Tell us something you’re proud of.

Celebrate your successes! Pat yourself on the back!

Bragging about yourself is not only allowed but encouraged in this topic.

If you’re naturally humble and don’t know what to say: pretend like this is a job interview and you have to sell everyone here on your strengths and successes.

Today's problem description: https://adventofcode.com/2024/day/21

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>

No, really. Sincerely putting this out there.

Using Tildes sometimes feels like talking into the void. The UI, even in Three Cheers, is minimal. The conversations sometimes clinical, though I greatly appreciate the compassion that comes through here versus other places that shall remain nameless.

Yet I am struck. I've seen people here, more recently, cite meeting other Tildans (Tildaniens? Tilwhoseits?).

As a somewhat reclusive 51 year-old married dude with only furry children, I don't get it. But I do know that I need more friendships. It gets harder, as you get older. (As for me, not keeping toxic friendships from school and later 2 decades working remotely led to, well, this.)

So how do you connect with humans as humans here? How do you "make friends"?

Asking as someone who has a diagnosed potent ADHD and perhaps other as yet medically undetermined NDisms.

(No idea what tags to use for this. Help?)

I promised @chocobean that I would talk about my recent turn to Christianity, so here goes.

The short, trite answer is that I’m taking a leap of faith on a few mystical experiences, and because I’ve run out of spiritual options. Everything else I have tried to do with my life has come up short. A lot of this outcome results from a traumatic early childhood formed, perhaps ironically, in part from Christian religious abuse. In some way perhaps I am trying to synthesize and re-narrate that experience. But also, I really want to go to a Church that is fun, fulfilling, challenging, and does progressive good in the world. There just ain’t a lot of those to choose from, so I figure I need to start my own. For a little more detail, read on. You can skip to the last two paragraphs for a little more reasoned “why Christianity here and now,” independent of my experience.

I was born into a fundamentalist family. Lots of rules, hell, purity, that sort of thing. Very traumatic, and I mean clinical trauma. I left the church in high school thanks to drugs and some smart people, but I maintained a kind of love affair (infatuation?) with good preaching. Something deep inside me responds to the gospel message. I cry when I listen to Jesus Christ Superstar, and a passionate preacher with a good heart, and great gospel music. This is likely tied to suffering-religion at its best helps us grieve and carry on, find joy in a broken world.

One time in college, after a psychedelic party, I found myself unable to sleep, a common side effect I experienced from LSD. I turned on the local gospel station, and suddenly was struck with the urge to go to church. This was black folks gospel, and so I wanted to go to a black church. There was one I knew about, and I have no idea how it was in my consciousness. It was called Life Community Church in Durham, NC. I put on my best suit, tied my tie, and with dilated eyes and doughy disposition I set off. I arrived at precisely 10:30, the service time identified on the marquee.

You may be familiar with black folks time, which is often most evident at church. Black folks time is about moving when the spirit moves you. When I arrived, on white folks time, the church was half-full. It met in an old movie theater, the kind with hundreds of seats. I was ushered to a seat, which was basically the next available seat, they were filled sequentially from the front. This was different from other churches I attended, where members generally seat themselves in their customary location, a respectful distance from others.

There was a large, energetic gospel ensemble delivering the real gospel goods. Large choir, lots of electric instruments, percussion. Everybody dressed better than I was. And I did my best to keep up, clapping hands and shouting and grinning. I was all in.

After a while, the pastor came on stage, a 6’8 Nigerian native. He made a few comments, and invited us to pass the peace. In a white church, this takes a couple minutes, and you politely smile and shake the hands of the people around you. At Life Community, however, everybody left their seats and wandered around giving hugs and smiles and lots of time to each other. No idea how long we were at that, but I did notice that space was now standing room only.

Then the preacher was joined by his 5’4 (at most) Guatemalan wife, who greeted us cheerfully before the pastor began his sermon. It was all mostly about leading a decent life, strong families, moderation, godliness, fairly conservative socially. I was riveted to every word, I clapped and shouted and prayed.
When everything was finally over, and I had been repeatedly and warmly welcomed and invited to come back, I finally made it to my car and noted the time: 3:30 p.m.! And I knew then, this was what I wanted to do with my life-bring this kind of joy, and be a channel of this kind of power.

