In some games like Terraria or Horizon Forbidden West, you can have a "fake" set of armor on top of your "real" set of armor. The "fake" set defines how your character looks, while the "real" set determines your stats. This isn't a common thing in a lot of games, but in basically any game with different outfits with stats, I hear this being a requested feature. Whenever someone mentions this feature in a comment, people will chime in that it's cool and they wish [insert game here] would add it. The Horizon devs being one example of a studio who heard about this from the community of their first game, Zero Dawn, and added it to the sequel.

I really don't like this, even having it available as an option for single player games. Let me explain...

I think it really ruins the whole point of stat changing equipment in games. A big part of video games with customizable equipment and builds is designing a build and a character appearance that you like. Do you want to be slow with powerful attacks? Do you want to be fast with weak attacks? Do you want balance?

I'd argue that making a set that looks good while balancing the stats is another one of these things that adds to meaningful character creation decisions. Do you take the insane armor, or the really decent armor with worse stats that looks cool? Find a cool hat the character you're roleplaying as totally would wear? Oh, it has worse stats than the helmet you were using... But it weighs less! Maybe you can use a heavier chest plate to compensate for the stats you lost?

This also makes armor that both looks cool and has great stats into very valuable items that players want to get.

Of course for PvP games, having the type of armor that a player has on instantly give away their power level is important. On a Minecraft server, if you see two hostile players, one has leather armor, and the other has full netherite, you know the netherite guy is going to have better gear.

You might think this only matters for PvP games, but not allowing this mechanic in mostly single player games also adds a lot to the game, since you'll likely either see friends play the game or watch videos of other people playing the game. Each armor being intrinsically linked to certain stats creates a link between what you know that armor does and what kind of player would use that armor. In Elden Ring (which also has PvP, but bear with me), if you see someone wearing Bull Goat (the heaviest armor with the best stats), or wearing nothing but a jar on their head (to get worse defense but faster dodge rolls and some buffs to consumable throwing items), that tells you a lot about their play style just looking at their character's appearance. If both of these people could wear whatever armor they wanted and make the functional armor invisible, I would have no idea what build they had.

Using armor that looks good but has bad stats can be a fun flex to show you're good at the game, and choosing to have terrible fashion in exchange for stats is hilarious, as per this ProZD skit. That concept is a fun part of gaming culture I wouldn't want to see destroyed.

My mother and her husband's hobby is trawling Facebook marketplace for things they never realized they wanted (and often repairing them) and they managed to obtain a Harvest Right Freeze Dryer at a laughably low price. They've had some fun with it, and I'll be over soon and am considering giving it a try.

We're getting into winter, so my first thought was to freeze dry some toppings to pour into my ramen as needed -- I often add whatever is in my fridge, but it would be nice to have something mindless to throw in. Once you're running the dryer, it makes sense to fill it completely for efficiency's sake, so I'd be making a good quantity. There are 5 trays, so it would make sense to do 5 different mixes, though I could do more than that by making a tray separator with foil.

A little bit on freeze drying: To do it efficiently, you pre-freeze whatever you want to dry. Small or thin pieces are best, because they will sublimate out moisture faster, meaning the cycle completes faster. That's important, because the whole assembly uses a ton of electricity. Things that are very fatty or oily (ie, bacon or peanut butter) will not freeze dry well, and then will not be shelf stable after drying either. The other benefit of small pieces is that they rehydrate faster in liquid.

My first thoughts were a mix with frozen peas, carrots, broccoli and edamame (maybe chicken? But that's more work because it would need to be cooked first). Perhaps another with chopped napa cabbage, grated ginger and garlic...? I considered just doing individual ingredients, but I think it would just be easier for me to have a premade packet I can open and go. I typically buy chicken ramen, but I'll occasionally get something different.

There aren't any big Asian grocers anywhere near where the freeze dryer is, so any obscure ingredients I would want to dry, I would have to bring with me.

Let me know your ideas!

Hello,

I am struggling with a relatively useless personal issue, I am finding it very hard to play the aforementioned game mentioned in the post. My close friend has this heralded as his favorite game ever (tied with Majoras Mask) and possible one of the best of all time, and since the remake came out he very graciously lent me his copy. I have just gotten past the first major boss (Hooktail I think his name is) and just playing this game feels like a chore.

The combat is very slow, the dialogue is so overly childish, the story is your typical Nintendo fan-fare story. Even the music, which Nintendo does a great job most of the time, I find just average. I find the Rogueport theme music to be overly obnoxious for some reason, and too grating to my ears for a central city/hub which you're visiting a lot.

I really want to know what I am missing out on that makes this game so beloved by people other than pure nostalgia because I just can't see it. I know it's completely fine to not like games, but I feel a game as acclaimed as this should usually be liked by most people, and I think I usually fall into the subset of that lol.

Ironically enough, this is the same friend who introduced me to FromSoftware and I have loved all of their games.

Howdy,

Just this morning I got a wild hair and started thinking about replacing my older Kindle Paperwhite, mostly because something with a a USB-C port would be nice to have. I'm still not sure I'll actually do this, as my Kindle works just fine, occasionally needing a reboot is about the extent of it, as well as the reading time can get janky here and there.

Based on what I'm reading about Kobo, it seems like it offers a bunch of features I'll never use or be interested in. I do not care about customization. I don't borrow from the library. I don't mind buying from Amazon. I rarely read books more than once, so I almost never go back through my collection to see what I have. I don't like ads (I have a PiHole, for example), but the ads on Kindle don't bother me, my brain skips over them, never even noticing. And by casual reader, I mean I read maybe 5-10 books a year, so my Kindle often just sits by my bedside, gathering dust for a spell.

Basically all I do is pick up my Kindle, unlock it and get back to reading whatever I had been, then close the case and set it aside. I like that I can read on the Kindle app on my phone if I've forgotten my Kindle at home. I do read lots of samples on it.

Kobo seems nice and I like an excuse to migrate away from a major corporation, but it's more expensive than a Kindle (I've bought both my Kindles I've owned, used for $40) and seems to offer little that I care about over the Kindle. I'm well aware I can transfer my purchases over, but I'm not sure I care or want to bother with the hassle, so I'm wondering if a Kobo would be at all the right choice and am looking for opinions.

Thanks!

It was genuinely inspiring seeing everyone's posts from last week. There are a LOT of awesome projects going on!

Time for another update on your progress:

• What did/didn't you get done this week?

• Anything go according to plan?

• Anything go off the rails?

• Any successes or struggles to share?

