I've recently come back to studying German, after having taken a small break for a few months for a new job.

My main form of study is immersion (I recently stumbled across the books of Walter Moers and haven't looked back since) and conversation practice on iTalki.

Nowadays, I try my hardest to only buy tech second-hand and preferably as future proof and modular as possible. My go-to machines are a fully modded Lenovo Thinkpad T430, and a more humble Thinkpad X230, both running Linux (Ubuntu and PopOS respectively). They work just fine for my basic needs (mostly surfing, some occasional streaming and word processing). But they struggle during my conversation lessons on iTalki or Zoom, most of the time either overheating or freezing/stumbling. I realize this might be a Linux problem, but I have also found the web camera and built-in microphone on both machines to be really inadequate for video calls. I gave up using my own laptops for my language lessons over a year ago, and now have resorted to stealing my partners Macbook, which isn't ideal.

Do you have any recommendations for any more recent laptops that would offer a better video conference experience, while offering at least a removable battery? Pricewise it would be great to be find something below €500 used.

How many friends do you have? Good good friends vs more casual friends. What's the dividing line or definition of one vs the other for you? Related question: what life stage are you in, and what was friendship like at a different stage?

How do you keep in touch, esp for friends not in your city? Do you call them randomly or call / video chat with them regularly? Do texts count? Do people welcome phone calls out of the blue or is it more like, "oh gosh you have cancer" if one gets a call from a friend these days?

How much effort are regular people* putting into maintaining/strengthening their friendships in their late-30s onwards? (Regular people being, maybe, folks who aren't terminally online, folks who are neurotypical, folks without social anxiety etc?) [edit: oh no I messed up!! I mean that I super want to hear from others who fit one or more of these boxes as well, but since I'm 3/3 plus all kinds of crazy I am interested to know if these are factors in friendships, particularly because most people are of the "normal" sort who would have to put up with me.....my apologies.]

Do folks suddenly realise maybe they don't have many/any close friends, or they're not as close anymore as they thought they were decades ago? How do folks maintain friendship as people age and move apart? Or is it just normal that once you're not in the same city to hang out, they stop being good friends?

Have you ever made conscious and serious efforts to make / rekindle friendships before? How, and how'd that turn out ?

Do we have any information on how Tildes growth is going?

I only use Tildes, used to only use reddit until they pulled their bullshit last year. I don't use any social media and I feel like I am missing out on a lot of news and things. When I used reddit I had curated my subs to my interests and I feel like I was up to date on everything I wanted to be.

But now, due to Tildes being a much smaller community, the news I receive is much more generalized and I've been noticing a lot of times I miss things. For example because all video games are clumped together in one Games Tildes, only the most popular kinds of gaming news gets posted there, so more specific or niche things I miss.

Another example, I had never heard of Ozempic before the South Park episode, and a friend was shocked and told me I was so out of the loop for not knowing what it was. I'd never seen anyone talk about it on here, so how would I know?

I also notice there's just significantly less engagement overall on Tildes. I can scroll through the front page of Tildes every morning, see maybe half posts I've already seen and half new ones, and by the end of the day there will be a handful of new posts but not many. In its golden years, Reddit would have new posts every few hours with new info or news about different things. Tildes feels really small still.

Point being, I'm curious how Tildes is doing in terms of growth and whether it looks like it'll be getting larger communities which will split more subcategories into the broad categories we have now. Or if it has plateaued and this is how it'll be for good?

Hey guys,

I've had a Switch for a couple of years but I haven't really played it lately because I've kinda been disappointed with the last two titles I've played. I've played God of War recently and I was just blown away by how much fun I had and I kinda of want to replicate that? Sadly, my friend wants his PS5 back so I'm looking for some game recommendations for the Switch.

I've played BOTW and I just found it so boring. I played maybe two hours and I was at no point entertained. I also played the Link Awakening remake but I didn't really like the graphics and so I just stopped playing after two hours or so. 2D Zeldas are among my favorite games of all time (OOS/OOA; Minish Cap/LADX), I'm kinda scared to say this, but I also didn't really like OOT (although I played it a good 10 years after its initial release). I don't really like open worlds and much prefer having "guided" gameplay, but I do enjoy a mix of both (like God of War).

I've played Hades and absolutely loved it, just like Rayman Origins, but since I've been disappointed with BOTW and Link's Awakening, I'm kinda scared to buy another critically acclaimed game just to not like it... Looking at the list of games and picking one seems so daunting, I don't really know what to do.

You guys have any suggestions?

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!