I didn’t have any real religion then, however, wrongly thinking that was some kind of requirement, and so I left the dream on the table. I went on to become a drug addict, get clean, get married, have kids and begin life as a lawyer.

When the kids started to get mobile, their mom and I decided we ought to go to church, that it would be good for the kids morals, provide community, that sort of thing. I was buddhist/atheist/soft new age, not really in on the Jesus thing, but it seemed right. We found a church with a great garden out front and a pride sticker on the door, and headed in. Compared to Life Community Church, the preaching was good, but not as passionate, though the message more closely aligned with my values.

The best part of the experience was Sunday school, however, and I even taught a couple classes, really enjoyed doing the bible study part of it. I started paying more attention and getting more involved. We brought in Nadia Bolz-Weber as guest preacher one Sunday. Nadia is a powerful preacher, and her work in Colorado was very promising for a time. While she was preaching, I had a mystical experience, a feeling of lightness and an urgent awareness that I should be up there doing that same thing. My (now Ex) wife was surprisingly into the idea, and so were the pastors. I went and toured a seminary in pursuit of the call. But at the seminary I was like, there is no way I can spend three years with these people, and I still wasn’t really a believer, so I let the moment pass. It’s one of the few regrets I have in life, following the call then may have led to my marriage having a very different outcome. Alas for life choices.

Come forward a few years, the marriage has dissolved bitterly, I have come out of denial about how awful my childhood was and how dysfunction of a human I had become, and how much my kids suffered as a result. Among my many ongoing efforts to remedy this, I found myself at a spiritual retreat in what is known in some circles (mainly Quaker) as a “Clearness Committee.” It’s a space where someone with some kind of intractable problem becomes the subject of a conclave of caring folks. I was there to figure out career transition. There were some q and a, some breathwork, and in the middle of a silent spot someone asked the shockingly straightforward question, “what do you really want to do?”

The answer in my mind was immediately, “I want to preach.” And almost as immediately, a voice came into mind “you can’t do that,” coupled with a profound fear of saying so out loud. I knew from previous spiritual work this was a sign that I should immediately take the contrary action, and so spoke it out.

Now, this was not a Christian gathering, but as it happened, the person who asked the question was a Christian pastor, and she gave me some names and numbers of people to talk to. As it also happened, she used to work for a guy in my current Church, who, as it further happened, was the past president of a prestigious divinity school. This was my favorite guy in Church, and so I talked to him, and here we are. A lot of yes all in a row.

So, it’s really a gamble on a set of experiences I don’t fully understand about a God I barely believe in. But I knew almost instantly as soon as I arrived in divinity school that I was doing the right thing. I still don’t believe, but I have made a decision to act in faith anyway. From an intellectual point of view, I have a strong impulse to do something, anything, to try and bring some goodness to the world. And since, in my estimation, for better or worse, America is a Christian nation, it seems Church could be an effective vehicle for that. Plus, I really do want to be a preacher.

I was about to end there because it sounded cool, but I want to say a little more about why Christianity might be especially good for my values, and for the West. More than just custom and tradition, I’m discovering that a lot of the way I think about the existence of the world is really Christian in nature. Most intellectuals since the 18th century or so would point to Plato, or more recently, to chaos as the proper way to order a mind. But in practice, most people are espousing a neo-Platonist Christian kind of justice and morality. In a super short sentence, this is that creation and humanity were made for each other. Ten years ago I would have said, and a large part of me still believes, the truth is more a kind of Manifestatum ex Chao of both together, and perhaps there is nothing particularly special about humanity. However, most people, practically at least, seem to recognize that rational ordering exists uniquely in the human mind alongside a more programmatic animal nature. They also seem to believe in the notion of goodness. Many humanists argue that we can be “good without God,” however, as far as I can tell they arguing about a goodness which is derived from Christian scholarship (love your neighbor). Even if I’m wrong on that, and/or they are right about the uselessness of God for good, most people in the way they act suggest an assumption that true compassion flows from the Christian God. As a result, I think the best way to foment good for most people here where I am geographically is within the Christian religious framework.