• Do you need feedback or help on anything?

This is your topic to share anything and everything you want about what you’ve made so far.

Special Ed. Teacher here.

This year I've been assigned a tough caseload. But my most challenging student is easily the student with Reactive Attachment Disorder and possibly autism. I'll call him Jake.

Edit: He's in middle school, btw.

To protect his privacy and my own, I can't give many specifics. This student is chronically online and I wouldn't put it past him to Google situations he's caused in my class.

Some vague descriptions of the things he's done this year:

-Repeatedly jokes about pedophilia and teachers who have been arrested for it. It makes me uncomfortable that he does this, obviously. The only saving grace here is that he has thrown it around so many times, including calling multiple teachers pedophiles last year, that everyone knows he is just being rude and it's not a serious accusation. Thoroughly documented and I'm not really concerned about actually being accused. Fyi, I have informed his adoptive parents and they have informed his counselor. They are taking it seriously and have started investigating whether or not this is just shocking humor or a more serious part of the Jake's history before adoption.

-Waits for the perfect time to drop rude or shocking comments to inflict maximum damage. When he wants to say something awful to me or in general, he will hold off until he has an audience and the room is relatively quiet.

-Constantly mocks and shit talks certain students. We have dealt with it. He isn't just getting away with it. But even after consequences, separation from the students, and punishments at home, he doesn't stop. He's hung up on hating a couple of kids in particular but will generally be rude to whoever if he wants to. One of these kids is a scrappy kid from a rough school and I could totally see it ending in punches if we don't manage this.

-Absolutely refuses to share any serious thoughts. Even when asked what kind of support he needs, what kind of rewards would motivate him, or what's bothering him, he just gives ridiculous answers in a high-pitched voice or walks away. This kid wants no part in coming up with solutions and won't even engage in a conversation about his behavior or even the behavior of others.

-Speaking of his high pitched voice, this is the voice he always uses to say rude things. He has his normal speaking voice and then he uses this higher pitched voice when he says things that are rude or shocking. Like he has two different brains and one wants to be mean.

-Last year, he kept a list of times he felt students and teachers had broken the code of conduct.

-absolutely hates special Ed. Hates me for being a special ed. teacher. Reminds the other kids in my class that they're "special" constantly.

For the record, all of these things have been addressed many times. The school has been supportive, the parents have been supportive, and everyone knows that this behavior, if continued for much longer, will likely result in a change of programming for this student. He would be placed in a more restrictive setting.

This is kind of my last ditch effort to see if anyone has ideas, because this student is on the verge of leaving my classroom. If there is anything I can do to make it work with this kid, I would do it immediately. He's smart, witty, and unfortunately very funny in a South Park kind of a way. But he's raising hell every day and he's the first student I've had where it feels like I can't connect with him at all. And not for lack of trying.

something I have been thinking about lately.

like any kid being raised as the internet piracy was really taking off, I must have watched countless R-rated movies when I was still in high school.

I can see an argument being made that maybe immediately after watching the movie, it excited me too much and maybe I didn't know how to internalize a sex scene or a violent scene. as for the cursing, I didn't need movies to teach me bad words, society took care of that already.

but I have a hard time placing any issues I have now that are cause of watching movies that were not appropriate for me. I care about people, I place great significance on empathy and non-violence, I am a pacifist for goodness sake but I still enjoy a good shoot-em up movie. As for the sex scenes, honestly, the general misogyny and patriarchal nature of western society had a far greater influence on any incorrect assumptions I had made about the bedroom and porn. Imo porn is the only thing that really fucked me up, watched it too way too early and in a conservative-ish (at least with regards to sex) household so not like I could feel safe talking to an adult about it.

But I have a hard time placing any permanent harms that watching R-rated movies in my teens had on me. Then again, I was raised by pretty moral women who instilled a very active conscience in me.

which makes me think the rating system is mostly pointless and just done in response to activist conservative parents who get too worked up about that kind of thing?

Or maybe it does have a long-term effect just only with certain folks?

Hey! I know a couple Miata owners are hiding here, so I figured I'd ask a car question here. Bear with me, this is a non problem that I blow out of proportion.

I get twitchy when I don't have a fun manual car, so right now I have a high mileage 330i E46 ZHP sedan. For those out of the know they're fairly notorious BMWs that are pretty unreliable, but the E46 generation is fairly easy to work on yourself. This was the ideal performance model that I wanted for a while, but unfortunately this one gave me lots more things to work on over the last year and a half than my last one. (Who knew the one with 230k miles off the street would be more difficult to sort than my grandpa's pristine 50k example??) It is a great car, it brings fun to my commute, but I don't feel the love with it. After the last repair I did took a turn, I just wanted it out of my parking spot more than anything... So now that it's back in a solid state, I have it up for sale and I'm planning on replacing it.

Here's the problem: bare minimum, if I'm going to drive something to work I want it to have side airbags. My pregnant wife and I almost got sidelined by a moving truck blowing a red light in my old NB Miata, and while I consider that kind of thing could happen regardless of the car I'm driving, I have a 60-mile highway commute and figured I shouldn't play those odds in a car with 80's safety sensibilities anymore. I sold the Miata and got the BMW, for safety and because it had back seats in case I needed to take the kid in it.But then I ended up never needing the back seats at all, and it doesn't seem like I really ever will in whatever I get. So now I'm looking to replace the bimmer with something less practical. And while my second kid is on the way - so we won't have a ton of time to go together for a bit - my wife agreed she misses the drop-top. So I'm looking at convertibles again. I feel like I've got two routes about this. (We have a minivan and a family sedan, so ignore any unmentioned notions of practicality going into this.)

The NC Miata has side airbags, and as a benefit they're dead reliable. They're a bit faster, a bit more comfy, and all around a better car than my NB was. So I could save up for that... But I just don't feel a ton of heart for them? Despite all the revisionism going around the NC and how they're underappreciated, I just find them very, uh, bar of soap to look at. Some seat time might change my mind here. A Fiat 500 Abarth or a 986 Boxster would also work, and I find them more interesting, but they don't have the reliability points.

On the other hand, if I'm looking to get something for my hobby... Shouldn't I get something I really want? There are a few things I'm interested in my price range, but what's really piquing my interest is an NA Miata or an MR2 of some generation. I had a bad NA before and would like to try again; I adore the styling, and the market cooled off a bit since the Covid bubble. With the MR2, I've never had a mid-engine car and they seem pretty simple, reliable, and aren't as unpredictable as a lot of other MR options. I could upgrade either of those down the line, and many I'm looking at are well taken care of with rust or pre-cat issues out of the way. There's also a huge influx of interesting kei cars and imports coming in that I'm really curious to drive and work on in the price range; Beats, Cappuccinos, Pajero Minis, and GC8 Imprezas are on my radar.

