleaning it up will give me some relief (my theme of 2023 is "Simplify").

I know nothing about buying computer monitors. When I look them up, I'm not even sure which type I should be looking for (IPS? OLED?).

I do plan to game on it, but most gaming-focused monitors seem like overkill for someone like me who will primarily have it hooked up to a middling 5-year-old laptop that plays mostly indie stuff. I do occasionally play the more intensive/prettier game, but those are usually usually far between and definitely not a priority that's worth spending a bunch to target. I tend to tank the graphics settings on games like that anyway to keep my laptop from becoming a cooking surface, and I'll take a smoother framerate over better eye candy all day, every day.

What are the trusted brands (if any)? What pitfalls should I look out for? If anyone can help point me in the right direction, I'd appreciate it!

My use case: general browsing and (mostly casual) gaming

My computer: System76 Oryx Pro 5 (2019), NVIDIA GeForce RTX 2070 Mobile, Pop!_OS 22.04

My budget: ultimately whatever is necessary to get a quality product, but hopefully no more than $300 USD or so?

Preferred Size: 24" -- absolute maximum I could do is probably 27"

Key Feature: built-in speakers or soundbar

Let me know if there's any other key information I can provide that would help.

Questions I Have:

• Will buying a higher resolution monitor (e.g. 4K) tax my graphics card more because it's rendering at a higher resolution, or can I just scale down the display resolution to something less intensive?

• Same question as above, but for refresh rate.

• Would audio be transmitted over HDMI, or would I have to have a cable from the headphone jack (or some different method I'm not aware of)?

Welcome to this exciting episode of "Someone Asks Basic Life Questions to the Internet"! In this installment, we ask for help from members of the audience who really know where their towel is. Do we have a Betty Crocker in the house?

Right now I have 2-3 crusty and mostly useless kitchen towels strewn around my counter space. For some reason, kitchen towels just kind of evade my attempts to manage them well. I tried to keep them folded in a corner of the counter, but I never liked the idea of putting them back there after I used them even if it was just to clean a water spill. Putting them in a drawer was this but worse because they bunch up and seize up on the frame it goes into.

On top of that, I'm never sure exactly how to keep them clean. Most of the time I avoid using them to touch food or to clean up with; I clean up with sponges and use paper towels for when it needs to touch food. But I think that paper towels are kind of wasteful, so I want to stop using them. There are also some applications where paper towels simply don't work that well to begin with, especially when you need a sturdy wet towel. I'm wondering if I should just be sticking them in my weekly laundry loads, but I tend to forget about them for a day and don't want to have a need for them while they aren't usable.

One of my favorite movies to watch during the holidays is The Secret Life of Walter Mitty. It came out on Christmas day and helped me deal with a lot of things that were happening during the winter of 2013. When the winter days get short, I like to revisit the movie because it makes me feel better. What movies do you like watch during the holiday season, that doesn't have Christmas as a theme?

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.

Voting closed

So I am making the poll a bit earlier. The holidays are coming up and it might also be better to have the schedule about a week before rather than having it the day before the first movie of the month. This time we are going for shorter running times - so anything at 100 minutes (1 hour and 40 minutes) or less. "Movies are too damn long nowadays" is a common complaint, so lets see what we can come up with of good movies that don't require a long evening to watch.

We will need five movies for January.

Rules

• Must have a running time of 100 minutes / 1h40m or less based on official running time on IMDb
• Not one we have already done
• Only one nomination per user
• Please only nominate if you intent to participate

In case of ties in the number of votes, random.org will decide. Voting closes Sunday.

I was thinking it would be possible that they actually stumbled across something factual. But it's really hard to ask about this on todays web, because everything is so polarized, with Antivax versus "debunkers" whose sole goal is to win the debate. I sort of wished that there were some highly intelligent people who didn't care about this at all who could look into it from a fresh perspective. Some martians or something.

The reason I'm asking this is because my mother is heavily into antivax. And I really can't deal with any of her sources, but if they're right about about something, I'd like to know.

Hello, due to some unfortunately circumstances I need to have my left hand in a cast for some time and I'm looking for recommendations for games I could play only using my right hand (so only using the mouse). I have a few in my library that I've already been playing like Super Auto Pets and Let's Revolution, but I'm a bit bored of them. I also tried a tower defense game called Super Sanctuam TD, which was in my library, so I've tried looking for some other TD games but couldn't find anything that caught my eye.

Edit: I only listed what I've played recently, but I don't really want to limit myself to any genre, the only requirement is to be playable only with the mouse.

Today's problem description: https://adventofcode.com/2023/day/19

Please post your solutions in your own top-level comment. Here's a template you can copy-paste into your comment to format it nicely, with the code collapsed by default inside an expandable section with syntax highlighting (you can replace python with any of the "short names" listed in this page of supported languages):

<details>
<summary>Part 1</summary>

```python
Your code here.
```

</details>

Is anyone here involved with archery in any way?
I've been thinking about looking for a local archery club because I've always had an interest in it, especially in a competitive context. As a 15-17 year old I spent many hours in the backyard coming up with wild trickshots and not stopping until I perfected them. I want that specific type of joy back.
I had a (maximum) 110lb youth model Diamond compound bow but it's the only bow I've ever owned. Also looking for reccomendations for my first adult sized bow. I don't care if it's an English-style longbow, compound, or a weird horsebow, I'd love the input either way.

Gaming has been a mostly stale experience for me over the last few years, even with friends. But this game is the one that stands out; it's addictive in the best ways.
The soundtrack?
Slaps.
The storyline(s)?
Slaps.
The fact that creativity is rewarded?
Slaps.
The weird micro style of storytelling?
Slaps.
Iguazu being a whiny bitch the whole time?
Hilarious.
Anyways let's talk about it.

So for the past two years, I've been a residential Cable Technician working for a subcontractor for Cox (Comcast). After many applications, I finally landed a position. I'd been trying to get a foothold into IT for a while now; my A+ is nearly expired at this point. I was pretty stoked to actually get the position. The position is a "Level 1 IT Specialist" at a private school. Utilizing company software to respond to tickets, fix issues for admin staff and teachers/students. The only hitch at first was that I had to shave clean (Silly, I know). Begrudgingly, I relented. That's fine, it's not particularly impressive anyway.

Today, I got a call from the HR rep who did my onboarding saying that I would also unfortunately need to cut my hair to follow their guidelines of hairline above the collar. This is a huge deal for me, as my hairline is currently at the middle of my back. I just wear it up for work. This would truly devastate me. The people interviewing me (3 of them) said it would be fine, then the employee handbook stated otherwise. When asked, the HR rep said she'd contact a supervisor, supe said no, and now she's referring me to another department (Benefits? Dunno how that's relevant) to try to make an exception or something to that effect.

Beyond just wanting to lament the likely loss of 4 years of work, I did want to ask those who are more experienced in the IT field than myself: Is this job (the IT one) one that will absolutely help me progress in my IT career? I know I didn't give the most detailed explanation of it; I hardly know everything myself. It was hard enough to finally have a job get back to me. And I was accepted rather quickly. But the loss of my hair gives me pause, and makes me wonder if I'm better off at my current job and waiting for another opportunity that might never come. Should I just grit my teeth and accept this blow to my identity for the sake of furthering my career? Any advice at all is welcome.