Finally, I’m partial to the notion of classical (medieval?) professionalism: a professional is one who professes a noble principle, i.e. clergy profess goodness, educators profess truth, military officers, peace, lawyers, justice, physicians, health, and artists, beauty.

Happy end of year, everyone!

I saw a comment today on Tildes that reminded me of a type of thread that I really enjoyed back on Reddit: end-of-year awards. Those were typically in individual subreddits and involved a lot of specifics and inside jokes related to that community, but I think Tildes is a small enough place where we could do one site-wide. (Full disclosure, I am not sure if this is a great idea and am open to any and all suggestions.)

Brief explanation:

• For starters, there are no actual awards to give out, sorry. Just some pats on the back and maybe some street cred to go with it.

• The purpose of the thread is mostly to highlight cool, helpful, and interesting things or users you've seen here on Tildes in the last year. This thread is hopefully a gateway to those interesting posts/comments/discussions that you might have missed.

• Top-level comments should be an award category (for example: Most Interesting Thread, Best Discussion, Most Helpful Comment, Funniest Joke, Most Helpful User, Best Prediction, Favorite Recurring Thread, etc.) Note that none of these examples are negative because again the goal of this thread is to highlight awesome stuff that others might have missed over the last 12 months.

• Responses to those top-level comments should be the actual nominations, preferably with a link to said comment/thread, and a quick explanation as to why you think it deserves recognition.

• Upvotes serve as the votes for each category, though I encourage you to vote for as many nominees as you'd like since the awards aren't real and the points don't matter.

That's pretty much it. I'll post a few comments as examples, but hopefully it should be pretty straight-forward. Feel free to add your own award categories, and please nominate as many users/comments/threads as you'd like!

If this thread helps at least one person discover a helpful thread from 6 months ago that they might have missed, then I'll consider it a success.

What have you been listening to this week? You don't need to do a 6000 word review if you don't want to, but please write something! If you've just picked up some music, please update on that as well, we'd love to see your hauls :)

Feel free to give recs or discuss anything about each others' listening habits.

You can make a chart if you use last.fm:

http://www.tapmusic.net/lastfm/

Remember that linking directly to your image will update with your future listening, make sure to reupload to somewhere like imgur if you'd like it to remain what you have at the time of posting.

As part of a weekly series, these topics are a place for users to casually discuss the things they did — or didn't do — during their week. Did you accomplish any goals? Suffer a failure? Do nothing at all? Tell us about it!

Tildes is a very serious site, where we discuss very serious matters like mortality rates, mirror life and hedonic treadmill. Tags culled from the highest voted topics from the last seven days, if anyone was keeping score.

But one of my favourite tags happens to be offbeat! Taking its original inspiration from Sir Nils Olav III, this thread is looking for any far-fetched offbeat stories lurking in the newspapers. It may not deserve its own post, but it deserves a wider audience!

Today's problem description: https://adventofcode.com/2024/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>

Posting for ideas/advice, if anyone has any, as I'm unsure of where else to turn.

I have a VPS (Named "Bucket") I rent and self host a few services on, along with a home server (Named "Vergil") that lives under my basement stairs and I host many more services on. At 2:01 AM today I got a notification from Bucket that my Plex (hosted on Vergil) was down/unreachable. I'm assuming that's when this issue started.

When investigating I found that Plex wasn't down, but Bucket couldn't reach/talk to Vergil. Further investigation showed that it wasn't just Bucket, but nothing can reach/talk to Vergil. At first I thought it was an issue with my router, as I have my gateway set up in IP bypass mode and manage my network via my third party router (UDM-Pro). But after digging through logs looking for any automated blocks from any misclassified intrusion attempts, I realized that none of my attempts were even reaching the router. So I checked the route, and that's where I found what I think is the problem.