Since I'm not going to be driving to work for a few months while my kid is coming, it won't matter if I won't take it. But when that time comes I'm not going to drive the thing 5/7 days of the week. A manual car really livens my commute up and makes it much more enjoyable, and I probably won't want to be working on an old something with two kids around.So I keep jumping between these two options. My brain tells me I should save for an NC2 Miata; my heart tells me to get something cooler. My gut says I'm clueless and I should just wait for he best thing that pops up. But I just don't know.

Was anyone asking themselves the same question at some point, and what did you end up doing? Did you get the fun side dream car and keep it as the weekender, or did you get the compromise car and enjoy it every day?

Inspired by this post and many thoughts I had about the topic previously.

For some reason, a lot of people treat friendships and romantic relationships as two entirely separate things. People say stuff like "I could never date a friend" or "I want to date them but they just want to be friends". The top comment by @BeanBurrito on the post I linked mentions how men want to become friends with women simply because they have too little confidence to just ask them out.

I've never understood this. To me, being a friend and dating are just two points on the same closeness spectrum. You go from acquaintances to friends, then best friends, then partners. You can obviously skip some of those steps sometimes, but those are still the same thing - being in a romantic relationship is the same as being very close friends, it's just an even closer form of it. Yes, there's usually an extra factor of exclusivity in a relationship - but they can be non exclusive, so it's not a defining trait.

Asking someone out shortly after meeting them is such a wild concept to me. You probably wouldn't meet someone and immediately just go "hey, let's be best friends", so why would you ask them if they would be even more?

I also don't really get why people care about being "friendzoned", for the same reason. Like ok, you won't be the "bestest closest friends" with someone, but you can still be good friends? If they agree, you can still have personal conversations, or cuddle, or do whatever else that you can do in a relationship. I get why people can be upset if a person they like shows absolutely no attention towards them, but why would you be upset at them just wanting to be friends?

It it literally just about sex and physical attraction? But then also, things like "friends with benefits" exist. So clearly, you don't have to be in a relationship in order to do that. And if that's the only thing you actually need, why would you ask someone "let's date" instead of just directly saying what you want?

I don't get it.

I just chatted online with someone currently hiring for a mid-level software engineer who received more than 2,000 applications. That’s ridiculous.

So (inspired by actual events), I’m writing a freelanced article, "Upending the hiring process for technical talent.” Although the topic applies to any job search situation, the story is tuned to software developers and other tech fields, and I expect both remote work and AI to be primary factors.

Getting thousands of applications is nuts for both the company and the applicants. My question is, "What — if anything — can be done to make the process more sane for everybody?"

I would love input from the wise people on Tildes. (Formal attribution is not required, but context is helpful for verisimilitude: "...says one program lead from a midwest insurance firm.") I know you have opinions. However, the HIVE MIND responses I care about should come from people who have been affected by this change – primarily HR professionals and tech industry hiring managers. My short (?) list of questions:

• How many job applications do you typically get today for a technical position such as a software engineer? How has that number changed?
• Are there differences in the applications? I’m open to anything from “remote work expanded the number of people who want to work here” to “They are impersonal and seem AI-generated” to… well, what? Tell me.
• How do you triage the applications (no / maybe / worth talking to)? How long does it take? For HR, what percentage of the applications are provided to the hiring managers? For hiring managers, how does that percentage make you feel?
• How have you changed job listings? For instance, are you asking for more information in the application process or including more detail in the job req? Are you employing tools that claim to sort responses? Are you offering salary transparency so that nobody wastes time when the numbers don’t align?
• What changes have you implemented in the job process? (Turning more to recruiters, for instance? Relying more on employee referrals?)
• Is “return to office” an issue here? (I would imagine that “local candidates only” would reduce the number of applications, but I don’t want to assume too much about any HR connection.)
• Regardless of what your company IS doing to deal with the job application deluge, what — if anything — do you think COULD be done to make the process more sane for everybody? What would you do if you could wave a magic wand to address the problem?

Despite everyone else in the family being right handed, my son is a leftie! Very excited for this development, but as we're nearing school age at 5, I'm wondering about the things he uses daily.

Seeing him cutting with right handed scissors, I'm getting him some left handed ones. What are other common items I may not be considering that are just so much easier to use the left handed version of?

I've been a long time Fi user on the Pixel line of phones, so I've always gotten the gold standard of service from Fi. My wife is an adamant iPhone user. We want to port her over to my plan, but I was hoping to get some recent feedback from anyone using a modern iPhone (just bought her a 16) -- All the things I find on Google are months to years old. If this is you, how well do the iPhone features (Visual voicemail, iMessage, RCS, FaceTime, 5G, etc) work for you on Fi?

I read through hundreds of comments on reddit (I know, Ive digressed) on the question 'What would women dislike most if they became men?' The one that hit me square in the face were the thousands of men who agreed that they hadn't been complimented for anything in years.

One commenter said the last time he was complimented was ten years ago and he can still remember the time and the place because it was so unusual. One gut punch even said, "Many men are laying in their casket before many good things are ever said about them" and at first I thought, well that's gotta be hyperbole. But then I thought more about it and realized that while I have had a couple of compliments from my wife over the last year, I dont recall a single other person saying anything complimentary in probably over a year... And I never really thought about it, but its just not something we expect to hear.

It's not like I was waiting for compliments, but I think the statement true - men just rarely get compliments. And I'm not sure why.

I definitely don't compliment my friends very often. Occasionally do compliment my adult son but I'm sure, like most guys, that's pretty infrequent coming from any other male in his life.

It's just a bit odd when I think about how often my wife gets compliments. Or my daughters. Not sure why we men get so little affirmation that way. It really struck me as odd.

Update us on your progress so far!

• What did/didn't you get done this week?

• Anything go according to plan?

• Anything go off the rails?

• Any successes or struggles to share?

• Do you need feedback or help on anything?

This is your topic to share anything and everything you want about what you’ve made so far.

I have an M1 MacBook Air. I use UTM to run a Debian 11 virtual machine.

After the initial setup, updating and upgrading, installing Firefox and a few small programs, (I almost called them apps, d'oh), the Debian.utm file size was about 6GB. Now, less than a month later, it's almost 9GB.

