I have never played a tabletop RPG before, but was absolutely fascinated with this Kult playthrough that the YouTube algorithm decided to show me for some reason. I watched the whole thing! The "gnostic" backdrop the lore has is spellbinding.

It's hard to gauge its popularity just from YouTube videos, but I'm curious to know if anyone on Tildes has played it, and if so, what your experiences have been. And do you know of any TTRPGs that are similar? Vampire the Masquerade, maybe? My friend group isn't into this sort of thing at all, but maybe I can persuade them...

(In case you manage to miss the copious warnings at the start of that video, Kult's themes are quite graphic. Fair warning!)

The well on our acreage has stopped producing much. It may come back after some rehabilitation but in the mean time I called out a local water expert and well repair tech to look at it.

He said it might be necessary to drill a deeper well. Then he pulled out two rods, bent at a 90 degree angle and held them loosely in his grip, letting the ends point forward and still able to move freely. He started walking, criss crossing our yard til at one point the two rods turned inward to point toward each other. He dug his heel in to mark the spot and moved on to find at least 5 other spots on the yard where there is water underground. This is well witching. And its been used for years to find underground water.

Dont ask me how it works. I have no clue. But he asked if I wanted to try it, so I did. Held the rods loosely and walked and sure enough, over a certain point they swung together. I was looking at them but very consciously not moving my hands or trying to manipulate them in any way. The rods were only about 1/8" thick and I wasnt gripping them tightly so it would have been impossible to make them turn. Did my hands turn in ever so slightly? Not that I could tell. I turned around and walked back over the spot and sure enough, the rods turned in at the same spot.

Its a weird phenomenon. Have no idea why it works but it does work. I've seen witching used at a friends house with a very long pole held in one hand that would dip down when the witcher walked over the water, and it produced a successful high flow well. This guy even said he could find gas lines using the same technique.

Can't wait til the wife gets home and I let her know she married a witch. lol

Hello, every now and then I find myself looking for open-source "self-hosted" (VPS accepted) Google photos alternatives.

I have searched every now and then but I have never found something I felt that suits my needs.

I don't mind setting it up myself with command lines and stuff from an empty VPS as long as the monthly fees are pushed to a minimum.

I do have a certain set of constraints and I was wondering what would be the best app to do it. Any app that I end up trying fail one of these somehow. Or it is an app that I couldn't test adequately on my 2GB RAM VPS. Should I be upgrading first and then testing them?

Here are my constraints:

I would like to be able to share photos privately to friends and family. Like maybe a secret link to share photos or albums with friends.

I would like to be able to view photos on mobile, using Internet. I don't mind opening a mobile web app but I would like to be able to show it.

I would like to have some privacy-respecting face recognition. This also opens up the question of what RAM of VPS I should be using.

I would like to leave the file and folder structure untouched. I have already somehow arranged the files into albums by using folders so bonus points if the app figures that out. However, I would bite the bullet if there is a good solution that asks to "copy" the files into a new folder thereby doubling the storage needed. But I hope to avoid it.

Any help towards the right direction would be appreciated!

What have you been watching and reading this week? You don't need to give us a whole essay if you don't want to, but please write something! Feel free to talk about something you saw that was cool, something that was bad, ask for recommendations, or anything else you can think of.

If you want to, feel free to find the thing you're talking about and link to its pages on Anilist, MAL, or any other database you use!

Random thought. What if we taxed property based on the area per person of the property, as opposed to sale value?

Edit and quick intro to those who mostly rent: most real property in the US, especially residential property, is taxed yearly based on some variation of something called "fair market value," usually assessed by a local tax assessor's office

I'm proposing that a property would be taxed for every square meter of space per person in the designated property unit. It can't be totally simplified, but should be fairly straightforward. There could also be progressive brackets. It might not make make sense to apply it strictly per person, but rather for a typical use. That is, we would assume "single family residential" properties to house 3.4 (totally made up number) people per house and property.

The goal of this is to find a fair, market-driven incentive to build density into urban cores.

A similar approach could be applied to commercial space (but probably not industrial).

It could be coupled with a sales tax (currently missing in most real property tax regimes, at least in the US) to capture runaway property valuations in certain jurisdictions.

Alternatively, we could drop the property value based tax rate (but not eliminate it), and then add a per person-area surcharge.

It's not meant to increase revenue, although it could certainly be used that way. It could also be use to decrease revenue, and maybe that would be a good way to sell it. But at the end of the day, developers and residents would both have an incentive to pursue as dense development as possible, even if there is not a density driving pressure of desirablity, which only exists in a few really cool urban cores.

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?

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.

If I understand folks with that PoV correctly:

if you are a democrat or typically vote democrat, you generally think that republicans are a danger to democracy, bad for the lives of minorities, and the disadvantaged/LGBT+, etc.
If you are a republican or typically vote republican, you generally think that democrats are a danger to democracy, divide the country with identity politics, etc.
(obviously I am making sweeping generalizations of both camps off the top of my head but hopefully the point comes across)

But, I don't get what your endgame is. Like, you make it seem like if the other party wins, the country is screwed. but you can't possibly think that the country will forever vote for your party for President, right? So you think America is destined to go downhill depending on how many years the opposing party is in power?

America flips between red and blue. So the other party is bound to win at least once a decade imo. and yet I hear how democracy is more at stake now than it's ever been if "the other party wins". So I don't get the long-term viability of "lesser of 2 evils" approach.

Since I doubt America will become less angry and divisive anytime soon thanks to yallls 24 hour news networks and the social media companies that make more money the more Americans are mad at each other.

Then again, I am by no means an expert so where am I wrong or have I misunderstood something?

Week 3 has begun!

Post your current bingo cards.
Continue updating us on your games!

If you did not participate in previous weeks but want to start this week, that's fine!
Reminder: playing bingo is OPTIONAL.

Quick links:

• Backlog Bingo Site
• Week 1 Discussion and Event Guidelines
• Week 2 Discussion

Week 2 Recap

10 participants moved 18 games out of their backlogs!
There were 0 bingo wins.

• 1 participant played free choice
• 7 participants played standard bingo cards
• 2 participants played bingo golf

Thus far, a total of 33 games have been played for the May 2024 Backlog Burner.

Week 2 Game List:

• 2064: Read Only Memories
• Andro Dunos II
• Aperture Desk Job
• Bendy and the Ink Machine
• Breakout
• Chop Goblins (x2!)
• Coromon
• Curse of D’Sparil
• DARK SOULS III - Archthrones mod
• DIG - Deep in Galaxies
• ELDEN RING
• Hellblade: Senua’s Sacrifice
• Hotel Dusk: Room 215
• Open Roads
• Radical Dreamers - Le Trésor Interdit
• Vampire Survivors
• Umurangi Generation
• Yakuza Kiwami

I bought a Timex Expedition North Titanium Automatic a few months ago and have been enjoying it, but it gains about 10s a day that I have to correct. Nowadays we have incredibly accurate and precise clocks that can tell us exactly what time it is, but all mechanical clocks and watches have some amount of inaccuracy.

How did people account for inaccurate clocks in the past? Even if time didn't need to be standardized outside of a community until the railroads and a central clock in town could act as a reference for the entire community, wouldn't the central community clock drift? Eventually the central clock could say it was midnight at sunset. While people can tell that is incorrect, how could they say to what extent it was incorrect?