Running mtr to route from Vergil to Bucket gives full resolution of the route:

    mtr -rwzbc 10 45.79.209.169
    Start: 2024-12-19T16:49:53-0500
    HOST: Vergil.goose.ws                                                    Loss%   Snt   Last   Avg  Best  Wrst StDev
      1. AS???    192.168.2.1                                                 0.0%    10    0.1   0.1   0.1   0.2   0.0
      2. AS???    192.168.99.254                                             10.0%    10    0.5   0.6   0.4   0.8   0.1
      3. AS7018   45-26-156-1.lightspeed.tukrga.sbcglobal.net (45.26.156.1)   0.0%    10    4.4   3.6   2.0   5.9   1.2
      4. AS7018   107.212.169.24                                              0.0%    10    5.2   3.7   1.6   6.1   1.5
      5. AS7018   12.242.113.31                                               0.0%    10    2.2   3.7   2.2   5.3   1.0
      6. AS7018   12.247.68.178                                               0.0%    10    2.8   3.8   2.2   5.8   1.2
      7. AS20940  ae6.r21.atl01.mag.netarch.akamai.com (23.192.0.94)          0.0%    10    3.2   4.3   2.3   5.7   1.1
      8. AS20940  ae0.r21.atl01.icn.netarch.akamai.com (23.192.0.65)          0.0%    10    3.7   4.1   1.9   6.5   1.5
      9. AS20940  ae1.r21.atl01.ien.netarch.akamai.com (23.207.235.35)        0.0%    10    4.2   3.5   1.9   5.6   1.1
     10. AS20940  ae22.gw3.atl1.netarch.akamai.com (23.203.144.39)            0.0%    10    5.2   5.0   2.4   8.8   2.0
     11. AS???    ???                                                        100.0    10    0.0   0.0   0.0   0.0   0.0
     12. AS???    ???                                                        100.0    10    0.0   0.0   0.0   0.0   0.0
     13. AS???    ???                                                        100.0    10    0.0   0.0   0.0   0.0   0.0
     14. AS63949  bucket.goose.ws (45.79.209.169)

However, routing from Bucket to Vergil does not:

    mtr -rwzbc 10 99.42.115.109
    Start: 2024-12-19T16:49:13-0500
    HOST: Bucket.goose.ws                                                Loss%   Snt   Last   Avg  Best  Wrst StDev
      1. AS???    10.204.3.155                                            0.0%    10    0.2   0.3   0.1   0.8   0.2
      2. AS???    10.204.35.16                                            0.0%    10    0.4   0.4   0.3   0.5   0.1
      3. AS???    10.204.32.2                                             0.0%    10    0.7   9.4   0.4  74.3  23.2
      4. AS63949  lo0-0.gw4.atl1.us.linode.com (74.207.239.106)           0.0%    10    0.7   0.5   0.4   0.7   0.1
      5. AS20940  ae45.r22.atl01.ien.netarch.akamai.com (23.203.144.36)   0.0%    10    0.4   0.4   0.4   0.6   0.1
      6. AS20940  ae4.r22.atl01.mag.netarch.akamai.com (23.192.0.98)      0.0%    10    0.6   0.7   0.6   0.8   0.1
      7. AS20940  ae1.r24.atl01.ien.netarch.akamai.com (23.192.0.103)     0.0%    10    0.5   0.4   0.4   0.6   0.0
      8. AS7018   12.247.68.177                                           0.0%    10    1.0   1.0   0.8   1.2   0.1
      9. AS???    ???                                                    100.0    10    0.0   0.0   0.0   0.0   0.0
     10. AS7018   107.212.169.25                                          0.0%    10    1.4   1.4   1.4   1.5   0.0
     11. AS???    ???

Calling the tier 1 support number for AT&T residential support was very less-than-helpful. They kept on wanting to send a tech out to the house claiming there's an issue with the line. I kindly thanked them for their efforts but gave up, and tried emailing the contact email address for the AT&T datacenter/core router from the WHOIS in that last successful hop of the trace from Bucket to Vergil. I doubt I'll hear anything back, but I'm unsure of who else to turn to/what else to try. I've never seen/experienced a route broken in one direction like this. But I'm unable to access any of my devices/services from outside my house, due to it. Hoping someone has an idea or suggestion?