The VM size increases after each use. I haven't downloaded or installed anything close to 3GB worth. I have downloaded files, then put them into the trash and emptied the trash, could the trash not be emptying properly?

I have run ncdu, but nothing stands out. When I drill down into /usr and into each large folder, no sub folder is larger than a few 100MB. I can't see any big files lurking.

I've googled using many search terms, but I can't get past results that are about how to increase the size of a VM that is running out of room.

Thanks very much for reading this, any ideas?

Hi Tildes !

I was passively looking for an refresh of my current laptop (Thinkpad X1 carbon Gen 5; it's still working fine except some mysterious thermal profile¹), and a friend of mine working in retail told me he could sell me a Macbook Pro (the mid-range 14in one with the M3 Pro chip² at a heavy discount (more than half the price; it's a display model but he tells me it wasn't mistreated). It's a too good of a deal to pass on, so I accepted.

¹ it's constantly at 70C; I already changed the thermal paste and the battery.
² does that mean it's Macbook Pro Pro ?
³ and I guess the Thinkpad's going to be recycled as a home server. I half hope that running Linux on it will solve the thermal problem

My use case would be (in no particular order):

• photo/video processing: I know what I need and I already have a CaptureOne license. Davinci Resolve is enough (and plenty) for me
• programming (web dev, arduino; VScode's probably gonna be the second thing I'm going to install)(I'm kinda interested running a LLM locally, but have no experience with that)
• light CAD for 3d printing,
• gaming? My old gaming tower runs Elden Ring fine but struggle a bit with Baldur's Gate 3 (it's really the loading time, and loading textures), and it seems this MBP can run it fine.
• regular day-to-day browsing / office and adulting work

I would qualify myself as a power-user.

Background: I'm not entirely new to the Apple ecosystem. Back in uni I had the first unibody MBP sporting Leopard and then Snow Leopard. I then went with a X220t and then a my current X1.

Some questions:

• I see that BetterTouchTools is still a thing (back then I mapped three fingers swipe up to new tab, three finger swipe down to close tab, and twist to change tabs). I half remember one that was just a staging area living on a sidebar when moving file from one part of the finder to another (the name eludes me). Is there any other handy utilities I should be aware of ? That's also your prompt to plug in your favorite apps :)
• How's the dongle life (and what's the recommended one) ? While most of my stuff can be USB-C, I still have important stuff that requires USB-A (my photo printers, several portables hard-drive)
• Any interesting (gasp!) Android integration ? I'm not currently using any with my Windows machine (having Whatsapp/Telegram/Discord is sufficient), but I'm curious anyway.

Wondering if anyone has any good books or other content to recommend on software design. I feel like when I start out on a new project I always get stuck in a rut of trying to design something good, then end up with an awful design anyways. On the other hand, I've been around professors and more experienced software engineers who seem to effortlessly come up with simple, powerful architectures and interfaces.

While I know that reading a book or two won't get me the experience I need to improve, it does seem like that might be a good jump-start. Anyone have any suggestions for me? Thanks!

I'm into astronomy as a hobby, and it's useful to have a log of the things in the sky you've seen. Many people take handwritten notes, but my handwriting is awful and having to write notes takes away from enjoying the views through the telescope.

So after being inspired by AI note taking applications I've read about online, I decided to give it a try while out observing.

First, I take my recordings and run them through Whisper's speech to text engine. Because my recordings have frequent astronomical terms, it seems to be more useful to run the larger models (or the new turbo model), because they seem to do better identifying the names of moons and constellations.

Next, I run Ollama and give it a prompt like:

Here is a speech to text transcript of an observation session. Create a detailed log of the session, using only facts found in the text. Do not add your own interpretation to the text.

I'm still experimenting with prompts and models, but oddly it seems like shorter prompts give better results. So far, the type of model doesn't seem to matter so much as the number of parameters. Gemma2 27B outperforms llama 3.1 7B, but llama 70B outperforms both of them (again, I think the larger models have more context about which astronomical terms are important). Here's what that gets me with basically no work on my part:

**Observation Session Log**

**Session Details**

* Date: October 3rd, 2024
* Location: Wolf Street
* Telescope: Teleview 85 (also referred to as 80)
* Observer: [Not specified]

**Targets Observed**

1. M29 (Open Cluster in Cygnus)
	* Time: 2057 - 2101
	* Eyepiece used: 18.2mm
	* Notes:
		+ Found using star hopping from Sater
		+ Appears as a faint open cluster with 6-7 distinct stars
		+ Stars are fairly even in brightness and color
2. M39 (Open Cluster)
	* Time: 2109 - 2116
	* Eyepiece used: Ultra-wide angle, 18.2mm, and 8.5mm (noted as a mistake, actually
using 7mm)
	* Notes:
		+ Found using star hopping from Deneb
		+ Appears as a larger open cluster with more differentiation in star magnitudes
		+ Stars appear bluer than surrounding stars
3. Alberio (Double Star)
	* Time: 2120, 2155
	* Eyepiece used: Ultra-wide angle and 7mm
	* Notes:
		+ Found easily without a guide
		+ Appears as a beautiful contrast between colors with constituent parts standing out from the surrounding stars
4. M15 (Globular Cluster in Pegasus)
	* Time: 2120 - 2130
	* Eyepiece used: Ultra-wide angle, 18.2mm, 7mm, and Barlow (2x) with 7mm
	* Notes:
		+ Found using a bright naked-eye star as a guide
		+ Appears as a slight smudge or fuzzy patch with averted vision
		+ Not resolving individual stars at any power
5. Saturn
	* Time: 2140 - 2150
	* Eyepiece used: Low power, highest power (with a star chart to confirm moon positions)
	* Notes:
		+ Three moons visible: Rhea, Enceladus, and Titan
		+ Striping on the surface of Saturn visible at highest power

**Session End**

* Time: 2157

I'm very happy with the quality of the notes. It's much, much better than my handwritten notes and much less work, so I'm likely to do this more consistently.

When I was in elementary school, I found some Advanced Dungeons & Dragons books at a yardsale. I read through them, brought them to school, and played through a basic campaign with some friends. Since then, I haven't met anyone interested in pen-and-paper RPGs. I still hope that I can one day convince someone to play with me, but I don't even know which system I should try to learn. There are now so many different editions of D&D, in addition to countless alternatives and endless arguments over the merits of each.

Whatever system I decide to learn, I will need to invest time and energy into learning and teaching the game to others, and I'll most likely be the DM, so I'd like to choose one that won't be too difficult for beginners to get into. While I enjoy exploring interesting game mechanics, I think the idea of creating an interactive adventure story or a world to explore with friends is what attracts me the most. The Fate system sounded interesting, but I had a hard time understanding the core rulebook. I've recently read short summaries of several other systems that seem like they could be fun and not too hard to get into, such as Index Card RPG, Shadowdark, Tiny Dungeon, Five Torches Deep, Fantasy AGE, and Creative Card Chaos; but I can't afford to read through each of them and seven editions of D&D to determine which one is most suitable for me.

Does anyone have any advice on how to evaluate my options or a suggestion for a good one to start out with?

I bought an M2 Macbook Air at the start of this year for uni. I only planned to use it for uni work as I have another 'more powerful' laptop that I use for everything else, but I kinda love the M2 and want to make it my daily driver laptop. Battery lasts for ages, screen is great, it's thin and light, etc. The problem is - as you might guess - I only got the 512GB model and if there's one thing Apple hates, it's people having control over their hardware, so no expandable storage. I can't afford to upgrade the entire laptop, so I need to work with what I have. Here's what I want to use it for:

• Graphic design: Adobe software, high-res images, typefaces, etc.
• Music production: Ableton Live 11 Suite, sample packs, plug-ins, project folders, etc.
• Music library: uncompressed .m4a files because iTunes hates Vorbis 😢, ~80% of my library (I don't have everything downloaded yet) is 25GB.
• Web-browsing: Firefox... this one isn't really relevant but I feel like I should include it for completeness.

Does anyone have any tips to stretch this 512GB as faaaaaar as it can go? I have a 2TB external SSD, but I'm wary of keeping anything important on it because it's small and I don't want to accidentally lose a bunch of stuff. I can spend a bit of money (maybe 30usd) if anyone has a good idea that requires buying something, but I can't spend any ludicrous amounts, I already did that to get the laptop!

If you love language, etymology, or just plain collecting interesting words, where do you look to feed your interest? I’ve seen many RobWords (YouTube) posts here, and I really like his content. I also love the traditional word hunt through reading authors like Dickens.

In addition to “where do you look?”, what does your hobby look like? Do you keep lists of words that you review and learn about? Do you make effort to include your newly found words in writing or conversation? I have the (probably very annoying) habit of interrupting a conversation to say, “you know, there is an interesting word for that!”. What else do you do?

I am reading Never Split the Difference right now, and while the book has a few stereotypical "salesman self-help" moments, I have found some of the strategies to be genuinely incredible.

The biggest game changer for me has been mirroring what the other person says to avoid conflict and gather more information.

Real life example: My wife has a bad habit of poorly explaining what she wants and where it's located. Then, I get her flustered when I rapid-fire follow up questions. Here is an exchange we have frequently which leaves us both frustrated as hell.

She will ask something like, "Can you get the box out of the drawer please?"

I usually reply, "What box?"

"The box. The red box."

"Okay...what drawer?"

"The drawer, you know, the drawer. Come on."

"DUDE. Can you at least tell me which room you're even talking about?"

"Nevermind, I'll get it."

Lately I've been trying mirroring to help both of us and it's awesome.

"Can you get the box please?"

"Get the box?"

"Yeah, the red box. It has a paper in it that I need."

"Okay, you want the red box with the paper in it?"

"Yeah it's in the kitchen drawer next to the sink."

It's so weird when you first start doing this intentionally, but people don't even notice. I have no idea why it works so much better but it's amazing.

So, this got me thinking, what other little human psychology tricks work? Are there other books that genuinely changed the way you approach people or situations?

I'm a teacher and my job is to teach students who mostly have behavioral problems, so I am always on the look out for more of these things.

I have been a metalhead for over 20 years but I seem to still mostly listen to the bands I found back then. So mostly bands that started in the 80s or 90s. By the mid 2000s metalcore and its various derivatives got very popular and that wasn't for me, so I kind of stopped paying much attention to new stuff for many years. The only newer band I have been really excited about is the Finnish black metal band Havukruunu, and to some extent Uada and Spectral Wound.

Would love to get some recommendations for new names that have appeared in the last 10 or so years.

A pretty quick work trip has been planned. I will fly into Heathrow Saturday morning. I'll have until Sunday evening to get to Warwick. I'll be in Warwick for 5 days before flying back out the next Saturday.

I'm looking for any general advice but also if there is anything specific to the following:

• I'm going to book my own hotel in London the Saturday night I fly in. Saturday and Sunday are essentially my "tourist" days. Where is good to stay? Not too concerned with price.
• I'm taking a train to Warwick and mostly have that figured out but is there an app or pass that I should add to my Apple wallet for transit around London?
• I like museums of all types. Are there any in particular I should check out?
• Any classic pubs or restaurants I should try to get to?
• Once the week starts I don't think I'll have much time to do touristy stuff and I won't have a car. Any recommendations on things around Warwick/Birmingham that I can get to some evenings via train or bus?

October 1st has already hit in some parts of the world, so Timasomo has officially begun!

Posting in this topic is your official entry into Timasomo. Let everyone know what your actual plans are: what are you going to make?

Anyone who was not already on the notification list will be added with a comment in this topic.

Once the date turns over to October 1st wherever you are in the world, feel free to start creating!

FAQs

The first half of this post is a vent about recent events I have to get out of my system. Below is some hopefully actually interesting content about the constructed conpidgin Viossa.

If you are interested in languages & linguistics and, like me, are not immune to the draw of short-form video content, you are probably familiar with the creator Etymology Nerd. He makes shorts on TikTok and other platforms about all things linguistics, usually pointing out some cool facet or etymology. The videos are, due to the their length, often very surface level, but they’re informative and fun, and for the most part, accurate enough – at least as far as I can tell. However, two days ago, he posted this short on TikTok and then a bit later to YouTube: conlangs are so back. It points the spotlight on a constructed language by the name of Viossa: A collaborative con-pidgin, that is, a conlang created by users attempting to establish communication despite speaking different languages. This is rather meaningful to me, as I was one of the original co-creators of Viossa – more on that below. At first, I was quite happy about this, until I went to check out the Discord server and found it effectively on fire. While there were about 1700 members on the discord server, the number of active members was much smaller, certainly less than 100.

In the first day after the TikTok video, over 1000 users sought out the discord server and joined it.