Edit:

Well, after about 38 hours of this issue, the power went out at my house. My networking equipment is on a UPS, so it did not go down. But when the power returned, the route began resolving again, and I am connectable again. Don't know if an area power outage rebooted some AT&T equipment nearby, I would imagine their stuff is also on UPS. But who knows?

For the non-believer about my route previously being complete:

[goose@Bucket: ~ ] $ mtr -rwzbc 10 99.42.115.109
Start: 2024-12-20T15:20:23-0500                                                        HOST: Bucket.goose.ws                                                        Loss%   Snt   Last   Avg  Best  Wrst StDev
  1. AS???    10.204.3.155                                                    0.0%    10    0.1   0.2   0.1   0.2   0.0
  2. AS???    10.204.35.16                                                    0.0%    10    0.2   0.3   0.2   0.4   0.1
  3. AS???    10.204.32.2                                                     0.0%    10    0.6   1.8   0.4   9.9   2.9
  4. AS63949  lo0-0.gw4.atl1.us.linode.com (74.207.239.106)                   0.0%    10    0.4   2.0   0.3  15.6   4.8
  5. AS20940  ae45.r22.atl01.ien.netarch.akamai.com (23.203.144.36)           0.0%    10    0.4   0.4   0.3   0.5   0.1
  6. AS20940  ae4.r21.atl01.mag.netarch.akamai.com (23.192.0.90)              0.0%    10    0.8   0.7   0.6   0.9   0.1
  7. AS20940  ae0.r24.atl01.ien.netarch.akamai.com (23.192.0.95)              0.0%    10    0.4   0.5   0.4   0.5   0.0
  8. AS7018   12.247.68.177                                                   0.0%    10    0.8   0.9   0.8   1.2   0.1
  9. AS???    ???                                                            100.0    10    0.0   0.0   0.0   0.0   0.0
 10. AS7018   107.212.169.25                                                  0.0%    10    1.4   1.5   1.4   1.6   0.1
 11. AS???    ???                                                            100.0    10    0.0   0.0   0.0   0.0   0.0
 12. AS7018   99-42-115-109.lightspeed.tukrga.sbcglobal.net (99.42.115.109)   0.0%    10    3.6   3.2   2.1   4.9   0.9
[goose@Bucket: ~ ] $

Hello Tildes! I often find myself intimidated by authors of great sagas, trilogies upon trilogies, and dozens of standalone novels. How do I know which book (or series) to read first?

I've been recommended Terry Pratchett and Brandon Sanderson recently. I've read zero novels by either author. I've also been warned that there is a definitive best place in the canon to start, "and it's this one!" But then someone else interjects and says, "no, it's this one!" followed by passionate reasoning. Okay. If it is really worth starting somewhere in particular, where should I begin?

I'm unlikely to read an author's entire corpus. I just have too many books to read and not enough time. But I'm not opposed to reading longer series if they're really fun. I'd appreciate any input about these authors in particular and this problem in general. Thanks!

Important: This will be a noisy topic. If you do not wish to see it in your feed, please use the Ignore feature to hide it!

Tip: If the large number of comments are cluttering up the topic and you just want to see the main giveaway posts, click Collapse Replies at the top of the comments.

🎵 It's the most wonderful time of the year 🎵

This is our annual holiday game giveaway topic. Spread some goodwill and holiday cheer with others!

Before you participate, please make sure you read the rules below.

Rules

-Gifters

Post your available games, the platform and method of delivery, rules for your giveaways (e.g. first-come first-serve, random draw, etc.), and any additional info or requirements. Feel free to get creative!

-Giftees

Request giveaways. Please make sure you follow the gifter's posted guidelines.

-Guidelines

Anyone can choose to be a gifter, giftee, or both! Giveaway rules are set by individual gifters, but there are handful of guidelines everyone should follow:

1. No grey market keys! Only give away games from reputable sources. If you're not sure what this means, please ask.
2. Requests for games should be done in this topic, but if the gift is a key, those should be delivered by PMs only. Please don't post keys publicly in this topic, even obfuscated ones.

If you're new to these, check out previous giveaway threads to see how these usually go.