Etymology Nerd didn’t ask for permission, he did not even give a heads-up. He found and joined the server on the 27th, asked a few questions, and then posted his short on TikTok two hours later. And while he learned that the server’s moderation was getting overwhelmed, he reposted the video to YouTube unchanged the next day anyway, merely leaving a pinned comment asking people to be respectful. The Viossa discord is currently on lockdown (invites paused) until things settle down. In the meantime, the short has amassed close to two million views on TikTok & Youtube combined. While I don’t think this can be called malicious, it speaks of a lack of care of the impact it can have to shine a spotlight on a small community when you have such a big following. Who cares what happens to them, I got my clicks, right?

But that’s enough venting. Time for some history. As I mentioned above, I was one of the people who started this whole thing. Back in 2014, before Discord, there was a Skype group for people interested in conlangs. I was in high school at the time, as were most other members – reddit demographics. We realized that many of us spoke at least one language other than English, and decided to conduct an experiment: Could we establish communication through those other languages by finding common grounds and learning each other’s words for things? So on Christmas Eve that year, six of us hopped into a video call and tried to communicate without using English. Each of us would contribute with one or two languages: Norwegian, Finnish, Japanese, Irish, Albanian&Greek and Swiss German. Within the first night, we had a few words and could ask simple questions. Within the first week, we had a few hundred words and were able to hold uninterrupted, if simple, conversations. We had some other people join the project over the course of the first year, and presented the results on reddit:

• Viossa, an experimental pidgin, one year in the making. Ask us anything!

Things continued quietly from then on. The number of members grew slowly, while others got bored and dropped out of the project. At some point, Discord rolled around and the community moved there – a far easier platform to join than Skype. Some copycat projects sprung up, but to my knowledge, sadly none really persisted. In 2017, I held a talk at the Language Creation Conference about this style of language creation, and on Viossa in particular. The conference was livestreamed, so you can watch it on Youtube here (ca. 30 minutes):

• Ka Du Hanasu?—Collaborative Conpidgins

A major influx of new members came in 2020, when Jan Misali made a video on the language as part of his Conlang Critic series. His video is extremely well put-together, and created in close collaboration with many regular members of the community, and it really is the best showcase of what Viossa had become in the six years since its inception. You can find it here:

• Conlang Critic: Viossa

This video put the project on the radar for many more people, and it has definitely changed the language. When you get many learners in a short amount of time, the things they pick up tend to reinforce each other, and you get sudden drastic shifts. I’m finding that I struggle with understanding a lot more of the language used by people who joined after this video than from other oldtimers. Then things settled again, until the etymologynerd post two days ago.

And that’s the history of, weirdly, one of the more successful constructed languages, built on just two rules:

1. If you can understand it, it’s correct Viossa.
2. Learn Viossa through Viossa, no translation.

Inspired by the post about "petty reform" platforms, I noticed a trend, that matched with my own brain musings.

People have an inherent problem with number conceptualization(Poor natural magnitude conception?).

I recall this being a problem as old as time. Things that have helped me grapple with this are things like Fermi Problems and someone who used a grain of rice to represent the scale of wealth discrepancy in the world, using Bill Gates or Elon Musk as an example (can't find the original video, all the derivatives have been turned into TikTok-esque drivel).

I ask the people of Tildes, what types of scale descriptors, demonstrations, etc. have you found moving in your life? Really putting something into perspective. I will give bonus points for "positive" examples, not just doom and gloom, but welcome anything that tickles your fancy.

A few years ago, I got my hands on a bottle of St. Elmo Cocktail Sauce. When I tried it for the first time, it had so much horseradish that for a moment, I thought I was going to die.

Fast-forward three seconds later, and I was eagerly repeating the experience over and over and over again. I could not get enough of it. It was like it was kicking my sinuses in the testicles and slapping my tastebuds in the face. I became addicted.

It changed my life.

The problem with cocktail sauce though, is there's only a few occasions you can reliably snack on it. I want something I can take with me on the go. I want a snack that grabs me by the shoulders and says "WAKE THE FUCK UP, YOU HAVE A LIFE TO LIVE."

I've tried various wasabi peas and smoked wasabi almonds. Horseradish potato chips (or crisps, if you'd rather) and pretzels. Nothing, and I mean NOTHING, provides the puckered face, lose-your-balance experience I'm looking for. The only way I've gotten close is by putting handfuls of dried wasabi peas in my mouth at a time, and that folks, is just not sustainable.

And so, I come to you with my plea: I want pure, concentrated doses of horseradish/wasabi on some sort of crunchy, long-lasting snack vehicle. Yes, I have a problem, and yes I want you to enable me.

Any recommendations?

For those who don't know: Dark Tough sells high quality and really tough socks that take forever to wear out or develop holes. They're made in the USA and have a no-bullshit lifetime warranty. I bought my first pair over a year ago. It's actually kind of crazy that I put up with shittier, cheap socks for so long. I'm never going back.

And now, the ol' underwear are starting to get some holes in them. The kind of holes that let the breeze tickle your balls.

Unfortunately, while searching online for the Darn Tough equivalent of underwear, I found a lot of counter-recommendations. Someone would recommend a brand (like Duluth), but then someone else would provide a pretty detailed account of why and how that brand's underwear apparently sucks now, or they don't honor their warranty anymore, etc.

So, I thought I would ask for recommendations on Tildes, since I generally trust the judgement and reviews of you all more than other people on the internet.

Gonna try and get a handle on everything shown off at TGS this year. It will probably be less structured compared to the Sony State of Play thread I posted, as language barriers, time zones, and finding official trailer sources I gonna be a lot more time consuming than just going to the Playstation youtube channel.

DAY 1

Gamirror Games Now TGS 2024 Speical

XBOX Broadcast
METAL GEAR SOLID Δ: SNAKE EATER - Official Trailer #2
Overwatch 2 x My Hero Academia | Collaboration Trailer
Age of Mythology: Retold - Immortal Pillars Teaser
Indiana Jones and the Great Circle - Trailer | TGS 2024
TANUKI: Pon's Summer Announcement Trailer
Threads of Time - First Look Game Announcement
We Love Katamari REROLL+ Royal Reverie - Xbox Game Pass Trailer
Fragpunk - Trailer | TGS 2024
Metaphor: ReFantazio | Xbox Tokyo Game Show 2024 Broadcast Trailer
A Deep Dive into the Magical World of Atelier Yumia
ASURAJANG Xbox Announcement Trailer
BLEACH Rebirth of Souls – Announcement Trailer
SYNDUALITY Echo of Ada – Release Date Trailer
All You Need is Help Launch Trailer
Slitterhead: Learn More from Gaming Legend Keiichiro Toyama
Starbites - Xbox & Windows Announcement Trailer
DRAGON QUEST III HD-2D Remake: TGS Demo Playthrough
Trials of Mana | Xbox Announce
Legend of Mana | Xbox Announce
Final Fantasy I-VI Pixel Remaster | TGS Xbox Announcement

SNK Special Program
FATAL FURY: CotW × STREET FIGHTER｜Teaser Trailer

Koei Tecmo Broadcast
“DYNASTY WARRIORS: ORIGINS” TGS Official Program

Level 5
HOLY HORROR MANSION – Teaser Trailer Saw some discourse online about this game using AI art
INAZUMA ELEVEN RE – Teaser Trailer
INAZUMA ELEVEN: Victory Road – PV7
DECAPOLICE - Theme Song Trailer
Professor Layton and the New World of Steam – Trailer
FANTASY LIFE i: The Girl Who Steals Time - 2nd Trailer
MEGATON MUSASHI W: WIRED – New Content Announcement Trailer

Capcom
A Beginner's Guide to Monster Hunter Wilds
Monster Hunter Wilds: 4th Trailer | Release Date Reveal (Extended Kut)

Day 2

Most of these devs don't seem to have anything up on YouTube (or in some cases don't have an easily identifiable channel). So It's mostly just the live stream broadcast here.

Aniplex
The Hundred Line -Last Defense Academy- SPECIAL PROGRAM

Sega
SEGA/ATLUS Special Program in TGS2024

Square Enix
"EIKO KANO'S CRITIKANO HIT" TGS2024 SP

Infold Games
Infinity Nikki Special Program at TGS 2024

Dungeon Stalkers TGS2024 Special Program

Anyone have recommendations for good true crime podcasts? The format I'm most interested in would be something documentary-style, similar to Darknet Diaries (easily one of my top 3 podcasts in general), but covering a broader range of crime instead of just technology/internet-based ones. I've given a few podcasts a try, but there are so many true crime podcasts I don't really know where to start. Here are some I've already given a shot and why I like or don't like them:

• My Favorite Murder - I could stomach it OK in the early episodes, but once they started dong all the live shows and I had to listen to crowds laughing and cheering at what I thought were wholly inappropriate and disturbing moments it really turned me off. I don't mind approaching crime with a bit of humor (we laugh so we don't cry), this one takes it a bit too far for me at times.

• Crime in Sports and Small Town Murder - Lumping these together since they're by the same guys. It's another one where they take the comedy a bit too far for my taste at times. I originally learned about these guys from the Timesuck podcast (which I'm enjoying as I'm listening through older episodes and does sometimes cover crimes).

• Predators I've Caught - I actually kinda like this one. I watched and enjoyed all the TCAP stuff with Chris Hansen way back in the day, and even though I've come to realize that a lot of it is kind of problematic I can look past most of that for the purposes of entertainment. My biggest issue with this podcast and why I don't bother with it anymore is the insufferable number of ads they slot into each episode (and no option like patreon to get an ad-free feed). It's basically unlistenable.

• I did listen to Serial while it was actively airing, and it's great, but I'm more interested in one that covers something new each episode as opposed to longer multi-episode arcs.

• I Met My Murderer Online - This one scratched the itch pretty well, but it seems to be done now (no new episodes for over a year and the website doesn't seem to be up anymore). It had decent production value and covered a lot of interesting subjects.

I usually listen to podcasts in chronological order, so I'm totally open to recommendations of podcasts that are no longer producing new episodes if there's a decent backlog to go through.

Timasomo is "Tildes' Make Something Month": a creative community challenge that takes place in the month of October.

The best way to get a feel for Timasomo is to check out our previous Showcase topics, where creators share their creations with the community at the end of the event:

• 2023 Showcase
• 2022 Showcase
• 2021 Showcase
• 2020 Showcase
• 2019 Showcase

There are no hard and fast rules on what you can create. You can make anything!

All of the Timasomo topics will be over in ~creative.timasomo, so if you're interested in participating or following along, make sure you're subscribed there.

All people who respond to this topic will be added to a notification list that I will ping each time I put up a new Timasomo topic. If you do not wish to be added to the list, or you wish to only be notified for the final Timasomo showcase, please let me know.

The Roll Call thread will be posted in ~creative.timasomo on October 1st. That is the official beginning to the event and is where people will formally commit to their projects for Timasomo.

FAQs

This Thread: Planning!

Post your ideas.

Give feedback to others.

Set up collaborations.

Ask questions.

Everything in this thread is non-commital! Bounce around ideas and figure out what you'd like to do in our communal brainstorming session.

Also, please do NOT start work on your project yet! Stage setting, planning, and other preparations are allowed (e.g. getting supplies/materials, setting up workspaces, etc.), but save the creation initiation for the 1st.

Get excited for another GREAT Timasomo!

My only living parent has between one and five days left to live. The parent is unable to speak now and has had dementia for the last 5 years and will not recognize who I am if I go visit now in these final hours.

They live a few thousand miles away from me; it would be expensive to go and money is painfully tight right now with my partner unexpectedly unemployed and struggling to get a job comparable to the job just lost.

I’m somewhat estranged from this parent. The short version is this parent is a narcissist and really didn’t show up when I was growing up, or at any point in my adult life, or really at any point when it mattered. Despite this person being a really crappy parent, they exerted a massive gravitational pull in my life through many decades—basically, this parent loomed very large for far too long given the extreme narcissism, albeit much less so in the last decade or two. (Dementia and my coming to terms with it all and caring less and time and my having my own kids and my starting my own family all being some sort of salve.)

I have one very close friend who is telling me that it is critical to go before this parent dies because being present while they are still living will give me a kind of closure and unexpected resolutions that I cannot even anticipate now. This friend is quite adamant that going is critical for personal growth.

A different close friend says that going while the person is still alive is a complete waste and that I should go for the funeral instead where I can see other relatives and connect with my sibling and other relatives and deepen those relationships which (the friend says) will be a momentous transition point for us all, creating a better sense of family than any of us could have ever had while this person was alive. This friend insists that the healing and closure is identical pre-death and post-death, but that the extra emotional burden of seeing someone dying will derail me and never be able to be “unseen.” This person thinks spending money on two trips is foolish, so the one trip to go on is for the memorial. FWIW, My sibling is only going for the memorial.

Even if money were no object, I’m not sure I could emotionally handle going twice. I suppose I can, but that’s very time intensive and I have young kids myself who need me and for whom it would be a strain if I were gone for too long. I’ve already said it, but I have to say it again: money is really tight Going twice feels possible, but extremely difficult

I guess what I’m really trying to understand, if my feelings for this parent are presently ambivalence that grew over a decade or two from what was formerly extreme anger and hurt, is there something meaningful about going while the parent is still alive? Is there something important that happens before the person dies that is in someway healing or transformative or valuable? Is it more important to instead go when my sibling is going? Should I max the credit card and go twice? Should I risk infuriating and deeply damaging my relationships with my extended family and not go at all to save money? (This last option seems wrong, but it is a possibility, so I feel like it at least deserves considering.)

Friends of Tildes, what did you gain or lose from seeing a relative in hospice? What thoughts and wisdom do you have to share around moments like these?

Thank you in advance for sharing your stories. I’m sure your collective wisdom will help me make a better choice.

This is the seventh of an ongoing series of book discussions here on Tildes. We are discussing This is How You Lose the Time War by el-Mohtar and Gladstone. Our next book will be Kindred by Octavia Butler around the end of October.

I don't have a particular format in mind for this discussion, but I will post some prompts and questions as comments to get things started. You're not obligated to respond to them or vote on them though. So feel free to make your own top-level comment for whatever you wish to discuss, questions you have of others, or even just to post a review of the book you have written yourself.

For latecomers, don't worry if you didn't read the book in time for this Discussion topic. You can always join in once you finish it. Tildes Activity sort, and "Collapse old comments" feature should keep the topic going for as long as people are still replying.
And for anyone uninterested in this topic please use the Ignore Topic feature on this so it doesn't keep popping up in your Activity sort, since it's likely to keep doing that while I set this discussion up, and once people start joining in.

Thought that was a rather boring race. First half or so was just tire management. The added DRS zone didn't really spice anything up, as so many of the gaps were greater than 1 second. Even in the late race when the gaps tightened up, didn't seem like passing was possible. Perez couldn't get around Hulk. Leclerc couldn't get around Russell.

On a more positive note, Colapinto continues to kill it. Albon had to retire due to a PU cooling issue, but even before that, Colapinto passed his teammate on a great move at the start. One that Albon was not particularly happy about! Unfortuantely, Perez just nudged Colapinto out of the points.

McLaren continues to extend their recently-attained lead in the Constructor Championship. McLaren is ahead of Red Bull by 41 points. Though with 6 races left, that's not quite a guarantee just yet.

Anyway, we begin the unofficial autumn break. 4 weeks until COTA. A whole month. Sigh. Since we're entering another break, I'll also post the current Constructor and Driver Championships standings below.

Next race:

United States Grand Prix
Circuit of the Americas -- Austin, Texas
Sunday, October 20

Solution

It was probably my motherboard. I got a new CPU and motherboard and it worked. I also upgraded from DDR3 to DDR4 ram in the upgrade process

Background

So my computer is not posting, and I am unsure the cause. I am not getting an error code, so that complicates things. I do not know if this motherboard will provide post codes, it does not have a seven segment display for providing post codes.

How it started

It just randomly stopped displaying any pictures, unsure if it happened while in use or when the computer was asleep. I was doing stuff at my desk and had music playing on my computer. The music ended and I did not put on more music and the monitors went to sleep. Later when I went to use my computer It did not appear to wake up, I tried fully shutting down and turning on my computer, and that is when this problem occurred.

Symptoms:

• When I power on, computer appears to start normally, with all fans spinning so power delivery appears to be working. Even GPU fans are spinning.
• Holding down the power button turns the computer off as normal.
• Nothing is displayed on the screen, my monitors do not even detect an input.
• USB devices do not appear to be powering on.
• Every minute or two, the GPU fans ramp up briefly, and then ramp down. It may be all fans are ramping up, kind of hard to tell exactly which fans are ramping up.
• With the AMD GPU, the LEDs for power turn on. However, I vaguely recall the GPU itself having some RGB when the system was running that was not on. How my computer was setup I did not see inside my case that often, so the RGB on the GPU is a vague memory from a few years ago and I would not put much weight in there being some RGB.

Hardware:

• MOBO: Gigabyte 9900FXA-UD3
• CPU: AMD FX-8350
• GPU: ASUS Radeon HD7870 or EVGA GTX 970
• PSU: Cooler Master Elite V2 550W

Troubleshooting Attempted:

I initially assumed it was GPU related as the computer appears to turn on normally, but then nothing is displayed. So another user shipped me his old GPU (the GTX 970), and I swapped it out with my old one, and the problem persists.

I tried swapping out the RAM

I tried a brand new PSU and that also did not solve the issue

Leading hypothesis

Since I have changed everything out except CPU and MOBO, I am thinking it is probably my MOBO. I am currently researching my options for replacing my MOBO, or a friend offered me his CPU and RAM from his old rig with a broken MOBO that may be a better option than replacing mine.

Just though it might be nice to have a space for general EV discussion here on Tildes. The only other space I know of to talk on the subject is r/electricvehicles, which has gotten big enough to get polarized and echo-chambery… prepare to get bombarded if you say anything positive about EV models from Japanese manufacturers or suggest that a used Chevy Bolt isn’t a great fit for everybody, for example.

Anyway, what is everybody driving and how do you like it? Has it given you any trouble? Any upcoming models you’re excited about or interested in? If you don’t drive one now, is there a model you’re eying?

Right now I’m driving a 2023 Nissan Ariya Platinum+, which I chose because it’s what I could get a reasonable lease deal on without too much trouble. It’s been great for the most part but I’d be lying if I said it wasn’t total overkill for my needs… something more like a modernized electric Golf would better fit me, but those don’t exist in the US, so here I am.

The upcoming model I’m most interested in is by far the Rivian R3. It’s sized about the same as a Golf, the retro styling is cool, and its got several high-utility features that make it almost seem like a reincarnation of the Toyota Matrix (fold flat seats including front passenger, back hatch window that can open to accommodate long objects, etc) without the Matrix’s weaknesses. The Pacific Northwest inspired interior of the higher end R3X model looks gorgeous too and is a welcome departure from the sterile grayscale interiors that EVs have become known for.

It seems like Reddit and Twitter are the best for this but they've both gone down hill. Does anyone have a good RSS feed?

Im currently using

https://www.thescore.com/author/justin-boone

https://www.borischen.co/p/ppr-running-back-tier-rankings.html

I wouldn't mind more tier like lists, but I want to get more breaking news stuff.